Mar 27, 2023

$24 Billion, just POOF!

Twitter is not worth as much as it was sold for. Also, Levi's would rather not have to pay models, cops are still in less danger than teachers, some tigers got loose in Georgia, a tornado leveled a town, and the Pope's drip is not real.

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What does a $24B drop in value over a few months look like?

Well it looks like a heap of unchecked nazis posting white supremacist content on a site with frequent outages and virtually nobody to solve them, or more succinctly, Twitter.

In an email sent to employees about company value and equity, Musk said Twitter is now worth $20 Billion. As a reminder: he bought it for $44 Billion. He also referred to the company as a "reverse start-up" which is BIZARRE and I get what he was trying to go for, but its still confounding.

Anyway, the reverse-startup Twitter is also going to remove blue check marks from verified people who are not paying for Twitter Blue. On April Fools Day. I am calling it now that they're gonna actually do it, and its gonna cause havoc, and they're gonna backpedal and claim it was an April Fools joke.

At the same time, they're also going to let people hide their blue check marks, possibly because it is utterly hilarious to see someone with a blue check mark who is paying for Twitter Blue right now.

And just as a kicker, some of Twitter's source code leaked online and they're trying to figure out who did that and who may have downloaded it.

Levi's wants to use AI to generate fake models for better diversity instead of, oh I dunno…

Levi's—the jeans one—idk if there's another one though—is partnering with an AI company to artificially generate more diverse selections of models for their clothes.

Okay so the obvious WHAT here is "why not just HIRE DIVERSE MODELS?" But don't worry: Levi's says this is to help make sure there are more models for more types of people to make a more inclusive purchasing experience.

Ah, yeah inclusivity! Like you could do by paying more diverse models to model your products. You care enough to pay for one type of model for the clothes! The rest get an AI's guess.

"But Endeavorance", screams the jean hawker, "We're doing this to provide inclusivity to more people so that everyone can benefit!"

To which I continue my fake argument with a jeans company by replying, "Ah, yes, truly solving the problem of issues with a lack of inclusion: ensuring everyone has an equal opportunity to buy your mass market products."

Cops are in less danger than Teachers

The Washington Post did a deep dive into workplace violence and danger, showing that among other trends, cops are attacked less than teachers, and violence in the workplace against women is on the rise.

In terms of being attacked on the job, cops are attacked less often than nurses and psychiatric assistants. In terms of deadliest jobs, cops don't even make the top ten, with fishing, farming, roofing and even groundskeeping being a deadlier job.

According to their report, cops have actually seen one of the steepest declines in on-the-job attacks, seeing a 32% drop between 2011 and 2019.

Uh, tigers got loose in Georgia

After a violent storm damaged animal enclosures at the Wild Animal Safari park in Pine Mountain, Georgia, two tigers got loose and began to roam the area.

The park's official statement said "two tigers briefly escaped," which… I mean it's not something you want to hear escaped, even briefly.

A tornado in Mississippi leveled a town

This one's not funny. A tornado ripped through the small town of Rolling Fork, Mississippi, a majority Black town with a population of just about 2,000.

The mayor is quoted in saying "My city is gone," as 25 people have been killed by the storm and massive portions of the town have been leveled to rubble.

Relief efforts from local and federal networks are underway, but many lives have been catastrophically disrupted.

Closing out this portion by just saying: Make sure you have a disaster plan in place. Whatever it may be, if at all possible, plan for what you'd do. Of course nobody can plan for everything and plans are never perfect, but just be safe out there. 🕊️

Drippy Pope is not real, he cannot hurt you

AI generated images of the Pope in extremely dope getups made the rounds over the weekend, with people wondering if they were real or not. They were not.

Similar to the AI generated photos of Trump being arrested, these photos fuel the ongoing fires around AI image generation and the threat it poses to misinformation.

While there is DEFINITELY cause for concern about misinformation with AI generation, I still have to wonder: what headspace must one be in to think the Pope actually wore those clothes? Like, I get it—it'd be amazing if he did. But hey turns out that real life isn't actually funny meme time lol 420 69.

My honest take though is that we don't really need deepfakes to trick the majority of people anyway. Liiiiiike if people thought those were real, they'd probably think a mildly decent photoshop job was real as well. The majority of the issue with misinformation is how passingly digestible it can be. It's easy to just see a thing and just be like "yeah okay cool" and accept it and move on. AI generated or otherwise.