Afternoon Tea 5.8.24 - Whale Phonics

Anti-Labor, rap battle partisans, and a new kind of CCTV

Porto Alegre in Southern Brazil needs help. A lot of help.

Greetings from the Best Coast! The Tea is a touch late for East Coasters, but should be coming in right on time for the Cascadia Region. If this time works better for either/both coasts, yell at me! Nicely, but also feedback is always welcome.

Literally me for 5+ years

Amazon violated labor law in Alabama union election, labor official finds (NBC News) The anti-union chokehold Big Auto & Big Tech has could be unraveling. With UAW’s victory and this Amazon violation, labor activists could establish a beachhead, leading to dozens of small victories across the as-yet-unorganized auto factory, energy plant, and manufacturing in the American South.

An Oil Price-Fixing Conspiracy Caused 27% of All Inflation Increases in 2021 (Matt Stoller) As we said over and over again, inflation is because companies can get away with it. Full stop. 1/5 extra dollars you paid ON ANYTHING in 2021 was the result of cartel-style tactics that we should be revoking corporate charters for.

Between paralegals and clerks, what do they actually do?

Fake videos of Modi aides trigger political showdown in India election (Reuters) & With content king, creators trying hard to be kingmakers this Lok Sabha elections The largest election on earth is already plagued with fake info and outright misinformation. BJP ministry members are arresting rival Congress party staffers in response to deepfake videos of elected officials and Bollywood celebrities. Snapchat disclosed it had hit 200million users in India, and I assume that has everything to do with being able to push temporary text & video to a group list. Disintegrating Dark Ads will be the pivot point that many of the elections this year hinge on. Buckle up.

AI Chatbots Have Thoroughly Infiltrated Scientific Publishing (Scientific American) It’s not just “delve!” AI word choice is now demonstrably affecting the language of peer reviewed journal comments, with a hilarious spike in “meticulously” among others. You probably don’t need to use “Scholarly” if you’re doing peer review for a real journal, so cut it.

<Hunter S. Thompson intensifies>

A Lawsuit Argues Meta Is Required by Law to Let You Control Your Own Feed (Wired) UnFollow Everything is a tool that lets you unLike every FB page at once. FB thinks this is wildly illegal, and sued to bury the thing. The creator & the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia disagree.

This Tool Shows Some Telegram Users’ Approximate Physical Location (404 Media) “Closed Circuit Telegram Vision”, or CCTV, should prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, just how insecure Telegram is. For your friends who got into it in 2017/2018 and haven’t looked back since.

I hope the Terrier gets good representation

Scientists document remarkable sperm whale 'phonetic alphabet' (Reuters) Those goofy whale sounds you make are accurate, you just need to work on your accent and pronunciation.

Drake’s security guard ‘seriously injured’ in shooting at Toronto mansion (The Guardian) & London OVO Store Vandalized With ‘They Not Like Us’ Graffiti in Reference to Kendrick’s Drake Diss Track (Complex) Stochastic Terrorism has come to hip hop beefs! As much as I think Kendrick’s dogwalking of Drake is world-endingly entertaining, a shooter showing up to his home is not appropriate rap battle behavior unless his name is Suge Knight. The graffiti is kind of amazing though.

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