David J. Smolar

Personal acct - personal opinions and RTs. Chief Creator, editor & producer, musician/composer, Jewish educator. Likes cheese.

[David J. Smolar @DaveSmolar]

@DEADLINE I'm just here for the #FrancesSternhagen stan club. See if Sorkin does a biopic about that.

[David J. Smolar @DaveSmolar]

@AlJean @VDOOZER @PrimaryCinema @TheSimpsons Ah, The Critic! Maybe he'll finally know what it means when I occasionally yell out "Licked by Lovitz!"

[David J. Smolar @DaveSmolar]

@Cudlitz This is like every day of Passover for my insides.

[David J. Smolar @DaveSmolar]

@capitalweather At BWI’s train station and OMG. And of course, I’m the second to report it to ya…

[David J. Smolar @DaveSmolar]

@ditzkoff Elizondoriffic!

[MERICA MEMED @Mericamemed]

lowkey actually satisfying

[David J. Smolar @DaveSmolar]

@AlJean @VDOOZER @PrimaryCinema @TheSimpsons Noting that my 12yo son and I are nearly done binging all eps of @TheSimpsons - all of them. Hoping to move him onto Tracey Ullman’s show next, if I can find copies of the episodes…
btw, he’s now binging Friends, so I don’t know what he thinks Life really is.

[David J. Smolar @DaveSmolar]

@capitalweather At BWI train station…super cool.

[David J. Smolar @DaveSmolar]

@Joshstrangehill @thatbilloakley You’ve now exorcised these ear worms from my mind. Bless ye.

[David J. Smolar @DaveSmolar]

@AugensteinWTOP You Know My Name, Look Up The Number. #nailedit

[Steve 🇺🇸 @SteveLovesAmmo]

This guy created a camera that was built to capture at 2 billion frames per second and showed us light traveling.

Really cool stuff.

[David J. Smolar @DaveSmolar]

@WesJohnsonVoice @AwesomeCon Meanwhile, I’ll be celebrating being two degrees from Paul Giamatti.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Ring paid somewhere between $8 and $10 million for a 30-second Super Bowl spot to tell 120 million viewers that their cameras now scan neighborhoods using AI.

The math is wild. Ring has roughly 20 million devices in American homes. Search Party is enabled by default. The opt-out rate on default settings in consumer tech is historically around 5%. So approximately 19 million cameras are now running AI pattern matching on anything that moves past your front door. Today the target is dogs. The same infrastructure already handles “Familiar Faces,” which builds biometric profiles of every person your camera sees, whether they know about it or not.

Ring settled with the FTC for $5.8 million after employees had unrestricted access to customers’ bedroom and bathroom footage for years. They’re now partnered with Flock Safety, which routes footage to local law enforcement. ICE has accessed Flock data through local police departments acting as intermediaries. Senator Markey’s investigation found Ring’s privacy protections only apply to device owners. If you’re a neighbor, a delivery driver, a passerby, you have no rights and no recourse.

This tells you everything about Amazon’s actual product. The customer paid for the camera. The customer pays the electricity. The customer pays the $3.99/month subscription. And Amazon gets a surveillance grid that would cost tens of billions to build from scratch, with an AI layer activated by default, and a law enforcement pipeline already connected.

They wrapped all of that in a lost puppy commercial because that’s the only version of this story anyone would willingly opt into.

[RetroNewsNow @RetroNewsNow]

📺ABC Primetime, February 7, 1982:

— Network premiere of 'Superman'

[Cory Booker @CoryBooker]

Stay defiant in the face of injustice.

[David J. Smolar @DaveSmolar]

@EmoPhilips See I told you it was risqué. And that’s not just because I’m covered in peanut butter right now.

[David J. Smolar @DaveSmolar]

@EmoPhilips The next day, a Rabbi comes for a trim. Afterwards, the barber refuses payment, reiterating “No charge for clergy”. The Rabbi thanks him and leaves. That afternoon, the Rabbi returns with five more rabbis.

[David J. Smolar @DaveSmolar]

@EmoPhilips (3/?) Next day, a minister goes to the same barber for a trim. He then offers to pay but the barber says “No charge for clergy”, so the minister thanks him and leaves. He returns with a Bible as a gift of gratitude.

[David J. Smolar @DaveSmolar]

@EmoPhilips (2/?) A priest goes for a five minute haircut. The barber finishes and the priest asks for the price. The barber says, “No charge for clergy.” The priest thanks him and leaves. That afternoon, the priest brings the barber a rosary in gratitude.

[David J. Smolar @DaveSmolar]

@EmoPhilips In honor of your big birthday, here’s the joke I mangled before ye after the Timonium show, in the freezing cold about a year ago. 1/?