Yesterday I said goodbye to my partner, mentor, best friend, and legend. Dan Kidney gave me my wings and made me the artist I am today. He taught me so much and inspired me through everything. We were each other's muses and I know that while he may no longer be by my side, +
this is so fucking insidious. there’s literally NO good reason to have a concealed camera connected to the internet available for general use. they will absolutely be training AI with the feedback, too. evil invention from evil people — i wish you nothing but the worst
Do you remember when radio stations used to give away concert tickets and backstage passes? I just heard a midday radio giveaway, and now the prizes are groceries, a year of gas, or rent paid. It’s a strange reminder that survival has become the prize. That’s pretty sad.
When the only option to decline is "don't use our service" and/or "delete everything you've uploaded before AI even existed", then there's no consent and it shouldn't be legal. Especially when thousands of artists who uploaded have died before AI existed.
“The students who cannot read a 20-page article today are the voters who will not be able to read a bill, or the jurors who cannot follow a closing argument, tomorrow.”
"use ai or you'll get left behind" oh no that's okay you guys go on ahead i'll be back here with my reading comprehension & critical thinking skills
I genuinely think a lot of millennials are reaching the same conclusion at the same time.
We grew up watching technology make life better every year. Cell phones. iPods. Smartphones. An app for everything. It felt like the future was arriving right in front of us, and we couldn’t wait for what came next.
Then somewhere along the way, it changed.
Everything became a subscription. Social media became algorithms. Every day feels like another once-in-a-lifetime event. The things that were supposed to save us time somehow ended up demanding more of our attention than ever.
We were sold convenience.
What we got was a world that feels faster, louder, more expensive, and somehow less human.
And that’s why so many people I know dream about a completely different life now. Not more technology. Not more optimization.
Just a quiet job, a flip phone, a small town, and a place where life feels real again.
Pope Leo writes, “The speed and ease with which answers or summaries can be obtained risk extinguishing the desire to ask questions.” Curiosity and the human hunger to learn are under attack. They are trying to build a world in which no one *wants* to know anything.
Erin Brockovich has launched a website and has begun tracking all data centers in America and logging resident complaints
In just 1 week it’s already logged 1,690 resident complaints
For this who don’t remember
Erin Brockovich was the paralegal responsible for winning out a case against PG&E, Hinckley in California, because their wastewater runoff was seeping into rural areas and creating a lot of health issues for, for the surrounding neighborhoods
That case brought in a $333 million settlement that went to the families affected by the situation because a lot of them either had staggering medical bills due to their tap water was no longer safe
So why is this important, well residents all over America are reporting their tap water and river water is being heavily polluted by data centers
Her map of data centers is new, she just launched it
The website features an interactive US map showing operational, under-construction, and proposed AI data centers, overlaid with community-reported complaints
Residents can submit reports with details, photos, and locations. Within days of launch, it received a surge of submissions over 1,600 in the first week, and reports of 1,800+ from 47 states shortly after
Common Resident Complaints Being Logged
- Water usage
- Raising utility bills for residents
- Noise pollution: Constant 24/7 humming from fans, generators, and cooling systems disrupting sleep, daily life, and wildlife.
- E-waste from frequent hardware upgrades, pollution including PFAS concerns
For about ten years, the DVD made Hollywood more money than the movie theater did. A film could flop in cinemas and still turn a tidy profit once it hit the shelf at Best Buy. In 2005, discs sold around $16 billion in the US. Theaters made about half that.
That safety net changed the kind of films that got made. Since a strong disc run could cover a box-office miss, studios were willing to bet on smaller, odder movies. A scrappy comedy like Napoleon Dynamite or The Big Lebowski could rake in as much from disc sales as it ever made selling tickets, sometimes more. And the hours of behind-the-scenes extras Jackson misses got made for the same reason: the discs sold well enough to pay for them.
Then streaming showed up, and the disc money fell off a cliff. Sales sank more than 80%. By 2018, DVDs were down to barely $2 billion. By 2023, a full half-year of disc sales added up to about $754 million, less than a tenth of the old peak. With the safety net gone, the risky bets stopped. The mid-size movie, the $20 to $60 million film that filled theaters for decades, mostly stopped getting made. Hollywood's big studios put out 204 movies in 2006. By 2010, that was down to 141.
The digital version that replaced the disc comes with fine print. When you click "buy" on a movie, you're really just renting it. What you actually get is a license, a permission slip the store can take back. In late 2023, PlayStation warned customers it was about to wipe more than 1,300 shows they had already paid for. It backed off only after signing a fresh deal, and even that one expires in a couple of years. California now has a law, on the books since 2025, that makes stores admit the "buy" button is actually a rental.
Jackson's old box sets still sit on a shelf and still play, extras and all. The digital copies most people traded them for can vanish the morning a licensing contract runs out.
One thing I’ve never understood about streaming is that it’s built on “watch hours” yet special features - a thing people love to spend hours watching - haven’t carried over