In medieval times, within the arms race of ever more demonic torture devices, some sadistic genius came up with the idea of the Little Ease.
This was a prison cell built so small in every dimension that a grown man could not stand upright in it nor lie down at full length nor properly sit.
The pain is relentless and without relief and inflicted by one's own body. Prisoners were known to go insane within a few days. A stay at the Little Ease was considered even more cruel than the rack, the thumbscrew, and the other ghoulish machinery of the Tower of London.
A breeding pig will spend her whole life in a version of that box.
These are social, roaming creatures (more intelligent than dogs) who will never leave this corset of steel.
They have been selectively bred to be bigger than their frames can support. Yet we put them in cells so confined that they cannot comfortably sit, and their attempts to do so (for example, by sneaking their limbs into adjacent stalls) reliably lead to fractures and sprains.
They cannot sweat, yet have nothing to roll around in to cool themselves off. Except their own manure, which (contrary to the common misconception) they are so averse to (thanks to their strong sense of smell) that new sows will often suffer from constipation to avoid soiling the space from which they eat and sleep.
Here is how the writer Matthew Scully described what saw at one of Smithfield’s “gestation barn”:
> “Sores, tumors, ulcers, pus pockets, lesions, cysts, bruises, torn ears, swollen legs everywhere. Roaring, groaning, tail biting, fighting, and other “Vices,” as they’re called in the industry. Frenzied chewing on bars and chains, stereotypical “vacuum” chewing on nothing at all, stereotypical rooting and nest building with imaginary straw. And “social defeat,” lots of it, in every third or fourth stall some completely broken being you know is alive only because she blinks and stares up at you … creatures beyond the power of pity to help or indifference to make more miserable, dead to the world except as heaps of flesh into which the [insemination] rod may be stuck once more and more flesh reproduced.”
—
The Save Our Bacon Act is trying to unroll the few state protections we have against this barbaric cruelty - for example California’s Prop 12 - which banned the sale of pork from pigs kept in gestation crates.
It’s incredibly important we don’t end up with this sort of federal preemption.
SOB will not only kill the most important animal welfare related laws in the US of the past decade, but more importantly, it will also restrict ALL future legislative progress (aka how the animal welfare movement has gotten its biggest wins).
The Senate is currently deciding whether to add the SOB Act to the Farm Bill.
With relatively little money now, we can discourage the most pivotal senators in the Ag committee from backing this amendment.
Defeating this bill is even more important given the amount of philanthropic funding I expect to come online in the next year or two.
It will plausibly be over 10x more expensive to repeal SOB than to prevent it from passing in the first place.
All that money that could be spent transforming our society's relationship to mass animal suffering will instead have to be spent just getting us back to where we are right now.
That's why money spent now fighting this bill (and I mean right NOW) is so effective.
If you’re in a position to donate six figures, please DM me.
🏆 Who won our first hackathon? 🥇🥈🥉
This weekend we (@e2b_dev) & @FireworksAI_HQ hosted "Code Interpreting 2.0".
We got 20 good-quality submissions. It was our first hackathon so I'm still surprised that so many developers came to build such cool stuff on Saturday - you all are amazing! 🖤
Check out the demos. 🧵👇
Big thanks to @EdgeAGI venue & @eraqian for having us!
We just hit a 100 sign-ups to what was meant to be a small 20 person event. The force is strong with Berlin GenAI builders 🇩🇪🦾
We have an awesome demo lineup and a large enough space to host a few more Tabletop demos.
Link below ⬇️
Less than 3 weeks left for GenAI Builders Demo Day in Berlin 🇩🇪 🛠
If you're building a company, side project or just experimenting with GenAI, come join us on the 5th of September for a night of Demos.
We're bringing together the best in Berlin to build and learn together!
Calling all AI Builders in Berlin 🤖🇩🇪 to join for our next meetup on Sept. 5.
Have a demo to show?
The criteria are simple:
1. You're going to demo something you or your company built,
2. It involves GenAI tooling or apps (with GenUI for extra🔥)
https://t.co/1qM8Qy318h
On Sept 5th @awws0me@warianoguerra and I are hosting a demo night for AI builders in Berlin 🇩🇪 🛠
We have 10 spots for 5 min demos.
Sign up now 👉 https://t.co/2pAwaTaS5C
Are you building something at the intersection of AI & UX?
Can you get to Berlin on September 5th?
Then join us at the first GenAI Builders Berlin Meetup :)
https://t.co/hHZiRFyUzJ
Hamming was only off by about 4 years:
“What is wanted in the long run, is the man with the problem does the actual writing of the code with no human interface…
I would think by the year 2020 it would be fairly universal practice…”
- Art of Doing Science and Engineering
⚡️Introducing ion design (YC W24)⚡️
We instantly turn Figma designs into clean React code. We're already speeding up businesses by ~40%
ion saves thousands of hours by:
- Learning structure from your codebase
- Reusing your existing components
- Automatic dark mode 🌙
(1/4)
Introducing Sora, our text-to-video model.
Sora can create videos of up to 60 seconds featuring highly detailed scenes, complex camera motion, and multiple characters with vibrant emotions.
https://t.co/YYpOAcrXQ3
Prompt: “Beautiful, snowy Tokyo city is bustling. The camera moves through the bustling city street, following several people enjoying the beautiful snowy weather and shopping at nearby stalls. Gorgeous sakura petals are flying through the wind along with snowflakes.”