#angel investing platforms

[startup-steroid]

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[startupgamechanger]

Simplifying Startup Funding:How to Use Angel Investing Platforms

[etanjohnson01]

Angel investing platforms

Angel investing platforms are online networks or tools that connect startups with angel investors. These platforms allow entrepreneurs to pitch their business ideas and seek funding from a network of wealthy individuals, also known as angels. Some popular examples of angel investing platforms include AngelList, SeedInvest, StartupSteroid, and CircleUp. These platforms provide a streamlined process for both entrepreneurs and investors to connect and facilitate investments in startup companies.

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[oikarma]

number one girl

pairing: max verstappen x reader

summary: the story of ynmax is a very, very heated topic riddled with holes and chock full of conspiracies: a couple and split to rival brocedes. it's mostly an a f1 thing, though, until you release an album and the internet tries to deduce what ruined a decades-long friendship.

a/n: angst warning. bear with me, you're in for a long ride. we go from twitter to insta to reddit to sdfsd. this was SO FUN!

part one / part two / part three

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

liked by stevienicks, georgerussell63 and 3,104,827 others

yourinstagram: "number one girl" out now.

view all 411,295 comments

user1: mother??? music???

user2: our multitalented baby <3

stevienicks: so proud of you ❤️

yourinstagram: so thankful for you 🥺 your support is immeasurable in worth

user3: max verstappen did you-

user4: george listening to this so he can justify bullying max next season

user5: please 💀 i choked on my water reading that

user6: CHARLES IN THE CREDITS FOR PIANO?? how many side quests has this girl roped people into

user7: they're still good friends lol just cause she and max stopped speaking doesn't mean she's not close w the rest of the grid user8: @/user7 right! she and alex have also posted each other quite a bit after the rhode collab

user9: is no one talking about the lyrics 😃 gut wrenching, yes, but the way it all lines up w max??

user10: no babe dw we're all talking about the lyrics user11: my roman empire...

user12: who's this max guy and what does he have to do with my queen y/n

user13: @/user12 he's a formula one driver, they ued to be best friends user12: @/user13 like nascar? omg what i only knew that she debuted in shadow n bone but WHAT IS THIS

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

A PAGE FROM Y/N's JOURNAL November 15, 2021

Max is a plane right now to see Kelly. I feel like I've been punched, three times over. The nausea is getting to me.

How could you? Just say all those things, like you always do. Do you mean any of them? When you say "I love you, more than anyone in this life." When you say "You're worth it, really. "When you say "forever." Does anyone ever really mean forever? Forever is part of the foreseeable future. You cannot capture what is beyond that.

You were my life. The words, every moment. An inescapable reminder.

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

liked by charles_leclerc, brunomars and 2,819,305 others

yourinstagram: "toxic till the end (ft. lewis hamilton)" is up on youtube and all music platforms ♡

view all 309,418 comments

user1: what. the. fuck.

user2: is she dating lewis? what? y/n girl please stop being cryptic my head can't take all of this 😭

user3: if this is part of the press tour i must say i am now extremely invested in the ynmax drama and i didn't even know who max was until i saw a thread on number one girl...

lewishamilton: Best of luck with your future endeavors, Y/N 🫂 Will be by your side!

yourinstagram: you better be 🫰 user4: the friendship we didn't know we needed

user5: lewis with...pink hair...

user6: max emilian verstappen fumbled so hard

user7: imagine ghosting THE y/n l/n and then she drops this

user8: well, 4 years later but yeah user9: what even is a wdc...

user10: what does the heart mean y/n

user11: bro

user12: so i guess the harry styles dating rumors were all fake 😔 but omg lewis music!!

kellypiquet: Face and voice of an angel 😽

yourinstagram: me? please, pregnancy glow has been treating you good 💕 user13: at least they don't have any hard feelings...

user14: bruno in the likes is the most random thing ever

user15: acting career, check. singing career, check. formula one side quests??? multple checks

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

liked by kellypiquet and 4,103,697 others

lewishamilton: Behind the scenes of Miss Y/N's "toxic till the end" music video

tagged: yourinstagram

yourinstagram: looking good there, lew

lewishamilton: Very kind of you to say user1: trust me we are witnessing the start of a great romance

user2: i don't want to delulu too hard but PLEASE tell me y/n's moved on with lewis it would be the ultimate baddie move

user3: imagine...you won abu dhabi but you lost the love of your life to the guy you beat 🤪 user4: we're all insane but i'm just going to keep dreaming

charles_leclerc: Why am I not in your dump?

yourinstagram: face card wasn't lethal enough user5: she's brutal 💀 user6: our charles's facecard could start wars idk what she's on

user7: daddy please give me ONE chance

user8: give me some of that maranello?? he looks so good oml

user9: focusing on music videos and not racing...no wonder he's washed

user10: @/user9 can you stfu and touch grass user11: @/user9 literally no one asked

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

AN UNSENT LETTER FROM MAX November 2021

Dear Hey, Y/N.

I realized you blocked me. It hurts. I don't know what to say or what to believe anymore. I miss us. Overstepping was the wrong choice, if you must, but going back is not impossible.

We've been friends for so long. Why can't you won't you try?

I miss you.

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

r/Fauxmoi · 1 day ago hamilton7xc

Max Verstappen and Y/N L/N's infamous split explained?

feralonsos: So she's been pretending he led her on when she lead him on

parking23: I don't know anymore. I know nothing. Don't even talk to me.

forzamcqueen: I want to say it's not about YNMax but 21 (as in 21, when they split?) and Y/N has been coming out with music recently. When you look at the "number one girl" lyrics from Boy's perspective it lines up with this submission. That Max wanted reassurance from Y/N and she gave it to him, but she couldn't give him everything he needed.

↳ roses_berg: @/forzamcqueen I don't know...it seems kind of unlikely. Y/N has a lyric about "chasing the prize" or something like that. What prize would she be chasing? On the other hand, you have Max who has clearly said racing is his passion and he loves winning.

↳ forzamcqueen: @/roses_berg I see where you're coming from but there are a few interpretations. Toxic Till the End suggests she thought his attachment to her was maybe unhealthy, and he kept trying to find ways to keep her by his side. Y/N has mentioned in past interviews (promo for her role in Shadow and Bone, when she was starting to do acting) that she's had bad experience with past relationships and is hesitant on starting a new one.

↳ januaryblues11: @/forzamcqueen Sorry, what interview? Could you link it?

↳ forzamcqueen: @/januaryblues11 No worries, I put it down below. The part I'm referring to is around 5:41.

↳ WolffHornerFan: @/forzamcqueen Okay, okay. I need a timeline then. She must've started filming Shadow and Bone in Oct 2019, then wrapped 4 months later in Feb 2020. This might be the "prize" she's chasing? Her own career. Before it was announced that she was in the series most news referred to her as "close friend" or "best friend" of Max Verstappen. Now a lot of people know her for S&B or Top Gun Maverick, etc.

↳ CautiousOwl: Might've not wanted her relationship to overshadow her career. It's understandable, if she wanted to be taken seriously instead of a "nepo friend."

↳ 4norrisop: She's amazing in Shadow and Bone! Definitely recommend checking that out, but I don't understand why she ghosted him.

↳ ynluv07: @/4norrisop he was dating kelly at the time. she might've thought it was a bad idea after it happened (i'm referring to the kiss, which i assume happened because she explicitly refers to it a few times in "number one girl") and distanced herself. maybe she told him it wasn't okay?

↳ ICEMAN_bwoah: Brain hurts.

↳ brooksies: Well if she did give up her happiness because she thought Kelly deserved better, that's great. No wonder they're still on good terms.

↳ DauntingParrot91: @/brooksies Yeah, sure...

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

AN UNSENT LETTER FROM MAX January 2022

Y/N, I'm sorry I asked for too much; I'm sorry I pushed you. I'll take my bags and go quietly, this time. Maybe you'll open the door again someday. I love you too, my best friend always.

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

liked by lewishamilton, taylorswift and 4,103,269 others

yourinstagram: Burnout.

comments on this post have been limited

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

AN UNSENT LETTER FROM Y/N February 2022

Wish you'd take a little longer to pack up your bags. You're moving too fast. Make me want to hate you more than I hate myself, so I don't have to miss you. Make a mistake, please. So I have someone to blame.

Please, won't you stay a little longer? I would call you babe, just to make you smile. I wouldn't mean it that way, but I still love you. You're my best friend. Why wasn't that enough?

I'll be okay, sometime. You say it's written all over my face, and I wonder, what is? I'm fragile, now. I'm speechless, now. Don't leave me in pieces. I'm sorry, let me fix it. It won't be good for us, but oh-how I want to.

I'm already having trouble breathing. Please, stay a little longer. I can't stand these four walls without you inside them.

Come back, be here.

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

liked by kellypiquet and 1,249,805 others

maxverstappen: She stayed a little longer 🖤

tagged: kellypiquet

view all 91,432 comments

user1: GUYS HE DEF HEARD THE SONG

user2: do we think kelly asked him to post it

user3: tbf given on how sweet her n yns interactions are i wouldn't be surprised if she listened to burnout

user4: kelly. you are the strongest woman i know

user5: so i can convince you the minute i kiss you speak a little softer so i don't have to answer and make it okay before you can say

user6: i just know he had a little breakdown inside after he heard the album

user7: max rn: CHARLES HOW COULD YOU PLAY PIANO FOR HER

user8: max: alexa play that should be me user9: ho-olding your handdd

user10: who are we blaming today

user11: at least max is finally someone's number one girl

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

AN UNSENT LETTER FROM MAX Summer 2024

Sometimes I look to the television and you're on, flying a plane or wielding magic, whatever it is you do these days. I knew you could act. I knew you'd make it far. I hear you were nominated for a Golden Globe, too.

I was mad for a long time. I was upset you kicked me out of your life so abruptly.

Kelly's expecting. I think she will be as good a mother to our child as she is to little P. A family is what I have always wanted, you know. It was not what you wanted.

I am sorry. I have said that many times, but one day I will need to say it to your face. I am truly, irrevocably sorry for all the hurt I caused you, in the name of love.

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

r/PopCultureChat · 1 day ago forzamcqueen

"Burnout" by Y/N L/N

How do we feel about the release of the full album? Moreover, how do we think it fits into the YNMax narrative? I, for one, have been listening non-stop trying to figure out the story.

lec_clerc16: I think it's funny how many people have gotten into F1 because of her music. Lol.

↳ NaturalOtter5: Well Lewis & Charles were on it so I would say the F1 community is pretty interested in the tea aswell.

↳ lec_clerc16: @/NaturalOtter5 Right, but YNMax is old drama. Sure, someone's posting in r/F1 every other week about an old photo or new quote. It's still been around for a while. This is fresh meat 😋

jennyowens1342: such a player...LOL who is gameboy about atp

↳ sassybanana: TBF Y/N's dating life has been a lot more quiet than Max's. There have been rumors but she hasn't hard launched anything. Maybe the one public "relationship" was enough for her.

museapollo: the more i listen the more convinced i am that y/n did not want the relationship as max did and decided it was best for them to stop being friends. the whole album is about a codependent relationship and the two people can't deal with leaving but they know it's better for both.

↳ janitorsclosetmonster: yess!! that's what i've been saying. we can't blame y/n for everything, it must've been confusing for her as well. having to navigate everything. idt she'd dated anyone at that point. max was her only close friend.

↳ EggplantParmesan713: But did max cheat...that's the real question. When did THE kiss happen? And who started it?

↳ museapollo: @/EggplantParmesan713 idk. i can't figure if she actually loved him (romantically) bcs it's clear he did but her side is a bit more hazy. you have: 1. "i just WANT it to be you" - it's not actually him she loves but she desperately wants it to be him 2. "cause even when i said it was over / you heard baby can you pull me in closer" - she's telling him it won't work out but he's not listening. 3. "please, won't you stay, stay a little a little longer, babe?" - she pauses before babe, like it's her trying to convince him to stay. mb she thought it was best to distance herself/end the friendship for a bit but she still loves him a lot because they've been friends for so long

↳ forzamcqueen: @/museapollo The best explanation I have heard so far. You can't force someone to love you the way you do. At least they've matured and moved on.

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

January 2025

Dear Max:

Congratulations. I'm sure you will be a wonderful father, as I have always guessed. 2024 was a great year for you. I watched all a few of your races; you've still got it.

I'm putting out an album soon. I thought you should know. I already had a talk with Kelly, she's listened to some snippets and she likes it a lot. Some of the writing is about you the things I never said.

It was wonderful being your best friend. We had a good run, better than most.

Missing you Wish you the best, Y/N L/N

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

February 2025

Dear Y/N:

Occasionally, I think of all that could have been.

But we had many years together, and I will always cherish those moments.

Kelly loves the album, she puts it on while she cooks or does her makeup. P sings along in the car. She says she wants to go out for a tea party with you sometime. I listen to it even when they're out of the voice, for a reminder of your voice. You've made quite a name for yourself. I'm sorry I couldn't be there by your side.

Thank you for writing it. There are some things that you have to hear once, just for yourself.

Love Always Yours, Max Verstappen

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

what did you think?? i might do a part 2 of yn & max talking for the first time in forever but i wanna know if you guys liked this one first LOL

[misfitwashere]

How we get rid of the American oligarchy

ROBERT REICH

JAN 16

Friends,

In what was billed as his “farewell address,” President Biden yesterday warned America that the nation is succumbing to an “oligarchy” of the ultra-wealthy, and the “dangerous concentration of power” they pose to democratic ideals:

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”

He’s right, of course. 

Fascism starts with the Trump derriere-kissing we’re now witnessing by the wealthiest people in America, who own the biggest megaphones and thereby determine what information Americans get. What they get back from Trump is raw power to do whatever they want. 

Elon Musk — the richest person in the world — controls X, which under his leadership has become a cesspool of lies and bigotry. 

Musk has posted or replied to more than 80 posts about the Los Angeles fires, many of which downplayed the role of climate change — placing blame instead on individual female firefighters of color and lesbian firefighters, including posting their names and faces. 

He boosted an hour-long propaganda video by right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones that claimed the fires were “part of a larger globalist plot” to cause the collapse of the United States; Musk replied simply, “True.” 

He repeatedly amplified claims that the Los Angeles Fire Department’s investments in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs cost lives by wasting money that could have been spent on disaster response, suggesting that the destruction could have been mitigated if more white men had been retained.

Musk has made it clear that his platform’s main role during the upcoming Trump regime will be to back whatever Trump chooses to do and criticize Trump’s critics with more lies and bigotry. 

Jeff Bezos — the second-richest person in America — owns Amazon. His Prime Video just announced it will spend a whopping $40 million for a documentary about Melania Trump, for which she is an executive producer, and stream it on Amazon Prime. 

What else will Amazon promote or censor, to curry favor with Trump? 

Bezos also owns The Washington Post. Just before the election, he killed a Post endorsement of Kamala Harris. Earlier this month, a Post cartoonist quit after the newspaper spiked a cartoon showing Bezos and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg kneeling before Trump.

Mark Zuckerberg — the third-richest person in America — owns Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. He’s sucking up to Trump by ridding his platforms of content moderation so that they, too, can amplify Trump’s lies and bigotry. 

Announcing the end of fact-checking on his platforms, Zuckerberg says he thinks it will “take another ten years” of fact-free operation before Meta is “back to the place that it maybe could have been if I hadn’t messed that up in the first place.”

Zuckerberg says the deciding factor was the “cultural tipping point” of Trump’s election. 

Not only will Zuckerberg fire most of the 40,000 fact-checkers who have screened his platforms’ posts for accuracy, but he will be moving the few who remain from California to Texas, “where there’s less concern about the bias of our teams.”

So Texas workers will be less “biased” than California workers? As Dan Evon of the nonprofit News Literacy Project notes, the move “provides an air of legitimacy to a popular disinformation narrative: that fact-checking is politically biased.”

Training materials for Meta’s remaining trust and safety workers include examples of speech that Zuckerberg now wants permitted: 

“Immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit.”

“Gays are freaks.”

“Look at that tranny (beneath photo of 17 year old girl).”

Trump praised the move, saying “I think they’ve come a long way.” 

A reporter asked Trump if his threats to put Zuckerberg in prison caused the change in policy. “Probably,” Trump responded. Perhaps the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit against Meta played a role as well?

Zuckerberg has also promoted prominent Republican Joel Kaplan to be Meta’s chief global affairs officer and put Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship and a close friend of Trump, on its board.

My friends, none of this has anything to do with freedom of speech. It has everything to do with the power of money. 

The three richest Americans want to decide what the rest of us will know about the coming Trump regime. 

Concentrated wealth is the enemy of democracy. As the great jurist Louis Brandeis is reputed to have said, “America has a choice. We can either have great wealth in the hands of a few, or we can have a democracy. But we cannot have both.” 

As we slouch into the darkness of Trump II, America needs people and institutions that speak truth to power, not align themselves with it. 

When we the people regain power, three reforms are critically necessary to begin to tame the oligarchy:

X, Amazon, Meta, and other giant tech media platforms must either be busted up or treated as public utilities, responsible to the public. 

Hugely wealthy individuals must not be permitted to own critical media. 

Large accumulations of individual wealth must be taxed. 

My friends, we will prevail. 

[zephyrrhiesfyrian]

Tiny formers seeker trine. You have to get all three because they will cry if separated

The seekers flying circles around you when you come back from work, before demanding food and cuddles

Thundercracker will literally wait by the door the entire day for you to come home. He hugs your leg when you leave and as soon as you open the door when you come home he's zooming up to your shoulder and hugging your face.

Skywarp will generally also come greet you when you come home, unless he's napping or has gotten stuck in something. He may need you to come rescue him.

Starscream is a little diva who will scream until you pick him up and then act like a perfect angel as he burrows under your chin for snuggles.

All three of them like to fly up to high places (on top of bookshelves, the fridge, inside wall mounted cabinets), so you may want to invest in some of those cat-platforms for them to climb on, that way you don't have to deal with sick tinies constantly sneezing and coughing because they've been scampering around on dusty shelves.

[renardtrickster]

Also because bringing up "I watched Hazbin Hotel" and only talking about discourse is a Bad Look, here's my thoughts on the pilot and the four episodes thus far released.

I've seen some people say the animation in the show is less fluid in the pilot, but I think I like the show's animation more? It's a lot more consistent, the characters are shaded so they stand out from the background more (and kind of "pop"), but honestly a passing vibe I got in the pilot now and then was that it was "too fluid", like it moved too fast at places or like it had a lot of "flourishes" that felt off. I can't accurately explain it, but point is, I like the show's vibes more.

I also like the redesigns. I didn't notice anything too drastic with say Dust, Alastor, or Charlie, but Vaggie's was an upgrade. The red shirt breaks up the white, and she's looking much more Moth (the more Moth your characters look the better).

I don't really have anything to say about the voices, my attention was divided elsewhere. I will be committing seppuku later for not being able to have a strong, belligerent opinion on this matter.

Speaking of Vaggie, now that I've seen more of her character, I've grown to appreciate her more. There's a sort of 4-section graph where Charlie and Vaggie believe in the Hotel's success, with Charlie being much more personally emotionally invested in it while Vaggie's more cynical and seems to be doing it more for Charlie's sake. Meanwhile Angel Dust and Alastor don't believe the Hotel can succeed, but Alastor still helps while Angel Dust just blows things off.

Also everyone who did the "she's an Angry Latina stereotype" thing can eat shit now. She was angry in the pilot because Angel Dust publicly embarrassed her girlfriend, tarnished any credibility the Hotel had, and then insulted her to her face while being unrepentant the entire time. Now that we've seen more from her, she's just grumpy and more willing to put her foot down (as opposed to Charlie who is bubbly and more accommodating). I knew this specific accusation was bad faith from day 1.

I genuinely don't think the show is edgy. It "appears" edgy, but Charlie's a disney princess who walked onto the wrong set and is shifting the genre through her presence. The fact that her goal is to show that people in Hell can change and become better people isn't just portrayed as earnest (instead of naive) but it is in fact achievable (as shown by Pentious and the others over time) adds onto this. The show is a fundamentally hopeful and positive one and I respect it for that.

In line with that, I appreciate the musical numbers. They bop, I didn't need to tell you this, but they also fall into the category of "endearing through earnesty". Like Charlie singing to Pentious about how change begins with an apology is the corniest shit on earth, but I couldn't help but smile about it.

I do like the speed of the plot, both the "redeeming people" plot and the "expedited extermination" one. I cynically expected Pentious' redemption to be a red herring, but the fact that he stuck around and is turning over is something I approve of. It is a bit fast at times though, I do know that this is because there's only 8 episodes, but I choose to blame the studio/streaming platform over the writers on this one. Also, we should throw bricks through the window of every streaming service headquarters.

I did like Adam's portrayal. The original Adam and Eve myths, whether or not Lilith is there, do lend themselves to misogyny, both in terms of reading and "what influenced some doctrine". Between Lilith being cast out for not wanting to be subservient to a man/wanting to top and then having sex with animals and demons or something, and Eve getting duped by the snake and now humanity's been cursed with original sin because femoids are dumb and bad and men should make the decisions, etc. etc. Adam being depicted as a misogynistic frat bro-type who is obsessed with his dick and brags about his conquests to random people reads to me more as "a clever take/commentary on christian mythology and culture" instead of "gratuitous edginess".

Honest to god, I think they're better at using swear words now. My principle criticism of Helluva Boss (which I like) is that they sometimes use "fuck" like it's punctuation, and it can get grating or become "noise" that doesn't register, which is Bad when it's your funny dialogue. Cursing is still casual, but I feel like characters only turn on the capslock and start screaming FUCKING SHITASS when they're emotionally compromised or intentionally meant to come across as crude and unlikeable. If they took notes and course-corrected on this, I will never wear a hat because it's going to be off to them forever.

Angel Dusts' voice direction in episode 4 was really good. He usually speaks in a somewhat high-pitched, New York ("new yoike") accent, but when he was yelling at Charlie to leave I noticed that it seemed to get a bit deeper and he lost the accent, as though he was so upset he couldn't keep up the affect anymore. I got chills.

TL;DR Hazbin Hotel is good, actually.

Maybe people should take more breaks from using the internet, for their mental health.

[hiwelcometothemonstersancturary]

What are the gangs favorite type of video games to play? Weather it’s Mario, Pokémon, sports, rhythm games, horror games, etc etc.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. YOU ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD!!!! Now...

Poppy prefers tabletop games more, but she can be often caught playing or seeing someone else playing The Sims. She LOVES that game - Angel has The Sims 2 installed on their computer, and when they all move to a bigger house Poppy gets her own PC so she can play TS2 as much as she wants.

Kissy doesn't play much on her own, but she really loves 3D platformers and adventure games. Her favorites are the og Spyro the Dragon trilogy! I think she loves watching others play pokémon as well.

Huggy loves racing games. Get anything with a car and he's instantly in love with it.

I can Mommy Long Legs making super over-the-top stories on The Sims 2 as well, so she and Poppy often share news of what their sims are doing. They are both active in forums and are trying to make their own custom content for the game!

Bunzo is a pokémon guy.

PJ Pug-a-Pillar doesn't like playing games in general but he LOVES watching others play, esp if there's lots of cutscenes. It's like watching a movie!

Miss Delight falls in love with Portal 2 when it's released, but I think she's really picky with her puzzle games. She likes being a bit creative on her solutions! She's also really into RPGs. I think the Fallout franchise is her comfort game.

Catnap and Craftycorn are walking Silent Hill encyclopedias, but they LOOOOVE survival horror. Catnap's fav is the original SH1, while Craftycorn loves Haunting Ground (PS2) and SH3.

Bobby on the other hand prefers Resident Evil and Clock Tower 3, but when it's not horror it's definitely a more experimental game. She cries everytime she plays Shadow of the Colossus but she loves it.

Bubba, much like Miss Delight, is SUPER into RPGs and puzzle games, but pokémon and Ace Attorney have conquered his heart. He LOOOVES gushing about it!

Picky's favorite is Animal Crossing! It makes her feel safe and she loves just walking around her town. She made a really impressive one and everyone wants updates from her villagers, Picky loves giving them.

Kickin can't get enough of any FPS or action-adventure game, and he can and WILL ragequit if he's playing online and his teammates start being rude to him or each other. Thankfully he learned really quick how to deal with the more toxic players so now he can truly relax. Unfortunately doomed to become a League of Legends player when it comes out.

Hoppy also loves FPS, but 3D platformers and open-world games are her favorites. Anything that gives her plenty of freedom to move around or just be silly immediately catches her attention! I think she becomes a Team Fortress 2 player.

Dogday prefers to watch rather than play and he gets SO invested. I think Miss Delight likes playing puzzle games with him because they figure out solutions together, but if Dogday were to chose a game for himself to play it would probably be a rythimn game. It gives him the zoomies.

The other smaller toys all have their own individual preferences, so talking about them is more complicated!

Everyone becomes obsessed with Minecraft when it's released. Catch Catnap pranking everyone on their shared beta server by pretending to be Herobrine.

When Angel gets them an Xbox 360 they have many game nights where they play on the Kinect.

Speaking of which, Angel is down to play literally everything, but all the toys know they aren't very keen on anything horror-related. Not because it's scary, it's just that Angel finds them boring after surviving Playtime Co. They probably have an encyclopedia-level knowledge of pokémon, tho.

Prototype doesn't play videogames, but enjoyes watching the others play. Just don't put ANY war games in front of him and we're all good, otherwise he stops watching.

[ovaryacted]

Randomly ranting about AI.

The thing that’s so fucking frustrating to me when it comes to chat ai bots and the amount of people that use those platforms for whatever godamn reason, whether it be to engage with the bots or make them, is that they’ll complain that reading/creating fanfic is cringe or they don’t like reader-inserts or roleplaying with others in fandom spaces. Yet the very bots they’re using are mimicking the same methods they complain about as a base to create spaces for people to interact with characters they like. Where do you think the bots learned to respond like that? Why do you think you have to “train” AI to tailor responses you’re more inclined to like? It’s actively ripping off of your creativity and ideas, even if you don’t write, you are taking control of the scenario you want to reenact, the same things writers do in general.

Some people literally take ideas that you find from fics online, word for word bar for bar, taking from individuals who have the capacity to think with their brains and imagination, and they’ll put it into the damn ai summary, and then put it on a separate platform for others so they can rummage through mediocre responses that lack human emotion and sensuality. Not only are the chat bots a problem, AI being in writing software and platforms too are another thing. AI shouldn’t be anywhere near the arts, because ultimately all it does is copy and mimic other people’s creations under the guise of creating content for consumption. There’s nothing appealing or original or interesting about what AI does, but with how quickly people are getting used to being forced to used AI because it’s being put into everything we use and do, people don’t care enough to do the labor of reading and researching on their own, it’s all through ChatGPT and that’s intentional.

I shouldn’t have to manually turn off AI learning software on my phone or laptop or any device I use, and they make it difficult to do so. I shouldn’t have to code my own damn things just to avoid using it. Like when you really sit down and think about how much AI is in our day to day life especially when you compare the different of the frequency of AI usage from 2 years ago to now, it’s actually ridiculous how we can’t escape it, and it’s only causing more problems.

People’s attention spans are deteriorating, their capacity to come up with original ideas and to be invested in storytelling is going down the drain along with their media literacy. It hurts more than anything cause we really didn’t have to go into this direction in society, but of course rich people are more inclined to make sure everybody on the planet are mindless robots and take whatever mechanical slop is fucking thrown at them while repressing everything that has to deal with creativity and passion and human expression.

The frequency of AI and the fact that it’s literally everywhere and you can’t escape it is a symptom of late stage capitalism and ties to the rise of fascism as the corporations/individuals who create, manage, and distribute these AI systems could care less about the harmful biases that are fed into these systems. They also don’t care about the fact that the data centers that hold this technology need so much water and energy to manage it it’s ruining our ecosystems and speeding up climate change that will have us experience climate disasters like with what’s happening in Los Angeles as it burns.

I pray for the downfall and complete shutdown of all ai chat bot apps and websites. It’s not worth it, and the fact that there’s so many people using it without realizing the damage it’s causing it’s so frustrating.

[mikaelsrose]

𐙚 ‧₊˚ ⋅rc random act of kindness event

@webanglikethat

oh, jbaby. i've always found it incredible how much you pay attention to everything people say, how creative and thoughtful you were when it came to surprising your friends with birthday gifts, any other celebration gifts, and even random gifts. your participation in the fandom's creative sphere is genuinely jaw-dropping, your dedication (yes, im talking about the vday event rn) otherworldly, and i truly couldn't think of a better friend.

i often come back to this web weave either for inspo or just to feel something because you—same as fungi—have the unique ability to perfectly capture the atmosphere and dynamics between characters, not to mention your incredible descriptions. ive yet to read a few other of your fics but i genuinely cant wait to do that 🥰

@ratanslily

tanu, you're literally the first person i've ever tagged on a fic when i joined tumblr and i will NEVER forget the kindness and support you've shown me. your edits are always incredible and i often feel bad that the only thing i can say about them is incoherent babbling and gibberish, but that's how amazed i always find myself while looking at your work. the love you have for your friends and fellow fandom members is astounding and i'd simply like to thank you for all your work 🩷

@ordinary-lab-assistant

OSTENTIA, a big fat thank you for your dmitry fics and your immense help with achievements. for a dumbass like me, you're truly an angel 😇

@agattthaa

agatha, your participation in the fandom's creative sphere is genuinely incredible 💖 not only you write regularly as hell, your fics are always creative and of a great quality. the fandom's creative part thrives because of people like you 🩷

@adilqalbi

lulu, first of all—youre so talented and invested in the fandom's social platforms that it often blows my mind because i only run the catalog, and i often struggle even with that while you're a mod for the catalog, the confessions blog, AND you find time to write.

thank you for always being so sweet and supportive, lu ❤️

@secret-fungi

fungita, my green-card wife, biggest bully, and funniest friend 🥀 thank you for immediately agreeing to helping me run the catalog, for all your incredible fics (even though you never think so)—youre incredibly talented, you always manage to describe the emotions and capture the characters' dynamic so damn well. ive always been (a bit) jealous of that and i can only hope that one day i become at least half as good at it 💖

@lxvesicklili

LILITA 💗 my sister in sabrina, wife in abh ❤️‍🔥 the sheer talent and creativity you possess is mind-blowing and i couldn't be happier that we share the same lis because you provide me with a ton of incredible content 😅💗

@liykaii

WIFEY, im so glad you're back to writing because youre an incredible author? im so impressed with that little rafayel drabble you posted and can only hope that you'll write something for rc characters one day as well. moreover, thank you so much for creating all those amazing moodboards—i wont even try to hide it, ive always considered you the rc fandom's queen of moodboards 💗

@nexuvia

THE TALENT AND DEDICATION, the regularity with which you create and post is enviable and i can only dream to be like you 🥺

moreover, id like to say a big thank you to all fandom creators—starting with writers and artists, ending with editors, web weavers, theorists, and moodboarders 💖

[startupgamechanger]

https://startupgamechanger.com/simplifying-startup-funding-how-to-use-angel-investing-platforms/

[etanjohnson01]

5 Things You Shouldn’t Ignore While Founding a Startup

Founding your own startup venture is an exciting idea, but not adhering to the necessary legal norms and regulations can land you in trouble. Any mistake or misstep you accidentally make in the early days can haunt you sooner or later. Additionally, if investors find any legal issues with your startup, they might back off and refuse to invest in your company.

Visit Now: https://startupsteroid.com/5-things-you-shouldnt-ignore-while-founding-a-startup/

[mostlysignssomeportents]

On September 22, I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy. On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine.

It's been 21 years since Bill Willingham launched Fables, his 110-issue, wide-ranging, delightful and brilliantly crafted author-owned comic series that imagines that the folkloric figures of the world's fairytales are real people, who live in a secret society whose internal struggles and intersections with the mundane world are the source of endless drama.

Fables is a DC Comics title; DC is division of the massive entertainment conglomerate Warners, which is, in turn, part of the Warner/Discovery empire, a rapacious corporate behemoth whose screenwriters have been on strike for 137 days (and counting). DC is part of a comics duopoly; its rival, Marvel, is a division of the Disney/Fox juggernaut, whose writers are also on strike.

The DC that Willingham bargained with at the turn of the century isn't the DC that he bargains with now. Back then, DC was still subject to a modicum of discipline from competition; its corporate owner's shareholders had not yet acquired today's appetite for meteoric returns on investment of the sort that can only be achieved through wage-theft and price-gouging.

In the years since, DC – like so many other corporations – participated in an orgy of mergers as its sector devoured itself. The collapse of comics into a duopoly owned by studios from an oligopoly had profound implications for the entire sector, from comic shops to comic cons. Monopoly breeds monopoly, and the capture of the entire comics distribution system by a single company – Diamond – was attended by the capture of the entire digital comics market by a single company, Amazon, who enshittified its Comixology division, driving creators and publishers into Kindle Direct Publishing, a gig-work platform that replicates the company's notoriously exploitative labor practices for creative workers. Today, Comixology is a ghost-town, its former employees axed in a mass layoff earlier this year:

https://gizmodo.com/amazon-layoffs-comixology-1850007216

When giant corporations effect these mergers, they do so with a kind of procedural kabuki, insisting that they are dotting every i and crossing every t, creating a new legal entity whose fictional backstory is a perfect, airtight bubble, a canon with not a single continuity bug. This performance of seriousness is belied by the behind-the-scenes chaos that these corporate shifts entail – think of the way that the banks that bought and sold our mortgages in the run-up to the 2008 crisis eventually lost the deeds to our houses, and then just pretended they were legally entitled to collect money from us every month – and steal our houses if we refused to pay:

https://www.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-58325420110720

Or think of the debt collection industry, which maintains a pretense of careful record-keeping as the basis for hounding and threatening people, but which is, in reality, a barely coherent trade in spreadsheets whose claims to our money are matters of faith:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/12/do-not-pay/#fair-debt-collection-practices-act

For usury, the chaos is a feature, not a bug. Their corporate strategists take the position that any ambiguity should be automatically resolved in their favor, with the burden of proof on accused debtors, not the debt collectors. The scumbags who lost your deed and stole your house say that it's up to you to prove that you own it. And since you've just been rendered homeless, you don't even have a house to secure a loan you might use to pay a lawyer to go to court.

It's not solely that the usurers want to cheat you – it's that they can make more money if they don't pay for meticulous record-keeping, and if that means that they sometimes cheat us, that's our problem, not theirs.

While this is very obvious in the usury sector, it's also true of other kinds of massive mergers that create unfathomnably vast conglomerates. The "curse of bigness" is real, but who gets cursed is a matter of power, and big companies have a lot more power.

The chaos, in other words, is a feature and not a bug. It provides cover for contract-violating conduct, up to and including wage-theft. Remember when Disney/Marvel stole money from beloved science fiction giant Alan Dean Foster, whose original Star Wars novelization was hugely influential on George Lucas, who changed the movie to match Foster's ideas?

Disney claimed that when it acquired Lucasfilm, it only acquired its assets, but not its liabilities. That meant that while it continued to hold Foster's license to publish his novel, they were not bound by an obligation to pay Foster for this license, since that liability was retained by the (now defunct) original company:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/30/disney-still-must-pay/#pay-the-writer

For Disney, this wage-theft (and many others like it, affecting writers with less fame and clout than Foster) was greatly assisted by the chaos of scale. The chimera of Lucas/Disney had no definitive responsible party who could be dragged into a discussion. The endless corporate shuffling that is normal in giant companies meant that anyone who might credibly called to account for the theft could be transfered or laid off overnight, with no obvious successor. The actual paperwork itself was hard for anyone to lay hands on, since the relevant records had been physically transported and re-stored subsequent to the merger. And, of course, the company itself was so big and powerful that it was hard for Foster and his agent to raise a credible threat.

I've experienced versions of this myself: every book contract I've ever signed stipulated that my ebooks could not be published with DRM. But one of my publishers – a boutique press that published my collection Overclocked – collapsed along with most of its competitors, the same week my book was published (its distributor, Publishers Group West, went bankrupt after its parent company, Advanced Marketing Services, imploded in a shower of fraud and criminality).

The publisher was merged with several others, and then several more, and then several more – until it ended up a division of the Big Five publisher Hachette, who repeatedly, "accidentally" pushed my book into retail channels with DRM. I don't think Hachette deliberately set out to screw me over, but the fact that Hachette is (by far) the most doctrinaire proponent of DRM meant that when the chaos of its agglomerated state resulted in my being cheated, it was a happy accident.

(The Hachette story has a happy ending; I took the book back from them and sold it to Blackstone Publishing, who brought out a new expanded edition to accompany a DRM-free audiobook and ebook):

https://www.blackstonepublishing.com/overclocked-bvej.html

Willingham, too, has been affected by the curse of bigness. The DC he bargained with at the outset of Fables made a raft of binding promises to him: he would have approval over artists and covers and formats for new collections, and he would own the "IP" for the series, meaning the copyrights vested in the scripts, storylines, characters (he might also have retained rights to some trademarks).

But as DC grew, it made mistakes. Willingham's hard-fought, unique deal with the publisher was atypical. A giant publisher realizes its efficiencies through standardized processes. Willingham's books didn't fit into that standard process, and so, repeatedly, the publisher broke its promises to him.

At first, Willingham's contacts at the publisher were contrite when he caught them at this. In his press-release on the matter, Willingham calls them "honest men and women of integrity [who] interpreted the details of that agreement fairly and above-board":

https://billwillingham.substack.com/p/willingham-sends-fables-into-the

But as the company grew larger, these counterparties were replaced by corporate cogs who were ever-more-distant from his original, creator-friendly deal. What's more, DC's treatment of its other creators grew shabbier at each turn (a dear friend who has written for DC for decades is still getting the same page-rate as they got in the early 2000s), so Willingham's deal grew more exceptional as time went by. That meant that when Willingham got the "default" treatment, it was progressively farther from what his contract entitled him to.

The company repeatedly – and conveniently – forgot that Willingham had the final say over the destiny of his books. They illegally sublicensed a game adapted from his books, and then, when he objected, tried to make renegotiating his deal a condition of being properly compensated for this theft. Even after he won that fight, the company tried to cheat him and then cover it up by binding him to a nondisclosure agreement.

This was the culmination of a string of wage-thefts in which the company misreported his royalties and had to be dragged into paying him his due. When the company "practically dared" Willingham to sue ("knowing it would be a long and debilitating process") he snapped.

Rather than fight Warner, Willingham has embarked on what JWZ calls an act of "absolute table-flip badassery" – he has announced that Fables will hereafter be in the public domain, available for anyone to adapt commercially, in works that compete with whatever DC might be offering.

Now, this is huge, and it's also shrewd. It's the kind of thing that will bring lots of attention on Warner's fraudulent dealings with its creative workforce, at a moment where the company is losing a public relations battle to the workers picketing in front of its gates. It constitutes a poison pill that is eminently satisfying to contemplate. It's delicious.

But it's also muddy. Willingham has since clarified that his public domain dedication means that the public can't reproduce the existing comics. That's not surprising; while Willingham doesn't say so, it's vanishingly unlikely that he owns the copyrights to the artwork created by other artists (Willingham is also a talented illustrator, but collaborated with a who's-who of comics greats for Fables). He may or may not have control over trademarks, from the Fables wordmark to any trademark interests in the character designs. He certainly doesn't have control over the trademarked logos for Warner and DC that adorn the books.

When Willingham says he is releasing the "IP" to his comic, he is using the phrase in its commercial sense, not its legal sense. When business people speak of "owning IP," they mean that they believe they have the legal right to control the conduct of their competitors, critics and customers:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

The problem is that this doesn't correspond to the legal concept of IP, because IP isn't actually a legal concept. While there are plenty of "IP lawyers" and even "IP law firms," there is no "IP law." There are many laws that are lumped together under "IP," including the big three (trademark, copyright and patent), but also a bestiary of obscure cousins and subspecies – trade dress, trade secrecy, service marks, noncompetes, nondisclosues, anticirumvention rights, sui generis "neighboring rights" and so on.

The job of an "IP lawyer" is to pluck individual doctrines from this incoherent scrapheap of laws and regulations and weave them together into a spider's web of tripwires that customers and critics and competitors can't avoid, and which confer upon the lawyer's client the right to sue for anything that displeases them.

When Willingham says he's releasing Fables into the public domain, it's not clear what he's releasing – and what is his to release. In the colloquial, business sense of "IP," saying you're "releasing the IP" means something like, "Feel free to create adaptations from this." But these adaptations probably can't draw too closely on the artwork, or the logos. You can probably make novelizations of the comics. Maybe you can make new comics that use the same scripts but different art. You can probably make sequels to, or spinoffs of, the existing comics, provided you come up with your own character designs.

But it's murky. Very murky. Remember, this all started because Willingham didn't have the resources or patience to tangle with the rabid attack-lawyers Warners keeps kenneled on its Burbank lot. Warners can (and may) release those same lawyers on you, even if you are likely to prevail in court, betting that you – like Willingham – won't have the resources to defend yourself.

The strange reality of "IP" rights is that they can be secured without any affirmative step on your part. Copyrights are conjured into existence the instant that a new creative work is fixed in a tangible medium and endure until the creator's has been dead for 70 years. Common-law trademarks gradually come into definition like an image appearing on photo-paper in a chemical soup, growing in definition every time they are used, even if the mark's creator never files a form with the USPTO.

These IP tripwires proliferate in the shadows, wherever doodles are sketched on napkins, wherever kindergartners apply finger-paint to construction-paper. But for all that they are continuously springing into existence, and enduring for a century or more, they are absurdly hard to give away.

This was the key insight behind the Creative Commons project: that while the internet was full of people saying "no copyright" (or just assuming the things they posted were free for others to use), the law was a universe away from their commonsense assumptions. Creative Commons licenses were painstakingly crafted by an army of international IP lawyers who set out to turn the normal IP task on its head – to create a legal document that assured critics, customers and competitors that the licensor had no means to control their conduct.

20 years on, these licenses are pretty robust. The flaws in earlier versions have been discovered and repaired in subsequent revisions. They have been adapted to multiple countries' legal systems, allowing CC users to mix-and-match works from many territories – animating Polish sprites to tell a story by a Canadian, set to music from the UK.

Willingham could clarify his "public domain" dedication by applying a Creative Commons license to Fables, but which license? That's a thorny question. What Willingham really wants here is a sampling license – a license that allows licensees to take some of the elements of his work, combine them with other parts, and make something new.

But no CC license fits that description. Every CC license applies to whole works. If you want to license the bass-line from your song but not the melody, you have to release the bass-line separately and put a CC license on that. You can't just put a CC license on the song with an asterisked footnote that reads "just the bass, though."

CC had a sampling license: the "Sampling Plus 1.0" license. It was a mess. Licensees couldn't figure out what parts of works they were allowed to use, and licensors couldn't figure out how to coney that. It's been "retired."

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/

So maybe Willingham should create his own bespoke license for Fables. That may be what he has to do, in fact. But boy is that a fraught business. Remember the army of top-notch lawyers who created the CC licenses? They missed a crucial bug in the first three versions of the license, and billions of works have been licensed under those earlier versions. This has enabled a mob of crooked copyleft trolls (like Pixsy) to prey on the unwary, raking in a fortune:

https://doctorow.medium.com/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator-5f6360713299

Making a bug-free license is hard. A failure on Willingham's part to correctly enumerate or convey the limitations of such a license – to list which parts of Fables DC might sue you for using – could result in downstream users having their hard work censored out of existence by legal threats. Indeed, that's the best case scenario – defects in a license could result in downstream users, their collaborators, investors, and distributors being sued for millions of dollars, costing them everything they have, up to and including their homes.

Which isn't to say that this is dead on arrival – far from it! Just that there is work to be done. I can't speak for Creative Commons (it's been more than 20 years since I was their EU Director), but I'm positive that there are copyfighting lawyers out there who'd love to work on a project like this.

I think Willingham is onto something here. After all, Fables is built on the public domain. As Willingham writes in his release: "The current laws are a mishmash of unethical backroom deals to keep trademarks and copyrights in the hands of large corporations, who can largely afford to buy the outcomes they want."

Willingham describes how his participation in the entertainment industry has made him more skeptical of IP, not less. He proposes capping copyright at 20 years, with a single, 10-year extension for works that are sold onto third parties. This would be pretty good industrial policy – almost no works are commercially viable after just 14 years:

https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal_copyright.pdf

But there are massive structural barriers to realizing such a policy, the biggest being that the US had tied its own hands by insisting that long copyright terms be required in the trade deals it imposed on other countries, thereby binding itself to these farcically long copyright terms.

But there is another policy lever American creators can and should yank on to partially resolve this: Termination. The 1976 Copyright Act established the right for any creator to "terminate" the "transfer" of any copyrighted work after 30 years, by filing papers with the Copyright Office. This process is unduly onerous, and the Authors Alliance (where I'm a volunteer advisor) has created a tool to simplify it:

https://www.authorsalliance.org/resources/rights-reversion-portal/

Termination is deliberately obscure, but it's incredibly powerful. The copyright scholar Rebecca Giblin has studied this extensively, helping to produce the most complete report on how termination has been used by creators of all types:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/04/avoidance-is-evasion/#reverted

Writers, musicians and other artists have used termination to unilaterally cancel the crummy deals they had crammed down their throats 30 years ago and either re-sell their works on better terms or make them available directly to the public. Every George Clinton song, every Sweet Valley High novel, and the early works of Steven King have all be terminated and returned to their creators.

Copyright termination should and could be improved. Giblin and I wrote a whole-ass book about this and related subjects, Chokepoint Capitalism, which not only details the scams that writers like Willingham are subject to, but also devotes fully half its length to presenting detailed, technical, shovel-ready proposals for making life better for creators:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

Willingham is doing something important here. Larger and larger entertainment firms offer shabbier and shabbier treatment to creative workers, as striking members of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA can attest. Over the past year, I've seen a sharp increase in the presence of absolutely unconscionable clauses in the contracts I'm offered by publishers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/27/reps-and-warranties/#i-agree

I'm six months into negotiating a contract for a 300 word piece I wrote for a magazine I started contributing to in 1992. At issue is that they insist that I assign film rights and patent rights from my work as a condition of publication. Needless to say, there are no patentable inventions nor film ideas in this article, but they refuse to vary the contract, to the obvious chagrin of the editor who commissioned me.

Why won't they grant a variance? Why, they are so large – the magazine is part of a global conglomerate – that it would be impractical for them to track exceptions to this completely fucking batshit clause. In other words: we can't strike this batshit clause because we decided that from now on, all out contracts will have batshit clauses.

The performance of administrative competence – and the tactical deployment of administrative chaos – among giant entertainment companies is grotesque, but every now and again, it backfires.

That's what's happening at Marvel right now. The estates of Marvel founder Stan Lee and its seminal creator Steve Ditko are suing Marvel to terminate the transfer of both creators' characters to Marvel. If they succeed, Marvel will lose most of its most profitable characters, including Iron Man:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/marvel-artists-estate-ask-pre-trial-wins-superhero-copyright-fight-2023-05-22/

They're following in the trail of the Jack Kirby estate, whom Marvel paid millions to rather than taking their chances with the Supreme Court.

Marvel was always an administrative mess, repeatedly going bankrupt. Its deals with its creators were indifferently papered over, and then Marvel lost a lot of the paperwork. I'd bet anything that many of the key documents Disney (Marvel's owner) needs to prevail over Lee and Ditko are either unlocatable or destroyed – or never existed in the first place.

A more muscular termination right – say, one that kicks in after 20 years, and is automatic – would turn circuses like Marvel-Lee/Ditko into real class struggles. Rather than having the heirs of creators reaping the benefit of termination, we could make termination into a system for getting creators themselves paid.

In the meantime, there's Willingham's "absolute table-flip badassery."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/15/fairy-use-tales/#sampling-license

Image: Tom Mrazek (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:An_Open_Field_%2827220830251%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

--

Penguin Random House (modified) https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/707161/fables-20th-anniversary-box-set-by-bill-willingham/

Fair use https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property

[probablyasocialecologist]

These claims of an extinction-level threat come from the very same groups creating the technology, and their warning cries about future dangers is drowning out stories on the harms already occurring. There is an abundance of research documenting how AI systems are being used to steal art, control workers, expand private surveillance, and seek greater profits by replacing workforces with algorithms and underpaid workers in the Global South.

The sleight-of-hand trick shifting the debate to existential threats is a marketing strategy, as Los Angeles Times technology columnist Brian Merchant has pointed out. This is an attempt to generate interest in certain products, dictate the terms of regulation, and protect incumbents as they develop more products or further integrate AI into existing ones. After all, if AI is really so dangerous, then why did Altman threaten to pull OpenAI out of the European Union if it moved ahead with regulation? And why, in the same breath, did Altman propose a system that just so happens to protect incumbents: Only tech firms with enough resources to invest in AI safety should be allowed to develop AI.

[...]

First, the industry represents the culmination of various lines of thought that are deeply hostile to democracy. Silicon Valley owes its existence to state intervention and subsidy, at different times working to capture various institutions or wither their ability to interfere with private control of computation. Firms like Facebook, for example, have argued that they are not only too large or complex to break up but that their size must actually be protected and integrated into a geopolitical rivalry with China.

Second, that hostility to democracy, more than a singular product like AI, is amplified by profit-seeking behavior that constructs increasingly larger threats to humanity. It’s Silicon Valley and its emulators worldwide, not AI, that create and finance harmful technologies aimed at surveilling, controlling, exploiting, and killing human beings with little to no room for the public to object. The search for profits and excessive returns, with state subsidy and intervention clearing the way of competition, has and will create a litany of immoral business models and empower brutal regimes alongside “existential” threats. At home, this may look like the surveillance firm and government contractor Palantir creating a deportation machine that terrorizes migrants. Abroad, this may look like the Israeli apartheid state exporting spyware and weapons it has tested on Palestinians.

Third, this combination of a deeply antidemocratic ethos and a desire to seek profits while externalizing costs can’t simply be regulated out of Silicon Valley. These are fundamental attributes of the industry that trace back to the beginning of computation. These origins in optimizing plantations and crushing worker uprisings prefigure the obsession with surveillance and social control that shape what we are told technological innovations are for.

Taken altogether, why should we worry about some far-flung threat of a superintelligent AI when its creators—an insular network of libertarians building digital plantations, surveillance platforms, and killing machines—exist here and now? Their Smaugian hoards, their fundamentalist beliefs about markets and states and democracy, and their track record should be impossible to ignore.

[leveloneandup]

California Women’s Law Center 2024 Pursuit of Justice Awards

The California Women’s Law Center will host our annual Pursuit of Justice Awards reception and dinner on Tuesday, May 21, 2024, at Hotel Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica. We hope you will join us in recognizing phenomenal leaders who are working to promote equal opportunity for women and girls around the world.

Christen Press and Tobin Heath are history-making soccer players, World Cup Champions, Olympic Gold Medalists, equal pay trailblazers, and co-founders of RE-INC, a company built to reimagine a more inclusive and equitable future for all. As beneficiaries and champions of Title IX, and two of the most skilled soccer players in the world, Christen and Tobin have used their platform to advocate for equity in sports and are inspiring leaders working to ensure future generations of players benefit from increased support and more opportunity.

CWLC will also be honoring our Angel City Football Club, the women-owned Los Angeles’s National Women’s Soccer League team entering their third full season. Dedicated to players’ well-being on and off the field, Angel City FC created The Player 22 Program which invests in athletes’ post-player careers and their entrepreneurial endeavors, supports the development of and push to get more women into the business of sports, and addresses gender discrepancies in athletics.

For more than 30 years, CWLC has worked to protect, secure, and advance the civil rights of women and girls. We have advocated for and achieved policy change on a comprehensive range of issues including gender equality, Title IX enforcement, women’s health and reproductive justice, economic security, and violence against women.