Tag: How We Live Now

Pro-Palestinian Activism Leads to ICE Abduction

Ozturk, 30, was detained leaving her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, on the outskirts of Boston, on her way to break her Ramadan fast with friends.

Khanbabai has now been in contact her client, the government said, after it was previously reported that she had been unable to get in touch with Ozturk.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) advocacy group said in a statement: “We unequivocally condemn the abduction of a young Muslim hijab-wearing scholar by masked federal agents in broad daylight. This alarming act of repression is a direct assault on free speech and academic freedom.”

News reports say that Ozturk had been involved in pro-Palestinian activism at Tufts. She had co-written an op-ed in the Tufts student newspaper, criticizing the university’s response to Israel’s attacks on Gaza and Palestinians.

“DHS and Ice investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans. A visa is a privilege, not a right. Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated. This is commonsense security,” the spokesperson told the Guardian.

DoJ lawyers say detained Tufts student was sent to Louisiana before court order
Federal judge in Boston issues order giving government until Friday to answer why student has been detained

Petty Reasons for Personal Boycotts – Redditors Vent

TheHitmanMaul
Not mine but a boycott via association.

Denny’s once gave my wife only 1 sausage link. Haven’t eaten in any Denny’s in 15 plus years…

notprocrastinatingok
I once ordered a Jimmy John’s sub with no mayo. It came back covered in mayo.

sekajiku
must have read it as mo’ mayo

eipotttatsch
There is a muesli brand here in Germany called “Seitenbacher”. I refuse to buy their products – despite them being amazing quality – because during my first real job I had to listen to the radio in the office, and their incredibly annoying commercials would be running every 5 minutes. It was just the owner of the company repeating the name over and over.

Just seeing that name irritates me to this day.

littlepurplepanda
There’s a particular cosy indie game everyone loves. But the company founder was rude to me at a party so I refuse to play it.

ulletm
My neighbor boycotts the only grocery store in town bc one time another customer called her a bad name and the 16 year old cashier didn’t do anything about it lol

fishyangel
Foot Locker because the salesman made fun of me for wanting a Flyers Starter jacket in North Jersey. I think that was about 30 years ago.

Vegetable_Vanilla_70
Reebok because my buddy did an internship there and said he was treated badly

PeeTee31
FedEx once claimed I was not home 3 times in a row. 2 of those times I purposely stayed home and worked near the front door.

Looked at cameras and saw that they never even pulled up in front of my house when they’d mark my not home.

I now drive a farther distance to Office Depot or Staples if I ever need to print stuff for work.

I also will pay more for USPS or UPS when given the option.

Fuck FedEx forever.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1jcrj80/which_brand_do_you_boycott_for_a_petty_reason/

Palestinian Rights, Free Speech, and AI

The dystopian future is here. Yale University has suspended a scholar in its law school after a Jewish news website that uses AI to produce articles called her a member of a terrorist group. It comes as the Trump administration has launched a relentless campaign to silence any speech sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

Already, ICE has arrested an activist at Columbia University who helped lead Palestinian protests. It was also recently reported that the State Department will use AI to scan social media and deport international students who express pro-Palestinian views. The Trump administration has pulled federal funding from universities that continue to allow protests that are supportive of Palestine, which it claims are antisemitic. Conservatives care a lot about protecting free speech on social media platforms, except when it is speech they disagree with.

Helyeh Doutaghi, the scholar at Yale Law School, told the New York Times that she is a “loud and proud” supporter of Palestinian rights. “I am not a member of any organization that would constitute a violation of U.S. law.” The article that led to her suspension was published in Jewish Onliner, a Substack that says it is “empowered by A.I. capabilities.”

Yale Suspends Palestine Activist After AI Article Linked Her to Terrorism

AI Software Development – Slashdot on

Replit CEO on AI Breakthroughs: ‘We Don’t Care About Professional Coders Anymore’

Replit, an AI coding startup platform, has made a dramatic pivot away from professional programmers in a fundamental shift in how software may be created in the future. “We don’t care about professional coders anymore,” CEO Amjad Masad told Semafor, as the company refocuses on helping non-developers build software using AI.

The strategic shift follows the September launch of Replit’s “Agent” tool, which can create working applications from simple text commands. The tool, powered by Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet AI model, has driven a five-fold revenue increase in six months. The move marks a significant departure for Replit, which built its business providing online coding tools for software developers. The company is now betting that AI will make traditional programming skills less crucial, allowing non-technical users to create software through natural language instructions.

Black Parrot
In my experience, business “analysts” don’t know what the hell they want, let alone how to specify it.

I’ve been asked to create reports that add pounds + gallons, and it’s almost impossible to get them to understand why that’s nonsense.

caseih
Maybe AI would be able to tell them what they want makes no sense, whereas a human programmer has to worry about tact and of course not getting fired.

AleRunner
My main experience with AI in programming is that it regularly produces things that don’t exist. References to libraries that have never been made. Function calls that should exist but don’t and so on. There are things that it’s useful for and can do much more quickly and accurately than a human but immediately the smallest amount of thought is needed, it does what you tell it to whether or not that’s possible. I expect that we’ll get a bunch of cars soon where the code is set up to use the “eco brake” for emergency breaking because there ought to be an eco brake so it makes sense to use it, even if nobody has invented such a thing yet.

Given their own hallucinations, I doubt the AI is going to save us from product management that has no idea what could and couldn’t work. Rather just allow them to get lots further before they find out that what they are trying to do is impossible.

Philadelphia Whole Foods – First Unionized Store

Workers at a Whole Foods Market in Philadelphia voted on Monday to become the first unionized store in Amazon’s grocery chain, opening a new front in the e-commerce giant’s efforts to fend off labor organizing in multiple segments of its business.

Employees at the sprawling Whole Foods store, in the city’s Spring Garden neighborhood, voted 130-100 in favor of organizing with the United Food and Commercial Workers union, the National Labor Relations Board said.

Whole Foods Workers in Philadelphia Vote to Form Chain’s First Union
The union win comes as Amazon, which owns the grocery chain, is also fighting labor organizing in its warehouse and delivery businesses.

Reddits Banning Twitter Links

More than 50 subreddits ban X links to protest Musk
The cascade of link bans came after Musk made a hand gesture at a Monday rally that many compared to a Nazi salute, which many cited in their protests, among other things.

One of the largest subreddits that banned links to X is the NBA community for professional basketball, which has 15 million members. In the same post, moderators also banned links to Meta’s Instagram, Facebook and Threads, as well as any other social media platform that requires users to log in to see posts, based on feedback from community members.

“We have reached this decision after taking recent events and strong sentiment from our community into account,” the announcement post said. “While we try our best to stay neutral and apolitical, we do not believe taking a stance against Nazi symbolism is or should be a political issue. Hate speech and the promotion of it has never been tolerated in our community.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/50-reddit-communities-ban-x-links-protest-musk-rcna188719

Health Care Reform Attempt – $7.50 Shot vs $75 Shot

Gruber: Yeah, that’s a great question. And I think that, ultimately, it’s providers. First of all, if I was the health-care czar, I wouldn’t just pay what Europe pays. I would do a study of what’s the value of a hip replacement, and I’d pay according to that study. Answer one. Answer two is, who’s going to scream? It’s going to be providers, in particular the specialists and the hospitals. And let me tell you a story that illustrates that, Derek. If you get a shot, a drug injected at the doctor—not one you buy at the pharmacy, but an injectable drug, like for cancer, at the doctor—the way the government reimburses you under Medicare, that’s our universal coverage for the elderly, is the doctor gets paid 7.5 percent of the cost of the drug.

So if I give you a shot, Derek, that costs $100, I get $7.50. If I give you a shot that costs $1,000, same effort, same risk of carpal tunnel, I get $75. That’s stupid. That makes no sense. So 20 senators wrote a letter to President Obama saying, “Look, the system’s broken, we should fix it.” So President Obama and his advisers came up with a new system where doctors would largely be paid a flat amount per shot. Budget neutral. We paid the same amount of money to doctors in total, but you get a flat amount per shot. Shortly thereafter, 80 senators, including most of the original 20, wrote a letter to him saying, “How dare you propose this radical revitalization American health care? You must stop this at once. It’s socialism.”

What happened? Well, the oncologists, the cancer doctors, are the ones that give the $1,000 shots, and they got upset and they lobbied. That is the challenge, Derek.

Why American Health Care Is a “Broken System”
plain-english-with-derek-thompson

King Soopers in Denver – Which is the Most *Boujee*

Most Boujee King Soopers???
Ok, the difference between the Soopers on Mississippi and Havana and the Soopers on Yosemite and Bellview are worlds apart…

Mississippi and Havana being the red headed step child of the King Soopers empire.

In your opinion which Soopers location is the most boujee?

Bougie is a slang word that you hear in everyday conversations and in the media. noun: Someone who’s considered middle class yet wants to be upper class and is determined to live a wealthier, flashier, more lavish lifestyle (designer labels) Adjective: high-class, fancy, materialistic, snobby. – Google

Limited_turkey
The Hampden and University store is a world away from my store.

hettuklaeddi
Orchard and Holly is bougier

Optimal-Can4635
Live in DTC but I drive the extra distance specifically for that store. Just me and the rich boomers

Koomerthedawg
This is the answer. Spouses used to work they, they are the Soops poster child for the area. Corporate loved showing that store off.

iamgt4me
This is the answer. Doesn’t feel like you’re in America. It’s so peaceful and relaxing in that store.

muchmaligned
I’m in Federal Heights and most of the Soops near me are shitholes with rent-a-cops doing SWAT team cosplay. The Erie one is like 20 minutes north and it’s practically a Whole Foods.

queenrose
The one on 84th & Pecos barely even qualifies as a grocery store. Worst King Soopers I’ve ever visited

muchmaligned
I live across the street from that one and I only go if I need, like, one thing I don’t want to drive ten minutes for haha. Feels like a militarized zone.

bediger4000
Scary Soopers at 13th and Speer is the dodgiest King Soopers.

jonmorrie
I lived in the condos above it for a few years. Can confirm

SadRobotz
Hampden and University is pretty swanky

Gunnerx1337
What about the boujiest Safeway?

Dubayess
Oxymoron

Rufus – Amazon Chatbot, Clippy like Popup AI Assistant

Rufus is an AI-powered shopping experience that lets you ask all kinds of shopping questions in the Amazon Shopping app and on Amazon.com.

To get started with Rufus:

Go to http://www.amazon.com and on the top left side of the navigation bar you’ll find the Rufus button.
Select the Rufus button, and a chat window will appear on the bottom left corner of the page.
With the Rufus chat window open, you can ask a question or choose one of the suggested questions.
When you’re done, you can click the X button to close the chat window or the minimize button to drop it down the lower left-hand corner of the page.
Note: Rufus is only available on smartphones in the Amazon Shopping app and on Amazon.com.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=Tvh55TTsQ5XQSFc7Pr

A comment link regarding Rufus:
https://www.amazonforum.com/s/question/0D56Q0000DVM4TrSQL/how-to-disable-rufus

This AI stuff is fake hot garbage. I don’t want or need a dumbed down respose to anything I could’ve easily looked up my self.

Is Amazon trying yet another AI that is about as useful as a clam in terms of research skills?

Rufus appears on browsers too. I use Edge and Chrome …..Rufus is there. I hate it.