aspiringwarriorlibrarian:

creepymutelilbugger:

victusinveritas:

Step 1: Remove filters in Reflecting Pool because Obama put them in.

Step 2: Give your criminal neighbor who runs “Greenwater Services” a $20 million no-bid contract to paint the pool.

Step 3: Fill the pool with water from the Potomac River, the phosphates from which cause algae blooms.

Step 4: Freshly sealed pool and extreme heat result in a super scum event

Step 5: Direct National Park Service to dump hydrogen peroxide into the pool which causes the paint to peel.

Step 5: Deploy US National Guard to stop people from taking photos of the swamp as a perfect metaphor for the administration.

you know I never put it together that he built his platform on draining the swamp and then like went and made a swamp and now refuses to drain it

6. Spread conspiracy theories that the Democrats have deliberately sabotaged the pool and arrest whoever pulls out the floating paint chunks as vandals.

marougus-the-dragon:

the-tiny-dragons-tea-room:

the-tiny-dragons-tea-room:

lesbianslimefriend:

tieflingkisser:

ALT

here’s where to find it on windows 10

Ugh, it was in mine. It’s off now.

IT GETS WORSE

I had to turn this off, but it’s something that allows Windows and anyone using your device to generate text/images.

LOBOTOMIZE YOUR MACHINES

AI is a freacking plague, I share this for any windows user.

antisocialxconstruct:

eclipticasolaris:

boyslit:

tzikeh:

Maryland to Become First US State to Ban Surveillance Pricing That Charges More After Mining Personal Data

Maryland will become the first US state to ban surveillance pricing in retail stores, after passing Protection from Predatory Pricing Act.

Good News Network

Jesus fucking christ that this exists in the first place

I WAS FUCKING WONDERING WHAT THOSE DIGITAL PRICE TAGS WERE ABOUT SUDDENLY i had hoped they were so the workers didn’t have to finagle those little papers into the slider part anymore 😭

Hi, yes, that is the OFFICIAL excuse made to me by the guy replacing the paper tags with digital ones at my local Walmart, but the end goal is to remove the numbers off the shelf entirely, replacing them with QR codes that you have to scan with the app…. Which requires your login information….. and also stores your card information so even if you didn’t use your Walmart account at the physical checkout, if you used a card they recognize, they assign that purchase to your Walmart account purchase history.

I explained very clearly to the manager my issue with the meat section not having the price tags listed, and they claimed it was only going to be for the meat, since meat is by weight, and the price of each item is printed on the packs of each item.

Sure. That’s how they get their foot in the door. Fast forward not even two weeks, and here we are:

Bar codes. No prices, no item descriptions. No price stickers on the individual items. Heck, not even the name of the item that is SUPPOSED to be there.

No. The only way to see the price is to scan it on your phone app, which is also recording what you looked at recently, as a way of gauging what you might be looking for in the future.

So here’s what we’re gonna do gang:

Every time you go into a store that has implemented these price-less tags:

1. Take 1-3 items up to the cash register. Ask the cashier for the price, or hit the price check item on the self checkout, which will likely call over the attendant.
2. Express that you didn’t actually want it, you just couldn’t see on the shelf how much it was.
3. POLITELY, AND WITH A THANK YOU FOR THE PRICE CONFIRMATION, Give the items to the cashier or attendant to put back.
4. When they inevitably try to push the app, politely decline. If pressed for why not, say you don’t want to have to carry your phone in-hand the whole time you are shopping in order to see how much things cost. (Not having cell service or data to use the app is NOT a valid excuse, as stores already often have complimentary WiFi AND more stores will provide WiFi rather than give up on this push for surveillance pricing)

If it’s a shelf-stable item, the cashier will have to set it aside, taking up room in their limited operating space, and eventually pass it off to someone to put in a holding area to put back later. If it’s a fridge/freezer item, it might have to get tossed due to food product sale regulations.

In either case, you are making it a pain in the ass for them to have these digital bar codes. Tie up the checkouts. Give the employees more busywork that the company has to pay them to do. Hurt their bottom line having to toss the pint of ice cream you carried around in your cart for 20 minutes before giving it back to the cashier.

Yes, call your reps. Yes, push for more legislation like this in more places. But also take an extra minute out of your shopping trip to MAKE IT HURT for companies to pull this shit.

I’ve seen some people in the notes express (very fair) concern that this is only going to inconvenience already under-paid laborers, and not have any impact on corporate. While I can’t speak for every company or every store, I do work in a grocery store and I can tell you this is precisely the kind of thing that would have an impact, especially if people are doing it en masse. Stores absolutely track their shrink numbers, and they do draw distinctions between what gets stolen, damaged, or wasted for other reasons. If people are making it clear that the reason they’re bringing things to the cashier is that the prices are not adequately represented on the displays, and rather than improving business it’s wasting product, slowing down transactions, and causing confusion and mistrust in customers, that is a language that shareholders speak.

probablyasocialecologist:

Analysis Finds That Google's AI Overviews Are Providing Misinformation at a Scale Possibly Unprecedented in the History of Human Civilizatio

A new analysis commissioned by The New York Times suggests that Google's AI Overviews are wrong an astonishing percentage of the time.

Futurism

A recent analysis conducted by the AI startup Oumi at the behest of The New York Times found that the AI-generated summaries, which appear above Google search results, are accurate around 91 percent of the time. 

In a sense, that may sound like an impressive figure. But here’s an even more impressive one: five trillion. That’s roughly the number of search queries that Google processes every year, translating to tens of millions of wrong answers that the AI Overviews are providing every hour — and hundreds of thousands every minute, the analysis calculated.

In other words, Google has created a misinformation crisis. Studies have shown that people tend to trust what an AI tells them without question, with one report finding that only 8 percent of users actually double checked an AI’s answer. Another experiment found that users still listened to AI when it gave them the wrong answer nearly 80 percent of the time — a grim trend the researchers dubbed “cognitive surrender.”

Large language models adopt an authoritative tone and can confidently present fabricated information as fact when it can’t immediately glean a straight answer. Add the convenience that Google’s AI Overviews offer, and it’s easy to imagine untold numbers of users taking its summaries at their word.

8 April 2026

democracyunderground:

The USPS just changed how postmarks work - and it will affect MAIL-IN VOTING while hitting Americans with late fees on everything from tax payments to rent checks.

Starting in 2026, your postmark date won’t reflect when you actually mailed something anymore. Instead of stamping mail with the date you dropped it in a mailbox or handed it to a postal worker, USPS will now mark it with whenever their sorting machine gets around to processing it - potentially days later.

JUST IN TIME FOR NEXT YEARS MIDTERM ELECTIONS

depsidase:

theunvanquishedzims:

michaelwaev:

I really think we should stop saying “kid-friendly” and start saying “ad-friendly”. We shouldn’t indulge these companies and their excuses anymore. I also think that continuing to pretend that this is about “protecting the children” pushes a lot of the blame onto kids and teens, who don’t have the political power to push through any of this censorship legislature. Corporations and governments are to blame.

yeahwrite:

thelocalmuffin:

Hey everyone, I know it’s going to be a busy day for a lot of people, but Google enrolled everyone over 18 into their AI program automatically.

If you have a google account, first go to gemini.google.com/extensions and turn everything off.

Then you need to go to myactivity.google.com/product/gemini and turn off all Gemini activity tracking. You do have to do them in that order to make sure it works.

Honestly, I’m not sure how long this will last, but this should keep Gemini off your projects for a bit.

I saw this over on bluesky and figured it would be good to spread on here. It only takes a few minutes to do.

Writers: It’s asking to read your Google Docs and be able to ‘summarize’ things from them and such things. I just turned all mine off.

cognitohazardous:

cognitohazardous:

im surprised no one is talking about how elon musk paid people to make high level hardcore characters for him so he could claim it was all his work on livestream only to be immediately exposed as he couldn’t even play the game right

like holy shit