1. The court holds Google responsible for statements made by its AI, considering them Google's statements (search engines have limited liability for results in their engine as they're the words of other sites/companies/people), meaning when their AI lies/hallucinates they're liable for the defamation/harm resulting from those statements.
2. Google's defense that customers are generally aware of the lack of reliability and are responsible for fact checking was dismissed. As the court pointed out, that would "significantly diminish" AI Search's stated purpose and it can't be distinguished from Google's business practices/statements as a search tool.
3. Studies have found about 91% of Google's everyday AI responses are accurate, leaving millions of searches per HOUR with potential liability for falsehoods. 56% of correct responses weren't supported by the sources the AI listed. Both of which mean Google is now liable for a LOT more AI "errors."
4. Google was held liable for 80% of court costs in this case and this precedent is expected to reverberate around the world. This is a massive shift from the 3rd-party search provider role Google has previously played and it comes right as they've tied ALL searches to their AI search.
Edit: okay I forgot Hua Cheng's rejection of heaven happened after being the soldier Honger and DID know Xie Lian. But honestly, I think this way is more interesting. My headcanon now, keep it or reject it.
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Okay stay with me here cause this is long, and please correct me if I am forgetting something, but...I never really fully understood Hua Cheng's feelings towards his eye/E Ming...how he abuses Eming and calls the gouging out of his own eye "a fit of madness".
It comes back to the scenario of saving the random travellers from monsters at Mount Tonglu, of course, and given his code of "don't fuck with others lest ye be fucked with" that makes sense for him to do that. So why is there a sense of shame about it? Why does he always punish Eming? Why does he not fix his eye back to normal (idk unless there's some in-universe reason that process is irreversible)? It would have made more sense to me if those people had died, but they lived, so that idea doesn't fit, for me.
I thought about the themes of shame and hubris and saw some relations. Xie Lian and Jun Wu both share the quality of hubris, thinking they are the only one who can fix a large problem/know how to fix a large problem, and ignore warnings from everyone else...which ended in their own failures. In case of a success, they enjoy basking in the glory, but their failure also falls squarely on their lonely shoulders.
We already know Hua Cheng is the foil to that. Makes masterpieces in secret that he never wants anyone to find. Makes massive efforts for one person and fears discovery of them/doesn't expect reciprocation/doesn't see himself worthy. He selflessly does heroic deeds, refuses the reward, and acts/feels like he did a crime.
He did that particular deed in a time when he never knew Xie Lian. He has that hero gene in him...and he refused that call. Somewhere along the line, he realized he didn't have it in him to step into the hero role...that he didn't have the heart, the endurance, the courage, whatever it was...he decided he couldn't be the hero that Gotham needed right now.
What I wanna know is, where did Hua Cheng miss that message on hubris? Where did he get that kicked out from under him that made him change his mind after he ascended? He got mistreated as a child, sure, but that was AFTER the eye ordeal. I feel like we're missing that story on Hua Cheng's background. (He ascended first, then descended permanently...did something happen in the Heavenly Capital? - I almost suspected an interaction between him and Jun Wu, however if something was obviously wrong...Hua Cheng knew Xie Lian before he ascended, I feel like he would have warned him? Unless he was already in "Xie Lian knows best" mode / "he can overcome anything!" fanboy mode and left it be? Questions.)
I wondered, even, if among this timey-wimey immortals and gods timeline...did that refusal of godhood even happen BEFORE Xie Lian was born? The savior thing happened before he knew Xie Lian, we don't know how long it took Hua Cheng to reject godhood, etc. If that's true, does Hua Cheng see Xie Lian as the god he refused to be? That Xie Lian filled the void he didn't see himself fit to rise up for? That fits with his devotion for him, he's the god Hua Cheng might have been had he decided he had what it took.
I thought there was an interesting parallel with Wind Master. Wind Master took the godhood they didn't necessarily deserve at first, though they faked it until they made it, and thus became a better god than most who had been awarded the title. Hua Cheng had refused to even try.
What I want to know is, then, what is that circumstance that made Hua Cheng SO sure he couldn't do it? Maybe something in the capital? Somewhere else? Why is that hubris missing? I feel like we're missing a story.
in the comments he revealed that he replaced all his overheads with color changing smart bulbs too. and that he owns one (1) lamp. unclear if it changes colors or not
Static was WILDLY popular in Brazil (a country where the population is over 50% black) and we had re-runs for YEARS on open television. Everyone who was a kid in the 2000s knew and loved him. As a result, every single Brazilian Con has a LOT of static cosplayers!
So, a couple of years ago, Comic Con Experience (the biggest con in Brazil, which is actually also the biggest con in the world!) invited one of Static’s creator Denys Cowan as one of the guests of honor.
Now. Thousands of people attend his panel. And cosplayers went NUTS because they could show their Static cosplay to the creator himself! What none of us expected was Debts Cowan’s reaction:
He cried on stage.
He had never seen Static cosplayers - especially not so many of them! And he had no idea the show was popular here! No one ever told him his character was so beloved! Years and years of reruns and he had no idea! He obviously created the character with his experiences and his community (Black North Americans) in mind. Still, he accidentally touched a whole other community of black people who could see themselves on the screen as a superhero!
Anyway he is a lovely person and one of the best, most memorable guests we had. And I think this is a nice reminder that your art might touch people you can’t even imagine would when creating it.
Edit: I said “the creator” when i should’ve said “one of the creators”, its edited now, but while he isnt the one who came to brazil it’s important to say Dwayne McDuffie was another important figure to static shock!! Both are black men who paved the way in comic book history! Thank you @sokumotanaka for pointing it out.
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:
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.
Express that you didn’t actually want it, you just couldn’t see on the shelf how much it was.
POLITELY, AND WITH A THANK YOU FOR THE PRICE CONFIRMATION, Give the items to the cashier or attendant to put back.
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.
I worked in retail for years. If this had happened while I was working retail, I would have been delighted and felt great solidarity with anyone who was wasting my employer's time and money and giving me busy work as an act of protest. In point of fact every moment the employee spends carting items back to the shelves is a moment not spent standing at a register.
I try not to fall into the "I never liked their work anyway" ditch when an artist/creator reveals themself to be a terrible person
BUT
a feeling I do have and will stand by is "While I enjoyed their work overall I did have some gripes that I overlooked out of affection and whimsy, but now that my loyalty is gone and my affection tainted there is nothing holding me back from enumerating my many grievances, to which the revelations of the creator's shittiness may or may not provide a new and infuriating context."
#such a good summation of this actually#because yeah there’s usually things that were always present#but which were easy to overlook or give the benefit of the doubt#that suddenly become relevant after a revelation about the creator#and it’s really not the same thing as the self-defensive “’I never liked it anyway’
This is a comment someone appended to a photo of two men apparently having sex in a very fancy room, but it’s also kind of an amazing two-line poem? “His Wife has filled his house with chintz” is a really elegant and beautiful counterbalancing of h, f, and s sounds, and “chintz” is a perfect word choice here—sonically pleasing and good at evoking nouveau riche tackiness. And then “to keep it real I fuck him on the floor” collapses that whole mood with short percussive sounds—but it’s still a perfect iambic pentameter line, robust and a lovely obscene contrast with the chintz in the first line. Well done, tumblr user jjbang8
I went back to dig up this post because I was thinking about poetry.
This is one of those non-poem things that are among my favorite poems.
As the OP stated, the use of alliterative consonants is aesthetically just great, especially the placement of the strongest use at the end: “fuck him on the floor.” The use of “chintz” is indeed great word choice.
Because I’m insane, decided to scan the poem:
Not only is the second sentence, indeed, perfect iambic pentameter, the entire poem is perfectly metered, though the first sentence has four iambs rather than five.
There are further things I love about this poem, though: I like the casual connotations of “keep it real” juxtaposed with “chintz.” It causes me to interpret the “chintz” more strongly as meaning something fake, a facade. There is also of course the coarseness of “fuck,” which is a contrast with “chintz” but a different kind of contrast, gutsy and carnal where “chintz” is flimsy and inanimate.
And then there is the storytelling: there is SO MUCH storytelling in just these two lines. To break it down: The speaker is having sex with a married man, in the house he shares with his wife, which is “filled with chintz”—something that here connotes fakeness, in contrast with “keep it real.”
The illicit encounter in the poem takes place within a house filled with facade, the flimsy construction of the wife’s marriage and domestic sphere, but the encounter itself is a taste of something “real.” That’s a story, and it’s just two lines.
This is EIGHTEEN SYLLABLES, y’all. The amount of meaning condensed into these eighteen syllables is stunning, and it is so elegantly done.
From a technical standpoint (and ive taken 300- and 400-level poetry classes so I can say this) this is damn near flawless as a poem.
Ah dang to go further; the floor is framed as a refuge. As if there is literally no other space in this house that hasn't been populated by his wife with flimsy inanimate fakery. There is no space for this man in this house save for the floor. There is no space for him on the sofa, oon the counter tops, and most notably, no space for him in the marital bed.
I’d also like to point out the use of the word “has.” The wife has filled the house with chintz. She isn’t filling the house with chintz. She doesn’t fill the house with chintz. She has filled the house with chintz. Use of the past-tense makes the wife a subtly removed element in the story, someone whose presence we see in the environment, but who is blissfully distant during the actors throes of passion. There is an element of physical as well as emotional separation from the wife that is catalyzed by being fucked on the floor. Use of the past tense is an end to the wife presence in the actors life, a carnal catharsis amid cold fragility and emotional distance.
u know what i fucking love. is that it's so clear that many of us have important full time jobs. yet you can see us here on tumblr throughout the work day posting about the most unhinged shit possible. like we're really out here going to a meeting then coming back to tumblr like "shane drippy big dick bouncing on that thang" before running back to another meeting like Hi Linda yes I talked to the team earlier and we're ready to send the documents over. How was your weekend
