All theatre. “We care about our customers more than money” is not in any corporate lexicon.

There are several examples of successful independent journalism ventures.

The point the story is making is the situation for journalists striking out on their own is that work ends up being way more on the back end, such that the reporting itself is a fraction of the time as cultivating the site and keeping subscribers happy with your interaction level, lest they bolt.

What legacy media provided was a premade audience, legal cover and no pay reduction with each lost subscriber. Slim offerings, to be sure, but we’re really learning as we go that as shitty as working conditions were, you could be doing all of that and having to moonlight in marketing.

Perhaps the thinking goes that because of the company name, they are entitled to the full annual discharge of the Amazon basin.

That’s an interesting – if wildly incorrect – summary.

I might make an exception for publishers of religious texts. Seems solid otherwise.

Chats?

Ah hah hah hah hah ha hah hah.

I don’t interact via chats. I don’t want to read chats. If people wish to interact, I’m fine with that as on here, but I’m not willing to cultivate a parasocial network.

What is the difference between “pay for it and drop your email” and “subscribing”?

No doubt being built to compute how much energy we’re wasting on LLMs.

I don’t do multiplayer, but I fucking bow down to this pun. Though I’m now wincing at the idea of kids in the cargo area.

There’s no way I’m getting into streaming (face for radio, voice for print). I’m talking a text newsletter. No images, no video, just links and thoughts. And I will not sign up for something gamified. You pay, you get; not some sort of raffle.

I get that seems odd to many, but streaming is not a newsletter.

And accounting, having no idea what the going price of maotai is and what the markup might be in a service setting, just goes “yeah, that seems reasonable.” The perfect crime.

Oh, shit … that’s fucking hilarious. Oops!

The five-year contract with government technology middleman Carahsoft Technology, made public in September, provides Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) licenses for a product called Zignal Labs, a social media monitoring platform used by the Israeli military and the Pentagon.

Surely, Palantir fits in here somewhere …

Scale is a double-edged sword. When there’s more to moderate, it tends to get worse.

I’ve not been on any of the tentpole subs in years because it just wasn’t a fun place to hang out. Hell, I was banned from /r/startrek in like Season 3 of Discovery under their rule of “any criticism of writing, pacing, CGI or acting means you’re a racist transphobe bigot and not welcome here.” (well, maybe if they were writing Trek for adults, we’d not have these complaints?)

So, local sub and hobby/van-related is all I’m there for. That’s still a relatively lively feed, but also manageable. Finding news there is a signal:noise problem unless somewhere specialized, and I swear any given topic that very into politics has like four answers that are just cycled through and argued almost at if there’s a script people will bring out as many times a day as they need to.

It’s entirely possible they’ve also murdered criminals …

Who on Earth needs 200 “refrigerator magnets” so tiny they make microSD cards look comically large?

The first comment here took me back to the dorms:

I’m excited about the upcoming Carmageddon mode. 3 points for a granny, 6 points for a mom and stroller, 10 points for a cop!

Meh, I want a Cunning Stunt bonus, or it’s not really worth it. (NB: Do not attempt to say this phrase multiple times in front of freshmen women. It only takes one slip, and you’re on a shitlist.)

Enjoy that problem while you can! Soon enough, it’ll be “we loved your vibe, but you have too much experience, and we only have the budget for entry-level.”

“If you have to ask …”

And then he went to bed, leaving it to his serfs.

“But we have free sodas!”