cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/76214946

When the former special counsel insisted he had not gone to see the Atlanta **Hawks **play in that time period, Mr. Schmitt declared, “I think you’ve already perjured yourself,” and called Mr. Smith a “dirtbag.”

The accusation appeared to unravel almost immediately.

Invited to respond by Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, Mr. Smith said he had, in fact, attended a basketball game on that day, but it was to see the Iowa **Hawkeyes **at the University of Maryland. That night, Caitlin Clark, the star point guard who now plays in the W.N.B.A., scored 38 points and had 12 assists.

The guys sitting behind Senator Schmitt are two lawyers who work for him. He also likely had his staff vet the claims. Senator Schmitt was really mad at being called out on his lies.

The video is really something

Archived copy of the article — archive.is isn't exactly a good actor, but they don't require registration.

Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton of producing a "defamatory" ad centered on a former patient who was arrested for missing court dates related to unpaid medical debt owed to the Kansas Republican.

In a letter sent to Hamilton, Marshall's attorneys claimed that the ad released last week by the Kansas Democrat's campaign contained "false" information and must be taken down.

"We demand that you immediately cease and desist from any further publication, broadcast, distribution, or promotion of the advertisement," the letter said.

The ad in question features Meischa Zimmerman—a one-time patient of Marshall, a former obstetrician-gynecologist—who was arrested in 2011 after missing a $50 payment.

...

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1433245/mcdonald-s-is-using-ai-to-dynamically-price-its-burgers

Context: Eric Schmitt thought he found a big gotcha, and the GOP influencer machine was revved up to hammer the point home. Unfortunately, he was absolutely wrong.

Senator Eric Schmitt thought he had caught Jack Smith committing a federal crime on live television.

The Missouri Republican had a date. He had internal text messages. He had a large poster displaying an arena, prosecutors Fani Willis and Nathan Wade, and a seat supposedly reserved for Smith.

Most important, he had the confidence of a man unveiling the final piece of a conspiracy.

Schmitt asked the former special counsel whether he had attended a Golden State Warriors game against the Atlanta Hawks in Atlanta on February 3, 2024. Smith said no. Schmitt then suggested the texts placed him there anyway and warned Smith to process the evidence carefully before committing perjury.

The accusation was supposed to put Smith in Atlanta near Willis and Wade, the prosecutors who had pursued a separate Georgia election case against Donald Trump. It was supposed to suggest secret coordination among the officials who tried to hold Trump criminally responsible.

There was one devastating problem.

Smith had not gone to see the Atlanta Hawks.

He had gone to see the Iowa Hawkeyes play the University of Maryland in College Park. The attraction was Caitlin Clark, then in the middle of a historic final college season.

https://open.spotify.com/album/1B9VP6qMl5PIJZgynrGZCS

Finally got around to reducing my Meishan pork broth and had to sample it so I threw together a pork ramen for staff lunch at work yesterday.

The soup is just pork broth with a splash of light soy sauce and sesame oil.

The sausage is where I added the aromatics:

• ground pork (I like half ground once and half twice)
• 1.5% salt
• 0.5% Sichuan peppercorn, ground
• 0.3% brown sugar (optional)
• 1.5% minced garlic
• 0.7% minced ginger

If you can't stuff a sausage, frying the loose mix is a perfectly acceptable topping too.

Planning to make a spicy chicken version next time.

Cover art by me.

Art and music are facing a difficult moment. Major companies are gathering millions of images, texts, and music tracks to train generative models, often without creators’ consent or compensation. Then they sell tools that can produce new images and music, sometimes deliberately imitating the work of the very people whose creations helped build those models.

What angers me isn’t the idea of new technology. It’s who profits from it, and at whose expense. Artists spend years developing their skills and bring their own experience to their work. Corporations treat that work as free raw material. Creators may have no way to opt out, no share of the profits, and no clear answer about whether their work was used at all.

“Democratizing creativity” is a convenient corporate slogan. Companies call it democratization when they take other people’s work, turn it into a commercial product, and keep the power to decide who can use it and on what terms. That doesn’t give people more power. It concentrates power in the hands of companies that own the models, the servers, the data, and the platforms.

We’re told that now anyone can “create.” But being able to press a button isn’t the same as having control over the tool, sharing in its profits, or having a say in the rules. Artists are expected to accept that their work may have been used without permission, then compete with products built from that same work. Meanwhile, corporations get a scalable business, paying customers, and a feel-good story about progress. How convenient: call appropriation innovation, call pushing workers out efficiency, and call not asking permission democratization.

If this is really about democratizing creativity, why don’t creators get a say in whether their work can be used? Why aren’t they given transparency and compensation? Why does “making creativity accessible to everyone” so often mean that a company gains control while the creator loses it?

This isn’t about saying only trained artists should be allowed to use AI, or that everyone needs years of practice before they can express themselves. The question is why corporations sell access to tools built on the large-scale use of other people’s work while offering those creators no meaningful choice and no fair share.

Democratization without creators’ consent or control isn’t creative freedom. It’s appropriation with a nicer marketing slogan.