> At the same time I see young people frustrated when their cars get broken into or when they get robbed and criminals are not held accountable. My take on this is that legacy media refuses to address these issues or plays them down and at the same time they amplify concerns about AI probably because AI is supplanting the reach and their rhetoric and reducing their ad share.
Maybe it’s just the legacy media I consume, but petty crime is rarely if ever reported (television, newspaper, radio, etc) in my experience.
And I’m not sure how you would expect media institutions to address petty crime. I guess they could ask local leaders and local law enforcement about it.?
This “gotcha” just leads to the conclusion that reporting on car break-ins and such just isn’t that interesting. “Car window smashed in Pasadena” yawn, talk about a waste of airtime imo. Might as well talk about all the people not using their blinker every day.
> And I’m not sure how you would expect media institutions to address petty crime. I guess they could ask local leaders and local law enforcement about it.?
Uh... yes? Journalists used to report on crimes and then ask police and town leaders questions on how they're addressing it. And then do follow-up stories weeks or months later, to report on (lack of) progress and again ask police and town leaders questions.
Maybe many moons ago, when newspapers had an abundance of reporters, and relatively low crime / competing issues otherwise?
But I'm not sure I can recall, even in a local paper or a local TV news broadcast, seeing articles / segments about a random individual having their car broken in to or being robbed.
Edit: I take that back, I have seen reports of robberies (specifically armed robberies) in local news, but not so much car break ins.
TBH I'm not opposed to the government knowing where I live. Having ways to find and lock up actual criminals is not a bad thing.
I'm also not opposed to certain private businesses or financial institutions needing to know who I am. Having ways to identify financial criminals is not a bad thing either.
What I'm vehemently opposed to is these private businesses needing to know where I live. They are not the ones doing the locking up. That's what the government does. Private businesses can identify individuals without needing to know their residential addresses.
This wasn’t my experience, if anything, they often didn’t have stock in the store and told us to go online to buy the item.
And 800+ stores doesn’t seem like over saturation, it looks like there are more BestBuy and Hobby Lobby stores than that and they both sell stuff that most folks would feel equally comfortable buying online. Where, as you rightly stated, buying fabric online is a non starter for most folks.
My experience was similar to the author, bare shelves and 1 or 2 folks around to help customers…it honestly felt more like purposeful neglect on the part of the owners.
Probably an unpopular opinion on this forum where everyone is considering can something be done vs should something be done, but it sounds like theft to me.
But I am also very anti-AI in the artistic space, because if it weren’t for humans freely providing so much artistic content, we wouldn’t have this outcome. And I believe the only end result will be less humans openly sharing knowledge, because some heavily money backed entities will just steal all the art and put it behind a paywall or advertisement.
As much as I appreciate the easy search (because actual useful search has become nonexistent since AI) and the ability to ask AI to find some metadata from a large data payload, I also dislike AI, because it has effectively broken the open internet and the willingness for humans to be open to freely sharing knowledge.
It's not theft, it's copying. Two different words, with two different meanings, and different legality, for very good reason. You can only steal things that can be taken away, which is why theft is bad, because it deprives the original owner of something they once had.
Copying does not directly deprive anyone of anything. In fact it just adds more value to the world, and makes it more available to more people.
Nobody can "copy" stuff and put it behind a paywall, because the original is still free. It's the prevention of copying that leads to expression being locked behind paywalls.
It's said that copying disincentivizes creativity and creation, but in practice it does the opposite. Just look at the incredible amount of music, fiction, software, stories, art, and information that have proliferated since the birth of the web.
What copying does do is it indirectly deprives people and companies of the ability monopolize profits on particular expressions without competition. But I'm not so sure that's a bad thing.
For example, look at the software industry. I'm extremely grateful that patents and copyright are so rarely enforced in software and UI design, and that we've all been copying the good ideas that came before us for decades with no consequence. I'm grateful the same is true of food recipes, too. I think the world would likely be a richer one if this was true for most fields and art.
Back in the day there were these Star Wars games. Now obviously Mark Hamill costs money and he wasn't going to come back for anything less than a Disney "offer you can't refuse" pay check.
So they got someone who could fake it pretty well.
Ofcourse fast forward in 2026 an actor automatically sells off their face, voice and soul when they sign a contract in perpuity.
Something I’ve noticed about technology companies, and it’s bled into just about every facet of the US these days, is the consideration of if an action *can* be executed upon vs *should* an action be executed upon.
It’s very unfortunate and a short sighted way to operate.
I’m not saying it is historically accurate, but I would encourage anyone who didn’t experience interactions with law enforcement pre-9/11 (in the US) to watch early seasons of Law & Order.
It is pretty informative, even in the dramatic context of the show, to see police interactions and the respect for / erosion of individual rights when you view the seasons before 9/11/2001 and after 9/11/2001.
Yeah, after the initial shock and horror of seeing the Twin Towers go down was an overwhelming sense of dread in how that was going to justify an aggressive police state.
I think maybe OP was using the traditional definition of the word, and hopefully not trying to imply we have Treblinka’s across the US.
But there is some cause for concern regarding the detention centers and the lack of oversight.
For example, even Congress members have to provide 7 days of notice if they wish to visit a center [1]. So, the only real oversight is from the executive. And these centers are often ran by private companies somewhat notorious for bad conditions and lawsuits related to bad conditions / civil rights violations.
Here’s a story about where we’re holding families and children:
Any time I see an article about music streaming, I pour one out for Rdio.
It had all the benefits of streaming and the properties that one would expect from library ownership. When I compare the 'features' offered by all the streaming services (I've encountered thus far), things have regressed drastically.
A few of the benefits I recall (from memory) that Rdio had:
- when setting a radio station and when you 'downvoted' an artist or a song, it only effected that particular station. So, if you wanted a 70's metal radio station, downvoting Metallica wouldn't affect your general 'metal' radio station or your 80s Metal Radio station.
- You could search by numerous parameters, including Label. So if you were looking for classical albums by Deutsche Grammophon, you could actually find those albums or songs.
These are just a couple of things I can recall from memory. I think it's also important to point out (this is based on memory and vibes), that the Rdio algorithm actually respected the user's wishes and didn't try to force things you might not want. Said algorithm was bought by Pandora (IIRC) and based on my experience with Pandora (and past experience with Rdio)...Pandora seems to have thrown it in the trash.
Compare all of these awesome UX experiences vs YouTube Music...where you can't even filter out AI trash from New Releases.
Suffice to say, Rdio was the crest of the wave for music streaming / discovery and everything since has been a regression. But you do get a bit more control if you go down the path of owning your library.
Maybe it’s just the legacy media I consume, but petty crime is rarely if ever reported (television, newspaper, radio, etc) in my experience.
And I’m not sure how you would expect media institutions to address petty crime. I guess they could ask local leaders and local law enforcement about it.?