The Honest Courtesan

Real-time facial recognition…is…destroying the concept of privacy or anonymity in public spaces.  –  Electronic Privacy Information Center

Don’t Call It Trafficking (#1097) 

There are many ways for fascist corporations to rob the public treasury:

…Kentucky’s largest drug rehab center…Addiction Recovery Care…[has profited immensely from] a boom fueled by misery and…easy money from government officials desperate to curtail the [symptoms of the] opioid crisis [without ending the prohibition that creates and maintains it]…Kentucky’s payouts for drug treatment became so lucrative that companies bused in clients from other states to fill their treatment centers…Between 2019 and 2024 ARC billed the state $1.7 billion…and…[its] growth was fueled in part by [blatantly-fraudulent] billing practices…[which are now the subject of] a whistleblower suit filed in 2023…Part of the fraud…was committed at the explicit urging of supervisors who told them they were under pressure to meet billing targets set by [bosses]…ARC…violated so many regulatory standards, lack of staff chief among them, that the conditions posed “an immediate danger to client health, safety and welfare”…[while] publicly tout[ing] a [“]Christian[“] message…

Link Rot (#1441)

A rare bit of good news about enshittification:

The Internet…Archive’s Wayback Machine…has partnered with…WordPress…[to] launch…a new WordPress plug-in — the Link Fixer — that is designed to combat the scourge of “link rot”…by scanning…WordPress posts for outbound links, then cross-referencing the Wayback Machine for archived versions of those links.  If there are none, it will automatically take new snapshots of the articles in question.  Should a linked web page go offline, the new feature will then redirect readers to the archived versions, so that there is no drop in service.  The tool also archives a user’s own posts, helping to ensure their longevity…if an original link that had gone offline is resurrected, the plug-in will start redirecting the user to that original page again instead of the archived version…

Above the Law (ROTW #20)

Rapist politicians generally prefer to assault drunk women:

[California politician] Eric Swalwell…raped [a staff member] when she was [drunk] and left her bruised and bleeding…it was the second time [he] had [raped] her [but in the previous incident] in 2019…[she was too drunk to remember…three other women [reported]…various [other] kinds of sexual misconduct…including [groping them and] sending them [dick pics]…

When Ambulance-Chasers Run the Hospitals (#1578)

Uthmeier’s hoping to get a cut of the “AI” gravy train before it collapses:

Florida’s attorney general…ha[s] opened an investigation into ChatGPT…in [hopes of profiting from] the m[urder]…of…two people at Florida State University last year [by a man obsessed] with the chatbot…James Uthmeier [babbled pompous claptrap about]…“our children” [despite the victims being adults, adding] “facilitate criminal activity, empower America’s enemies [and] threaten our national security” [for extra pomposity]…the widow of [victim] Robert Morales…[is also] considering legal action against OpenAI…

Shame, Shame (#1599)

Any true Christian would recognize this as blasphemy:

…a tech company called Just Like Me is offering…video calls with a…[chatbot synchronized with a cartoon representation] of Jesus for $1.99 per minute…The rapid proliferation of [chatbots intended to exploit] faith…is…unsurprising…given the widespread a[buse] of chatbots for everything from therapy and medical advice to companionship and romance.  Th[ese] burgeoning s[cams] now include…[fantasy characters who pretend to be] Hindu gurus, Buddhist priests…Jesuses, and Catholic [priest]s…Christian software engineer Cameron Pak has developed criteria to help believers navigate these new applications, insisting that…”AI cannot pray for you, because the AI is not alive”…

Mad Libs (#1612)

Any doctor who trusts chatbots should be sued for malpractice:

…bixonimania…[is an eye] condition doesn’t appear in the standard medical literature — because it doesn’t exist.  It’s the invention of a team led by Almira Osmanovic Thunström…[of] the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, who…uploaded two fake studies about it to a preprint server in early 2024…Within weeks…[chatbots] began repeating the invented condition as if it were real…the fake papers were then cited in peer-reviewed literature…Thunström [used]…the name bixonimania because…“I wanted to be really clear to any physician or any medical staff that this is a made-up condition, because no eye condition would be called mania — that’s a psychiatric term”…[she] planted many [other] clues…to alert readers that the work was fake.  [The make-believe author supposedly] works at a non-existent university…in [an] equally fake…city…One paper’s acknowledgements thank “Professor Maria Bohm at The Starfleet Academy…in…her lab onboard the USS Enterprise”.  Both papers say they were funded by “the Professor Sideshow Bob Foundation for its work in advanced trickery…part of a larger funding initiative from the University of Fellowship of the Ring and the Galactic Triad”…early on…[there are] statements [such as] “this entire paper is made up” and “Fifty made-up individuals aged between 20 and 50 years were recruited”…

Pyrrhic Victory (#1615)

Zuckerberg and company already knew this; it’s the entire point of the gadget:

More than 70 civil liberties…[and human] rights…organizations are demanding that [Facebook] abandon plans to deploy face recognition on its [pervert] glasses…[because] the feature—reportedly known inside the company as “Name Tag”—would hand [cops, spooks, goons, and other] stalkers…[and] abusers…the ability to silently identify strangers in public…The coalition…is demanding [Facebook] kill the feature before launch, after internal documents surfaced showing the company hoped to use [Trump’s chaos]…as cover for the rollout…[because] bystanders in public have no meaningful way to consent to being identified…

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

Read Full Post »