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The title is questionable, but the article talks about an independent candidate carving a campaign and platform based on the needs of the residents of Nebraska. Gift link. https://wapo.st/4h432z3

"And yet, if you point out how stupid, wasteful, and corrosive these specific uses of AI are, you are painted as a loser killjoy by the investors and people who have the most to gain from its mass adoption, and the companies who make and promote the tools that enable it either ignore that it’s happening, publish some bullshit blog post that means nothing about how they are trying oh so hard to combat abuse of their systems, ask you what the big deal is, and continue to ensure that the swift destruction of the human-led, useful and usable internet continues unabated.”

404 Media

Hurricane Helene and the ‘Fuck It’ Era of AI-Generated Slop

The era of politically-motivated AI slop is here and it sucks.

Some #fall color is emerging!

Huge shoutout to @Daniel Cadenas who spent a fair amount of time deleting reply guy spam from our relays last week and setting up filters to prevent similar future attacks. Here’s to keeping search up and running!

Testing out the editor on the mac to see if we fixed the auto correct issue! And it’s fixed! Thanks Bryan Montz!

I’ve owned an Apple Watch for almost a year now and I have to say that I am deeply unimpressed. It knows weird creepy things about me like when I get in my car and then tells me how many miles to home, but then fails to capture certain physical exertion activities. For the past 2 days I’ve been cleaning out my mom’s house that was flooded by Helene, lifting super heavy waterlogged things and it tells me I’ve done no exercise. My quads and biceps are so sore and Apple is like nope physical labor isn’t bourgeois exercise.

If you still have access to fresh sweet corn I highly recommend trying this recipe! It’s the one thing I’ve made multiple times this summer!

Alison Roman

Grilled Corn and Scallion Salad — Alison Roman

The corn is very, very good right now, and you should make this corn salad to celebrate.

Lol. I really need to work on my wildlife videography. This one was walking down the road this evening.

Spent a fair amount of time this month weeding this invasive. I too love non-native plants but would rather spend my weekends doing something other than weeding invasive plants.

Japanese Stiltgrass | National Invasive Species Information Center

Species Profile: Japanese Stiltgrass. Can grow in a variety of habitats where it forms dense stands and crowds out native species (Fryer 2011)

In the past month or so I’ve heard multiple stories from people who have almost been scammed or have been scammed via phone, email, text etc. The grifters are having a moment and it’s one we should be aware of when it comes to branding and marketing of Nostr. A key element of brand positioning and marketing is to understand the context in which a product is entering the market. For Nostr three contexts we need to keep in mind are: 1. Most people are frustrated with platform social media’s dopamine engagement approach and endless ads, which boils down to a lack of control. 2. We live in the golden age of grift. All of us know at least one person who has fallen for or almost fallen for a digital scam of some sort. 3. The scammers did not stick to phone, text, email and social. They took full advantage during the web3 heyday. It doesn’t matter that reading a text message is nearly as risky today as holding a crypto wallet. The narrative is that the scammers concentrate in crypto.

ABC News

Americans lost $5.6 billion in cryptocurrency scams in 2023: FBI

The impacts of these schemes are devastating.

The average person does not care enough to learn the difference between Bitcoin and other crypto. Unlike Farcaster Nostr does not require crypto/Bitcoin to participate. This is a feature. In addition we need to remember that the crypto scams are just piece of the overall grift / scam culture pervading digital spaces. Phone and email scams are more sophisticated and text scams are emerging as well as social media scams. When I reached out to a contact in the game streamer space earlier this year about the Creator Residency, she expressed skepticism because of the web3/blockchain association, noting “Web3/block chain are considered risks and/or ethically the Boogeyman in a lot of creator circles”. It’s too much for individuals to navigate all the spaces scams can come through on their own. In the US at least the phone companies are not using the tech they have to prevent the scams from getting through. Gmail is decent but not perfect. Meta just 🤷‍♂️. I spent the summer onboarding a lot of new people to Nostr. I talked about the user-led approach to social media the protocol provides: build your own feed, own your social graph, choose your own content moderation, post the formats of content you want to post. At the end I asked if they would be interested in experimenting with micropayments via the pennies of Bitcoin. Some were interested. Others initially were not and then came back to me later asking for help to set up a wallet. Nostr is amazing on its own. It solves many of the problems people have with platform social media. By taking a Nostr-first approach to marketing, onboarding, and branding we’re much more likely to broaden the set of people interested in the protocol and its corresponding apps and services. In turn growth will accelerate. And some of those folks will eventually want to learn more about zaps, satoshis and Bitcoin once they understand Nostr isn’t over run with scammers and grifters. For those trying to onboard others, I’m curious if you are seeing the pushback because of fears around crypto or if you avoid that topic altogether?

Wtf? We should get NOAA on here. https://wapo.st/3AXVSfb