homesweethomeMrL

It was just about six months ago that Welle, 56, turned his resemblance to Jeff Bridges' character Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski in Joel and Ethan Coen's "The Big Lebowski" into a business venture, working in his off time as The Flathead Dude for events and charitable endeavors around the valley. But his transformation into the role began during the pandemic. He had let his hair and beard grow out as Covid-19 upended the world and suddenly saw The Dude looking back at him in the mirror.

Welle thought it would make a perfect Halloween costume, but that meant doing some research. Though a fan of other films directed by the Coen brothers, like "Raising Arizona" and "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou," he had yet to see "The Big Lebowski."

"If I'm going to do this for Halloween, I should watch the movie," he recalled thinking. "I watched it and was like, this is amazing, this is brilliant."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/32672000

US Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys have asked a federal court in Texas to end a temporary pause on a case accusing Elon Musk’s tech company SpaceX of discriminating against immigrant job applicants.

Case file: https://www.bloomberglaw.com/public/desktop/document/SpaceExplorationTechnologiesCorpvBelletalDocketNo123cv00137SDTexS/8?doc_id=X3GIQUAF0TQ80AB63HIABKNFIUF

cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/113988

cross-posted from: https://fedia.io/m/fediashitpost/t/1823702

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/post/485330

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.wtf/post/16807084

American inflation looks increasingly worrying

cross-posted from: https://ponder.cat/post/1675150

I refuse to sit here and pretend that any of this matters. OpenAI and Anthropic are not innovators, and are antithetical to the spirit of Silicon Valley. They are management consultants dressed as founders, cynical con artists raising money for products that will never exist while peddling software that destroys our planet and diverts attention and capital away from things that might solve real problems.

I'm tired of the delusion. I'm tired of being forced to take these men seriously. I'm tired of being told by the media and investors that these men are building the future when the only things they build are mediocre and expensive. There is no joy here, no mystery, no magic, no problems solved, no lives saved, and very few lives changed other than new people added to Forbes' Midas list.

None of this is powerful, or impressive, other than in how big a con it’s become. Look at the products and the actual outputs and tell me — does any of this actually feel like the future? Isn’t it kind of weird that the big, scary threats they’ve made about how AI will take our jobs never seem to translate to an actual product? Isn’t it strange that despite all of their money and power they’re yet to make anything truly useful?

My heart darkens, albeit briefly, when I think of how cynical all of this is. Corporations building products that don't really do much that are being sold on the idea that one day they might, peddled by reporters that want to believe their narratives — and in some cases actively champion them. The damage will be tens of thousands of people fired, long-term environmental and infrastructural chaos, and a profound depression in Silicon Valley that I believe will dwarf the dot-com bust.

And when this all falls apart — and I believe it will — there will be a very public reckoning for the tech industry.