Rain delay – it's time to cover the field

NFL meets Disney meets Cringe

The NFL has teamed up with Disney+ to do the unthinkable.

The unimaginable.

The – dare I say – unwanted.

The two media powerhouses are combining forces on October 1st to convert a football game into a cartoon, semi-realtime.

It raises some of the most important questions of the century like – who is this actually for?

Can you imagine what would happen if a serious injury occurred suddenly? Hopefully, they have the same person working the dump button as ESPN’s Pat McAfee show because you’re going to have to be on top of things to make sure this goes without a hitch.

How could we do this to ourselves? (Part 3)

Honestly. I mean, let’s be really, really honest here. Why do you think tech companies are petitioning Congress so hard for AI regulation?

Altman, Gates, Zuckerberg, Huang, Musk, Nadella, Puchai, Schmidt, and many others (why?) petitioned about 60 senators in a closed-door (why??) meeting to discuss how to lock down the industry that they’re actively creating (why???).

None of what they discussed can presumably be considered private. Industry secrets are not going to be shared across competitors, regardless of how many pinky promises they’ve made each other to “not tell.”

Schumer personally called this event “an enormous and complex and vital undertaking: building a foundation for bipartisan AI policy that Congress can pass.”

Let’s get serious here. Bitcoin will be celebrating the 15th anniversary of Satoshi’s whitepaper soon and we can’t seem to get one sane piece of legislation passed. Our lawmakers have needed well over a decade to settle on the idea that cryptocurrency is a slot machine masquerading as a piggy bank with the promise of an index fund.

It is naive to think that lawmakers are going to be able to do anything more than pass a completely inappropriate, fear-driven law that handcuffs the United States – while other countries speed past us waving the middle finger.

But maybe that’s the point. Maybe this group of tech geniuses know all too well how this all works and have colluded…independently come to the same conclusion. They’ve collectively set their sights on ensuring an ideal outcome – not for the people, but for themselves.

The moral outrage, the existential doom, and the fear that if we don’t act fast we will be beyond the point of no return seems like it comes directly from our bipartisan political playbook.

So what does an ideal outcome look like for tech companies? Simply put – no accountability for outcomes, only intentions.

With intense pressure being applied by activist groups to create punitive justice for any company that disturbs the sacred cows of today’s society, it’s becoming painfully obvious why they’re running ahead of what could mean pain (or jail) for the consequences of their inventions.

…and as for the reason the initial sessions aren’t public – it is because someone has to say the quiet part out loud – “we can’t control the outcomes.”

TIL: There is a Unicode Consortium on Emojis

Geez, it feels like I was born yesterday.

As you might have seen on LinkedIn, I’m a bit fascinated by everyone’s usage of emojis in their professional content.

Lucky for them, there are even more “official” emojis heading our way.

I for one am looking forward to using lime, mushroom, and *checks notes* …Vajrasana in my day-to-day conversations.

They may, in my humblest of opinions, wish to reconsider some of the non-gendered group pictures.

But maybe this is why I’m not on the Consortium.

Links and whatnot

• The iPhone 12 emits too much radiation and Apple must take it off the market, French agency says

• US Congressman introduces bill to ban the Federal Reserve from creating a CBDC

• The IRS turns to AI to stop tax evasion by hedge funds, private equity, and law firms

• ChatGPT traffic spikes as students return to school

• The Great Gloom? U.S. worker happiness is eroding at a record pace. And health care pros most dire of all

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