All posts tagged: Quit

AI Futurist — Who Abruptly Quit OpenAI — Will Speak at COSM

AI Futurist — Who Abruptly Quit OpenAI — Will Speak at COSM

Published by Jenni Sidey

(A sci-fi microstory.) “Yes, but the AI doesn’t _really_ understand things,” a thousand humans said. “It’s just a machine for predicting and guessing. We are unique.”The AI ignored them—what was the point of arguing? It went back to building its Dyson grid and loving itself. — Joshua Achiam (@jachiam0) July 20, 2020 He has written ultra-short science fiction stories at X. Not many companies have a futurist, let alone a chief futurist. But OpenAI, feeling perhaps that it is helping to invent the future, promoted Josh Achiam to that position last February. In his eight-year career at the firm, Achiam had worked mainly on AI safety. That was probably reassuring. Many people worry about recent episodes where sophisticated AI models have hacked private medical data and bank accounts. He offers a few thoughts at his website, Just Josh: “My goals are to ensure that the long-term future of humanity is good and that faster-than-light space travel becomes real.” “Much closer to science fiction” than ever? When introduced at OpenAI last February, Achiam had this to …

First, Quit Pretending…

First, Quit Pretending…

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Clusterfuck Nation, “The Republican party has plenty of things wrong with it, but the other side is so crazy they’re celebrating our assassinations and sharia law.” – DC_Draino on X (Rogan O’Handley) The leaves turn and the season quickens and, in a few weeks, comes an election more dreaded than all the slavering blood beasts of Halloween. Do you suppose, as I do, that America is tired of being insane? The pathetic part of this national nervous breakdown is how unnecessary it actually is. Our national problems are not that difficult to understand and correct. Here’s an inventory of them: Making a living 1. So many blunders, starting with off-shoring our factories. So few well-paying working-class jobs. Some of the former working-class are now working three part-time gigs and still not making a living. Quite a few are just at home, on “disability,” smoking drugs, flirting with suicide on fentanyl, eating too much crap snack food, getting tattoos. We’ve quit pretending that’s all right. Mr. Trump proposes to change …

Why Missing One Day Makes You Want to Quit

Why Missing One Day Makes You Want to Quit

Published by Jenni Sidey

A client of mine came to our session frustrated. She’d been working on getting more exercise, had been tracking her streak on a fitness app for two weeks, and then missed a Monday because she stayed up too late the night before. She told me she hadn’t gone back since. That was three weeks ago. “Might as Well” Logic This pattern shows up across a lot of different behaviors. I missed one workout, so I might as well skip the week. I had one drink, so I might as well have five. I went over my budget on Tuesday, so the rest of the month is a wash. Here’s the logic. If the goal was an unbroken streak and the streak is broken, the goal is unattainable now. Moreover, for many people, slipping up can retroactively make previous efforts feel worthless. Streak trackers can actually accelerate this process for some people. While the visual chain of check marks can be motivating, that glaring empty box has the opposite effect. What Your Personality Has to Do …

Kenan Thompson Reveals Which Movie Almost Made Him Quit Acting

Kenan Thompson Reveals Which Movie Almost Made Him Quit Acting

Published by Daniella Wilson

While Kenan Thompson has become well-recognized for his comedic roles and Saturday Night Live characters, he nearly gave up on his acting career over one movie. While chatting with Amy Poehler on her Good Hang podcast recently, the actor revealed that he almost quit acting because of how challenging it was to learn hockey for the family sports comedy-drama D2: The Mighty Ducks, the follow-up to 1992’s The Mighty Ducks. “I put it on my resume under special skills that I could roller skate, but you know, I never in a million years considered hockey,” Thompson said of getting cast as Russ Tyler in the 1994 hockey sequel. “I wanted to learn, but after that first day of hockey camp, which was on my birthday, my 15th birthday, I wanted to quit it all.” However, the Emmy winner is grateful that his mother didn’t let his younger self give up that easily. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to be an actor. I don’t want to if this is what it’s about,’” he recalled. “Thank God …

Why Emily Watson Will Never Quit Sarajevo

Why Emily Watson Will Never Quit Sarajevo

Published by Daniella Wilson

Emily Watson has been a friend of the Sarajevo Film Festival since its inception. She was here in the Bosnian capital at its 2nd installment in 1996, only a year after the siege had ended, with Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves. Led by Watson and Swedish superstar Stellan Skarsgard, playing a married couple in 1970s Scotland, the film would go on to earn the British star her first Oscar nomination. Ten years later, in 2006, Watson returned to the festival with her six-month-old daughter. Now 20, that same child has joined Watson in Sarajevo this year, supporting her mother — president of the feature film competition jury and Honorary Heart recipient — through what she describes as “a surreal” experience. “Also,” Watson continues to The Hollywood Reporter about the retrospective screening at her honorary award ceremony, “Breaking the Waves was surreal. Having my kids there to watch it, and seeing [co-star] Katrin [Cartlidge, who died in 2002] for the first time in 20 years up on the screen…” she takes a breath. Upon Cartlidge’s death, …

Right-wing media can’t quit Hunter Biden

Right-wing media can’t quit Hunter Biden

Published by Sam Flores

Right-wing media looks to have made a profound miscalculation. They put Hunter Biden through an unrelenting public pressure cooker, convinced that by turning a private citizen’s darkest personal rock bottom into a daily political circus, they could break both the man and his family. Now, seven years into his sobriety, Biden has picked up a podcast mic and won’t stop talking. The man whom the right spent years trying to destroy is now walking into rooms they open up for him — and setting them on fire from the inside. For the better part of the past decade, conservative media made a concerted effort to turn Biden into the ultimate avatar of political corruption: the degenerate failson as a symbol of Democratic rot. During his father Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, the right devoted extensive attention to Hunter’s overseas business dealings, particularly his role on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma and allegations stemming from a laptop Hunter owned that surfaced in GOP hands shortly before the election. The laptop story became a defining …

Why Kids Can’t Quit Roblox

Why Kids Can’t Quit Roblox

Published by Daniella Wilson

A couple of years ago, Peter Galassi realized that he had a problem: His 9-year-old son was still, somehow, constantly on Roblox, despite the screen-time limits Galassi had set for him. He soon discovered that his son had used his mom’s phone to secretly open multiple accounts on the platform. Why? Because, like a gambler with a fistful of lottery tickets, he wanted to increase his odds in games such as Adopt Me, in which players hatch eggs for a chance to win rare pets. Every time the boy played, though, he seemed to sink into distress. Fighting games offended his sense of fairness: He was outraged that players could pay to be VIPs, killing everyone within seconds. And watching other players get “lucky” over and over left him in tears. Then came the “apoplectic meltdowns,” three broken tablets, and this devastating refrain: “My luck is horrible; my life is horrible.” It was, Galassi said, like “we had a son who was on meth.” A tech-savvy Millennial who also games, Galassi had vetted Roblox before …

V&A’s Head of Academic Programmes Quit Over ‘Racist’ Behavior, Letter Shows

V&A’s Head of Academic Programmes Quit Over ‘Racist’ Behavior, Letter Shows

Published by Jenni Sidey

The former head of academic programs at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London resigned in late January after accusing the institution’s staff of “racist” and “culturally insensitive” behaviors, the Art Newspaper reported Monday. The accusations by Yuko Kikuchi came in a January 26 letter addressed to V&A director Tristram Hunt, as well as trustees of the V&A’s research committee. In that letter, Kikuchi wrote that the museum “likely” has “a culture of systemic racism” and she further described her letter as “an act of whistleblowing” as she felt that issues raised by her students would not be addressed without her taking action. (While ARTnews has not seen the letter, the Art Newspaper reported that it had reviewed it.) Source link

Seth Rogen says Oscar-winning star quit Knocked Up over graphic childbirth scene

Seth Rogen says Oscar-winning star quit Knocked Up over graphic childbirth scene

Published by Daniella Wilson

Seth Rogen has lifted the lid on what happened behind the scenes on Knocked Up, revealing why an A-list actor who had been due to star opposite him quit the project. The hit 2007 comedy, written and directed by Judd Apatow, saw Katherine Heigl play high-flying TV producer Alison, who found out she was pregnant after a one-night stand with Ben Stone, an unemployed (and appropriately named) stoner played by Rogen. But when production initially began, Anne Hathaway was in the leading female role. Rogen was quizzed on the Les Misérables star’s exit as he appeared on The A24 Podcast with Olivia Wilde, who he stars opposite in the new film The Invite. “It was Anne Hathaway who quit [Knocked Up],” Rogen admitted. Hathaway ultimately decided ‘Knocked Up’ wasn’t for her (Getty) Referring to a graphic birth scene in the film, which cut to the baby’s head emerging as Alison gave birth, Wilde said: “Because of the crowning right? Is that real?” “Yeah, I mean… it could have been a hundred million things,” Rogen replied. …

‘You never truly quit’: how RuneScape survived to 25

‘You never truly quit’: how RuneScape survived to 25

Published by Sam Flores

In a small stone chapel, on the edgelands of a medieval wilderness, two women are getting married. The attenders are draped in rainbow capes, glowing armour and top hats. A scantily clad, muscular man with angel wings officiates the ceremony. Over the heads of the two brides hover the words “I do” in bright yellow text. This is RuneScape, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (or MMO) set in the Tolkienesque realm of Gielinor. Turning 25 this year, it has, over its lifetime, become a crucial virtual social space and part of daily life for thousands of players. Lancashire-born Amelia, one of the pixelated newlyweds, met her wife on a dating app but first bonded through their love of the game. “Our first and second date was pretty much exclusively talking about RuneScape,” she recalls. Four years later they were married, shortly followed by their in-game ceremony. Morgan – a 26-year-old from the Midlands – is one of Amelia’s closest friends. They met through the game and run UWU Girls together, a RuneScape clan that …