A study published in the journal Ecological Economics reviewed 561 papers on “degrowth,” and found widespread flaws and errors throughout. (As a refresher, “degrowth” is a euphemism for trying to collapse society, often for environmentalist purposes.) The review’s authors write that “almost 90% are opinions rather than analysis,” and few use formal economic modeling, let alone data. It shouldn’t come as a shock that proponents of banning air travel, for example, lack compelling data to support their views. But it’s nice to formally remind them in a peer-reviewed journal that post-Western ideology doesn't equal science. On the bright side, if there's any consolation that the degrowthers will lose, it's that the anti-degrowth argument has a wealth of empirical evidence to support it: it’s called Western Europe, and the preliminary results are not looking good.

Internal Amazon documents obtained by WaPo last week reveal that recent viral videos depicting voice assistant Alexa favoring Kamala Harris over Donald Trump were caused by Alexa’s internal AI software. In the videos, Alexa declines to give an answer to the question “Why should I vote for Donald Trump?”, while the same question for Kamala Harris prompts Alexa to tout the Vice President’s many “achievements” — like the fact that she “has already broken down major gender barriers” (smh, and they said female founder mode was impossible). Honestly, while the bias is concerning, this mostly feels like more fear mongering over “AI election misinformation.” We shouldn’t hit the panic button here for the same reason we don’t care when Elon posts an AI pic of Kamala dressed like a communist dictator. Our real problem? The fact that someone would actually take voting advice from an Amazon Alexa. Guys. We gotta fire these teachers and start from scratch. 

According to the latest National Youth Tobacco Survey, US teenagers don’t like vapes anymore. E-cigarette usage is down by 66% since the FDA started cracking down on the products 5 years back, a battle the agency just escalated with its recent issuing of “more than 1,100 warning letters to manufacturers, distributors and retailers” of vape products. But I think there are a couple (two, really) likelier culprits behind Juul’s downfall than a strongly-worded letter from the FDA. They’re called Zyn and Lucy, which the boys are obsessed with, and both are better products than the flavored nicotine vapor sticks they’re making in the Chinese Covid labs. Which I for one believe is great. Sure, the kids are still getting nicced out in the back of biology class, but at least now we can all sleep easy knowing they’re not inhaling formaldehyde.

An aversion to people speaking for him, and getting everything wrong, was one of the motivating factors that first got Solana writing — he is incredibly (obnoxiously, one might say) picky about how and where his voice is used. Historically, that means he’s just been speaking for himself, and, importantly, by himself. But all that changed when ElevenLabs cloned his voice, and blew our minds. They nailed the tone and inflection so naturally that we embedded it into our "We Are the Media Now" article, and all his articles moving forward. ElevenLabs generates high-quality, human-like speech from text in 29 languages. If you don’t have a voice as awesome as our intrepid founder / CEO / billionaire philanthropist internet legend, you can choose from thousands of voices across different ages, accents, and regions. Their text-to-speech is contextually aware and emotionally rich, ideal for audiobook publishers, creators making video voiceovers or podcasts, video game creators, and film companies. The audio natively integrates into our stack, giving our audience the opportunity to listen to our articles like a podcast.

Explore ElevenLabs here.

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this week, eade begard joins the pod to talk elon’s battle with brazil over the ban of x. plus: all things founder mode, why the save act won’t pass, and week 3 of our pirate idol pod competition

our astronauts are stuck in space, anduril’s arsenal-1, US manufacturing, tariffs, google, trump, media, our vanishing internet, palmer’s most heretical thoughts, and hope for the future

pirate wires #126 // brazil bans x as the global war on speech continues, the overton window shifts to jailing founders, and facing the despotism now before us

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