The South #Florida Sun Sentinel and seven other newspapers sued Microsoft and OpenAI on Tuesday, claiming the technology giants illegally harvested millions of copyrighted articles sun-sentinel.com/2024/04/30/sun… via EthanBaron

Which is it? Do you want to occupy the public space to express your dissent and invoke your absolute right to speak? Or do you want to beat on anyone who then exists in that same space and invokes their absolute right to document it?

Yosemite National Park: $32 million in new upgrades renovate famed waterfall area, construct new visitor center mercurynews.com/2024/04/25/yos… #yosemite

1. Today FTC issued a final rule banning noncompetes for workers across the country.

The rule will ensure that Americans have the freedom to pursue a new job, start a new business, or bring a new idea to market.

ftc.gov/legal-library/…

The Society of Authors collected survey data from 800 of its members and found that 26% of illustrators and 36% of translators had already lost work due to generative AI. This tracks completely with anecdotal data from my own reporting.

Not good.

www2.societyofauthors.org/2024/04/11/soa…

'Recent studies have suggested that as the Earth’s climate continues to warm, the likely outcome for California is the type of “weather whiplash” that the state has seen over the past 15 years'

They're not supposed to compete with it. Legacy media — aka 'actual journalism' — is a different thing to endless information, conjecture, misinformation and straight-up lies being circulated by brainless tech and the ill-informed. But the latter suits billionaires better.

Oddly, the youngest age groups are the only ones with more deaths now than before.

In the first 6 months of the pandemic no deaths were reported among children younger than 14.

In the last 6 months, 3 young children have died from COVID, including 2 under the age of 5.

California no longer publishes demographic data on who is dying from COVID, so I requested the most recent 6 months of deaths, and compared it to the first 6 months of the pandemic.

A lot has changed.
mercurynews.com/2024/04/15/who…

Fun for your Friday: Search Google for “Google to stop showing links to California news reports” and tell us if you see this EthanBaron story in the results. mercurynews.com/2024/04/12/goo…

Yosemite reservations will begin Saturday -- here's how they work mercurynews.com/2024/04/09/yos… #yosemite

'the BLM may not issue a right-of-way for wind or solar energy development on Federal land unless it has (1) held an onshore oil and gas lease sale during the past 120 days'

My colleague, The Wall Street Journal's Evan Gershkovich, has been in a Russian prison for a year. One year. Because he had the audacity to be a journalist and write the truth.
Hearts have broken each of the 365 days, and the world has lost 365 days of honest reporting from Russia.
#FreeEvan

when the chatbot lies

'they (allegedly) secretly spent taxpayer funds to build themselves small apartments inside two Peninsula train stations'

'Chevron is the city's largest employer, largest taxpayer and largest polluter. Yet when it comes to writing about Chevron, The Richmond Standard consistently toes the company line. And there's a reason for that: Chevron owns The Richmond Standard.'

Baltimore bridge disaster: Could it happen here? mercurynews.com/2024/03/26/bal… #baltimorebridge

'NBC prioritized an election denier over its own reporters'

I met this young lifeguard hero and photographed him during his 1,000-yard ocean swim in 20 minutes or less as part of his annual re-qualification in Half Moon Bay. It’s a good story to read by EthanBaron. Check it out!

Sad, and beautiful, but mostly sad