Expensive sci-fi dreck

Final Garbage Day Live guest is out! It’s Dan Toomey, the comedian and journalist behind Morning Brew’s excellent Good Work YouTube series, will be joining me on stage. What a lineup! If you haven’t bought tickets yet you definitely should. I’m really excited about this show. It’s going to be blast. October 23rd. The Bell House, Brooklyn. See you there!

You can grab your tickets here!!!

We Already Know How The Tesla Robot Is Going To Go

Last week, Elon Musk hosted a live event called “We, Robot,” where Tesla showed off their new hideous Cybercab and Robovan and a robot model called Optimus. The Optimus robots mingled with the crowd, served drinks, and played charades with YouTube tech critic Marques Brownlee. But it seems like the nerd bait pageantry wasn’t enough to dazzle investors.

Tesla stock tanked afterwards, wiping out (hopefully) billions of dollars of Musk’s personal wealth. Though it’s unclear if that was in response to the new awful cars, the Optimus, or both. But the event did succeed in one regard: It served as a flashpoint for a techno-reactionary movement that has been waiting for something like this for a very long time.

Many users on X spent the weekend celebrating the debut of the Optimus by posting some of the most racist shit you’ve ever seen in your life. (And yes, all of them are Verified.) And, by the way, “ANC” in the post above is a reference to African National Congress, the anti-apartheid party in South Africa. Just so you get how awful that post is. There are also a bunch of losers that are apparently fantasizing about dating the Optimus once you can order one with breasts. Which is really what Musk has turned Tesla in it. A company that sells the idea (at a hefty premium) that certain kind of men can replace the undesirables in their life — however they define them — with expensive sci-fi dreck.

The irony, of course, is that the Optimus robots were not fully autonomous at all. Sure, they had the token “I just pooped my diaper” walk that all humanoid robots have for some reason. And they were a big upgrade from their first “appearance,” where they were literally just a guy in a suit. But the Optimus model still needs a human to pilot it. As The Verge has pieced together, there is a lot of evidence that the robots at “We, Robot” were being remotely controlled and even voiced by human beings doing an impression of a large language model.

Which is in line with most of the supposedly revolutionary tech entering the market right now. The cashier-less restaurant is managed by a remote worker zooming in to an iPad from The Philippines. The AI models powering ChatGPT are trained by workers in Kenya being paid cents per hour. And TikTok’s For You page is maintained by traumatized moderators in Colombia. Which makes it all the more likely that, long before robots like Optimus are fully-autonomous, they will almost certainly be operated in the same way. By someone, somewhere, for very little money. As one user on X summed it up:

The best way to view something like the Optimus is as a tool for for, if not fully replacing, then obscuring labor that men like Musk don’t want to think about anymore. A way to paper over their exploitation with a shiny chrome facade. And make no mistake, even if even stockholders were not impressed this time, there is more of this coming. These robots don’t need to autonomous to enter the market. They just need to work passably well via remote control and not accidentally kill you if the Wi-Fi cuts out. Because the so-called AI boom we’re in right now is really selling two things, neither of which have to be very good. A way to automate work you don’t value enough to hire a human being to do or, at the bare minimum, a way to hide the human beings doing that work so you can feel better about how little you pay them.

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A Good Post

This was dropped in the Garbage Day Discord by odoyleghouls. I would try the Cinnamon Toast Crunch bacon.

Everything We Know About The Guy That Was Probably Not Going To Assassinate Trump Over The Weekend, But Was Arrested At A Rally For Being Weird

A man named Vem Miller was arrested at a Trump rally in Coachella Valley over the weekend. He was stopped at a security checkpoint and detained for allegedly trying to use a fake press pass. Authorities later found weapons in his car. Accusations have been swirling online that he was planning on assassinating Trump, but it seems more likely that Miller is a low-level right-wing influencer who just so happens to be driving around with a trunk full of guns. Which isn’t that out of the ordinary for that crowd.

He was released on bail and posted a video on right-wing video platform Rumble saying that he’s a huge Trump supporter and wasn’t trying to kill him.

According to the BBC’s Shayan Sardarizadeh, Miller is a big-time conspiracy theorist and has ties to prominent QAnon influencers. Miller also recently “war-gamed” out a Trump assassination while talking on a podcast, but like I said, this is just part and parcel for Trump’s most devoted followers. Which has to be, you know, confusing at the very least for Trump’s security team. I’m sure it’s very difficult separating out which kind of domestic terrorists you want at your rallies.

Adobe Claims They Made A “Commercially Safe” Video AI Model

At the Adobe Max keynote today, the company announced the release of the first commercially safe video generation model.” Which is to say, an AI image and video tool that is, supposedly, only running on legally-attained material. Even more interesting, if you use Adobe’s AI model, which is called Firefly, a digital watermark of sorts will be inserted into your project’s metadata identifying that it has AI-generated material in it.

This is basically the big moment the AI industry has been waiting for. Where these tools can actually be deployed safely in commercial projects and effectively replace the role of stock photo and video services. The real question though is whether or not replacing those fairly mundane and, honestly, pretty inexpensive services is enough of a cash cow to pay for the exorbitant cost of jamming generative AI into your core products the way Adobe has.

That has been the central tension at the heart of generative AI from the beginning. Can you hype up something deeply boring and fairly niche and convince enough people to pay for it to actually make any money?

John Cena Was Fanum Taxed

I am going to assume the average Garbage Day reader does not know what a “fanum tax” is even if you’ve seen it in TikTok slop. Fanum is a streamer, real name Roberto Gonzalez. And a “fanum tax” is when Gonzalez asks for a bite of your food.

During a recent Kai Cenat stream featuring John Cena, Gonzalez burst through the door and stole Cenat and Cena’s Big Macs. Based on Cena’s reaction, I am going to guess he does not know what is happening or why people in the chat are so excited about it.

The Big Pokémon Leak

Chances are you are being bombarded with a lot of references to the massive Game Freak leak circulating around the web right now. It’s being called the “Giga Leak” or the “Tera Leak,” referring to how big it is. And there is A LOT in it. I’ve been going through it all weekend and I feel like I’m still coming across new stuff. There’s also a lot of fake stuff being shared right now so it’s not easy to parse.

The broad strokes are the leak contains sprites for several games, concept art, a lore bible for the whole franchise, company minutes, memos, film pitches, and details about upcoming Pokémon games for the Switch 2, which is referred to by the codename “Ounces” in internal communications.

The biggest bombshell from the leak, though, at least in terms of discourse concerns the Pokémon Typhlosion. You see, in the lore bible, there are a bunch of in-universe myths about different Pokémon species. And, apparently, someone at Game Freak came up with the idea of a Typhlosion kidnapping a young girl and breeding with her. See, writing weird fanfic smut doesn’t have to be a phase you grow out of. You can eventually get hired to do it for your favorite games if you’re good enough.

Goon Con

@astudiodigital

Gooner - Felipe Di Poi #astudiodigital #animation #funny @feleup

Some Stray Links

• “Inside the TikTok documents: Stripping teens and boosting 'attractive' people”

• “How Meta Brings in Millions Off of Political Violence”

• “Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is back online after last week’s DDoS attacks”

P.S. here’s Sarah Stanky.

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***