The Supreme Court said Monday it would not take up the case Ralph W. Baker, Jr. v. Ta-Nehisi Coates et al, a copyright dispute in which Baker alleged Coates’ book “The Water Dancer” plagiarized Baker’s book “Shock Exchange: How Inner-City Kids From Brooklyn Predicted the Great Recession and the Pain Ahead.”
[…]
The justices did not give a reason for why they were recusing and the court has not responded to a request for comment, but Barrett, Gorsuch, Jackson and Sotomayor all published books through Penguin Random House, whose parent company Bertelsmann was named as a party in the case.
It’s unclear why Alito recused himself from the case, though judicial ethics watchdog Fix the Court speculates it’s possible he could have purchased stock in one of the other parties named in the case, such as Apple, Warner Bros. or Disney, or Amazon, which owns MGM Studios, a party in the suit.
A Bluesky thread…
Ketanji Brown Jackson “signed a book deal, reportedly worth $3 million, in 2022 after she joined the Court. Penguin Random House will publish her memoir.”
Amy Coney Barrett “reportedly signed a $2 million book deal with Penguin Random House in 2021”
Neil Gorsuch: “Penguin Random House, which published a book that consisted of his writings and speeches with a splash of memoir thrown in, paid him $650,000 from 2018 to 2020. The next year, he signed another deal with HarperCollins for $250,000.”
Sonia Sotomayor: $3.8 million in book deals since joining the court
https://subium.com/profile/zacheverson.com/post/3lpkvppkzms2y
There are source links at the thread if you’re interested.
Yesterday I wanted to post at Hexbear about the FDA’s new rules about covid boosters. Basically have to be over 65 or have preconditions to get them more easily. I only knew about a paywalled article. I googled “FDA covid boosters over 65 preconditions” but I got the paywalled link I didn’t want and total junk results. I went to google news and I didn’t get any results. Not even the paywall article. I gave up in disgust and I decided to try again today. I did it today (~12 hours ago) and I got the very similar outcomes. I ended up posting a shitty article that reeked of AI because that’s all my searches could find.
I did the google search right now and it seems to work like old google. It gives actual results for me - FDA covid boosters over 65 preconditions. But at google news - it’s still shit. It only gives 2 results. Neither of them is the paywall.
I have a weird feeling like google is already extensively using AI. AI is intentionally wasting people’s time so we google over and over and over again. We’re training the fucking thing. It’s forcing us to format our phrasing how google wants. Plus - it’s most likely learning how to obfuscate so it can get even worse. An inferior product makes google more money.