Jon Ayra
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jonayra.bsky.social
Jon Ayra
@jonayra.bsky.social
130 followers 200 following 34 posts
Jon pronounced "actual info about me in the bio ? Unrealistic expectation tbh."
Deeply unserious person. Here for serious news, unbiased journalism, and other's assorted sexy displays of critical thinking.
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Reposted by Jon Ayra
bencollins.bsky.social
Also talked about The Onion being inefficient on purpose.

www.status.news/p/the-onion-...
What has it been like shifting from reporter to media executive, managing a staff instead of filing stories yourself? And do you write any of the jokes at The Onion? Or are you strictly managing the business? The Onion’s process is deeply, beautifully inefficient. Every day, our writers take 150 headlines into a physical writers room in Chicago and whittle them down to maybe one or two. These people throw away the funniest sentence I will ever write in my life six times by noon every weekday. The point of taking over this place was to preserve this process, which I learned this week is almost assuredly more rigorous than The New York Times. That’s why I don’t touch any of it. I just try to get more people to pay attention to the output, and get our work into different mediums and new places. We brought back the paper, reinvested in the Onion News Network, bought a full page ad in The Times for something they were going to write anyway. The role is to make the world-class work they’re already doing seep into everyday American life more frequently, and that’s working. You actually can do this, you know. You can just try to highlight the beauty of things you like and not try to vampirically extract value at every step. If people get one thing out of this whole Q&A, I hope it’s that. You do not have to make an A.I. version of your own employees that operate at 1.5x speed but produce purely iterative garbage, especially in media and journalism. People don’t actually want that shit. Make a good, human thing and people will bend over backwards to support you. This is a valid way to run a company.
July 7, 2025 at 2:29 PM
Reposted by Jon Ayra
gregpak.net
We covered all this in 2011 in the VISION MACHINE graphic novel, by the way, in which three friends grapple with a world remade by the iEye, a revolutionary new creation/surveillance device.

Free download here!

gregpakshop.com/collections/...
Vision Machine graphic novel - PDF
Always free! This publication was made possible by support from the Ford Foundation and is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-ShareAlike license that allows anyone to copy,...
gregpakshop.com
May 30, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Reposted by Jon Ayra
gregpak.net
We predicted the way they're selling this tech as a safety measure in VISION MACHINE, in which the corporation gets folks to sign up for permanent surveillance to save a missing child...
Three panels from the VISION MACHINE graphic novel. PANEL THREE Buddy lounges on his new couch in his apartment. It’s okay if we can’t see his face -- I’m thinking we’re at one end of the couch, low angle looking up over Buddy’s shoulder towards the ceiling, where a big diagram/cartoon floats in the air. The diagram features fun, chibi-style caricatures of a hipster and a policeman shaking hands, both wearing iEyes. They’re surrounded by a slew of cartoony, chibi-style mugshots of people of all kinds -- connected by thin green lines to the hipster and thin red lines to the policeman. LIZ EVERS ... giving law enforcement the ability to run facial recognition software on all of the people you come into contact with during the day. POLICEMAN CARTOON Thanks, citizen! HIPSTER CARTOON You bet, sir! BUDDY Whatev! LIZ EVERS I know some of you may be dubious. But believe me. This may be the last, best chance... PANEL FOUR Now the image is replaced by the face of a five year old African American girl. Not a cartoon -- it’s a school photo style image. She’s holding a stuffed animal -- a big mouse. LIZ EVERS ... to save the life of little Penny Jinadu. CAPTION PENNY JINADU. Three years old. 35 pounds. 39 inches tall. Last seen at the Chicago O’Hare airport. CAPTION (in red) Missing: 21 hours 32 minutes. PANEL FIVE Close on Buddy, sitting up a bit, face turning solemn. BUDDY Aw, man.
May 30, 2025 at 1:23 PM
Reposted by Jon Ayra
gregpak.net
And yes, it damages your brain. We didn't directly predict LLMs and generative "A.i." in VISION MACHINE, but we sure nailed the antihuman invasive internet slop garbage they engender.
Two panels from the VISION MACHINE graphic novel. PAGE TWO PANEL ONE BIG panel. Buddy’s POV. He’s looking at the HR person through the iEye interface -- and his field of vision is filling with pop up windows and advertisements with arrows/tails that point to details in the background. These windows should include the following: 1. An arrow points to the clock on the wall, which is indicating noon. The window attached to the arrow shows a picture of a fast food company’s logo. COMPUTER CAPTION Lunch time? Try the new O’Burger Burger Supreme! 2. An arrow points to the HR person. There’s a circle around her eye -- the software’s apparently doing a retinal scan to confirm her identity. The window includes the following info: COMPUTER CAPTION Eleanor Grundy-McGregor. Human Resource Director, Datamerge Management. Virgo. 3. A pop up ad is alongside the previous caption -- media purchase suggestions based on the HR person. The text can be done by the letterer, but RB, please give us one graphic on the right side of the window that looks like the cover of a self-help book for “Impressing the Boss.” COMPUTER CAPTION New EyeVids for you: 1. Impressing the Boss 2. How to Negotiate a Raise 3. Brunettes Gone Wild 4. Another window shows a heart rate medical scan screen. COMPUTER CAPTION Stressed? Check your heart rate now! 5. Another window points to the HR person’s video screen. COMPUTER CAPTION New FloPro monitors now just $69.99 at Compubuy! 6. Another window contains the Sprout logo COMPUTER CAPTION Please log in to access your personalized settings. PANEL TWO Buddy jerks the iEye from his face. Disturbed look on his face, like someone who’s just turned off a really loud radio. BUDDY Okay. BUDDY No. HUMAN RESOURCES PERSON What’s the problem? BUDDY Come on. The interface has been unusable for six months. How can anyone concentrate with all that?
May 30, 2025 at 1:37 PM
Reposted by Jon Ayra
gregpak.net
...and of course the end result is that everyone's REQUIRED to wear the iEye at all times - especially in work environments. Total Awareness Project 2.0 - run by both corporations and the government.
Three panels from the VISION MACHINE graphic novel. PANEL THREE The HR person looks up. look on her face. A wry, “don’t try that on me, kid” HUMAN RESOURCES PERSON Don’t play dumb, Buddy. I’m talking about the Sproutville grid. 2. HUMAN RESOURCES PERSON You’re contracturally obligated to wear your company-provided iEye at all times. PANEL FOUR Buddy indicates the iEye he’s wearing. look. Faking a perplexed BUDDY And so I am. So what’s the big-- PANEL FIVE The HR person leans forward, presses a button on the side of Buddy’s iEye. Buddy’s leaning back a bit, looking a touch alarmed. HUMAN RESOURCES PERSON Might help to actually turn it on. BUDDY Hey, wait a-- SFX Booooong. COMPUTER VOICE Welcome.
May 30, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Reposted by Jon Ayra
iwriteok.bsky.social
the consequences of this will cost countless lives. he must be stopped. but it's important people understand what is happening here isn't a carbon copy of the old Nazi program. this is a new hideous evil and it must be confronted as such.
April 22, 2025 at 1:20 AM
Reposted by Jon Ayra
taylorlorenz.bsky.social
Of course Fox News, NY Post, Mediaite, + big right wing influencers are manufacturing another fresh round of fake outrage about me bc what they really want is to deplatform me. These ppl call up brands I work w and places I write and take my quotes out of context and try to get them to fire me etc
Matt Walsh: Psychotic wench Taylor Lorenz gushes over Luigi Mangione, calls him a “morally good man,” and brags that fan-girling a murderer has led to the biggest audience growth she’s ever had. The CNN “journalist” sits and laughs along. Just an utterly depraved display all around.
April 14, 2025 at 3:03 AM
Reposted by Jon Ayra
ketanjoshi.co
Intentional or not, Musk switching from selling EVs to help people 'save the planet' and towards selling EVs as post-apocalyptic selfishness-tanks was right on the money and preys on yet another male delusion / irrationality for marketing purposes

www.forbes.com/sites/zachar...
Elon Musk Boasts Cybertruck Is ‘Apocalypse-Proof’ At Live Delivery Event
Musk showed videos of demonstrators firing handguns and a Thompson submachine gun at the vehicle.
www.forbes.com
March 17, 2025 at 8:31 AM
Reposted by Jon Ayra
ketanjoshi.co
Something I find frustrating though is that in all 3 pieces there isn't any discussion of how the Labor government's vehicle efficiency standards carve out exceptions for luxury SUVs - which basically just neuters the entire policy from tackling the root cause of rising GHGs
Big cars are dead weight dragging down climate policy
Australia’s government has released a new transport climate policy. But it doesn’t deal with the problem of car bloat: the main driver of rising emissions.
ketanjoshi.co
March 17, 2025 at 8:34 AM