David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

For everonye outside of germany, a superrich family fumbled dodging taxes and now paid the record sum of 4 BILLION euros. Which would cover nationwide child coverage by 166% That is the amount of money countries miss out on due to rich people evading taxes

I'm going to be honest here, I think AI is going to do so much damage to the usable internet that even after it's inevitably crashes out, it's going to take years to disentangle from every space it's polluted, like digital asbestos it's gonna be time consuming effort and likely expensive venture.

Do you know why copyright sucks? It's bc artists live in constant financial precarity and often have no choice but to sign over their life's work to Michael Mouse for a fraction of what it's worth. You know what would be worse than that? If Copyright didn't exist and Michael didn't have to pay shit

Remember this any time politicians, or the media, or misinformed people in general tell you crime is out of control.

i love her sm 😭

This is a vital message: one of the larger reasons BlueSky is refreshingly free of alt-right shitlords is because in the early days we made a gentleperson’s agreement to starve these fuckos out and it worked. No likes, no quotes, no engagement. They got bored and left. Please keep the Old Ways.

This is the smartest damn thing I’ve heard all year. If nothing else, it might serve to erode employers‘ trust in ChatGPT.

"I asked ChatGPT" "I asked Grok" ok well I asked Gandalf and he said he has not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a witless worm

Seems like Shadowrun thought too small when they imagined that only in the matrix Runners would go up against ICE.

This is increasingly reminding me of the time I shaved off half an eyebrow. It was morning, I was shaving in the shower, I was perhaps sleepy (skeptics may say hung over), and after shaving my face I absent-mindedly started shaving my eyebrow, perhaps because it is also hair on my face? /1

NEW: The Trump administration cut research funding that sought cures for future pandemics, examined the causes of dementia and tried to prevent HIV transmission. ProPublica heard from more than 150 researchers to understand the work that’s been lost.

is it time to bust out my "bigfoot is bears" photo collection again? if your mental image of a bear is a thick-furred, fat glossy male bear in autumn, you're probably not prepared for how weird their proportions can look in spring, or when walking upright, like they frequently do.

There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd. It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.

20 years ago we were suing teenagers for millions of dollars because they were torrenting a single Metallica album and now billionaires are demanding the free right to every work in history, so that they can re-sell it. The law only ever serves capital.

New from @davidarmstrongx.bsky.social: When I was diagnosed with cancer, I set out to understand why a single pill of Revlimid cost the same as a new iPhone. I’ve covered high drug prices as a reporter for years. What I discovered shocked even me.

Piers Morgan is a POS but man is this interview wild - based on the way her tone changes I don't think she realized the implications of what she said until after she said it. If you look closely you can see her realize she is absolutely cooked in real time.

1/ The US government has ordered the Swedish city of Stockholm to end its diversity, inclusivity and equality (DEI) programmes within 10 days. The city authorities say the demand is "bizarre" and they won't be complying. ⬇️

I don't 'refuse to use' AI, I just don't use AI; in the same way that I don't shoplift, or plagiarise other people's books - it requires no effort of will, it's just not something I would think of doing

While a Youtuber released a 3 hr video cherry picking information, elevating astro turf tech groups, and claiming the lawsuits are faulty, in reality things are moving in a positive direction for creatives! In one of the lawsuits brought up, Kadrey v Meta, this is what the judge had to say 👇

who gives a fuck dude she brags about using the money she receives to get laws passed that abuse countless actual people who exist in the real world

This: www.volksverpetzer.de/analyse/trum...

More journalists need to talk about this the way Japanese articles do

To the world: We are fighting back. Our movement has been silenced by the media here—but we are not backing down. This is what our streets looked like across multiple cities. Tomorrow, there will be more of us! Raise a glass to freedom. —With love, Your American allies.

Zelda Williams (the daughter of the great Robin Williams) sure had a lot to say about the “Studio Ghibli style” AI images that have been trending recently. I think those people should read these posts and really think about what they’re doing.

“Washington has become the court of Nero,” Senator Claude Malhuret declared before the French Parliament this week. His speech, whose dark urgency and stark rhetorical force made it a social-media sensation, has been translated and adapted by The Atlantic:

Got mad, did another thing www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

One of the most common arguments you hear from fans of generative ‘AI’ is that it’s not plagiarizing people’s work, it’s just learning like a human learns. So I’m going to break down why that’s just not true, and why it can never be true, with the existing systems. 1/

In case it helps someone: The phrase “We don’t do / say that here” is immensely useful in managing people who feel emboldened to try to push boundaries and test behaviour norms in your spaces. It’s a bland statement of fact, doesn’t contain an accusation, and can be used by anyone including peers.

Shameful and murderous www.propublica.org/article/trum...

Very good advice to find after a day of doomscrolling

The US Copyright Office came out with a new report regarding AI & copyright. I read the 50 page report this morning. Not sure I got all of it (will probably need a 2nd run through) but my initial takeaways: I think the headlines I'm seeing are pretty sensationalist and frankly a bit dishonest. 🧵 1/

The US Copyright Office has declared that generative AI art and text generated by prompts cannot be copyright protected. (Read more: The Verge)

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a declassified World War II-era CIA guide to sabotaging fascism in the workplace has become one of the most popular free ebooks on the internet: www.404media.co/declassified...

Incredible things continue to happen on the federal worker subreddit.

American science and medicine has been thrown into chaos and uncertainty over the past week. Here are some stories to get up to speed. 1/12

Withdrawing US funding from the World Health Organization is a potential disaster for public health worldwide, due to the impact it will have on the important work the WHO does. Preventing the CDC from even *talking* with WHO personnel is a step much farther toward undermining global health & safety

you honestly love to see this

“In order to shoot off one email per week for a year, ChatGPT would use up 27 liters of water, or about one-and-a-half jugs… that means if one in 10 U.S. residents—16 million people—asked ChatGPT to write an email a week, it’d cost more than 435 million liters of water.”

So how’s it going so far?

“Terrible things are happening outside. Poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart. Men, women, and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.” Diary of Anne Frank January 13, 1943

As expected, the Trump team is already deleting climate info from government websites. In anticipation, our team at Urban Ocean Lab created a permanent archive of 100+ key resources and published a permanent archive: www.urbanoceanlab.org/resource-hub 👩🏽‍💻

1/It goes beyond what happened at DHS & NASA today. CIA employees were told all resource & affinity groups are canceled. No black history month or MLK celebration, or any other ethnic recognition months. DEI folks are to be fired rather than allowed to rotate back to former offices.

side-to-side comparison

America Defeats America theonion.com/america...

Not everyone can fight Trumpism and Trumpists directly. But remember this: kindness, decency, and fidelity to American values are defiance in the face of Trumpism. So be kind, decent, and faithful, particularly to the many kinds of people despised and attacked by Trumpists. That’s revolutionary./1

anyway

Elon Musk gave two back to back Nazi salutes at the Trump inauguration parade

🧵 THREAD: Our reporter spent the past year reporting inside the State Department, trying to answer the central question of Biden’s foreign policy: How did the U.S. let Israel get away with widespread horrors in Gaza?