I teach Talal Asad’s surgical takedown of Walzer as often as I can: On Suicide Bombing

Maybe we'll deserve it for not believing in Gavin Newsom hard enough, you know?

Remember: When Tylenol was poisoned *by an outsider* and killed people, the company recalled all their products & redesigned them. When Intel’s Pentium had a bug so obscure it affected 1 in _9 billion_ long division calculations, they recalled their chips. ChatGPT was made deadly *by its team*.

I think the thing that pisses me off most about that article by the lady with the insufferable face on why indie publishers/authors MUST use AI for the 'non-creative' tasks is that I'm an author currently in a state of deep depression and overwhelm, and you know what I use instead of AI? COMMUNITY.

Thinking about how there was a mostly-abortive push to blame gay people for monkeypox, the inevitability of the next illness that's mismanaged into a pandemic, and the increasing reactionary politics of the center, having a bad time.

Heba Muraisi, on day 54: “[I]can feel myself get weaker as each day passes" with "bruising on her arm and constant body ache"…is losing the ability to "form sentences, and struggling to maintain conversation". She vows to continue until their demands are met. www.thenational.scot/news/2572535...

When I hear this, I think of the people who were in the streets in Ferguson in 2014-2015 for 375 days STRAIGHT while the national guard was called up and people were being brutalized by cops in the streets for WEEKS. Complete amnesia.

Reached right past Donald Trump and Joe Biden and said “you! The indie cartoonist! Yes, you! How DARE you commit genocide!!”

white racists love to find a black person and accuse that black person of being the white hegemonic government

None of this is responsible. None of this is ethical. And--importantly--none of this is actually competitive. Do not believe anyone who tells you that AI schlock marketing is what will win you an advantage. That person does not care if you sell books; they want to sell you AI schlock marketing.

The entire thesis here is "hey, do you realize how many people could choose to not use labor from human beings if they instead used the extruded meat product trained on labor from those same human beings?"

"Use AI for translations" Hey, who was doing translations before? How did we train AI to do translations? Who was the author of the translations that were fed into AI? Ah, I see, another "ethical" use.

"Use AI tools to analyze royalty statements and contracts" oh my god please read your fucking contracts and ask a human being about things you don't understand.

Was AI trained on their prior output? Yeah, it was? Okay, thanks, fuck off.

"this doesn't replace creative labor" Really! Who was doing it before? Was it a human being? Was that human being performing labor? Was it in a creative capacity? Yeah?

Do you want your book to sell? DO NOT LET AI WRITE YOUR BLURBS OR YOUR PROMOTION OR YOUR MARKETING

I don't think you could come up with a list more designed to inflame sentiments than "here is a list of things that publishers MUST use AI to do and remain competitive, but don't worry, this isn't pushing out creative labor"

Another really good thread from Courtney Milan:

Always good to keep in mind that Guardian has a partnership with OpenAI.

I know it sounds pretentious. Took me 10 years of indie pub to get a book deal. Over 5 years, I've lost an agent. Had a deal not renewed. Lost a deal on the table. I focused on my craft. 5 years on, another deal. I've *never* cut corners. Fuck them and their AI shilling, frankly.

Before 2020 I might not have understood how badly this would be abused to silence scientists speaking out about the pseudoscience rampant in medical policy and guidance. This is absolutely not a power the medical establishment that rejected the science showing COVID is airborne can be trusted with.

Guillermo del Toro: "I've taken some liberties in adapting the Mary Shelly novel, I hope everyone understands." Ishiro Honda: "Frankenstein the deathless will fight a burrowing dinosaur with a glowing horn and radiation breath, signifying mankind will never understand the monsters we create."

the third grader just said they’re sad because it’s raining in december and global warming means they don’t get to have winter like people always did before

A good reminder that when you purchase an ebook or movie, you're usually just purchasing the license to have it in your library. You do not own it. The provider can alter or remove it at any time. If physical is available, buy that. If not, well, enjoy it while you can.

Free Lexi

So...I caught a shiny alpha Haunter on Pokemon Legends ZA. I need to evolve my boy. Can anyone help? #PokemonLegendsZA

So...I caught a shiny alpha Haunter on Pokemon Legends ZA. I need to evolve my boy. Can anyone help? #PokemonLegendsZA

You know, millions of us once dreamed of being famous authors, and millions of us are not, including BIPOC & LGBTQ folks. It's true that there's plenty of discrimination in publishing. It's also true that sometimes, one's craft, talent, and luck don't get you the desired outcome. *That's life.*

As a thirty-two year old who has been mad about gen AI since it first came out, gen AI can get in the bin and rot there.

Yet another airport gate employee lying about facial recognition being mandatory. If you’re a US citizen, you CAN refuse.

Move where you're happy, encourage your base to move where you can, but let's leave out this frankly insane rhetoric

I encourage the death of twitter but it leaves a very bad taste in my mouth when people act like artists making a living by posting where the community are clapping for nazis. Nobody ever put their eggs in one basket by posting on only one platform and none of them will ever pinky-promise love us.

✶ Candelabras to Light The Way ✶ if y'all were a fan of these! we're revisiting this for sticker club january 2026 ;))) possibly in... ✨silver.✨ so anyone joining for december will be joining for a new candelabra inspired set! xx knightmare.club #art #bodypositive

Clearing out stuff on my phone and I think this was in ref to an unhinged a03 tag 🤣 #radioapple

The metaphors are getting ripe.

One good thing about me is that my brain works and I don't fall for Orwellian, propaganda nonsense like this. The Israelis are breaking the ceasefire and NBC News is actively running interference to support the Israeli government (as are most other American corporate media outlets).

we’ve been over this we just did this in Massachusetts they’re not gonna leave, they’ll whine and bitch and moan and eventually this will raise more money than expected because nowhere they go is actually like the place they’re leaving

I hate him so much

read this to hate him more

When u buy books new, buy them from Firestorm! You'll get a cute bookmark and even sometime surprise stickers! Firestorm is the best!

As bluesky continues to disappear Palestinian accounts, please know that it is raining again in Gaza and people’s tents are flooding

Goat down! I repeat: Goat down! www.dn.se/sverige/stor...

unsarcastically: I give credit to Michael Walzer for explicitly saying, in essence, "btw I didn't read any of this and am just gonna vibe it out" in the intro to his racial capitalism article rather than the pretend reading done by most in this genre

Liberals are anti leftist first, anti conservative second. The priorities are in that order and if they have to tank every election to stop leftist momentum they will.

Genuinely depressing how many people out there believe this

the robots stealing Peter Coffin's job

will also add - yes, this is my personal crusade - that turning podcasts into videos implicitly asks women to once again make more effort than men, as the bar for "camera-ready" for one gender is obviously higher than for the other

Like the Jon Favreau directed Lion King "live action" remake (2019) which is a shot-for-shot of 1998's The Lion King filmed entirely in the uncanny valley at release was the 7th highest grossing film internationally OF ALL TIME and a ton of people dont even know it exists

The really interesting dystopia is happening next door with the "real life" shot for shot remakes of the Disney Renaissance movies. You can read a whole chapter of history and theorizing about that shit in The Extended Universe! (Out in April!) bookshop.org/a/5522/97988...