Just to state the bloody obvious - the USA doing X has, and will continue to have, catastrophic outcomes.

🇵🇸 Northwestern Gaza | A Palestinian child retrieves loaves of bread buried under sand after Israeli shelling struck displacement tents yesterday, destroying what little food and shelter her family had in the Gaza Strip.

The USA was decent, so long as law enforcement confined itself to shooting people of colour.

Labour has shifted further and further to the right since gaining power, enacting some of the most hostile policies against minorities in decades, and the outcome? They are polling lower than the Mariana Trench. They aren't losing support to Reform. They are losing it to progressive parties.

This is a great moment for people to not turn what's happening in Iran into the usual Western "pick a side like it's a World Cup match" thing, cheering for upheaval like they did for Syria a year ago. Every Iranian I know or know of, from expert historians to sociologists, agree on two things:

🚨 Exclusive: Tony Blair isn’t just a big fan of AI — he's now trying to build and sell AI tools to governments Tony Blair Institute staff have described the plan as 'insane' and compared it to Palantir New by D4S and @lighthousereports.com 🧵 democracyforsale.substack.com/p/blair-bids...

'By 2050, one billion people are expected to be displaced globally due to natural disasters, while climate breakdown threatens to make one-fifth of the world functionally uninhabitable by 2070. A huge portion of the world’s population will have no choice but to move.'

"Migrants who seek survival in the UK will then witness their plight used to fuel a political ideology that turns them into the threat, and us into the victims. It’s time we acknowledged just how deliberate a strategy that is."

My long-sleeping darling I miss you so much Every day that passes hastens our awaited meeting in heaven I am here to stay strong just for you, for our children and for the honesty you left with me I love you so much Forever and until the stars burn out 💔🇵🇸🍉 chuffed.org/project/sharif

I couldn't sleep all night because of the constant shelling. My 4mo daughter, Talia, is terrified by the force of the explosions. There is no safety here, we live in fear and anxiety. Your support helps us to endure these extremely difficult circumstances. - Sama’a 🤍 chuffed.org/project/157569

'[The USA's] ruling class, Democrats and Republicans, piece by piece, dismantled democracy. In Germany and Italy, the constitutional state, as well, collapsed long before the arrival of fascism. Trump, who is the symptom, not the disease, inherited the corpse. He is making good use of it.'

We are cursed by what the historian Barbara Tuchman calls the “bellicose frivolity of senile empires.” Chris Hedges open.substack.com/pub/chrished...

X is breaking the law by facilitating the generation of explicit images of women and child sexual abuse images (CSAM). - Ireland’s AI Junior Minister Niamh Smyth People impacted should report to the Gardaí, Coimisiún na Meán and the Irish Internet Hotline. www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41...

Whales in Antarctica. Read the full story here: buff.ly/hJBHcsM Photo by Eduardo This is an encounter from 2025 #WhaleTales #Humpback

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From Conor O’Mahony, Law Professor, former Child Protection Rapporteur to the Govt of Ireland bsky.app/profile/cono...

"It also appears that he thinks Grok’s illegal content generator feature just organically appeared like a tree in the forest rather than being created with intention by the company whose European headquarters are in Dublin." thechangingtimes.darylfeehely.com/post-260108-... #IrishPol #Speirgorm

It was never about delays in the legal system.

Can't believe that Patrick O'Donovan, of all people, is failing to meet the moment. I feel so let down. This man singlehandedly saved the animal crib.

These guys can't even come together and get all Irish state bodies to stop posting on X just in case that'd annoy the richest asshole in the world, and you all thought they take legal action against it?

Shocking response from the Minister, essentially the "guns don't kill, people do" defence of Musk's CSAM machine. Also spectacular cognitive dissonance, when only last month he was claiming we all need to give up our digital rights to protect children online. #Spéirghorm

The problem is that Starmer's Labour, the Democrats and their acolytes desperately want to continue with the apolitical, economistic, technocratic style on which they ascended in the '90s, ignoring the fact that politics (and history) are happening, with or without them, and will wash them away.

I'm sorry to keep posting about this but this should be a government-destroying scandal at this point. How the fuck are you not coming down like a ton of bricks on this? There could hardly be a less ambiguous situation, and yet...!!!

#BREAKING | Israeli occupation forces fire a missile that explodes near displacement tents in the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, causing fires to break out.

There is no limit to the craven obsequiousness when it comes to the US tech firms. www.thejournal.ie/patrick-odon...

🚨 Breaking | 🇵🇸 Southern Gaza Israeli occupation forces fired a missile that exploded near displacement tents in the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, causing fires to break out.

This is great news, since Mercosur would be a total disaster for South American rainforests and other natural ecosystems. But the way it was achieved was absolutely the opposite, with the Irish Farmers' Association tail once again wagging the Ireland dog. share.google/GT76HuZJON7x...

'there’s very little bureaucracy around the decisions of the leader, and instead, the leader can make decisions based on their personal interests. That’s not just a change in the United States; you see that in Russia, Hungary, Turkey, 1/

O'Donovan demonstrating the dangers of technological illiteracy. It is *chilling* to me that someone with this poor a grasp of the issues is in charge of anything.

Imagine taking a stand that supports sexualised images of kids and being completely factually wrong about it too

"It's not necessarily the app that's making the images... it's people using the app that's making the images. Making images of that sort is reprehensible..." No, people are asking the app to make the images. IT'S A FEATURE. Not a bug.

Slithering away.

My word. (Again.) Media Minister Patrick O'Donovan: "At the end of the day, it's the choice of a person to make these images... technology is moving so fast... even if the law is changed there's no doubt about... the advances are far faster than law is able to respond..."

“The Child Sex Abuse Material Machine might have some good uses too” is a lamentable policy position.

Ireland will vote against the EU's massive Mercosur trade deal jrnl.ie/6920848t

One thing about all of this is: if the line is not here, at the mainstream, industrial-level creation of CSAM, where is it? Musk by his own mission statement is out to smash societal norms, cut “empathy” from the West, demolish the EU… What is next down the tracks for him, for X, if this isn’t it?

I have no doubt that one next step is Gen AI video tools that make it easy to “flood the zone with shit” à la Bannon and make it impossible to know what is real or not.

My word. The Taoiseach, in China, says "platforms can be misused and abused or they can be used for positive reasons as well..." and says that should be considered carefully "before jumping to conclusions" on whether it's appropriate for the Government to be on X.

There is no need for new legislation here, there is no need to kick the can down the road. In August 2024, Pavel Durov, the founder and owner of Telegram was arrested on his private jet in France. French prosecutors indicted him for among other things, the distribution of CSAM on his platform.

Not criticising Malcolm Byrne in this but multiple legal experts, the Tánaiste and others have already said what’s happening is illegal. This could easily go down the road of the “we have to do something new” response tactic which actually delays doing anything altogether - or completely derails it

'You've got your pro-natalists, your white supremacists, your anti-immigration nationalists, your anti-trans fanatics, your climate denialists all in one big "saving Western values" tent. This year they were joined by their new Silicon Valley friends...'

I'm sorry how tf are the Irish government fumbling the question "is sexual abuse imagery bad" at all, let alone this badly