In case there was any doubt about where big tech stands.

whoever said the ai business plan is to “create god and ask him for money” you are 100% right, I can’t get it out of my head, and it’s the only quick way to explain this infrastructure mania to people

🧵 Important thread for writers. Make sure to grab PDFs or whathaveyou from the online publications you've published in. Use archive.org for things that have already gone missing. Publications are removing articles that that disagree with the present US regime.

Julie K. Brown is a reporter for the Miami Herald who did groundbreaking work on Epstein beginning in 2018, including groundbreaking work on the disgusting coverup by Alex Acosta. Her travel itinerary was released with some of the Epstein files. It appears the DOJ was monitoring her in 2019.

Hans Bethe, the scientist who worked in both the Manhattan Project & USA H-bomb programs, wrote in 1983 a 40 page history called "The Story of Los Alamos." It seems not to be publicly available online except where I have made it so, free for all: osf.io/thjpk #NukeSKY 1/n

Either way, remember that @theguardian.com is in partnership in OpenAI, and has since published a lot of articles seeking to minimize anxiety or critique of the technology

It was reprehensible when people mocked condom usage at the height of the AIDS pandemic. It is just as depraved to mock those wearing masks to reduce the spread of airborne viruses today. Whenever someone takes any kind of step to protect public health, they should be applauded, not mocked.

David Attenborough [whispering]: “Like a grain of sand in a vast desert, the predator blends seamlessly into its environment, nearly imperceptible to the naked eye.”

Jon Stewart and the pod saves guys mocking people who wear masks while talking about What Is To Be Done is exactly what Jon Stewart and the pod saves guys are, it's the most Jon Stewart and pod saves guys thing possible.

The celebration and digital metastasization of conspiratorial thinking culminating with the U.S. head of health and human services believing that and governing as if modern diseases don’t emerge naturally, pandemics are all manmade, and science (not the complexities of nature) is to blame.

I got as far as "There's no putting this genie back in the bottle" and stopped reading. "We shouldn't do anything about AI and thus give ourselves to it" is not actually anything resembling responsible.

Read the piece, and what's most amazing about it is that there's not a single Mamdani supporter quoted, nor does anyone actually talk about what Mamdani is doing or could do - it's literally just a bunch of people griping about how they don't like Mamdani!

I found an old blog post in drafts that I decided to modify somewhat and put out - my own little plea for humanism, why I self-describe and generally consider myself a humanist. Not sure if anyone else will care, but fwiw here it is. sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-...

The white supremacist patriarchy's need to believe that it is new and brave and newly brave is exhausting - fellas, you stand on the shoulders of Lilliputians who built a society entirely for you and you are neither new, nor brave, nor remotely special.

"the president's own party will never convict him" (true) has been turned into "impeachment is deeply unpopular" (false) by DC conventional wisdom there's absolutely no evidence that either Trump impeachment was good for him or his party, politically, even if he wasn't convicted

A gentle reminder that if you’re concerned about erosion of vaccination levels & acceptance, masking up in spaces you share with other humans is a visible way to take care of yourself & your communities.

You know, just normal 2025 stuff. health.ny.gov/press/releas...

I don't get why anyone would want to build a data center in mid-MI. Electricity from DTE is so unreliable that everyone I know who can afford to owns a generator. In additional to all the environmental and social reasons to be skeptical abt building data centers, it just seems like bad business.

WE’RE SO BACK

It’s crazy how occupy isn’t even a memory and Black Lives Matter is totally forgotten prior to 2020 The media (and apparently European liberals) hate us all so badly.

“Why aren’t you in the streets” is a slap in the face to all of those people who been in the streets since Occupy

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.

Some can give $1000 and give nothing. Some can't afford to give $10 and give $11.

Measles wipes out immune memory. So all those antibodies you got from various infections since birth? Huge portions gone. Susceptible to everything all over again. hms.harvard.edu/news/inside-...

turns out that parasocial relationships trump credentials every time, and we don't really have a good counter for it other than "hope we can get some people who are good at attracting a parasocial following who also know what they're talking about"

shit like this is the core of the damage the social internet has done to us we have replaced actual expertise with "some dude with a podcast who makes you feel like his buddy while he bullshits into a microphone" and now a ton of people think that measles and chicken pox are the same

"It’s a pretty bleak state of affairs... if, even at the 'best' job available, you can’t get stable hours & your bosses can crush you when you dare ask for better." A bargaining delegate for @sbworkersunited.org, explains why almost 4K baristas are on strike.

You can't cite one single successful AI marketing campaign for a book, and yet insist that it is "necessary" for people to be competitive.

Finally, if you want to know why the letter makes so many general points but cannot identify a specific usage that people know and love? It's because the letter was AI generated.

Anyway here is the most successful promo I've ever done for a book. YOU DO NOT NEED AI.

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"

Conventions, if you use AI do not be surprised if creators turn down your invitations to be guests or even to be on panels. Do not use tools trained on stolen work from creators and then tell them you want to honor or uplift them - that’s not what you’re doing. You’re stealing and being lazy.

Translation is a fucking art form, I want to tear my hair out in bloody chunks and throw it at people who don’t understand this

New School was one of the few higher ed options for people with widely varied learning styles. It was meeting an actual need in the university sector (and for kids who struggled, despite smarts, in standard format schooling). Now? A safe space for ultra-cons to park their kids, unchallenged by ideas

It is inaccurate to the point of dishonest to use the phrase "self deport" to describe people detained in horrendous conditions agreeing to be removed from the country

Microplastics are here to stay; that's why we need to eat them responsibly in the classroom

ICE agents join ICE, especially now, because they want to oppress people. they join because they love this shit. it gets them off.

Rest in peace Thomas Sayers Ellis www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

🥳 Guinea and Kenya eliminated sleeping sickness. 🥳 Niger became the first African country to eliminate river blindness. 🥳 Georgia, Suriname and Timor-Leste were certified malaria-free. 🥳 Brazil eliminated mother-to-child transmission of #HIV. 🔗 bit.ly/49wdcpl

Avoiding being a vocal racist is also a good strategy here.

Will be interesting to see who lionizes the five times convicted for inciting racial hatred Bardot. But hey, she loved animals. www.lemonde.fr/en/obituarie...

And then there's this 😡

english degree: good luck getting a job, buddy! AI can replace you coding degree: good luck getting a job, buddy! AI can replace you film degree: your deep knowledge of behind the scenes stories from Who Framed Roger Rabbit will delight and entertain coworkers in any field for decades to come