This is a really important point, and a powerful lever. The tech oligarchs are very vulnerable here

Rep. Wesley Hunt (TX-R): "The bottom line is this: when a federal officer gives you instructions, you abide by them and then you get to keep you life" The Right went from Don't Tread on Me to Comply or Die in 12 months.

The final goal of any authoritarian system is to be able to murder with impunity.

ICE orphaned a five year old today

How I Built a Tool to Detect AI-Generated Fake References dev.to/lidianycs/ho...

New interview with me www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Dz3... I get to discuss my book and share some deeper insights into the origin of COVID-19, including what I believe happened on the Chinese/US side and in the background.

“The path to tyranny is often paved by individuals who ‘obey in advance,’ anticipating what authoritarian leaders want & preemptively meeting them halfway to avoid conflict. In the age of AI, this phenomenon appears poised to occur at an algorithmic scale.” —Andrew Sorota

Apropos of nothing, I have an urge to share a picture of some nice $400-sh Italian boots that I recently bought socialist collective:

As always, my last post of the year reminder... Reducing emissions will reduce future climate warming and impacts. The time is now. Visualization made by globalcarbonbudget.org. Thanks for being here in 2025! I appreciate all the support 🙂

My cynicism comes from very crisp memories of saying in 2021 “you know, models are going to be able to write well soon and we should start thinking about how to adapt,” and being confidently told that was a lunatic notion.

Looking for a Christmas miracle for a kitty (aging parent situation) for Baltimore pals: (1/2) ""My mom can no longer keep Angelo (alas!!!) and we are looking to rehome him. Angelo is a total sweetheart. He is 6 years old, gentle, playful, friendly, and a lovebug."

Looks interesting! Going to see if I can submit something

Today's cool thing (via Mastodon) archive.org/details/utah...

Thread-form observational comedy!

I want to be clever and say it's a wooldunnit starring woolverine, but those have already been claimed. @brianwolven.bsky.social I have lit the pun signal

This is hilarious and should be required reading for anyone who wants to put AI out into the world.

I am showing this because too much focus on "exposing" individuals and their malicious acts or role. Yes, there should be accountability for them. But dismantling this ecosystem will take a systemic approach for each layer, otherwise we are just reshuffling rage chairs or the deck of the titanic.

I've started a Patreon where you can pay $10/mo to join weekday morning writing sessions or $150/mo for writing sessions + one-on-one editing session with me per month (complete with marked up copy). Would love to have you join me. patreon.com/thirdstory

"holding a dumbass cinnabon employee accountable for being a racist asshole is an attack on the working class" is pseudo-intellectual trolling cack that should never make it past the editors desk but you don't get these jobs on merit, and engagement of any kind is king, so around and around we go

I asked Google Gemini whether the Hegseth AI memo is real.

Time again for my favorite christmas post ever, one that still makes me laugh every time i read it

On 16th March, 1968 Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jnr was flying helicopter recon for a US attack on My Lai, an alleged Viet Cong-controlled village in Vietnam. But as the attack developed below, Thompson realised he was witnessing something something else: A massacre. He decided to act. 1/28

storm the reality studio and retake the universe

Again: the Purpose of LLM- type "AI" bullshit engines is not to tell you the truth or to lie to you, but to tell you something you are statistically determined to be more likely to accept, irrespective of facts— which makes them perfect for accelerating dis- & misinformation & persuasive propaganda…

It turns out the one thing that AI is undeniably good at is creating vast amounts of credible-but-untrue things. I really wasn't expecting the Singularity to start with AI Slop

This is actually quite brilliant, up to and including the final sentence 🔥

I'm looking forward to the upcoming "Journal of Adversarial Poetry"

We’ve seen research showing LLM chatbots can reduce belief in conspiracy theories in experimental settings: scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=e... But in the wild, it seems that these tools likely contribute to strengthening belief in conspiracy theories for many.

The halcyon days of late SGI

money makes you stupid

I am okay with the prospect of being occasionally conned out of some petty cash knowing that in the grand scheme of things most people asking truly need it

Built by Magenta, it maps 300 genres as stars in 3D using UMAP, then blends nearby prompts into realtime audio via Lyria RealTime. Fly, click, anchor—your path becomes a dynamic mashup. Deployed via AI Studio with Cloud Run proxying the Gemini key. magenta.withgoogle.com/spacedj-anno...

Sent $100 to the Maryland Food Bank this month

Happy to share a recent publication in the @jdighist.bsky.social exploring how historians are applying generative AI. I argue that LLMs can be considered a new form of historical source, and source criticism can inform our critiques of these techs. journalofdigitalhistory.org/en/article/J... 1/8

10 years old and maybe never more relevant than in contemporary software development www.commitstrip.com/en/2016/08/2...

Time for some serious cleaning

New: The current “AI race” media frenzy, whether framed as productivity revolution, Chinese competition, or AGI salvation, is either largely myth-making or missing the most crucial point. So let me challenge that frenzy with a different story. 1/ open.substack.com/pub/protagon...

If you’re media covering bike-lanes, watch this news story. If you’re a downtown business association discussing bike-lanes, watch this news story. If you’re anyone hearing the LIE that bike-lanes are bad for business, watch this story. And please SHARE THIS STORY so others can watch it too.

No opinion about this specific claim, but I do think we need more humanities in our lives and hearts and minds. And more arts. More history, more literature, more painting, more moral philosophy, more poetry. More thinking about and cherishing what makes human life special.

Whither cognitive dissonance?

Most people study what misinformation says. We decided to study how it looks. Using novel multi-modal AI methods, we study 17,848 posts by top climate denial accounts - and uncovered a new front in the misinformation war. Here's what it means 🧵 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

2nd Nov. 2025 marks the 25th anniversary of the ongoing human presence off-world. That is, humans have continuously occupied the ISS for exactly 25 years today. So if you're <= 24 years old, you've never lived in a world where humans were *only* terrestrial-based. Image by HEO (from above!) 🔭🧪

Just donated to my local food bank, because this is a horrible timeline

New AI-powered anti-scam tool wins praise from UK fraud minister

five days and a few hours to go and at this point I'm just gonna be shameless: if you can help signal-boost this thing, I'd be grateful. I've done very well through my own channels, but haven't had much luck breaking out beyond them. www.kickstarter.com/projects/tom...

“we might add “natural cooperation” as a third fundamental principle of evolution beside mutation and natural selection” 🧪 #ComplexSystems #Evolution www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

friends, it is a labor of love www.kickstarter.com/projects/tom...