@cwarzel.bsky.social on the deafening silence from Google, Apple and the platforms in light of the X undress scandal and why especially this shrugging notgivingashitness about the dignity of humans is crossing a line www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDzZ...

Von der Leyen threatened action too: "If you don't act, we will".

Rhea Seehorn Wins Golden Globe for Best Actress in Plur1bus variety.com/2026/tv/news... which FUCK YEAH and so deserved! Best character on any show for a very long time. Carol rules. So good.

Another ex: #Trump recently bought Vice President Vance + State Secretary Rubio pairs of black shoes. These were seemingly too big for them. He then had them show their new shoes off (which they proudly did) during a press conference & commented on the relation between shoe size and penis size. 4/10

@bruces.bsky.social and others do their state of the year thing again für 2026 people.well.com/conf/inkwell... Lot's of AI, obviously, and hippies, Ibiza, Linklaters Novelle Vague, chinese tech predictions, bad flying car futurism, US-(proto)fascism and climate change, and more.

Who are the experts / journalists / researchers you turn to for critical perspectives on AI & the tech world? I created a feed of experts who watch AI developments with a skeptical & critical (but *informed*) POV. I'd love more people to follow it, but I'm also looking to add people - recs welcome!

‘Add blood, forced smile’: how Grok’s nudification tool went viral

Slightly diminish a game Entropy (Doom)

"Every element can be licked once"

There's an international row breaking out over the ban of X it seems. UK is talking to Canada and Australia www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/202... while Canada denies considering a ban bsky.app/profile/rach... and Trump allies threaten sanctions against the UK dailysceptic.org/2026/01/10/u...

A ream of norms are being shattered daily, but as a tech expert this one really shocks me. For a generation CSAM has been *THE* flaming red line for a tech platform. If they spent money on ANYTHING, it was moderating it miles away. To even have the whiff of it was a Federal kiss of death. Now? 🤷‍♂️

a blue whale’s anus can stretch up to over 3 feet making it the 2nd largest asshole in the world behind jd vance

If you consider, as i do, much of mainstream pop as already sloptimized synthetic lala, these numbers are not surprising and seem to underestimate the lust for mediocre shit. As i like to say, this is music for people who hate music.

No notes

i remember when the computer still demanded blood. my dad's Tandy took a mere pinprick from your finger, which was a revolutionary advancement from the bulky machines of the 80's that required a thimbleful to access usenet for a day. that itself was an improvement on the pint needed to join ARPANET

The lesson is clear and simple: The US has turned into a fascist state and ICE are the SS-troops of today.

Martin Peterson's creative response to being banned from teaching Plato (shared with his permission).

I don’t think we should have ceded control quite so quickly and without so much as a fight.

"The brain is much less like a machine than it is like the murmurations of a flock of starlings or an orchestral symphony". Consciousness is a Moiré.

This is a serious issue that deserves far, far more attention. Why are the Apple and Google app stores continuing to allow Elon Musk to harass and degrade women on a mass scale, through the Grok app? Why don’t they have enough backbone to say, “No. Your app is dangerous. You’re not welcome here.”

"when prompted strategically by researchers, Claude delivered the near-complete text of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The Great Gatsby, 1984, and Frankenstein, in addition to thousands of words from books including The Hunger Games and The Catcher in the Rye." Oopsie.

AI and LLMs are interpolatable archives: "Like a market, today’s AI is an aggregator, performing what Farrell calls 'a kind of cultural arithmetic.'" That arithmetic is the interpolation of activated neurons by a billion parameters.

I'm always on the lookout for this headline: "‘Black Mirror’ will return, just in time for reality to catch up with it" gizmodo.com/black-mirror... Brooker seems to have found a taste in BM-sequels since USS Callister 2, so let's hope for San Junipero 2, more adventures of the simulated dead.

can confirm

New GOODMUSIC featuring Bonnie "Prince" Billy / Dry Cleaning / Frost Children / Sleaford Mods / Exiter / Konradsen / Naked Lunch / Soft Pine and many more --> goodmusic.substack.com/p/goodmusic-... <-- ALL KILLERS NO FILLERS!

David Bowie is judging you, ChatGPT.

In Musk's latest masterful gambit, instead of putting a stop to the wave of sexual abuse imagery generated by Grok, he's attempting to monetize it instead by only letting paying subscribers generate images in replies. This isn't curbing abuse, it's profiting off it www.404media.co/x-premium-gr...

“While limiting AI image generation to paid users may marginally reduce volume and improve traceability, the abuse has not been stopped. It has simply been placed behind a paywall, allowing X to profit from harm.” www.wired.com/story/x-didn...

Ah, now users will have pay to create their revenge porn and disrobe teenage girls.

Now only paying subscribers can make violent non-consenual sexual imagery of women and children - Grok turns off image generator for most users after outcry over sexualised AI imagery www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

I first misread this as "mortality" and thought well then...

Another image that sums up the protest.

Garfield the cat made his first appearance 50 years ago today!

LET'S GOOOO www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202...

Yet another reason why every major media outlet that reported "grok apologized and promised to put in place new safeguards" was so full of shit (beyond the fact that Grok can't apologize and was just responding to a user prompt, Elon has made it clear: he wants X to be the deepfake abuse creator)

I reached out to more than three dozen X advertisers, xAI investors, politicians, and government agencies about the growing library of sexualized deepfakes generated with Grok—now including Renee Good. I only heard back from four, with three declining to comment. spitfirenews.com/p/grok-deepf...

Grok unhesitatingly fulfilled an X user’s request to put a bikini onto the body of ICE shooting victim Renee Nicole Good. The chatbot, launched by Elon Musk, has been making deepfakes of a lot of other women, too. My latest in @motherjones.com: 🧵 www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

AI can't unmask ICE agents. But it can add a bikini to a dead woman's body, which someone did yesterday with Grok.

I'm glad to see this pressure on Google and Apple. If any other company was running an active CSAM generator in public you better believe it would have been removed from their app stores by now www.wired.com/story/x-grok...

BREAKING: The United Kingdom is considering banning X, per the Telegraph

Everything we’ve predicted from science fiction about police weaponization, constant surveillance, misinformation, and the threat of AI to truth is in this moment.

Don't blame Grok: We need to move beyond the idea that generative AI models are just data, models & prompts. That frame places AI companies as passive observers of their own products - but they're the sole deciders of how models are optimized & to what goals. From me in @techpolicypress.bsky.social:

The nonconsensual deepfake porn site formerly called Twitter has some staggering numbers.

Let's get this party started with GOODMUSIC 1.1/26 featuring Snõõper / Gladie / A$AP Rocky / Model/Actriz / Radiohead / Amyl and The Sniffers / Vanishing Twin / Portugal. The Man / Kochkraft durch KMA / Sassy 009 and many more --> goodmusic.substack.com/p/goodmusic-... <-- ALL KILLERS NO FILLERS!

Telling isn't it that all the "protect our girls" people are still on X despite what Grok is doing.