Plutopia News Network Sci-Fi Saturday: First official trailer for Spielberg's "Disclosure Day" dropped this week, and it's looking profoundly weird and compelling. "People have the right to know the truth!" youtu.be/nKIpb7fQaMI?...

So far no drug company has paid me to take any of my prescriptions. I keep waiting. One drug company should be paying me 2000 per month, if there's actually been a 600% reduction in cost.

Taking a sledgehammer to the open Internet: youtu.be/q0hE4EM7RRo?... A whole pile of bad bills...

It's almost time for the annual two week State of the World conversation led by @bruces.bsky.social and yours truly. We'll try not to explode as we survey the damage, which is exceptionally plentiful and weird this year.

When the Washington Post added to its header the slogan "Democracy dies in darkness" in 2017, we took it as a warning. In fact it was a plan.

Cool AI-driven tool to analyze and evaluate claims made in social media posts (or anywhere you browse): doesitsquare.com

Plutopia News Network Sci-Fi Saturday: A bit of Christmas season sci-fi... In "Trancers" a cop from the 23rd century follows a criminal mastermind with psychic powers to December 1985. youtu.be/P84mvtrZemc?...

Trump's criterion for pardons: Is this a crime I might have committed myself? If yes, then I'll grant the pardon.

Move over, ChatGPT!

"Stay woke, keep your eyes open." ~ Lead Belly. www.dailykos.com/stories/2025...

Plutopia News Network Sci-Fi Saturday: "The Day the Earth Caught Fire" (1961): Nuclear tests alter the earth's axis and nutation, causing devastating climate change. Good 8 minute overview at youtu.be/Yj15_3WVE2k?...

We should've celebrated the third birthday of the term "enshittification," coined by Cory Doctorow in November 2022. Still gaining traction. Cory's book was released in October: discuss.privacyguides.net/t/cory-docto...

While American families are expected to pay more for goods this holiday season due to Donald Trump’s tariffs, small-business owners are facing an existential crisis, @annielowrey.bsky.social reports: theatln.tc/LgxsChD9

FIFA created a "peace prize" so they could give it to Trump, honoring a level of corruption much greater than their own. Nominees for next year include Vladimir Putin, Kim Jon Un, Min Aung Hlaing, Nicolás Maduro, and Alexander Lukashenko.

Gary Gach talks about four major branches of Buddhism at Lion's Roar: www.lionsroar.com/dharma-101-t...

Author Bruce Schneier joins the Plutopia podcast to discuss his new book Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship. Schneier frames democracy as an information-processing system that aggregates citizens’ preferences into policy. youtu.be/Ui1eP5cASN0?...

"Dead media — our older computers — were not simply superceded by improvements, but killed off as industrial policy. It’s not enough to create the new for the sake of improvement. The old must be actively annihilated." @bruces.bsky.social here: bruces.medium.com/the-dairy-pr...

Plutopia News Network Sci-Fi Saturday: In "Stranger Things" season 5, the Hawkins crew organize to search for Vecna in the upside down and rightside up, as the sinister Wolfpack and Dr. Day search for Eleven. (If you're not following the series, this post is gobbledygook.) youtu.be/PssKpzB0Ah0?...

hi i bet you need to hear Hüsker Dü performing the Mary Tyler Moore song live in 1985 today

Plutopia News Network's YouTube channel has 457 videos and counting! www.youtube.com/@PlutopiaNew... Support us via Patreon: www.patreon.com/cw/plutopia?...

Plutopia News Network Sci-Fi Saturday: In "Watch the Skies," teenager Denise, believing her father was abducted by a UFO, engages with an organization called UFO Sweden that he had founded to solve the mystery of his disappearance. youtu.be/7onngmmMZhA?...

Jennifer Granick discusses about the expanding machinery of government and corporate surveillance and its threat to civil liberties and democracy. plutopia.io/jennifer-gra...

communitymanagement.de/john-coate-f... from (a) Golden Age of online community / social media

Ken Paxton calls an immigration support program "evil and wicked," having confused it with his image in a mirror... www.texastribune.org/2025/11/11/p...

I'm wondering if this ziti shortage will be the last straw for Mad King Donald? www.theguardian.com/food/2025/no...

Gov. Greg Abbott is promising to destroy public schools by making it almost impossible for districts to raise taxes. He also said voters should have the power to reduce or eliminate school funding entirely. #txlege www.houstonchronicle.com/business/col...

In a new @[email protected] #podcast we talk to Sophie Nightingale, researches deepfakes and whether humans can be trained to recognize them better: plutopia.io/sophie-night...

At @skepticalinquirer.bsky.social, I interview Colin Wright about the mathematics of seduction: skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/th...

The 26th annual State of the World conversation kicks off January 6! Join @bruces.bsky.social, me, and others to explore what’s happening in a likely frantic year ahead. As always, the discussion takes place on The WELL, now celebrating its 40th year.

Watch out for the Unidentified Flying Demons! www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Dia de los Plutopia News Network Sci-Fi Saturday: the Frankenstein story is the genesis of modern science fiction, and filmmaestro Guillermo del Toro has created a stunning reimagining of the tale, considering the themes of creation, humanity, and isolation. youtu.be/9WZllcEgWrM?...

"You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views." ~ Doctor Who, Face of Evil, January 1977.

A very offline cousin sent this to fam group chat. This story is breaking containment.

Plutopia News Network Sci-Fi Saturday: Halloween 1938: Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre presented a radio version of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds," a newscast simulation so realistic that some thought it was real. Here's a recording of the broadcast...Happy Halloween! youtu.be/LWJqTXoVPTo?...

It seems that NBA gambling schemes are America's biggest emergency right now.

Austin, Texas has a coalition opposing the use and proliferation of ALPRs (Automated License Plate Readers). Follow the org, follow the issue: www.noalprs.org

This week's net.wars, "The bottom drawer", finds Keir Starmer's ID card rhetoric weirdly archaic and worries he will not learn the right lessons for studying India's Aadhar: netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/10/17/t...

Louis Rossmann and EFF-Austin's Mackenzie Rhine sat down to interview Austin City Council Member Mike Siegel around his vocal support for the movement to ban surveillance from Austin.

I'm thinking Trump should send troops to Cocos Islands, Christmas Island and Norfolk Island, to manage the response to his tariffs.

"Antifa" is an abbreviated term meaning "anti-fascist." What kinds of people would be most likely express concerns/fears about anti-fascism?

Plutopia News Network Sci-Fi Saturday: Check out "Just Iconic Rewinds" on YouTube. They collect "weird facts" about various classic sci-fi films. Last night we learned facts about "The Monolith Monsters," a sci-fi film about monster rocks from outer space: youtu.be/3ig5prwS7RQ?...

A long tradition of Federal disaster relief is ending with the Trump administration, with the fantasy that states can take responsibility instead. What surprises me is that he's dumping the opportunity to use disaster relief as leverage. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/c...

From “Vineland”: "it's the whole Reagan program, isn't it—dismantle the New Deal, reverse the effects of World War II, restore fascism at home and around the world, flee into the past, can't you feel it, all the dangerous childish stupidity—'I don't like the way it came out, I want it to be my way’”

LLMs are neural networks trained to model the probability of the next token from context; they learn rich representations of language and world knowledge, and chat systems often augment them with tuning, sampling, and external tools. So say we all.

RFK Jr. clearly hates people on the spectrum, probably because they’re so much smarter than he is.

Plutopia News Network Sci-Fi Saturday: Vincent Price is Robur, the "Master of the World" in this 1961 steampunk film, about as epic as American International Pictures could get with its low budget vibe. Robur is like Captain Nemo, but airborne. youtu.be/AsJruGxyHBE?...

Scoop Sweeney and I have published 450 videos on our Plutopia News Network channel at YouTube - check it out, poke around, watch a few! And subscribe if you like what you see! www.youtube.com/@PlutopiaNew...

When the president and his party keep making stuff up to justify military occupation of cities, it oughta lead the news coverage. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Plutopia News Network Sci-Fi Saturday: David Cronenberg's "The Shrouds" is a meditation on death, loss, and the power of grief. A grieving tech entrepreneur creates "GraveTech" for a live, 3D view of the decomposing corpse of loved ones. youtu.be/vwh1Fob4VKs?...

Utilities, groceries, health care premiums all going sky high, and he’s blabbering on like he’s Louis XIV in Versailles.