we need to cancel bot conscription, not just ai subscriptions. we need to cancel kill chains, fantasies about bot brains and automated people slain. we need to cancel job raiders and human haters.

art resist while fascism persists. new issue of the power tools zine is live. powertoolsofai.com/zines/power-...

New issue of the Power Tools Zine is live: powertoolsofai.com/zines/power-...

Power Tools Zine Issue #2 WIP

Updated the Power Tools website, issue #2 of the zine coming soon 👀 powertoolsofai.com

Bart Fish made a cool Zine about AI including a snippet of one of my essays and sent me a copy. Love it!

A well-know creative leader just told me that saying we should resist AI because it’s being used for mass surveillance, war (domestic & international), misinformation, racism etc is the same as saying designers should have not used computers and quit design, because the govt uses them for bad things

extreme techno-optimism, mixed w/ authoritarianism, surveillance and xenophobia have become the new american manifesto. billionaires get richer while we're mired in uncertainty, fear and ai-enabled shackles.

new newsletter up: powertoolsofai.com/the-rise-of-...

thank you to everyone that ordered a physical copy of my first zine issue 🖤 i’ve been working hard to put them all together and i am very close to mailing them out. still have a surprise or two, that i’m working on 👀

power tools: the zine is finally available ⚡🪚 it features eight creatives, including photographers, cartoonists, designers, artists and writers. It’s a mix of short stories, poems, essays, and art with critique of AI as the overarching theme. powertoolsofai.com/zine/

elon musk is an immigrant that hates immigrants, a narcissist disguised as an altruist, a critic who refuses to be criticized, a polluter parading as an environmentalist, a free speech “advocate” who pushes for censorship, a government contract hoarder that criticizes government spending…

what do you get when hobble together extreme tech optimism, authoritarianism, theology, and 1930s german political theory? a franken-thiel. this month i’m focusing on the monsters of ai, frightening demagogues hell-bent on transforming our society into a dystopian horror. first up is peter thiel.

This print I created was inspired by Joe Nunnink’s AI Bob Ross skits 🤣 Added some fast food / clown references because why not

test print: ai companions

what do all of these tiktok ‘creators’ have in common? they are all ai accounts entirely dedicated to spreading maga and conservative views.

openai doesn’t care about our health, it cares about our healthcare dollars. powertoolsofai.com/the-ai-war-o...

these two power tools of ai images i created, are live on @betterimagesofai.bsky.social i donated them so anyone can use them for free. if you’re not familiar with better images of ai, their mission is to source ai images that aren’t stereotypical and better represent the discourse around ai.

what if the jobs that ai creates, are ones that nobody wants? what if these jobs are low paying, lack security and involve being exposed to traumatic materials? this is already happening in countries like kenya, uganda, the philippines, venezeula and india. read more at powertoolsofai.com

Users hate AI. So tech made it mandatory. Even if you don't use it, it pollutes what you read and how systems make decisions. The computer's hallucinated word is final. And it needs all of your data to do it. In the age of no consent, UX exists to normalized complete acquiescence to surveillance:

“that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.” -erich fromm, the sane society

if you wanted to control large masses of people, where would you start? how they create, consume and distribute information. how would you force adoption? threaten their livelihood and financial security.

ai is not merely a tool. it’s a power tool. a tool used to surveil, persuade, misinform and control. elon musk wants to use his ai to rewrite history, using his own extremist views to create an orwellian record 1/5

social media = influence machines ai = bullshit machines politics = both

I recently finished reading this and it was a thoroughly enjoyable, yet unsettling read. I came into it already quite critical of Musk, Thiel, Andreesen and Zuckerberg but this book uncovered many more reasons to be concerned. Kudos to @jttaplin.bsky.social for writing such a great exposé.

Elon Musk is so familiar with the idea of weaponizing empathy because he’s been weaponizing altruism his whole career. It’s never been about “saving the human race” for Musk, it’s about gaining influence, respect and power by appearing to be selfless.

I don’t usually post work on here but this is a brand refresh I led late last year.

The Dems should take on corporate greed and pitch a new model of capitalism that places workers on even footing as shareholders. Caps on C Suite comp, and a formula for wage increases as a % of revenue. Different model for speculative businesses that rent cash flow positive.

A maga supporter told me “Not tolerating opinions is fascist.” Isn’t Trump’s whole spiel about not tolerating other people’s opinions? Isn’t he weaponizing the entire govt, to destroy opinions (and facts) he does not like? Cognitive dissonance is real people.

Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show performance is everything.

"The revolution is about to be televised. You picked the right time but the wrong guy." Kendrick Lamar 🔥🔥🔥 #SuperbowlHalftime

Our govt wants to make American AI models more like Trump. We’re talking about an extreme ideological bias that relies heavily on beliefs, conspiracies and straight out lies. Revisionist history that erases and replaces. Still keen on AI?

@kenmartin.bsky.social I’d love to volunteer to help the DNC with design, general creative and strategy. How can I help? I’d love to see the DNC open up volunteering in more creative ways. Why aren’t we building, decentralized pro-democracy tech? Why aren’t we empowering our democratic creatives?

Trump’s Gaza plan IS ethnic cleansing at a massive scale. It’s not enough to deport millions out of America, now he wants to help Israel with their mass deportation. It’s sick, dangerous and not at all American.

Today, I remembered a book I read in college: When Religion Becomes Evil: Five Warning Signs by Charles Kimball. I looked it up to remind myself what the five signs were, and it occurred to me that there are some similarities with the Maga movement. 1/7

“the vibes have shifted” is passive voice. “tech oligarchs made deliberate changes to social media algorithms which altered the way most people perceive reality in a successful attempt to engineer business-favorable outcomes” is more EW WOKE CRINGE but it’s also direct, accurate, and meaningful

We don’t really trust algorithms, do we really think AI models offer any more transparency? When someone like Musk says Grok needs tweaked because it’s still to PC…can we not see the danger around models being manipulated to serve certain ideologies?

It’s very sad when America is the fascist bully and the rest of the world are the democratic heroes. Or on a positive note, maybe it’s precisely what we need.

There’s some irony that the media and culture helped create Trump and Elon Musk’s personas, only for them to later be the ones that discredit them. Trump and Elon ARE the lies mainstream media helped create.

American technocrats believe liberalism is an existential threat to their profit and desire for limitless growth. They want a dictatorship. Read up on Curtis Yarvin. We need to fight back, not just against Trump, but against big tech. They are complicit. They prefer fascism over democracy.

Out of curiosity, I used ChatGPT and Gemini to analyze Marc Andreesen's "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto" for similarities with Nazism, fascism and other authoritarian movements. I'm mostly critical of AI but I thought it would be an interesting experiment given Big Tech's obsession with it. 1/11

Don’t let DJT, Musk or big tech make you feel powerless. You’re not. What’s happening in the U.S. is not a cultural shift, it’s a group of wealthy citizens overstepping their power and attempting to shove their ideology down our throats. Fight back. Organize. Speak out.

"We are told that technology takes our jobs, reduces our wages, increases inequality, threatens our health, ruins the environment, degrades our society, corrupts our children, impairs our humanity, threatens our future, and is ever on the verge of ruining everything." - Marc Andreesen

It's more important than ever that We The People, create communication alternatives to social media platforms. Bluesky is a great first step, but there is so much more work to do. We need open source alternatives to LinkedIn, Facebook etc. We need platforms that serve local communities.

American business would rather embrace fascism to keep growing, than stand up to it. Make no mistake. Big business does not care about your rights, your freedoms. Their wealth insulates them from society and negative consequences.

Jeff Bezos is so intoxicated by Trump’s promises to deregulate, that he doesn’t care about free press. American billionaires don’t care about civil rights or fighting fascism. They care about unfettered growth.

This is bro-caster Bradley Martyn, asking if we should stop letting women make choices any more. @mcuban.bsky.social Still think dems should study red pill bro content and emulate it? #redpill

“Terrible things are happening outside. Poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart. Men, women, and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.” Diary of Anne Frank January 13, 1943

Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo continues to impress me. Her empathy, leadership and wit is unrivaled. Her speech about welcoming Mexican immigrants back into her country was inspiring. While American's degrade them, she champions and welcomes them. She unites, while Trump divides.

Who’s working on AT Protocol apps? Would love to connect.