Taper #16: For Good Measure is here! taper.badquar.to/16/ 21 new computational poems under 2048 bytes editorial collective: @leoflores.bsky.social @anjchang.bsky.social @geryon.bsky.social @rosa-studio-art.bsky.social + @wolfchirp.bsky.social (me) published by @docmofo.bsky.social badquar.to

References to Palantir have been redacted from the Mandelson files on the grounds that they would be "prejudicial to UK national security or international relations"

It's hard enough to keep up with the destruction of universities locally. Especially when the dial is set to full-on demolition. But really this is a global, or at least pan-Western crisis. Reaction, inequality, elite failure, AI delusion – a perfect storm for which we seem totally ill-prepared. 1/4

RIGHT NOW: NJ state troopers with riot gear are forcing protesters supporting the hunger strikers of Delaney Hall and media ppl down the street. They’re firing flashbang grenades at the ground to force people to disperse, per the @statuscoupnews.bsky.social livestream www.youtube.com/live/yTlpCYk...

“I’m seeing Palantir infiltrate Canada in a way that we’ve just ignored it, and we keep ignoring it." I argue that the federal government should refuse to deal with the company, citing multiple examples of human rights abuses.

China removes hukou hurdle for migrant workers in social insurance shake-up www.scmp.com/news/article...

What some of us have been warning of for decades is happening, faster and fiercer than most imagined, even in the mildest and most temperate corners of the world. #ClimateBreakdown

My opinion of twitter-like social media is that it must be destroyed, or at least run as a federated public utility by municipal and interest-group cooperatives.

The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway and the Netherlands issue a top of the line, incredibly rate, never before seen kind of statement where they threaten to maybe, one day, possibly, hypothetically impose on companies helping Israel build settlements.

Hosea Williams, the man marching with John Lewis at the head of the protesters beaten on Pettus Bridge seeking voting rights, was a chemist from Georgia with an MA. Now an African-American microbiologist from Georgia with a PhD is going to Congress.

“*owning* a home” will NEVER work as a long term goal for the whole of an egalitarian, sustainable society: left-populists need to choose their words with more care. A good place to live, that you can stay in as long as you like, comfortable, well-maintained in a vibrant neighborhood IS attainable

All these 3rd way freaks just want to do Italian/Dutch Christian Democracy (post-neoliberalism version) so badly (SEA style Islamic Democracy, alternately), but it can’t come out of Catholicism or Calvinism as naturally so they’ve got to define it in more tortured ways.

Years ago, the tech industry's goal was "Don't make users think." Now with AI, Silicon Valley's mantra is "Take away the users' capacity to think."

cooked him like groceries

daaaamn london

@alixdunn.com sat down with @davidthewid.bsky.social to pull back the curtain on this triangle - how academia may unwittingly advance AI warfare, how we got into this mess in the first place, and how we get out of it. Listen ➡️ www.themaybe.org/podcast/comp...

Here is the furthest concession i am willing to make as a cold, winter, and snow/rain enjoyer (from California, by the Great Lakes): i don’t enjoy sticky summer days but do love long cool bright summer nights

Even speaking as an anti-capitalist, the attempt to establish a spoils and patronage-based order throughout the US-ruled segment of the global economy undermines core techniques of US financial & geoeconomic hegemony. It’s gross, harmful & beyond illegal; it’s also an opportunity to do better things

All the developers 404 Media talked to were excited to try using LLMs at work at first, or were at least curious about them. Their feelings about the tools, based on their personal experience, are now overwhelmingly negative. AI is rotting their brains www.404media.co/software-dev...

Bluesky: the poster’s [1] methadone [1] (Anglophone, left-lib, millenial)

We don't even have to wait 10-20 years for the details to come out!

im not against alt text at all but imagine if you required painters to produce a textual description of all of their own works

Politically incorrect statement of the day: it baffles comprehension to me that someone could have an Ethiopean/Horn of African meal (trumpet-jazz on the spekaers, families and friends having lively conversation around plates) then have a Dutch meal (or, here, go to a steakhouse) …

"To the contrary, voters are on average more likely to defect to the radical right when mainstream parties adopt anti-immigration positions, a pattern that has been particularly pronounced for established RRPs."

FWIW, I don’t think the major problem in my field, or related ones, is that people need to move faster & produce more. I read a lot of papers as part of the job, and I’m increasingly convinced we’d benefit from fewer papers and better ones, not more mediocre work produced ever more “efficiently.”

Just got an email about something happening on 05/12/2026 and I couldn't for the life of me figure out from context if it was in around seven days or seven months. For the love of all that is good, please disambiguate your dates. I don't care how.

The differences between the white-supremacist and "safety & ethics" liberal Silicon Valley firms turn out once again to be purely aesthetic and self-satisfied, making no practical difference for the rest of us. x.ai/news/anthrop... When push comes to shove, Almodei and Musk will be on the same side.

claude is literally wrong basically every time I ask a programming question. the pattern for me and claude is 1. hey claude how do you do this 2. claude says something wrong 3. I say that's so fucking wrong because of X 4. claude says "ah yeah you're right that's so fucking wrong because of X"

Here's the open letter the unionizing workers at Wizards of the Coast sent management. And yes, this is the MtG: Arena team, not tabletop, MtGO, or the various other WotC in-house video game projects. unitedwizardsofthecoast.com/letter

Sam Altman’s World project has been halted and investigated in multiple countries, but it recently partnered with Tinder, Zoom, and Docusign to verify users https://restofworld.org/2026/sam-altman-worldcoin-zoom-tinder-partnerships/?utm_campaign=row-social

but absent a pause (which again, is what the author is advocating) how likely do we think real progress will be made on this democratic governance? meanwhile, companies building data centers will just proceed apace without restrictions...

Raghu Rai's uncommon eye.

Depressing. I don’t know what optimistic people think is the best-case scenario here. Perhaps they just never cared about what they did. “On quitting, the spread of AI, and the loss of an ideal.” ky.fyi/posts/ai-bur...

Who Remembers the Armenians? I remember them and I ride the nightmare bus with them each night and my coffee, this morning I'm drinking it with them You, murderer - Who remembers you? ― Najwan Darwish, Nothing More to Lose

The richest 10% of Americans own roughly 87% of stocks. The richest 1% alone own roughly half of all stocks. As war rages on and millions of people struggle to make ends meet, it's worth pointing out once again that the stock market is not the economy.

If you've left X it's also time to quit Instagram, and minimize WhatsApp use.

Its worse than you think. The coming global food crisis #TheyDidThis "This piece by Adam Hanieh is one of the best compact accounts I’ve read of the actual material implications of shutting off shipping through Hormuz. Well worth reading." Gift article link @FT giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Israeli soldiers are detonating entire villages in South Lebanon while taking selfies. Ancient mosques, churches, cemeteries, schools, hospitals - all being obliterated by the genocidal regime www.instagram.com/reel/DWrg5xi...

i’ve played enough jrpgs to know how this goes. a village boy, his hometown love, a mysterious wizard, and a talking animal are going to band together and battle the ceo of palantir at the end of the world

Looking across history, in fairness these are core characteristics of rulers in “the West”

Famously vengeful Knicks owner Jim Dolan has long spied on people at his iconic arenas. WIRED goes deep inside the operation that allegedly tracked a trans woman, lawyers, protesters, and more. www.wired.com/story/madiso...

Not everything that breaks is technically the fault of vibe coding but the kind of culture that would foster vibe coding is the kind that produces a lot of shit that breaks.

Solar manufacturing capacity is approx double demand. Same with wind nacelles and batteries. The problem with Chinese manufacturing is not overcapacity! It's UNDERDEMAND. But how will it look as 2 x big fossil fuel supply shocks sink in?

That concrete box off the freeway wasn’t designed for storage so much as capture — of markets, workers, and, now, people detained by immigration agents, as the federal government turns warehouses into million-square-foot concentration camps. It is a disappearing machine. We need to see it clearly.

Genuinely tragic. When this is over, there will be no alternative to building new institutions with genuinely progressive and experimental pedagogy, hopefully in the campuses abandoned in the defeat of previous generations’ experiments

I know this is oversimplifying, but I find it very hard to read about any part and theater of the history of the Long 19th Century and not come away with the conclusion that the British Empire was an exceptional evil that repeatedly won: truly the greater evil. Maybe the BeNe(Lux) were as bad