RE: https://social.growyourown.services/@homegrown/115714102743637138 Tim Cook: Do better.

As others have remarked, this is exactly the line Andreessen Horowitz and others have been pushing. There's a whole Silicon Valley movement toward military contracts (because that's where the money is). These editorials read like a full-on ad campaign for tech's next big unicorn: war.

I am a founding and lifetime member of DSA, and was on the national board for a few years in the late '80s. This article explains why I am no longer active (or even a donor) because of the current sectarian character of the national board. OTOH, many local chapters, which are autonomous, are […]

@pluralistic does it again: brilliance. "To pop the [AI] bubble, we have to hammer on the forces that created the bubble: the myth that AI can do your job, especially if you get high wages that your boss can claw back; the understanding that growth companies need a succession of […]

Nine years ago I was at the Dakota Access Pipeline protest near Fort Rice in North Dakota. On Thanksgiving Day, I was privileged to participate in the traditional Native meal preparation by The Sioux Chef. Starting at dishwasher, I was eventually able to help […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

The sooner we tax the rich, the better (the article is paywalled, by a billionaire). https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2025/top-20-billionaires-american-elections/

The democratic socialist beats the republican on Staten Island. What a day 🌹

Ed Zitron has given you fair warning. rebalance your portfolio, either soon or when it's too late: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-against-generative-ai/

Fred Ritchin posts today about the fact that many major social media companies strip out content credentials from video uploads, credentials that could warn viewers that the videos are not real (i.e., they are generated by AI). The money quote: Participation in the Content Credentials […]

Eight years ago today, while in the Trump motorcade, I saw a bicyclist give the bird to the president’s vehicle. I tweeted an AFP photographer’s picture of Juli Briskman. It went viral. She got fired. Then she got elected […] [Original post on journa.host]

@parismarx "How many people need to be disconnected from reality, siphoned into dependence on chatbots, and put at risk of losing their minds before governments take action against these agents of chaos? The time is running out to wake up to the real threats posed by generative AI, and recognize […]

"Polka Dot Lady" has become a meme. From Jeff Tiedrich today: "a couple of days ago, masked ICE thugs showed up in lower Manhattan to round up Chinese street vendors who were guilty of the dastardly crime of selling cheap knock-offs — and our anonymous hero […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

@pluralistic The enshittification of of politics, American style, by Rebecca Solnit. https://www.meditationsinanemergency.com/this-wreckage-courtesy-of-the-enshittification-administration-notes-on-late-state-trumpism/

The coup is nearly complete. Trump does anything he wants, given that permission by his Supreme Court. Congress has been basically dissolved. Just how fascists want it. Only "the people" are left to stand in his way. #photosoffascism

https://bsky.app/profile/lyndab08.bsky.social/post/3m3qznyhm4k2n #photosoffascism

Here's good news: The Montana Plan is a constitutional ballot initiative to end corporate and dark money in Montana politics. It uses authority our state has always held—the power to decide what powers our corporations have—to stop them all, even those based […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

My partner and I own a small office building. I'm looking for renters, so I tried advertising on Facebook's Marketplace (I used it when I was active on FB but that's been years ago). Anyway, it got the following email today, and I replied (see the bottom of […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

There have been many comparisons between the crowds at Tea Party rallies on Tax Day 2009 with yesterday's No Kings rallies. There really is no comparison. Even in San Antonio, where Glenn Beck (the organizer of the Tax Day protests) spoke, the turnout was pitiful. But I was there […]

Maybe now we can "help readers identify [photos/videos] created by real authors"? https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/oct/15/books-by-people-for-people-publishers-launch-certification-human-written-ai?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

RE: https://mastodon.social/@indivisibleteam/115381133206656749 The only way to challenge this is to escalate our resistance faster. It starts Saturday. #nokings

A target has been put on the backs of anyone opposing Trump: they are called antifa by a fascist. My dad was antifa before anyone used that term in America: https://take-note.com/note-takers/marshall--mayer/my-other-writings/to-secure-the-blessings-of-liberty-to-ourselves-and-our-posterity. I’m […]

I’ll be working to get this on the 2026 ballot in Montana: https://bsky.app/profile/davidsirota.com/post/3m33uz3t4nc2w

Fred Ritchin has another post about generative AI's deleterious effect on visual representation, this time focusing on Sora, the video generation app just released by OpenAI (https://fredritchin.substack.com/p/visual-media-at-a-breaking-point). I've written before about generative AI and […]

RE: https://mastodon.social/@indivisibleteam/115347065447761900 The people will prevail. Show up on No Kings Day on 10/18 and bring your friends.

Occasionally, I will post photo of phascism. https://bsky.app/profile/darrigomelanie.bsky.social/post/3m2nbsn5ris2o

@timbray has published a follow-up to his talk at a recent IPTC forum posted at https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/10/01/C2PA-For-Social-Media#c1759769320.992779. The strategy seems doable, except for the part where we have to convince social media companies to not strip out metadata […]

About a month ago, I posted here about my history with President Clinton's "Roadless Rule" and the Trump regime's recision of it. It hits too close to home: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/06/trump-logging-forests

#fuckapple https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/conservatives-rally-around-apple-removing-ice-tracking-apps-protect-law-enforcement

@davidho “I never thought federal officers could behave this way. I really didn’t,” she said. “I always thought people must be provoking them or something, that they would never do this unprovoked. Obviously, I was wrong.” […] [Original post on newsie.social]

Get ready for some sticker shock: my Medicare premiums for next year went up by 61%. They are double what they were just last year. All to make some capitalist somewhere even richer than they already are.

*Looks like LLMs have been around long enough for a whole closet full of bloody shirts now. https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the-intellectual-situation/large-language-muddle/

I read Tim Berners-Lee recent editorial in The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/28/why-i-gave-the-world-wide-web-away-for-free) and learned about Solid (https://solidproject.org). It reminded me of a project I once championed […]

@timbray gave an excellent talk about C2PA, provenance and authenticity recently that concluded, "“I think the technology has the potential to change the global internet conversation for the better, by making it harder for liars to lie and easier for truth-tellers to be believed.” I concurred in […]

Even Roger McNamee is sounding a lot like @Zitron about an AI bubble about to burst: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/24/ai-investors-llms.

"It is very soon where every single word, every single interaction, every single image, video that we experience on – through computers will somehow have been reasoned through or referenced by or generated by A.I."—Jensen Huang, 9/22/25 as quoted in an interview on Nvidia's $100B investment in […]

Apple is AWOL on C2PA. "Not invented here" is so tribal.

@timbray Excellent presentation on C2PA today at IPTC. I particularly liked your focus on authenticating and protecting actual human authorship as a top priority. And, "making it harder for liars to lie, and truth tellers to be heard (or some such)."

"People forget that the famous “Overton window” is actually coin-operated."—Thomas Ferguson https://jacobin.com/2025/09/tech-capital-american-politics-ferguson

"But it’s not the complex problems of the future that are the most intractable. It’s the age-old conundrums of money, class and power."—Dustin Gaustella https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/16/ai-wealth-inequality-cultural-division

I stopped buying music CDs awhile ago. At the same time, I uploaded my CDs to my iTunes account, which later became the Music app on my Apple devices. But now, I can't rip a CD from my Music account for music that I uploaded to it (that function lo longer exists in the app). Thanks Apple.

Last night, I wrote another letter to Tim Cook after watching the "Awe Dropping" event and upgrading all of my devices to OS 26: https://take-note.com/note-takers/marshall--mayer/related-content/another-letter-to-tim-cook. Building on an argument I made in June of 2024, I reiterated that Apple […]

@anildash has a great take on Tim Cook and his failure to lead Apple with any moral convictions or vision. https://www.anildash.com//2025/09/09/how-tim-cook-sold-out-steve-jobs/

Sorry, but I'm not sorry for a guy who is famous for this: "I think empathy is a made up New Age term that does a lot of damage." Charlie Kirk.

Clinton's Roadless Rule was adopted in 2001 to stop roadbuilding on roadless federal land (59 million acres of it). Now the Trump regime is vacating the rule. An organization I led worked on the internet petition campaign to pressure the Clinton administration to strengthen and adopt the […]

We could all get used to that pretty quickly, instead of constantly being "skeptical of what is being depicted" as we are now. It's a critically needed response to the enshittification of public knowledge systems wrought by the tech fascists. 4/4

Now all we need is other digital camera manufacturers (Apple foremost among them because of their market share) to embed a symbol on each image indicating that "This photograph has NOT been modified by generative AI." Perhaps add a + to a corner of the image that when clicked reveals its […]

This is an excellent conclusion to an excellent article and a step in the right direction from Ritchin's previous positions. In fact, it's close to mine, as outlined at https://take-note.com/note-takers/marshall--mayer/related-content/apple-protect-authentic-photography. Pixel 10 barely […]