Trump's surplus hands

if you don't care about sex workers or sellers of kinky porn getting arbitrarily banned from using money then maybe you will care about the International Criminal Court being banned from using money this shit needs to be dismantled yesterday

This is a thread of major media outlets falsely anthropomorphising the "Grok" chatbot program and in doing so, actively and directly removing responsibility and accountability from individual people working at X who created a child pornography generator (Elon Musk, Nikita Bier etc) #1: Reuters

The Republican platform is simple: they want to sexually abuse children. And they want you to pay for it.

This is the "testing the waters" phase of the playbook. The GOP ecosystem targets groups like Somalis, Haitians, and trans people specifically because they've calculated that the average person's passive disapproval won't ever turn into active defense. They're exploiting public apathy.

i’d like to just say the popular social media generating CSAM is also the leading platform for bigots to claim without evidence that trans people are a danger to children

Mamdani's first executive order as Mayor was to rescind every EO issued by Eric Adams since Adams was indicted for bribery. Far-right operatives are characterizing it as deleting "official tweets and EOs addressing the protection of Jewish New Yorkers." It's incredible how desperate they are.

I cannot emphasize enough that the attempts to anthropomorphize an algorithm is a fundamental act of journalistic malpractice and an intentional act to shield the people responsible for this. It's fucking shameful.

Yes, Twitter and Musk themselves aren’t even attempting to apologize for “Grok creating CSAM” - but this too is an example of allowing a machine to take blame! Who CREATED the machine that’s apologizing for its actions in a fashion that shifts blame to itself and not to its actual human creators?

I would like to see some elon said stories, as long as what he's saying is "help help please let me out of this oubliette full of rats"

This has been a long standing concern for critics of LLMs, and the media just went along with the hype.

I am absolutely serious when I say that newsrooms need to adopt strict style guides for reporting on generative AI, to avoid implying sentience or agency. @cnbc.com are you listening?

Trump hasn't had two hands since the early 90s. The papers used to be full of stories about the 'one-handed billionaire.' But when he decided to run for president, all those stories and photos began to mysteriously vanish from the public record, and today you can't find a single one.

In response to user prompts, Grok: a) issued an "apology" for having generated CSAM. b) immediately retracted the "apology" TWICE. A LLM is not capable of holding an opinion, having ethics, or even remembering what it did just moments ago.

I swear to god I am losing my mind. This is @reuters.com. REUTERS. "Grok said in a post..." "Grok referred to..." STOP GROK DID NONE OF THESE THINGS IT IS A MACHINE THAT GENERATES SENTENCE-SHAPED WORD GROUPS www.reuters.com/legal/litiga...

This is the thing. At any point when writing about Grok or any other LLM, you can replace the name of the LLM with "the computer" without any loss in meaning. If you would not write "the computer apologized", then you should not write "Grok apologized".

I dropped Spotify a long time ago because they signed an exclusive contract with Rogan. Looking like a good choice.

I know Bluesky has serious issues but its not infected with a chatbot that creates CSAM on demand so, I dunno

I urge you not to share that stupid screenshot of Grok "apologizing" for generating CSAM without the context that it was only generated by a prompt from a random X user. Grok cannot "apologize" for anything, and the company had no part in issuing this statement.

Was just thinking that Gone With the Wind will be public domain in 6 years. Considering the tantrum the Mitchell estate threw about The Wind Done Gone, I think you all know what to do with that information.

Delete X. Get rid of it. The entire existence of that company has become an obscenity.

I think that actual philosophers and scientists probably have a better handle on this, but like - I don't think that most people out there walking around have a mental model where something can carry on an extended conversation with you and NOT be sentient

"Many said these aspirations and those who held them had come out of nowhere. Yet one man’s nowhere is another man’s somewhere... in our city, where every corner of these five boroughs holds power, there is no nowhere and there is no no one. There is only New York, and there are only New Yorkers."

hi, we saw you from across the bar and

Without a doubt this would be "Life Among the Savages" by Shirley Jackson. My spouse actually describes it as "the family scripture."

Sliwa is a lunatic who should never be allowed anywhere near the levers of power—and yet, he's the quintessential New York City candidate, in that as long as you love New York City too, he can get along with you.

It's kind of funny that the NYCMayor Twitter account just changes names without archiving the old posts so now it's @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social's name on all of Eric Adams' old tweets

Bob and I were among the hundreds of researchers that were supposed to conduct the 6th U.S. National Climate Assessment. Now it looks like they're gonna produce it with a few people and Grok? Communities need rigorous and accurate information about climate change. This will put communities at risk.

In 2026, I want one thing – a kidney donated from a living donor for my partner. I've lost sleep over whether I should post this – it's a massive ask. Sometimes I wonder if it's asking too much? But the reality is that I'm unable to donate my kidney, and he has zero family who are in the position

this is part of where my “celebrate the successes” post came from - it is important, for all of us that want to see better things, that Zohran not be seen as a failure hold him accountable but also be ready to go, look, this is Good, Actually for better or worse the larger project depends on it

Mandy Patinkin singing with the PS 22 chorus before @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social’s inauguration

Someone waited all year to file this Community Note, and by god, it was worth the wait

“Can’t believe NYC elected a Muslim as mayor.” In truth—a Black American Christian woman swearing in a Ugandan American Muslim of South Asian ethnicity as his Syrian American wife holds the Qurans he swears in on, all while standing on the steps of a subway station—is the most NYC thing imaginable.

I've been well taught the evils of linguistic prescriptivism over the years, and have mostly made my peace with it, but there are a few words that still push all my buttons when I see someone write "sike" for "psych", well, that's when I reach for my revolver

my one plea as we ring in the new year with Zohran being sworn in as mayor is to take some fucking wins he’s not going to be perfect, there will be setbacks and disappointments, but take some joy and some pride in the good that comes out of this good things are more durable when we celebrate them

What you see is the clear warm light of April. And it means that we can begin a whole new year together, Toad.

Okay, I will preface this with the GIGANTIC disclaimer that I promise I know how this looks, and I *swear* this is not personally motivated: If you have an old #LiveJournal account, and it has things you still care about in it, download it or import it to Dreamwidth SOON. Details:

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, y’all.

i agree with the Baby Beluga guy

It’s New Year’s Eve and I’m sobbing my eyes out for a goddamn snail

About 20 years ago I was working in an FAA en-route center. Pilot of a [US Gov Agency aircraft] reported a laser strike and then gave me lat/longs with six digits after the decimal point for the origin of the laser pointer. Took the local sheriffs dept about ten minutes to make an arrest.

It has been The Onion's best year since we broke Watergate and subsequently, personally had Richard Nixon removed from office. I'm going to share some personal favorite stories in this thread. Please add your own, and visit the Our Annual Year recap below. theonion.com/our-annual-y...

⏰ 12 HOURS TO GO 👀 When the new year begins, so does #PublicDomainDay2026. At 12:00 a.m. ET, iconic books, films, and music move into the public domain—and we’ll be sharing highlights #here all night long. 🔔 Set your reminder ➡️ blog.archive.org/public-domai...

All Cops Are Batrachians

Johnny Cash's video for "Hurt" feels like an appropriate requiem for MTV itself.

Key to understanding MAGA is their deep envy of celebrity. Actual celebrities break their brains. If George Clooney made fun of my lawyering I would have the wisdom to go along with it or shut the hell up. If you're not a celebrity yourself you cannot win these battles, you're fighting an avatar.

THIS. Did you know sickle cell is curable, now? FULLY curable. If you're feeling down or despairing about what FEELS like technology/advancement/science "standing still" or being fully malicious, I have great news: You're not paying attention to actual science. Just tech industry marketing.