Occasional reminder: the original Luddites didn't hate looms; they wanted everyone to *share the benefits* of looms. Even in that light, it isn't a good analogy for the anti-imitative-AI crowd (of which I am member) because whatever the economic effects of looms, they do at least actually work

Vaccination is as much a part of civic duty and mutual protection as anything else we do for each other. Get vaccinated, give blood, support your neighbors

Shorter Suzy Wiles: I'm not like a regular Eichmann. I'm a *cool* Eichmann.

Annoyed that we got all 14 minutes of Phish "covering" Also Sprach Zarathustra on #XPNCountdown, but they did the short version of "MacArthur Park"

Duolingo announced it was going “AI-first” just over six months ago. Since then its stock is down 64%.

Now if we could only get those Bluesky accounts bridged to the fediverse by simply following @ap.brid.gy so those on, say, Mastodon could follow along!

Let's practice everyone: "I don't like this thing, but that doesn't mean other people can't." But while we're here, I think a better framing of this would be "apple pie is easy to screw up". I suspect this guy's just never had good apple pie.

We don’t need to reform ICE. We don’t need alternatives to ICE. We don’t need to engage in dishonest debates wondering what the U.S. would do without ICE. ICE isn’t even 23 years old. Most adults know a world without ICE. And the billions used to fund ICE can be used to meet people’s basic needs.

TRUMP [after spending 5 minutes with Zohran]: surplus value, it’s a very wonderful thing, very wonderful, and they’re stealing it. Can you believe that? We’re going to be looking very strongly at the bourgeoisie, what they’re up to

Sharing with alt text

"Of course, it doesn’t feel right to want IT to HAPPEN. And it’s obviously not okay to try to make IT HAPPEN. That’s not what this is ABOUT, just to make things CLEAR LEGALLY as far as VARIOUS AGENCIES are concerned." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/whe...

Dems just wanted to win elections before caving. It doesn’t even read as self sabotage.

To be fair, I think she's right, in that she doesn't give a fuck, and neither do any of her colleagues

Senator Schumer has failed to lead this party in one of its most critical moments, and Americans will pay the price. It’s time for him to step down from leadership and make way for a new generation willing to fight for the people instead of the powerful.

Using ChatGPT

Smucker really is one of the slimiest of the bunch, and that's saying something (gonna sue me too, Lloyd?)

Electricity now costs 267% more (!!) for 1 month vs. what it cost 5 years ago near data center hotspots. Awesome reporting from Josh Saul @dinabass.bsky.social Leonardo Nicoletti @naurtorious.bsky.social Demetrios Pogkas (gift link) www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

The rebranding of reactionary gender and biological essentialism as “heterodox and challenging ideas to which liberal students must be exposed” is one of the greatest achievements of our stupid era. Congratulations to the reactionary centrists who helped make it happen - you dupes, you utter dolts.

Pretty fucking sure there’s a word in Arabic that means submission, lol. It’s a famous one. I bet you know it.

Please boost! #linguistics student here at Swarthmore is running a survey for English speakers (who don't know Mandarin / any other tone languages) about how we learn tones. Take a few minutes to help out with this student research! swarthmore.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

new from @kylietcheung.bsky.social in @teenvogue.com: recently, men have impersonated plainclothes ICE agents to assault women—only possible, she argues, because state agents commit violence with impunity. "To be clear, men wouldn’t be posing as ICE agents and assaulting women if ICE didn’t exist."

As usual with this issue, Harris is calling for a compromise that already exists. Every sporting body has standards for how long athletes must be on hormones before they can compete as women. The problem isn’t that we’re ignoring ‘reasonable concerns,’ the problem is that republicans are lying.

While I got my knuckles rapped by corporate America for being rude and tasteless about a guy who dreamed of the stoning of me and everyone I love, Fox's Brian Kilmeade advocated explicitly for the state murder of all homeless people -- on live TV, no less -- to virtually no response.

the problem with media corporations negotiating with fascists is that the negotiation is never over.

It's journalistic malpractice to report this as if it's simple record keeping and not intentional voter suppression.

November 17, 2021 www.mypanhandle.com/news/local-n...

I know enough linguist experience to be fascinated by this sentence, yes

And yes, I was the last Black full-time columnist in the Opinion section. Washington Post -- operating in a city which for a long time has been majority Black, is now without any full-time Black opinion writers.

reposting with alt text because this feels incredibly significant. the right-wing disinfo machine means a lot of the people grieving Charlie Kirk never heard any of the things he said that would have tarnished his brand as Guy Who Just Wants to Have Dialogue Across the Aisle

again, it is possible to denounce the shooting of Kirk without lying about who Kirk was.

i do not think it can be overstated at this point that we do not know who killed charlie kirk or why they did it.

"AI work is just as good as human work" is a statement that *always* flows from the direction of power. Employers to workers, producers to consumers, but not the reverse. Because it's not a thing people actually believe, but an argument: slop is good enough for you; you are slop.

If you want to resist, wear a mask If you care about future generations, wear a mask If you care about your long term health, wear a mask If you want to fight fascism, wear a mask Your resistance effort must be inclusive of everyone … and that includes disabled people Masking is community care

With all the criticisms of AI one I don't see as often is how it's the final form of the tech industry's 20+ year push to take computers and internet from "useful tool you can use in a vast variety of ways" to "thing that does everything for you and gives you as few options as possible for doing so"

Yes. But before we get to the primary process we should be thinking about who we don’t want to *end up* with. The way you end up with someone rather than choose is having “mean posts” stick in peoples minds and not “hates homeless people, doesn’t care about trans people”

all im saying is if we start saying we think the first one is more woke we can really fuck with their heads

🧵 I keep coming back to this list and, aside from the general issue that Dem politicians and spokespeople already seldom use most of these words and phrases, a few themes seem to emerge. I won't go through all of them, but I want to think more about two. 1/

"Age verification" laws are actually "upload your ID or get your face scanned to access every website, ending anonymity and associating your identity with everything you do online" laws and if more people understood that they would not be down for this authoritarian nonsense

I dunno let me try: Gavin Newsom once climbed Mt. Everest in 15 minutes, he’d have done it faster but for 14 of those minutes he was throwing away the possessions of a homeless person

I’m concerned that people won’t appreciate how big a line is being crossed here. Texas is suspending basic Constitutional freedoms for opposition lawmakers. This isn’t dipping your toe in the authoritarian waters, it’s diving head first into the deep end. This is big league authoritarianism.

2/ 1️⃣ On Tuesday, the Vaccine Integrity Project—an outside group formed in response to federal vaccine policy changes—meets to review the latest evidence on COVID, flu, & RSV vaccines. Insurers & physicians are watching closely for third-party validation. I have been selected to be on the panel.

People who experienced homeless encampment sweeps in Washington state and Tennessee wrote about the impact it had on their lives. Our team @propublica.org added these to our page featuring stories from people across the country: projects.propublica.org/impact-of-ho...

One thing I feel like I fundamentally misunderstood is how many people see social progress as threatening, especially if it’s driven by young people. I genuinely thought that they meant it when they said they wanted a better society for the next generation. And it’s so clear that isn’t really true.

"I think we have to assume that actually sunlight has a normalizing effect. I think promoting events where either proposition can win is a really great way to let people win who have ideas that should never be considered, and to introduce the idea that such ideas might, could, or even should win."

This is literally the fascist strategy to isolate the entire trans community. For every institution, sacrificing trans people becomes the "rational choice" to save the majority. They'll keep doing this with every minority group until they've picked us all off one by one.

A hugely underdiscussed effect of the creeping fascism of ICE is that debt collectors and landlords are filing more cases against immigrants, even when they're inflated or outright falsified, because they know immigrants are too fearful of deportation to show up to court to fight them.

The UFW can confirm farm workers were critically injured yesterday during chaotic raids in Ventura County, CA. Other workers, including US citizens, remain unaccounted for. UFW staff is on the ground supporting impacted families. Our full statement below. ⬇️ 1/