Bowen

I would be blissfully happy if I never had to talk about AI ever again. Unfortunately I am compelled to think about this because it’s fucking up computers, and I deeply love computers. I grew up making computers. I went to summer camp for computers (like twice, I’m not kidding). I love writing about computers and telling people why I find them special with all my heart. I enjoy jailbreaking closed hardware that would otherwise become e-waste, like robot vacuums and Amazon devices, and giving them a second life as something ethical. I love solder and burning rosin, and getting a fresh stack of PCBs sent to me from a factory. I love to create a machine from parts, and my heart overflows with joy when that machine does exactly what I want it to do, despite every multinational company stuffing it with shit I never asked for.

The rabid adherents of AI – not those who feel compelled to use it for work, but the ones who won’t shut the fuck up about it – are too blinkered, greedy, or ignorant to see the writing on the wall. They do not love computers; maybe they never did. They love money and having a mistake-prone LLM do their work for them. They love increasingly ugly leather jackets. They fear falling behind their peers, and would do anything to keep up no matter the impact on the world. They love the insular fascist tech culture that radiates like a cancer from the Bay Area, a once vibrant and interesting place made foul by their presence. They love offloading their tasks to something mimicking a human voice, and scaring themselves into thinking it has personhood despite the entire premise being flawed from the jump. They love deskilling themselves in real time and fooling themselves into thinking they’re Albert Einstein 2. And that would be bad enough if they kept it in a nasty little Discord server, but like libertarianism, crypto, and NFTs before it, they just refuse to shut the fuck up about it. It’s an endless torrent of tortured blogs delivered in an inhuman chorus of the same mockery of a voice. Who are they trying to convince, me or themselves? Why do they need my validation? To quote the great ethicist Carl Brutananadilewski, “Go away, go away. So tired of this. Friggen go away you freak.” and “What do you need? What do you want? Can I not just live here without occasionally having to deal with you animals?”

reading the whole thing right now. getting emotional over how much these words match what i feel. i love the computer. leave it alone.

First answer from said AI: “I NEED YOU TO KILL ME”

That’s all Folks

joan from MAD MEN

she should have been allowed to kill one guy per season

Inshallah we survive it.

Time to dust off a classic

you're a morally complex and often misinterpreted anti-hero, Charlie Brown

Contrast of Forms, by Fernand Léger, 1913, (rotated) 📸 by Mike Segar

YouTube video by ThePriceMaster The PriceMaster (full version)

it is apparently the 25th anniversary of the greatest piece of art Denton, Texas, has ever produced

Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling!

5 chubby black cats dancing around the lord dog THE KING of hot dogs

Rejoice!

Always a great sign for how things are going in your country when 21-year-olds are like “hey, I innovated a system to play bagpipes in tear gas”

I used to love computer it was my friend. Now I have hate in my heart

Renfeild: I booked your passage on the Demeter, master
Dracula: thankfs. dont foret the box of,, dert

But why tho?

are we gonna vanquish this fuckeng evil or what

ummmm you don't understand, MY family came here legally. They had to meet rigorous requirements like, "get on a boat", and "don't shit yourself to death on the boat before it gets there"

by popular request i have turned the meme into a blog post, which explains how it works, links to the template file and includes a selection of examples from the thread

#KirbyFraming

Every social theory undergirding Trumpism has been broken on the steel of Minnesotan resolve. The multiracial community in Minneapolis was supposed to shatter. It did not. It held until Bovino was forced out of the Twin Cities with his long coat between his legs. The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.

Last week in Minnesota, I watched ordinary people risk their lives to protect their neighbors. In the process, they not only won a significant—though not final—victory against authoritarianism, they proved virtually every MAGA social theory wrong. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Good afternoon from downtown Chicago, where despite heavy snowfall, thousands have gathered for an anti-ICE/CBP demonstration in solidarity with the Twin Cities. More are still streaming in.

Lt. Illinois Gov. Juliana Stratton just addressed the crowd, and called for ICE to be abolished.

If the truth is ever to win out over propaganda, it can only do so in the face of overwhelming evidence, the collection of which has become ever more treacherous in the second year of Trump’s second presidency. But the news and footage of Pretti’s death seems to have broken through the usual informational chaos—at least to some extent. On Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook pages, the videos of Pretti’s last moments appear to have galvanized people who don’t normally engage or post about politics. And it is thanks to the bystander videos of Pretti’s killing that people are trying to hold the administration accountable. This morning, the CNN host Dana Bash referenced the footage in an interview with Bovino, asking him why Pretti was shot after being disarmed. “We’re not going to adjudicate that here on TV in one freeze frame,” Bovino replied. “It’s not a freeze frame,” Bash said. “We’re showing a video of one of your agents taking the gun away. And that happened before Pretti was shot.”

it's really a sign of how dire things are that part of being a citizen is having to choose whether to watch amateur footage snuff films to determine how much the state is lying to you.

Cartoon sticker on a bar wall with the caption “fuck ICE”

Behind the great paywall in the sky (if you want to read more than 4 reviews a month)…

RIP Pitchfork

You will be missed.

Classic Musk promise.

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