Derek B. Johnson

The autocrat's toadies destroy functioning governance and launch crisis after crisis in order to create a nation that runs on patronage in which he's the only one able to do anything for anyone.

The Nobel *Peace* Prize winner is cool with murdering civilians on boats

Relatedly, I've learned a lot about the situation in Ethiopia from a friend who works on that. Their strongman ruler, PM Ahmed Abiy, is a monster who attacks his own people with drones and jails journalists and opposition leaders

He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019

if i've learned one thing from doing union stuff while also doing other forms of organizing, it's that you're better off with people you disagree with who are nevertheless trying to do the same thing as you than with people you agree with who aren't trying to do anything

"even if it's AI, it's at least true" hard to overstate the damage this stuff is doing to people's brains. we're gonna be cleaning the slop out of archives for decades

The utter inability of legacy news media to be able to deal with being straight-up lied to is one of the primary drivers of this mess.

Fake AI videos mocking dead celebrities are going viral. We talked to their families, and they're horrified.

We break down OpenAI's Sora 2 and the moral and legal problems of "synthetic resurrection."

Gift link: wapo.st/4nNKzd3 w/ @tatumhunter.bsky.social

We did our best!

1.) cyberscoop.com/potential-eu...

2.) cyberscoop.com/germany-oppo...

When you **understand** your principles, you can **speak clearly** about them.

MIT as an institution has a sharply defined concept of "merit" that this letter uses to turn the tables on the administration's confused and decepive use of the idea.

Can you put into words what that purpose is? You and the frog have really become icons of this protest. There’s been a nice overall whimsy that has shown up. The frog is amazing. We had a bunch of other inflatable people here last night, too. I saw people playing Twister the other day. What they rely on is fear. So by coming out in an absurdist manner, it speaks to them, to some extent, that we’re actually not that afraid. It also dismantles their narrative a little bit. When they try to describe this situation as “war-torn,” it becomes much harder to take them seriously when they have to post a video saying [U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security] Kristi Noem is up on the balcony staring over the Antifa Army and it’s, like, eight journalists and five protesters and one of them is in a chicken suit.

www.wweek.com/culture/2025...

It's strange seeing a bunch of outlets pub stories about Thiel's antichrist lectures and label them as exclusives. For one, they aren't exclusive if a source offered the same material to half the tech press.

It's also kind of silly for folks just to parrot Thiel when he's saying this:

Ezra Klein Is Mourning The End Of The Civilacrum Klein wants a simulation of politics without conflict. Ascendant fascism won't allow that.

I get the anxiety of growing up in an era of relative peace and stability and then being faced with this moment. It's uncomfortable to say the least and I won't pretend I don't relate in some way wondering if I'm equipped for it.

But you adapt or lose your ability to see the world as it is.

Might feel like an inversion of the Civil War, but less than you might think. The federal government was thoroughly in the hands of the Slave Power in the 1850s. States resisted the Fugitive Slave Act; Dred Scott was SCOTUS. Secession happened b/c they wouldn't accept losing that control in 1860.

White House staff should just make and show him an AI-generated video where he wins, fly him to Duluth and tell him it’s Oslo, and dare the New York Times to say anything more than “Experts disagree about whether Mr Trump was awarded the Nobel Prize”.

FSB boss: “Sergei, you post frog to make America Nazi”

Sergei: “Da”

Boss: “Why is frog now Antifa?”

Sergei: “…”

Boss: “Сергей!!!!”

i’ll just say that TRON: LEGACY is a thoroughly mediocre film and an incredible audio/visual experience for when you’re in the right…state of mind. (see also: JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE SNYDER CUT)

Perry cites other fed prosecutions/lawsuits in Chicago and says "in the last 48 hours, in four separate unrelated legal decision from different neutral parties, they all cast significant doubt on DHS' credibility and assessment of what is happening on the streets of Chicago."

Perry: "I agree with you about the seriousness of threats, generally, across the United States right now. I don't think there's a single public servant, really, who is not being subject to threats.

"Mine started about 10 minutes after I got this case."

the man’s a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him

"Chatkontrolle" - EU-Staaten erzielen keine Einigung Die EU-Staaten haben erneut keine Einigung auf eine sogenannte Chatkontrolle im Kampf gegen sexualisierte Gewalt gegen Kinder erzielt.

Denmark scraps next week's Chat Control vote (was scheduled for Tuesday, Oct 14)

www.deutschlandfunk.de/eu-staaten-e...

Many people are saying

cyberscoop.com/voter-citize...

NEW: cost to 'poison' an LLM and insert backdoors is relatively constant. Even as models grow.

Implication: security doesn't scale with LLMs.

Super interesting: Prior work had suggested that as model sizes grew, it would make them cost-prohibitive to poison. 1/
arxiv.org/pdf/2510.07192

[Chuck Schumer voice] For every subscriber we lose in Fairfax County, we'll pick up two in Galt's Gulch.

Homeland Security Cyber Personnel Reassigned to Jobs in Trump’s Deportation Push The US Department of Homeland Security has shifted hundreds of national security specialists, including cyber personnel, into jobs that support President Donald Trump’s deportations and said it would ...

New: DHS has reassigned hundreds of national security specialists, including cyber personnel from CISA, into jobs that support President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts and said it would fire anyone who refuses to go along. Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Per sources: Bill Belichick has discussed buyout options with North Carolina’s hierarchy. Belichick has signaled a willingness to trigger his own $1 million buyout if he can find a soft landing with another team or in media

The people showing up to protest in inflatable animal costumes are doing way way better resistance counter-propaganda than any of the left-wing militia defense types who show up to civil defense actions in their cosplay operator gear.

Gonna start calling these guys the inflada.

You'd really have to deepfake any other politician to get a video of them saying "we took the freedom of speech away" on camera.

Like, not even people trying to take away your freedom of speech tend to use that language!