Shanna Katz Kattari, PhD 🍉🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈♿️

AI Without Us Big Tech, which has been farming data from humans so far, has been creating models of us that simulate what we would say, do, think, and behave.

New piece up at Liberation Toolbox on how Big Tech is killing us and extracting from us for AI, and still how they won’t be able to survive without us.

www.liberationtoolbox.io/ai-without-us/

Inspire Awards YouTube video by CEWatU-M

In case anyone wants to watch my award thing and associated talk (about 15 minutes all in), it starts at about 30:00 here: www.youtube.com/live/EGjMt0m...

It IS captioned!

Long COVID may be triggering Alzheimer’s-like changes in the brain: new study Over 20 million Americans are believed to have long COVID, suffering symptoms such as severe fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pain, palpitations, dizziness and muscle pain.

A well fitted N95 mask offers excellent protection against Covid.

When people lose their sense of smell or taste … it’s because the virus is damaging the brain.

We’ve seen a drop in IQ with each covid infection.

An increase in vascular disease.

Long COVID may trigger Alzheimer’s.

Mask up!

Friends from Minneapolis reporting to me that things are at the point where folks are being hidden in other people's houses and we are in the "again" part of "never again" which the "never" was supposed to preclude

Please and thank you.

Being disabled is literally its own full time job. Forcing us to reach out to find out about basic access info (that might not be accurate anyways) is just adding yet another barrier.

I hope so, because I am struggggggling

U.K. might lose a prime minister because a guy who worked for him knew another guy who hung out with Epstein. Meanwhile the U.S. opposition party is telling our President, who was Epstein's best friend, that his secret police should get better training so their public street murders look less messy.

Academic places to definitely not use AI:
~PhD applications
~Applications for professorial positions
~Letters of reference/recommendations
~Study consent forms
~Qualitative analysis
~Writing peer review
~Grading

(Really anywhere but these are just egregious)

Illustration of two white nonbinary people people with cats

Photos of two white nonbinary people on their commitment ceremony day

Photo of two while nonbinary people kissing

Photo of two white nonbinary people looking at each other

Happy seven years of being together to my love and nesting partner Allie. I hope our adventures never stop 💜

You called 💋??

Becky Chambers “Long Way to a Small and Angry Planet.” Martha Wells Murderbot Diaries (first is “All Systems Red”).

Instead of focusing on legalising assisted suicide for disabled people, maybe we should try to make the world more habitable for us?

In my polycule, we have one neurodivergent fae, one autistic murderbot, one AuDHD Ms. Frizzle, one autistic Morticia, and one AuDHD artificer.

It's not just "stand up to ICE when you see them," it's building many vast networks of support and trust to
- create safe spaces
- protect schools
- get kids TO school
- check on neighbors
- deliver groceries
- help pay the rent
- let people know of danger
- feed the helpers, too!
- and on and on

I keep seeing posts going "when ICE comes to MY city, we'll be out in the streets even harder" and man, I get that sentiment but I need everyone to understand that the work in Minneapolis is partly confrontational but MORE IMPORTANTLY aaallll the stuff organized in the background to help neighbors

Sign the Petition Demand the Release of Rodney Taylor from ICE Detention

ICE has been holding a disabled Black man for a year!

Rodney Taylor is a double amputee who was days away from receiving new prosthetic legs when ICE took him.

He’s been denied his prosthetics & placed in solitary.

His health is declining.

Public outrage might save his life.

Say his name:

With news today about a surge in gas-fired power generation for data centers and AI, here's an occasional reminder that I maintain Against AI and Its Environmental Harms, an open library with journalism, peer-reviewed research, and other media for teaching: pad.riseup.net/p/Against_AI...

ICE are alllll over Harlem right now, 116 & Frederick Douglass, checking IDs and targeting the area’s African community. Multiple people have been detained.

Community members are advising folks to carry citizenship documents - or stay away if they are at risk

Kansas just passed a monstrous bill enabling criminal penalties and vigilante lawsuits for trans people using the bathroom according to their gender identity and requires them to surrender their current drivers licenses and birth certificates if it does not match their sex assigned at birth.

Please stop using Substack. You won’t use Twitter. Stop using Substack.

Folks who think ICE isn’t in our communities? They are just doing it more quietly. They’ve been here in Michigan kidnapping our neighbors for months.

Stop pretending it’s business as usual.

Social work faculty, talk to your students about community organizing, community care, mutual aid. Have them do break outs to talk about the role(s) they want to play right now. Do safety planning work. Share various theories of change.

Do not be complicit.

He was a legal observer, on foot, recording on his phone when they murdered him.

If you’re an elected official, talking about reforming ICE should be instantly disqualifying. I don’t want to hear one goddam thing about electoral strategy

There is no excuse anymore, not that there was before. You don’t reform death squads

Another Minnesotan was just beaten by six agents, pepper sprayed, pistol whipped, then shot in the back. Ten times. The ICE agent then said “boo hoo” to those witnessing it in horror.

Abolish ICE.

Yes AND
Yes AND
Yes AND

We cannot look away. We cannot only look to ourselves. The impact of the U.S. is massive and as scary as things are here, we are making them scary elsewhere too.

Syria is being bombed.

Madagascar is having a revolution of sorts.

Haiti is dealing with terror that is a clear holdover of colonization.

Venezuela now has a president from the same party and no new elections and we are stealing their resources.

Greenland should be for Greenland.

Also. Yes. Things are bad on the home front. Annnnnd.

Iran has murdered at least 5,000 folks (could be closer to 20,000), and still are throttling communication.

Gaza is freezing and starving and under attack. West Bank too.

Sudan is experiencing horror.

Congo is being mined for our phones.

Moderna curbing investments in vaccine trials due to US backlash, CEO tells Bloomberg TV Moderna does not plan to ‌invest in new late-stage vaccine trials because of growing opposition to immunizations from U.S. officials, CEO Stephane Bancel said ‌in an interview with Bloomberg TV ​on Th...

One of the things I was most worried about is starting to come to fruition.

RFK Jr. will succeed in eliminating all of our vaccines if allowed to remain in office. His disinformation campaign and the falling demand for vaccines will cause American companies to stop making them.

Pro tip: If you are attending a rally or action, wear a N95 mask & bring extras to give to others.

High quality masks can serve triple-duty: they prevent you and others from getting sick from airborne viruses, they keep your face warm in the freezing cold, & they can protect against surveillance.