John Chu

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain, Charlie Brown.

Musk has murdered 600k people.

DOGE was created for data theft and infrastructure dismantling and it wildly succeeded on both counts within the first few weeks of its existence. It will take a generation to rebuild what it destroyed and the breach of data is unprecedented.

He played Ralphi in Johnny Mnemonic. Terrific actor and a pleasure to work with.

Major sources of hate speech are located outside the US. Well yeah, we have this conversation every few months. And every few months people reject the bright shiny evidence that easiest way to ruin America is to feed the hate and bigotry that already exists here.

@leftlanesmith.bsky.social

Al's Biggest Threat: Young People W... 4.3k upvotes • 442 comments SonofRodney • 6h I recently heard about a teacher who instead of trying to circumvent students using ai, which is impossible, she made assignments by going "ask ChatGPT to write a report on this subject, and then research how and why it's wrong". Not only did the students discover that chatGPT is extremely wrong a lot of the time, it also lead them to realize that they should not use it as a primary source. ..• & Reply 个 697 少

This is the way.

If you're looking for a good example of Blueskyism (derogatory), here you go - someone taking a term that is being used correctly (here, 'Anglo-American' as a description of the common law tradition), and taking it....well, taking it here.

"nothing is real praxis except me kvetching about real practice on the internet"; fuck off, buddy.

politics is about people interacting; most of that interaction is done through words and symbols. like, money isn't "real" is you want to get down to it, but it has real effects! symbols effect the world that we have constructed through symbols!

jumping into someone's mentions to whine about how Mamdani's success was a symbolic gesture is like...you do know that words are not actions, right? like, if you're all praxis and only praxis, why are you babbling bullshit on social media?

1) Start the worst European war since 1945 and commit every imaginable war crime
2) Decide how you want to be rewarded for your aggression
3) Leak the list of your desiderata to the US press
4) Wait for the US president to enforce your wish list on your victim.
Russian policy 2025

A 2024 story about climate change memes from the non-profit Outrider quotes “Juliet Pinto, a Professor of Psychology” at Pennsylvania State University. I emailed Pinto, who is in fact a communications professor at Pennsylvania State University. “I have not spoken with any reporter about that piece of research, and I am not a professor of psychology,” she wrote back. The piece also quotes “Terry Collins, a climate scientist and professor of environmental science at the University of California.” I could not find anyone of that description, but Terry Collins, the director of the institute of green science at Carnegie Mellon, said he’s never communicated with Goldiee.

"I was embarrassed. I had been naively operating with a pre-ChatGPT mindset, still assuming a pitch’s ideas and prose were actually connected to the person who sent it"

Stunning investigation of how slop merchants are getting work into established media outlets

thelocal.to/investigatin...

Multilingualism protects against accelerated aging in cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of 27 European countries - Nature Aging In cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of 86,149 participants across 27 European countries, Amoruso, Hernandez and colleagues identify multilingualism as a protective factor against accelerated ...

This is a very strong causal claim! Hope it's not just correlation. www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Mark Kelly: "It was just two months ago that Charlie Kirk was assassination and Trump talked about political violence. And now his instinct is to call for our execution."

Hard for me to say how this is different from Fox News's entire business model, except that it's less sophisticated. This is transparently and obviously bad — and Elon should ban these accounts — but the spirit here of trading rage for money is pretty much a lot of right-wing media.

An account called Godly Nation tweets an AI-generated image of a Latin American family holding a sign. The sign reads "Yes we are undocumented, do you really want to deport us" The tweet got 13k comments, 1.6k retweets, and 8.1k likes. The account is based in Africa

13k comments on one tweet is a massive payout. All of the tweets follow a certain formula, so the content is likely automated using AI technology (e.g., AI generated images and text). Basically running it as a money printing machine. But for those in the US, it translates to low simmering rage.

A Twitter account called Ivanka News tweets an AI image of a young woman wearing Muslim garb. The woman is holding a sign that says "I came here illegally. Should I be deported?" Ivanka News writes: What is your response to this person ?? In the "About this account" tab, it appears the account is based in Nigeria

An account called MAGA scope writes: Who, in your view is the great enemy of the United States? Communism, Islam, Democratic Party, or Satan? The account is based in Nigeria.

An account called MAGA Nadine writes: You go to work and find this. What would you do? The attached pic is an AI image that shows a microwave. The microwave has a sign that says "For religious reasons, this microwave is now making halal food only." The account is based in Morocco.

An account called America First posts an AI image of Tulsi Gabbard. They wrote: How would you rate your trust in Tulsi Gabbard on a scale of 1-10?

Twitter pays people based on engagement (views, retweets, comments, etc). It appears that many MAGA accounts are based abroad and they use AI technology to generate low-effort rage bait.

My guess is that this will get worse as AI tech improves. For instance, fake videos of minorities doing crime.

We need it. Not only are the classes full, but also concert halls, libraries - we've gone to a bunch of classical concerts this year as an antidote to despair and guess what - they are full. They were not as full before, but they are now.

"Humanities are shrinking" is artificially imposed top down.

like, I very much am on board with "don't compromise with the fascists" but if the fascists say, "you know you're right about everything" you're allowed to amplify that as a way to sow dissension and confusion among other fascists.

if an opponent stands next to you, endorses your views, and gets nothing in return, that's a win. it's not capitulation. the other person capitulated!

I think Mamdani getting trump to agree to fund New York while making no concessions in return was good.

I think Harris getting Cheney to denounce trump without offering concessions in return was good.

like, I feel like when you win you should take the win.

DOGE Debunking - emptywheel MuskWatch’s DOGE tracker Running Xitter threads from Momentum Chaser January 30: Fact Check: No evidence US spent $50 million on condoms for Gaza January 30: FACT FOCUS: No evidence that $50 million w...

In honor of the death of DOGE, my page of DOGE debunking stories.

www.emptywheel.net/portfolio-it...

DOGE was a failure if the goal was saving money. It was a huge success if the goal was giving a bunch of techbro adjacent people unfettered access to govt data in ways that, thus far, are evading the Privacy Act.

Clarkesworld was one of the first online magazines I submitted to. They eventually published one of my favourite short stories that I've written (drafted over one night, not sure I can do that anymore), 'muo-ka's Child'. Help Neil keep the lights on at one of sff's best magazines:

High school senior, a U.S. citizen, detained by ICE in Oregon The 17-year-old was held more than five hours Friday in an ICE facility, his brother said.

Kavanaugh stop. Smashed the kid’s car windows and arrested him. He told them he was a U.S. citizen. The officer replied “I don’t care.”

www.oregonlive.com/portland/202...

If the 28-point plan came from Russia and somehow ended up in the hands of U.S. lawmakers, then we don’t have a “leak” problem we have a foreign influence problem. And anyone downplaying that should not be anywhere near national security decisions.

So, the question is, did Trump know it was a Russian wishlist when he was pushing Ukraine to accept it by Thanksgiving? Or does he know absolutely nothing about anything going on in the entire administration and just spouts whatever nonsense people tell him?

Comedy Of Terrors America’s most inept administration will destroy itself

Once again this⬇️ The clown show will end up destroying itself.

So, roll on Venezuela, eh?

The plan was leaked by the Russians and no one in America’s historically inept administration knew what anyone else was doing so people started getting behind it because they thought it was official policy.

Putin totally played the US, knowing full well he was up against incompetents and idiots.