In case anyone in Ljubljana might be interested, I'm doing a public talk Monday, 23 June at 11 am, in the library of the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana. "“Granular Biopolitics: Biometrics, Surveillance and Automated Governance”
Open to the public.

oligarch vs. despot.

If it were Russia the winner would be clear. In neoliberal land where the government relies on Musk for core functions (low earth orbit satellite delivery, global comms, etc), maybe less so?

Musk’s AI bot Grok blames ‘programming error’ for its Holocaust denial Grok doubted 6 million death toll, days after peddling conspiracy theory of ‘white genocide’ in South Africa

All of which leads, unsurprisingly, to the manipulation of Grok to parrot the political views of its owner. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Interesting twitter phenomenon: random MAGAs and pseudo-conspiracy theorists who don't trust the media are putting their faith in Grok and Perplexity for fact-checking. The old institutions for adjudicating rival accounts of reality are on the wane. But the new ones are simply scraping the old ones.

this is pretty amazing article: a deep dive into the workings of a dramatically reconfigured media environment...

This French article is great not just because it interviews @timothyjgraham.bsky.social but also because the visualisations are really well done. Oh, and apart from tge deconstruction of his megaphoning RWNJ, it also provides a Deep Dive into the Muskian Projkek.

Keep an eye on the right-wing uptake of Gramsci. They are poor readers and interpreters, natch, but this is their version of trying to reconfigure/"secure" hegemony. They're going to try to do it by force, of course...

Looks like travel to the US will now require vaccination boosters.

should have campaigned on it.

AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism It's embarrassing, destructive, and looks like shit: AI-generated art is the perfect aesthetic form for the far right.

"The right wing aesthetic project is to flood the zone – unsurprisingly, given their scatological bent, with bullshit – in order to erode the intellectual foundations for resisting political cruelty."
AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism
newsocialist.org.uk/transmission...

You guys need to wise up, you’re not dealing with conservatives or libertarians trying to implement conservative or libertarian policies. You are dealing with fascists trying to destroy the idea of the truth and replace it with the exercise of power.

David Brooks in the NYTimes has a revelation. He is shocked, shocked to learn that gambling is taking place in this establishment...
"The simplest answer is that Trump really seems not to give a crap about the working class" -- DB

When I was a kid in NYC, a family friend from Europe described to me what he thought was distinctive about Americans. "Most people see a glass on the table, and they know if they push it, it will fall off...Americans will just keep pushing until it falls off."
The glass is falling.

Well the irony in that now, is Humanities will be the only programs universities will be able to afford to fund 🥴

Listening to these billionaire jokers treat the future of our information environment like it's their own personal monopoly game is really a "let them eat cake" moment.

"AI then becomes a tool for replacing politics. The Trump administration frames generative AI as a remedy to 'government waste.' However, what it seeks to automate is not paperwork but democratic decision-making"
Love @eryk.bsky.social's writing and this piece is no exception. 👏👌

There is a simple solution to the CBS/Trump lawsuit.

The Harris campaign should sue Fox and insist Fox release the unedited versions of all their many edited interviews with Trump.

c.f. "robodebt"

Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance Google changed its public AI policies to remove assertions that it would not develop AI applied to surveillance or weapons.

I suppose it was bound to happen. Silicon valley feeling liberated by not having to pretend to live up to the hype about being the good capitalists, etc...
Every company has got to find a way to live up to its P/E ratio.

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

US response to robodebt: "hold my beer..."

Our piece on Community Notes and its narrow understanding of the disinformation problem is now live on @techpolicypress.bsky.social. It is based on our paper on the topic, which can be found here: eprints.qut.edu.au/254907/1/Mat...

Yup -- platforms make money from these ads, and as long as there is no liability on their part for failing to detect them and enforce their own terms of service, they will continue to multiply and prey on people.

wow -- if any of these cases had gone to trial, Trump never would have prevailed. This is a pure shakedown.
News organizations that capitulate are poisoning their own future. They have made themselves Trump mouthpieces without him having to install his own people. How readily they surrender.

Maybe it's better not to mess around with certain federal functions. It's not a game.

Obvs, paying off politicians for political favors is longstanding practice -- it's the climate of fear that is new. This isn't tit-for-tat, this is an attempt to buy ones way off the hit list.

Zuck caving to Trump's penchant for alternative facts. Bezos paying off Melania, billionaires endlessly funding the inaugural. This level of corporate obeisance is new. Trump has threatened to use the justice dept. and regulatory apparatus against enemies, Putin-style, and they believe him.

Instead, these below-the-fold changes are very clearly designed to avoid having to penalize people like Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene for the increasingly dehumanizing language they use against these specific groups. You can tell because of the changes they *didn't* make. 🧵 9/11

Commercial social media doing their level best to generate support for AU's social media ban...