Meg Pillow

Alex Garland has made some films I’ve really enjoyed, but this was not one of them. And it’s ok to say it was a miss! Can’t win them all

“Let’s have a zombie birth! Not like they did in Dawn of the Dead but different!”

“Oh too bad your mom has cancer here let’s memorialize her by boiling her skull down to bone so you can put it at the top of the skull pile, kid!”

It was so fucking bad

I think enough time has passed now and we are distracted enough that I can say that 28 Years Later had one of the best trailers I’ve ever seen but the film was an absolute stinker. Just horrible

In which Mr. Nichols debates hundreds of political scientists and historians over the meaning of "fascism."

Listening to these bozos on the far right talk is like the verbal equivalent of getting flashed by the guy in the trenchcoat at the bus station

There is so much he gets wrong about so many fundamentals, but by God, the man knows a bunch of losers when he sees them lol

It is objectively hilarious that Curtis Yarvin, the pedantic flapping wiener who has been credited as the “intellectual foundation” of all of our current fuckery, is preparing now to leave the country.

He’s right about one thing though: these clowns don’t have any clue what winning looks like

This is so true

It’s why I block ppl who engage in ad hominem attacks and why I ask ppl who claim to be progressive to put their money where their mouth is and stop criticizing Trump for weight, intelligence, etc. Criticize his values, his policies, his statements, his actions! There are plenty to go around!

Love this for you and for me! It’s been a rough road, and my group of friends is much smaller, but things are getting better

This is such good advice. And it reminds me that IRL and online, one of the biggest tells that someone has no counter argument is when they respond to you with an ad hominem attack. If you have a counter, you make it. If you don’t, you sling personal insults.

I should have said not arguing that some ppl DON’T find chatbots romantically fulfilling, but y’all get what I mean. There’s something really hinky about wanting sentience for something you’re in complete control over

Agree. And there is just a huge body of SF film & literature that explores this very thing that tech bros either have zero familiarity with or they just get off on the idea of creating something they can enslave

I’m not arguing that some ppl find chatbots romantically fulfilling or helpful in parsing trauma or emotionally complex situations. I’m telling you that either these are chatbots and they’re a useful tool for you, or they’re sentient, and you are their slave master. There’s no splitting hairs here.

And this is also one of the reasons why AI gf/bfs are problematic: because if you actually believe they are sentient, their framework puts them in a position where they can’t give consent. You are by default in a position of coercive control of your partner.

You can’t be racist against AI. AI does not have a race. It doesn’t have a body to be racialized. It doesn’t have a perspective which can experience racism

“An AI” is not a person. It’s a fuckload of floating point numbers wrapped in a function that accepts input and returns outputs. That is all

as a girl with a PhD in natural language processing and machine learning it's actually offensive to me when you say "we don't know how LLMs work so they might be conscious"

I didn't spend 10 years in mines of academia to be told ignorance is morally equal knowledge.

We know exactly how LLMs work.

This! Which is why I’m really lucky to have dear friends like you who share my values and stick around. You are a gem of a human being 💗

Ooh this is good - thank you for sharing!

Oh, and free healthcare! How could I forget! The richest country in the world should have the highest standard of living. And yet ours is in the toilet. All of this should be free, but instead we spend all our money on bombs and wars and welfare queens like Elon and fucking AI

This is such an excellent thread - it dismantles the claims that hating on AI is equivalent to bigotry and looks at the real-world impact of AI on marginalized ppl.

In essence, using AI is a political act, and every user needs to understand what they’re illustrating about themselves when they do.

Thank you so much for this excellent thread. Really appreciate you taking the time to write it.

Manar has raised very little despite asking for help for a while so if you’re looking to help a family who hasn’t raised much- hers would be a good option

You can’t abandon pandemic protections, funnel that money into militarizing the police, fund a genocide, and allow college students speaking out against genocide to be treated like terrorists and then claim that all of this is Trump’s fault. He’s awful! But all of this made his job easier

It’s very interesting watching ppl continue to claim that the left is at fault when it’s quite clear that centrism is what has helped to usher fascism in every single step of the way.

Every word of this, Kate. Right there with you.

I also wanna say again that the solution for this isn’t forced commitment. It’s UBI, free housing, free food, free job training, and free mental health resources.

Yes, I do include trans folks, undocumented folks, Palestinians, and children in that “most vulnerable” category, and I say yet again that you don’t get to pick and choose who to protect and who to discard. We stand and fight for all vulnerable ppl. That’s what “big tent” actually means.

A great thread that’s a reminder that if your politics don’t advocate for the most vulnerable in our society - which includes unhoused folks, disabled folks, and folks with addiction issues - then your politics are shit.

🫶🏻