Thomas Deacon

Why human rights defenders say the UK’s quiet policy shift matters As attacks on human rights defenders reach record levels, activists in the global south say the U.K. is quietly pulling back the very diplomatic protections that once helped save lives.

UK quietly gutted protections for human rights defenders, just before Christmas. Removing commitments to engage with embassies and monitor extractive businesses. www.devex.com/news/why-hum...

a woman says " if get bandwidth on this... you 've got maple syrup on your waffle from the get go " ALT: a woman says " if get bandwidth on this... you 've got maple syrup on your waffle from the get go "

Government says, more of better www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Distracted from distraction by distractions

BIG FIGHT AT POLAND’S WROCLAW ZOO!!!

For those looking for geolocated footage from recent events in Venezuela, @geoconfirmed.org has mapped the community's crowdsourced geolocations here: geoconfirmed.org/ven

Use it and give credit where it is due. pic.x.com/i5jESLxm6T

Close your eyes and let the self you carried all day become porous, so the wind at the window can blow through it; may your sleep be a strange companion written in shifting images, legible only to the part of you that never agreed to grow up properly.

Eating an everything bagel in bed, big mistake. My sheets now have seed herpes.

Collaboration starts at the beginning, not in the clean up

Leading Lawyers Back Open Letter to Home Secretary Opposing Ban on Palestine Action Senior barristers and campaigners warn Keir Starmer's Government is 'conflating peaceful protest with genuine terrorism'

"In banning the non-violent civil disobedience group, the Government is dangerously conflating peaceful protest with the real dangers of genuine terrorism"

bylinetimes.com/2025/07/01/l...

Palestine Action isn’t a danger to British democracy – but this repressive government is | George Monbiot With their illiberal attitudes and ever more draconian use of technology to crack down on protest, it is ministers who now imperil our rights, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

Palestine Action isn’t a danger to British democracy – but this repressive government is | George Monbiot

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screenshot showing choice of plans between Microsoft 365 and "lower cost without AI" option.

Happy "Microsoft trying to force CoPilot subs" day in the UK for all who celebrate.

(They just pinged me my renewal notice with it carefully worded to sound like a compulsory general price increase).

1) Go to your account page
2) Hit cancel
3) Change sub back.

Archivists Work to Identify and Save the Thousands of Datasets Disappearing From Data.gov More than 2,000 datasets have disappeared from data.gov since Trump was inaugurated. But analyzing exactly what happened and where it went is going to take some time.

At @okfn.bsky.social, we have been thinking about and testing approaches for fast and low-cost ways to rescue datasets. www.404media.co/archivists-w... It is time to scale our efforts and decentralize critical data archiving.

queen did not mince a single word www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

For visual AI there are a few data poisoning techniques (Glaze, Nightshade), but we are not there yet for audio. I have seen a couple of things for speech specifically (AntiFake - Yu, Zhai, Zhang 2023), but these might just be research prototypes and not end user tools.

This is like describing a tumor as a nonevent because a surgeon successfully spent 20 hours painstakingly removing all of it.

lemon pig. fresh. clean. happy.

lemon pig close up on the face. unbothered. moisturized.

lemon pig one year later. withered. problematic. being a loyal servant has taken a HEAVY toll.

close up on lemon pig face one year later. coin is still in its mouth, though its lips are dry and curled back in a grimace as it fights through the agony of living far too long past its natural lifespan.

lemon pig of 2024 before and after absorbing all my bad luck over the calendar year like a fucked up little yellow dorian grey. it is nearly time to rest, my faithful child.

BEN COLEMAN (b. 1979, Chertsey, England; lives and works in Denver) False Positives (ShotSpotter series), Audio installation Courtesy the artist Ben Coleman's sonic artwork False Positives confronts the unintended consequences of ShotSpotter, an acoustic gunshot detection system. ShotSpotter uses sensors to detect potential gunfire, transmitting audio to a review center where it's analyzed. Misidentified non-gunfire sounds, termed "false positives," can mobilize police to investigate the area near the triggered sensor. Leaked internal ShotSpotter documents reveal a list of sounds that are so frequently flagged by the system as gunshots that they have been assigned codes, induding 'PC" for firecracker. Many other sounds that we associate with celebration and joy can be mistaken for gunfire by ShotSpotter as well: claps, cheers, champagne bottles uncorking, party poppers, balloon pops. Exploring the sonic confusion between these real and mischaracterized threats, Coleman's installation transforms the museum's entrance into a charged and vibrant soundscape. ShotSpotter technology is highly racialized. The sensors are frequently installed in neighborhoods with predominantly Black and Latinx communities—which are already historically over-policed—and are less likely to be found in majority-white neighborhoods. The system's tendency to detect false positives has also contributed to an exponential increase in negative interactions between the police and residents of these neighborhoods. False Positives' juxtaposition of sounds challenges ShotSpotter's pervasive presence in the United States and Denver, highlighting technology's role in civic surveillance and the perpetuation of racial inequity. The City of Denver has installed ShotSpotter in five neighborhoods, induding the downtown area where MCA Denver is located. There are sensors installed on city light poles within two blocks of the Museum.

stopped by the Denver MCA to pick up an order from the shop and they have a really excellent audio installation in the entryway made up of noises that triggered ShotSpotter false positives

Oxfam reports that the wealthiest 1% have the same wealth of 99% of the world combined

It 'aint the immigrants stealing your wealth

BE AWARE: SEALION (YOUNGSTER) This little fella likes to jump out of the bushes at you!

The sealion in question

I love this town.

every year around christmas time the ballet dancers who play the rats in the nutcracker come out with a series of unexplained banger tiktok videos and anyway this is my favorite part of the holiday season

Teenage me is getting all the feels

Checking my progress and getting quite unsettled...

Black cat rest on green and blue striped cushions with the sun casting a shape on the wall. Flowers and pottery decorate the background.

Hi there Blue Sky 👋