Aparna Nair

Did you know matchsticks used to be made with white phosphorus? But it was so toxic it would cause the workers who made the matchsticks physical deformities. It's just a tool, right? This is a more apt analogy.

Because pencils have a different function? Pencil writing and drawing can be erased—clearly you do not make art. Pens are permanent. But either way using AI generated images is participating in the theft of the work of artists and photographers, maybe you’re okay with that, I’m not.

Then why use gAI images?

If stock images exist, what even is the point of AI generated images?

Models, photographers and artists are at least paid (even if it’s not much) for stock images. This is not the case with AI generated images.

Imagine working 36 hours on MechaHitler and then bragging about it on the neo Nazi’s website, what on earth is going on in Silicon Valley

Last night I left the @xai office after ~36 hours of working with no sleep. Although I was dead, I was also super energized. Incredibly grateful to be a part of this team. Happy thanksgiving! djcows @djcows · 11h thank goodness you got cyber to drive you home with fsd 14 Parsa T @ParsaTajik I lowkey fell asleep a few times 💀 fsd came in clutch 10:23 PM · Nov 27, 2025 · 96.2K Views

Working 36 hours straight on Thanksgiving so Grok says Elon is in better shape than LeBron

This touches on a few of the biggest sources of low morale for me:

- flood of AI slop lands in my inbox as peer review requests
- my critical reviews of said AI slop are then ignored by editors at Journals that won't give my work consideration
- all while I'm expected to ⬆️ research output

AI generated content of any kind undermines the credibility of whatever is being communicated

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. "The order was to kill everybody," one of them said. A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck. The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack - the opening salvo in the Trump administration's war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth's instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

This is murder. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Produce aisle sign: SPECIAL FRESH BRAZIL WHITE NAME

when you’re trying to evade capture after WWII ends:

Van Hollen is being personally credited as the chief pressure point that made Israel release a Palestinian teenager with American citizenship from their dungeons, where he was held for 9 months without even a criminal charge.

I don't disagree with John but there's another layer too which is people like him should never get near power and yet they get near it often.

There's something wrong with the system that allows people like Miller to do anything more significant than bookkeeping.

I did my favorite thing in the whole world: grocery shopping on Black Friday.

I cannot recommend it enough.

I walked the entirety of costco, got my flu shot, and checked out in 45 minutes.

Look forward to Bari Weiss asking "has identity politics gone too far?" while studiously ignoring the most virulent identity politics driving American government

Bennyl @cupking11 This is worrying. We've only started using robots ourselves. Psychronaetes - a sea cucumber Oceans / Scientists find 30 potential new species at bottom of deep sea using robots 10:36 AM • Jul 26, 2022 • Twitter Web App

humans can’t even shoot their organs at predators

whenever a youtuber *chooses to put into the video* that they asked chatGPT something, i close the video lol.

as if i'm interested in hearing about the journey you took talking to a fucking chatbot about a problem you were trying to solve 🥴

Stephen Miller Is an Immigration Hypocrite. I Know Because I’m His Uncle. If my nephew’s ideas on immigration had been in force a century ago, our family would have been wiped out.

Since Stephen Miller is in the midst of another of his Aryans-only trantrums, we should note that his family are 20th century immigrants from the shtetl of Antopol (Антопаль) then in the Hrodna gubernia of Russia. Applying his immigration rules, they would all have perished in the Holocaust.

Honoring Alice Wong: Reprinting Bitch Magazine's Access Series Alice Wong, who reshaped the world of disability media, joined our ancestors on November 14, 2025. The Flytrap is proud to reprint her curated Access Series for Bitch Magazine.

In honor of @sfdirewolf.bsky.social's legacy as a disability activist and writer, today we are republishing Bitch Magazine's Access Series, which was originally curated by Alice Wong. Worker-owner and former Bitch editor-in-chief Evette Dionne updated the intro to the series here:

www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/sea...

Our department head rocked up to an all hands meeting with a cartoon slide he’d created with copilot to celebrate us all coming together.

It was piss coloured, nonsense text filled and in any panel with a non-white person in had someone staring at/stalking them in the background.

So so creepy.

Over the past two years I’ve gone from “we need some regulation” to “I demand our next set of politicians wage war on LLMs and perp walk Sam Altman.”

Here’s a good one for you: I was at a presentation where an actual scientist asked chatGPT about the probability of a future event and presented the figure as an “analysis”. RIP their credibility

One of you just DMed me all "well, what else am I supposed to put on a slide?"

I’m very direct with mine. Black background, BIG white text. Bullet points. Sometimes images of where the relevant facts of a case took place or sometimes statistical figures.

i completely checked out of grad school this semester after getting smacked in the face with ai everywhere i turned

Dont want to ruin my own mood, tbh

See also: America for Americans: Xenophobia in US history by Erika Lee

how is an "AI image" different from clip-art, or a random google search for an image? what if you're discussing something novel and there really isn't any extant artwork to describe it? can anyone explain why a generated image is a Bad Thing (tm)?

at this point, it takes real commitment to pretend that using genAI images is the same as clip art or a "random google search"

(not quoting this person, because no desire to dunk, but, christ)

Absolutely. Same with ads, blogs, websites,etc.

If you can’t bother to put forth the effort I cannot trust anything else you do. It’s costume jewelry and I assume it’s trying to cover shoddy work.

I lose all respect to be honest

In Memphis, where people fear Elon Musk’s supercomputer is making them ill Colossus, an xAI supercomputer, is blamed for worsening air pollution in a historic black community

“While Shelby County has recorded the dirtiest air in Tennessee for many years — half the state’s admissions for childhood asthma come from there — local residents say the arrival of Colossus has made things worse.”

“If vaccines work, why would you need a booster?” he asks as he changes his oil for the third time that year.