Ava Dahl (they/it)

Cory Doctorow coined the word ENSHITTIFICATION & found that a little vulgarity helps people engage with abstract technical questions.

On the Future Knowledge #podcast, he explains why the web became hostile & how we can make it work again.

🎧 Listen ⬇️
futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/ens...

I’ve said it before but news outlets worry a lot about looking biased and not enough about looking phony.

Why should people trust you if you won’t say what they can see plain as day?

AI generated content disclosure via Arc Raider's Steam page: The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this: During the development process, we may use procedural- and AI-based tools to assist with content creation. In all such cases, the final product reflects the creativity and expression of our own development team.

Not to be the fun police but I do hope people know that Arc Raiders does use generative AI for voice acting, and by supporting the game you're letting higher-ups know that this is an okay practice.

They try to downplay this on the Steam store page by describing the AI usage as vaguely as possible.

Have fun outsourcing your thinking and creativity to the nearest STEM-obsessed techbro. Maybe he’ll write and algorithm that’ll pet your dogs and fuck your partners too.
As if selling out live shows now is hard, wait until corporations replace even MORE workforce with ai. It’s already happening.

Online wars have been waged over one burlesque performer ripping off another person’s concept and yet here we are, selling the planet, our drinking water, and our own artistic integrity one microtransaction at a time.
Unbelievable, and yet surprisingly predictable.

Furthermore, if you are in any arts field whatsoever: it’s the height of tackiness at best, and legitimate plagiarism at worst.
I do always find it so telling at the people who are the first to exploit a talent they themselves lack simply because there are no laws to stop them.

Say what you want about me but at least my shitposts are 100% made by a human.
If you think your point is somehow made better by ai slop, how strong of a position did you have anyway?
That’s like citing Reddit as your source. Lol embarrassing.

The cybertruck is a massive men's rights win. Finally a car that she won't take in the divorce.

A photo of fingers with spatters of rainbow paint

… I should call her.

This is helpful, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Have a look.

ssd.eff.org/module/atten...

Being a shapeshifter is handy sometimes; you can observe how people interact with someone they think can’t offer them anything.

I think we really should stop using antifa and just fully say anti-fascist and get them saying they are against anti fascism. Using antifa is giving them some distance and I genuinely think some of their base don’t even know that’s what it stands for.

The Real Threat to Free Speech in America is From the Right, Not the Left—Stop Pretending Otherwise The road to fascism is paved with false equivalencies. For years we’ve been told that the censorious Left is a serious threat to free speech. If Simon & Schuster cancels one book because the pu…

I wrote about how the road to fascism is paved with false equivalencies. lithub.com/the-real-thr...

If ICE agents are willing to shoot a US citizen in broad daylight, as they did with Marimar Martinez in Chicago, imagine what they’re doing to undocumented immigrants.

They shot her in front of witnesses & with body cams turned on

The horrors facing those disappeared to camps are sure to be worse

Shelbyville.

Being in your mid-40s and still engaging in high school social antics is some weird, miserable behavior.
I said what I said.
If you disagree tell it to your therapist.

I’m so sorry for your loss.
My MMO of choice was Star Wars Galaxies, and I still keep in touch with some of that community two decades later.

Pete Hegseth accidentally flipping a skateboard into his nuts on live TV

of all the dumb shit that sucks these days, the dumbest and pettiest shit that sucks is the way people fetishize debate. i would like to revert to the old roughly agreed-upon cultural understanding that debate club is for boring friendless nerds

I’m trying. It’s quite a time to have two eyes connected to the news + a heart, but I’m trying to find joy when I can.

If people put even half as much energy into saving trans people as they did saving Jimmy Kimmel, we'd have this all fixed! We have seen the power of collective action when it comes to entertainment. Let's apply that towards trans civil rights!

Image with text at the top that reads: "Wayback Machine Then and Gone" and "ICQ.COM". Below is a Wayback Machine capture of the icq.com website from December 10, 1997, alongside a stylized computer window featuring a pixel art frowning face representing that the website is gone.

As the very first standalone instant messaging software, ICQ revolutionized online chat and connected millions in the late ’90s 💬 It shut down in 2024, but its website survives on the #WaybackMachine.

See ICQ’s web history ➡️ web.archive.org/web/19980724...

#Wayback1T

I really think that The reason so many people feel old is because they are unwilling to engage with the youthful parts of themselves.

The colors I wear, the hair colors..outfits.. All of that is because I wanted to explore this version of self-expression when I was a kid and I was not allowed to.

i have to say, as a trans journalist who has covered the "trans debate" for about a decade now, there is no daylight between how the trump administration and conservatives lie about tylenol and autism and how they've lied about youth trans care.

raptured! at the GWAR show

Sorry I forgot to “live laugh love” my way out of having a boot on my neck again. My bad.

HP fans sure are fucking quiet in the wake of rowling quoting Mein Kampf too.
Seriously, Potterheads can suck shit. Full stop.

imagine coming back to save your company from the dogshit cost cutting policies of your former successor ruining the parks only to completely fumble the fascist takeover of america. like you literally handled desantis better than this just a few years ago.

I beg of you, please, do not make me have to defend Bill Maher from government censorship

i frequently don't understand the romance girlies but i have to admit that they don't fuck around