Not to lessen how disturbing this is, but at some point nearly 20 years ago I began to assume due to temperament and poor ethics that every man drawn to work with a government database like this is using it to stalk women

Katie Drummond@katie-drummond.bsky.social · 6h ago

"In one case, a CBP officer allegedly used government databases to contact a flight attendant. In another, an officer was accused of pulling information from trusted-traveler applications to ask people out." This story is free to read because of FOIA, and disturbing as hell:

The original "Tragedy of the Commons" paper was a racist hoax perpetrated by an academic fraud who wanted to make the case for the expulsion of black and Brown people from America and their mass extermination abroad: memex.craphound.com/2019/10/01/t... 85/

Which is why the Trump administration is teaming up with its preferred tech and military contractors to engage in detailed surveillance of data center and AI critics: prospect.org/2026/08/10/p... 78/

Private Intelligence Firms Are Selling Dossiers on AI and Data Center Critics - The American Prospect

Along with federal law enforcement agencies, private companies are now surveilling opponents of Big Tech.

prospect.org

But as data center protests grow larger and better organized (oligarchy is destabilizing), the cost of dealing with public opposition is mounting. 77/

The cost of bribing towns to foist a data center on the townsfolk is low, because there are *lots* of towns that fit the bill, so data center barons can shop around. 76/

AI can't do your job, but an AI salesman can reliably convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that *can't* do your job: pluralistic.net/2025/03/18/a... 73/

It's an era where corporate bosses can't stop gloating about how many jobs they're planning to destroy and how many paycuts they plan on imposing on the surviving workers: www.axios.com/2025/05/28/a... 72/

Behind the Curtain: Top AI CEO foresees white-collar bloodbath

Hardly anyone is paying attention.

axios.com

But the American state found new ways to conduct mass-scale, global surveillance, often by collaborating directly with tech giants. 62/

Contrast this with NSA spying: they accumulated detailed surveillance dossiers on about 6 billion internet users using a staff of no more than 5 million spooks (in 2013, about 5 million Americans were eligible for security clearance). 47/

Fundamentally, Piketty argues that the cheapest way to stop people from building a guillotine on your lawn is to build hospitals and schools; this is cheaper than paying for guards and prisons to lock up would-be guillotine builders. 43/

Piketty argues inequality is inherently politically destabilizing. A society ruled over fools and monsters who were not voted into power and can't be voted out of power is a doomed society. Eventually - French Revolution, World Wars - these societies grow so unstable they collapse altogether. 39/

Capital's tendency to accumulate in the hands of the already wealthy (r > g) means that these aristocrats end up setting an ever-larger proportion of our societal agenda, despite their manifest unfitness to govern and their absence of any kind of democratic legitimacy. 38/

Closer to home, Gates's hatred of public institutions led him to allocate millions to dismantling public schools and replacing them with charter schools, particularly for poor and racialized kids, with disastrous results: pluralistic.net/2026/03/09/a... 36/

A patent maximalist, he funded the lobbyists who successfully blocked South Africa from producing its own AIDS drugs under an IP waiver program, and then deployed them again to stop the Global South from making their own covid vaccines: pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/p... 35/

That's when things get dangerous: when aristocrats grow bored with leisure and mobilize their inherited capital to change the way we all live. Billionaire dilettantes are weapons of mass destruction, and their special projects have a wide blast radius and inflict a *lot* of collateral damage. 33/

This leads them to conclude that they have some kind of special, heritable virtue - magic blood - that the system has recognized with their great fortunes and the power those fortunes confer. 32/

Piketty shows that this holds true across markets and nations and eras: all other things being equal, the market system produces a class of hereditary aristocrats who command the world's capital and direct its deployment, despite never having *done* anything. 16/

In the summer of 2013, two esoteric, technical, incredibly important texts were published within weeks of one another: the first is the Snowden leaks, which revealed a system of global, pervasive digital surveillance. 1/

‼️‼️‼️‼️ Kate still needs help with getting groceries!

♡Kate, Yelena Belova fan 🇵🇸@katespeace.northsky.social · 2w ago

Hi all! We really need help with groceries this week, as always, any amount would be amazing, and would mean the world. Thank you so much. 💗 urgent. www.paypal.me/XP1991 - cash.app/$laPazdeKate - venmo.com/code?user_id...

help kate! 💸💕

♡Kate, Yelena Belova fan 🇵🇸@katespeace.northsky.social · 2w ago

Hi all! We really need help with groceries this week, as always, any amount would be amazing, and would mean the world. Thank you so much. 💗 urgent. www.paypal.me/XP1991 - cash.app/$laPazdeKate - venmo.com/code?user_id...

on the upside: it was a complete failure and they never produced a single usable shell!

More Perfect Union@moreperfectunion.bsky.social · 6h ago

The U.S. army — and U.S. taxpayers — poured over half a billion dollars into a General Dynamic artillery factory that was a complete failure and never produced a single usable shell. ProPublica reports that the bill for this failure was $533 million, but General Dynamics never paid back a penny.

is this anything

JFC ban these sex crime glasses in healthcare. If anyone you know buys them it is your duty to mock them until they stop wearing them.

Woman Calls Out Doctor Wearing Smart Glasses During Consultation Where She Had To Take Off Her Clothes: 'They Need To Be Banned'

A woman's discomfort with a doctor wearing smart glasses during a consultation has sparked debate over privacy and the use of camera-equipped technology in healthcare settings.

fashiontimes.co.uk

Always a good sign when your passionate argument championing the Obama presidency involves making up things you wish he’d done

Based on the urgency of requests for a cleaner over loudspeaker and the spread across two gates I think the lettuce gods may have been angered at the St. Louis airport this morning

wagie wagie in a crate all day long we fight and hate

The fact you can get a virus on discord this way is insane ????????

Roswin Merlot VT@roswinmerlotvt.bsky.social · 7h ago

It's one of the easiest ones to get, because it doesn't actually require clicking suspicious links or downloading files. The link is embedded in the image itself, so when you zoom in on the image to see what it says then it gets counted as opening the link even if you never clicked go to source.

FBI agents are always like, “just let us kill a coupla tens of thousands of people and ruin millions of lives, and hey, maybe we’ll cure cancer for you if you agree to worship the noble presidents and glorious state forever and ever”

Former FBI agent and current national security wonk Michael Feinberg thinks Obama's presidency was good, actually

Michael Feinberg@michael-feinberg.bsky.social · 8h ago

Basically the tendency on the far left to view Obama as some sort of traitor to the cause, which, from the point of view of anyone looking at a longer arc of history, is utterly ridiculous.

He’s right in the sense that obama would have to have a cause to be a traitor to one