Massachusetts Pirate Party
@masspirates.bsky.social
The Party of Open: Open Government, Open Culture, Open Innovation & People First Also at: * masspirates.org * masspirates.tv * social.globalpirates.net/@masspirates * twitter.com/masspirates
For all the people who want to expel refugees, keep this in mind: You or your children could be climate refugee seeking a better life Canada.
John Vaillant@johnvaillant.bsky.social · 2d agoMy latest on the #wildfires burning across the Northern Hemisphere: time.com/article/2026... via TIME
A judge found that the #Massachusetts State Police have engaged in “a pervasive informal practice of violating” the state’s Public Records Law and may order the agency to adopt reforms for how it responds to records requests. #mapoli
Mass. judge finds State Police engaged in pattern of records law violations
A Suffolk Superior Court judge found Massachusetts State Police engage in a “pervasive” pattern of violating public records law. The agency has been ordered to develop proposed reforms to improve reco...
masslive.com
That sounds like what the FBI required of police who used Stingrays
Jason Koebler@jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 6d agoNew: Police are being told to hide the fact that they're using Flock to pull people over and arrest them in both encounters with citizens but ALSO in their official police reports: www.404media.co/do-not-menti...
Do this if you want your kids to abandon you in old age.
Jared Yates Sexton@jysexton.bsky.social · last wk.One of the most important issues of our time is that the future of humanity is presently being authored by people who have nothing but total contempt for humanity and seek the erasure of everything that gives being a human meaning. It’s not just annoying. It doesn’t just suck. It’s existential.
Google paused the rollout, not burned the code and fired the executives who pushed it. www.npr.org/2026/07/31/n...
Google pauses AI satellite images, after fears of deepfakes in the sky
Journalists, human rights advocates and open source analysts recoiled in horror at the initial decision: "The opportunities for abuse and disinfo are literally boundless," said one.
npr.org
Massachusetts Pirate Party@masspirates.bsky.social · last wk.Someone is going to have Google Earth create fake satellite photos of nuked cities and use AI bots to spread them. Then the DOD's AI Defcon system will see the fake images and order a counter strike, destroying the world. All for (short term) share holder value.
Someone is going to have Google Earth create fake satellite photos of nuked cities and use AI bots to spread them. Then the DOD's AI Defcon system will see the fake images and order a counter strike, destroying the world. All for (short term) share holder value.
Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · last wk.New from 404 Media: Google Earth has introduced an AI feature that lets anyone fabricate completely bullshit satellite images. In our own tests, we added a “bomb blast and crater” to an area of Los Angeles. This is a misinformation time bomb, will 100% be abused www.404media.co/google-earth...
Reminded of an exceedingly wealthy artist choosing to destroy the art (he hired others to make?) and not the NFTs derived from the art. www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a...
Artist Damien Hirst Will Burn Thousands of Paintings in NFT Experiment
A year-long project is pitting traditional paintings against non-fungible tokens
smithsonianmag.com
Anna Phylaxis@quatoria.bsky.social · 2w agoThis is a metaphor so on the nose it hurts. Literally, they are removing knowledge from the public domain to feed their machines and permanently deny your access to it. The privatization of knowledge and information is their goal.
NEW: A federal judge threw out ICE's claim that state inspection law didn’t apply inside its detention centers. But since it took so long to adjudicate, ICE has now written the same language into contracts for four more facilities. It doesn’t need to hold up. It just needs to take years to resolve.
ICE’s New Detention Center Contracts Declare State Laws ‘Shall Not Apply’
One day after a federal judge ordered an ICE detention center opened to state health inspectors, the agency posted new contract terms that would void state oversight at four facilities.
wired.com
Cut to: one year from now. 30 drones are hovering around the front door, afraid to go in
The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com · 2w agoSome schools in Florida, Georgia and Colorado will be equipped with drones this year that can go through halls, smash windows and pepper-spray active shooters if teachers report a threat. The program follows a wave of high-tech campus security spending. https://wapo.st/4gVNMXn
read it online: archive.org/details/one-...
"1 Trillion Souls": a special short comic made for #Wayback1T : Mitsuki Yadate : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
After the first short comic I made for Internet Archive, featuring my fan-made character Alexandria Choi, a special short comic for Wayback Machine's one...
archive.org
welcome to the first episode of "why haven't i done this before?" printed my short web comic for @archive.org as if it's drawn for paper printing but only in b&w so it looks like a manga.
Alt text: a graph showing a massive spike in anti-trans articles per 30 days. The x axis starts in 2012, most of the spike is just in the last decade The spike really starts to kick in around 2017 or so, corresponding almost *perfectly* with powerful sexual predators feeling threatened by MeToo.
Toby Buckle@polphilpod.bsky.social · 6mo agoa stat i always cite is the number of anti-trans articles in the press went from 60 in a year, to 7,500
They said the quiet part out loud since they expect SCOTUS to say it is legal
tony romm@tonyromm.bsky.social · 2w agoNEW: In a stunning admission, the Trump administration admitted in court documents that it canceled billions in energy grants to states "based solely" on politics -- and whether that state was represented by Democrats and backed Harris in 2024. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/b...
I miss the days when we could be at least somewhat hopeful that the U.S. was not involved.
Shabana Mir@shabana.bsky.social · 2w agoAlexandra Bravo, the Ecuadorian prosecutor assigned to investigate U.S. strikes on 3 Ecuadorian boats and the 36 survivors’ accounts of torture & kidnapping by US, was shot dead by a hitman. The police detail that had been assigned to protect her was not present. www.dropsitenews.com/p/prosecutor...
I'm actually astonished at how clean this graph looks as a diagnostic for our housing ills. Note how close it is to 1 at the start. Houses per single adult or married couple.
One of those charts that is "watch the Great Recession destroy an industry that never recovers." Home-building drops until about the same employment recovers and then remains at that level.
Ryan Moulton@moultano.bsky.social · 2w agoI'm actually astonished at how clean this graph looks as a diagnostic for our housing ills. Note how close it is to 1 at the start. Houses per single adult or married couple.
this one does a pretty good job too, especially the orange and yellow bits.
Already an illegal use of IRS data: "Education Department intends to use IRS data to determine students’ salaries"
Jonathan Cohn @jonathancohn.bsky.social · 2w agoThis is major attack on higher ed and a perverse narrowing of its purpose. newrepublic.com/post/213446/...
DeFlocking isn't just a matter of a city voting to not renew a contract. Flock will obstruct the removal process and play coy about whether the cameras are even still working, forcing some cities to use black garbage bags until the cameras are gone. #FlockOff www.404media.co/flock-object...
Flock ‘Objects to Our Removing Their Equipment’: Emails Reveal Why a Town Put Bags Over Its Flock Cameras
"For the time being, if you or someone on your crew has availability to secure black plastic bags (or something else) over the cameras, that would be great."
404media.co
Freeing up more time for people to work from home and make their employers higher profits.
Russell Brandom@russellbrandom.bsky.social · 3w agoAt last, technology has advanced to the point where we no longer need to participate in imaginative play with our children techcrunch.com/2026/07/21/m...
Cambridge councillors right to stop ShotSpotter The technology has been shown not to prevent gun violence or improve public safety....
Cambridge councillors right to stop ShotSpotter
The technology has been shown not to prevent gun violence or improve public safety.
cambridgeday.com
private for-profit insurance-- every single form of it-- is a scam and is ontologically evil, full fucking stop we've never actually had a choice and we never will
Massachusetts Pirate Party@masspirates.bsky.social · 3w ago"But it is opt-in" they say. Here is how it will work. Good drivers will opt-in and get their rates cut. Insurers still need to make money, so they will raise rates on everyone else. That will cause more drivers to opt-in. Rise, repeat, all while we get spied on more and risk sharing disappears.
Americans will do literally anything but adopt safer street designs and stop buying huge fucking cars
Massachusetts Pirate Party@masspirates.bsky.social · 3w ago"But it is opt-in" they say. Here is how it will work. Good drivers will opt-in and get their rates cut. Insurers still need to make money, so they will raise rates on everyone else. That will cause more drivers to opt-in. Rise, repeat, all while we get spied on more and risk sharing disappears.
This same dynamic came up in the context of health insurance and wearables, and it was quickly identified that the end result of this would be a bunch of uninsurables who could not get healthcare coverage at any cost. The only way this type of insurance works is to prevent insurers picking winners.
Massachusetts Pirate Party@masspirates.bsky.social · 3w ago"But it is opt-in" they say. Here is how it will work. Good drivers will opt-in and get their rates cut. Insurers still need to make money, so they will raise rates on everyone else. That will cause more drivers to opt-in. Rise, repeat, all while we get spied on more and risk sharing disappears.
They’ll do anything but fund and build public infrastructure.
Massachusetts Pirate Party@masspirates.bsky.social · 3w ago"But it is opt-in" they say. Here is how it will work. Good drivers will opt-in and get their rates cut. Insurers still need to make money, so they will raise rates on everyone else. That will cause more drivers to opt-in. Rise, repeat, all while we get spied on more and risk sharing disappears.
Yeah, came here to say Allstate offered me this like ten years ago and I was like fuuuuck no.
We already have that with Allstate and Progressive. It’s a cell phone app that is WILDLY INACCURATE, and yes, you’re basically charged extra if you don’t use it. There’s a stretch of road near me that’s 45mph, but the Drivewise app believes it’s 25 mph, and so they accuse me of speeding every day.
