Democrats must recon with the idea that, guided by ideology and in exchange for massive profits from government contracts, many of these tech companies were *fine* assisting with the erosion of democracy and civil/human rights violations en mass.

Greg Sargent@gregsargent.bsky.social · 2d ago

One key point @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social makes here is that if Dems win the midterms (and win in 2028), deploying congressional power creatively to unwind Elon Musk's sway over the government (contracts, etc) will be essential to any reconstruction: www.ms.now/opinion/elon...

I’m in DC scheduled to give this talk today. But the organizers flagged slides in my deck that mention racism, structural gaslighting, New Jim Code and other themes that are off limits in the Land of the Free.

We've been being promised 3 and 4-day work weeks thanks to technology ever since the 1950s. It never happens. We keep the 5-day work week, and expectations of output skyrocket instead.

the reason “AI will create so much abundance we will have a utopian society” rhetoric falls so flat is that the people building it will never, ever share their bounty unless it is taken from them and we all know it

Gianmarco Soresi@gianmarcosoresi.bsky.social · 4d ago

Man who won’t give his employees piss breaks claims many piss breaks on the horizon

If AI is conscious then its use is slavery.

we've just begun

FRANCE 24 English@en.france24.com · 5d ago

Thousands protest Flavio Bolsonaro, fearing far-right return in Brazil

ah damn, RIP Margaret Hamilton. she took safety-critical software engineering seriously, and got people to the moon and back. news.mit.edu/2026/margare...

and the exact reason why all academic conferences should ban all LLM-assisted submissioms forever.

Molly White@molly.wiki · 6d ago

“You are infringing on the time and brainpower of people by pushing "your" content that little/no of your brainpower went into” is such a banger

I try to remind myself pretty regularly that AI-generated output is not universally hated / unpopular. Of course it isn't - it's trained on the hard work of decades of human creative and laborious output; work that itself was often very popular. Generative systems are also getting bettery at fakery

Any one need a microfilm scanner? Our library will scrap one on Saturday. It works. All our stuff is digitized. You pay for shipping or come pick it up near Erie,PA.

exactly

Matthew Guariglia@mguariglia.bsky.social · last wk.

Good to see reporters calling what's happening in San Francisco what it really is: Surveillance maximalism. The leadership of the city sees no problem they can't solve by defunding resources that prevent crime and pouring all their money, plus all the money offered by billionaires, into policing.

great thread of common-person resistence at the intersection of tech & gov't data

Rebecca Williams@rebeccawilliams.info · 2y ago

lovely

Whenever someone legitimizes harmful shit with the importance of achieving "dominance" you have a fascist at hand.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · last wk.

“In a more than 3,000 word blog posted today, Amazon web services CEO Matt Garman pushed back on public concerns around the impact that data centers may have on jobs, power demands, and the environment, saying ‘our nation can’t afford to lose’ the race for AI dominance.”

brb converting back to catholicism

Dustin A. Chacón@lingdustin.bsky.social · last wk.

I've heard people make claims that AI would lead to a new Renaissance, but I didn't imagine it'd happen like this:

I've heard people make claims that AI would lead to a new Renaissance, but I didn't imagine it'd happen like this:

Full details in the article below

Trump Asked Grok About Potential Blowback Before Kidnapping Venezuela's President: Report

It's horrifying to imagine Trump asking AI for advice.

gizmodo.com

Things Gavin Newsom has vetoed this week: -A ban on secretly recording people with smart glasses -A ban on ICE agents working for the state government -A ban on websites selling your data -A bill giving native tribes more say over water rights -A bill protecting transgender healthcare providers

“Having Gavin Newsom as president wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world,” says MAGA philosopher Steve Bannon

Gavin Newsom Sounds Like He's Running. Will Democrats Go For Him?

The outgoing California governor is invoking Bill Clinton as his spirit animal in an apparent lead-up to the 2028 primary. In conversations with Joe Hagan, he makes a case for his ideas.

vanityfair.com

For a long time I've wanted a sense of how trump has or hasn't interacted with chatbots (we know he posts a lot of slop sure). And this TIME anecdote about Grok arguably leading Trump into war is just extremely bracing

lol. they were feeling left out of the "model too good, gotta restrict" club

AFP News Agency@en.afp.com · 2w ago

Google restricts access to new AI model over safety concerns. For now, Gemini 4 Argon will only be released to a vetted group of cybersecurity experts to avoid misuse by hackers u.afp.com/S9B8

AP Stylebook warns against anthropomorphizing AI systems: “Avoid language that gives them human characteristics… Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.”

Cold-blooded murder. The goal is to get us used to it so they can do it on a larger scale.

Politico@politico.com · 3w ago

US military says it killed four in strike on alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean

It’s very simple and it’s been said over and over but I guess it needs saying continuously: if you deem one group too small to have equal rights you are enabling fascism, not fighting it. The people saying Dems are GREAT on trans rights are not paying attention and/or saying stuff like this.

a lot freaks me out about AI but 0% of my anxiety is about AGI. i think this is the part that freaks me out the most right now -- the many many indications that no one is at the wheel and no adults are present

1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it). But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that