Louis Römer
@lromeranth.bsky.social
🇨🇼🇳🇱🇺🇲 | he/him | PhD | anthropologist @vassar.bsky.social | opinions mine | reposts & likes≠endorsements |
Bad news, though the silver lining is that these mandates to train AI models on white nationalisst slop will hasten model collapse
Mike Ludwig@mludwig.bsky.social · 8h agoTrump’s Federal Trade Commission Is Threatening to Punish Big Tech for “Woke AI” Free speech groups sound alarm about a proposal from Trump's FTC to jawbone companies into training AI models on white nationalist narratives and undermine state laws. Meanwhile, Elon Musk wants his nude deepfakes...
Trump’s Federal Trade Commission Is Threatening to Punish Big Tech for “Woke AI” Free speech groups sound alarm about a proposal from Trump's FTC to jawbone companies into training AI models on white nationalist narratives and undermine state laws. Meanwhile, Elon Musk wants his nude deepfakes...
Trump’s FTC Is Threatening to Punish Big Tech for “Woke AI”
As Elon Musk defends nude deepfakes, the FTC is moving to censor AI models trained to recognize historical injustices.
truthout.org
What an absolute breath of fresh air of an episode! Solidarity with Emily on not being invited to the AI committees anymore, I cackled at that and had to explain what was funny to Ms Five 😂
Emily M. Bender@emilymbender.bsky.social · 8h agoMystery AI Hype Theater 3000, ep 82 www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/epis... … in which @savasavasava.myatproto.social joins @alexhanna.bsky.social and me for a good hard look at “harm reduction” as misapplied to “AI”.
Absolutely gutting to read this article on why Samantha Morton hasn't worked in a year even as there is near-universal acclaim (correct, wise) that she's the best part of THE ODYSSEY. deadline.com/2026/08/sama...
Samantha Morton On Why She "Hasn't Worked For A Year" Since 'The Odyssey' & Why She Was "Sad" & "Hurt" After Getting "Fired" From 'Her'
Samantha Morton is opening up about not working after filming Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.
deadline.com
as a movement we seem determined to never learn anything from the previous wars, whether we won or lost. its like there's never any institutional memory or anything. just careening from crisis to crisis.
And I worry that there are a lot of people on the left who don't care about this problem because they hate AI. But the truth is that as this technology continues to get jammed into everything from customer service to banking to fast food orders, having built-in fair right bias is bad.
It's really not good that the government is trying to force AI companies to make their LLM chatbots "anti-woke" (biased in favor of the right).
Mike Ludwig@mludwig.bsky.social · 8h agoTrump’s Federal Trade Commission Is Threatening to Punish Big Tech for “Woke AI” Free speech groups sound alarm about a proposal from Trump's FTC to jawbone companies into training AI models on white nationalist narratives and undermine state laws. Meanwhile, Elon Musk wants his nude deepfakes...
the current left/liberal position on ai feels a lot like the liberal position on talk radio in the mid-80s to early 90s: ignore it, it will go away, nobody pays attention to that. fast forward to 1994 and newt fucking gingrich is speaker of the house.
Parker Molloy@parkermolloy.com · 2h agoAnd I worry that there are a lot of people on the left who don't care about this problem because they hate AI. But the truth is that as this technology continues to get jammed into everything from customer service to banking to fast food orders, having built-in fair right bias is bad.
I know it sucks, but Dems have got to be prepared to inherit a munitions-and-readiness hole that is going to be expensive to fill, but which will need to be filled. Hardly the only such hole, but it will be a big one.
Secretary of Defense Rock@sodrock.bsky.social · 5h agoWho knew ridiculously long deployments and demanding op tempos run a ship and crew into the ground!
Still true btw for those who have an odd and totally not racist obsession with bringing up Dearborn or Uncommitted every day
#StupidSuez@diplomatofnight.com · 4w agoDo centrist Dems realize that the incentive structure they're establishing by admonishing one of the few major Arab American figures who unequivocally endorsed Harris despite nothing being conceded on Gaza? The lesson for those Arabs will be to uh, not do that again.
El-Sayed, Lawrence and McKinney all won progressive campaigns in Michigan last night by talking about climate and clean energy like it was a kitchen-table issue — because skyrocketing energy bills and endless wildfire smoke matter to people.
i think a lot of well-meaning people fall into a rhetorical trap where they take the bait and argue about male vs. female performance in sports rather than arguing for the value and dignity of women’s athletics generally. don’t let yourself be dragged into a bad faith framing.
Peter@notalawyer.bsky.social · 2d agothe best HS teams in the country have multiple guys who will be in the NBA in a couple of years. they aren't normal high schools, they're basketball factories. but this literally doesn't matter. the value of women's sports isn't contingent on their performance vis a vis men.
This narrative about "Black voters" is becoming the new version of "Democrats are out of touch with the white working class." Based on partial truths, it has rapidly turned into a ready-made story that is pasted onto situations where it barely captures what is actually taking place.
I’ve been screening our documentary with organizing communities in the South. So far, the organizers mention data centers first at every single event. From racial justice orgs to old school activists who don’t usually think about tech policy. This has legs.
"That, I expect, will be the defining feature of public policy (and particularly public health) post-Trump. Not that you’ll be able to trace every policy disaster back to Trump, but that you won’t be able to trace them at all." stringinamaze.net/p/welcome-to...
Welcome to the Age of Diarrhea
The future is not knowing what ails you
stringinamaze.net
thus do we understand half the reason for the NYT’s seething anti-Mamdani grudge
The Wall Street Journal@wsj.com · 19h agoNew York City’s business elites are long accustomed to direct access to City Hall, where even Democratic mayors felt the need to court the city’s wealthiest and most influential corporate leaders. That access is getting shredded by Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Right, but McKinney and Gilmer-Hill winning as progressives AGAINST INCUMBENTS (if McKinney can do it) complicates the narrative on how Black voters view progressive candidates.
What is truly "shocking" about the polling miss in Michigan is that it is completely average for a primary "The expected error on the margin between two primary candidates in a race for governor or U.S. Senate is a whopping 13.0 points." blog.fiftyplusone.news/p/2026-texas...
Do we really know who's leading the Texas Senate races?
Primary polls have historically been rather unreliable, and a surge in new primary voters means turnout assumptions matter more than usual
blog.fiftyplusone.news
|horses|@chemotaxis.bsky.social · 11h agoPolling is like really fucked. Strikes me as a huge problem honestly.
The entire Republican Party, and a chunk of the Democratic Party, have a direct interest in convincing you that conservative wins are a mandate and anything else is not.
This is no joke, as a Detroiter waking up on vacation I just came to Bluesky to find out who had won and the first few headlines had me convinced Stevens had. Meanwhile the DSA candidate for our state rep, Chris Gilmore-Hill, beat an incumbent so I’d love that to make the narrative.
A.R. Moxon@juliusgoat.bsky.social · 11h agoThe media's takeaway from an El-Sayed win is the same as it would have been from a Stevens win, and the same as it will be if El-Sayed wins the general, or if he loses it: everyone, no matter who they are, needs to take several steps to the right.
I’m telling you this as a political scientist. The person who is electable is the one who is elected. This can and does change over time. Any and all speculation about “electability” is either puffery or anxiety and is often both.
Julia Azari@juliaazari.bsky.social · 18h agoOne way to be safe is to never write an electability take
The media's takeaway from an El-Sayed win is the same as it would have been from a Stevens win, and the same as it will be if El-Sayed wins the general, or if he loses it: everyone, no matter who they are, needs to take several steps to the right.
Universities “are increasingly acting like other employers, finding “complicated and sometimes pretextual reasons” to fire employees, even those with tenure. “What we’re seeing at the New School is emblematic of the rising pressures on higher education as a labor market and as an industry”
He Had Tenure. The New School Laid Him Off Anyway.
The professor, a longtime critic of the university, was among 19 educators who lost their positions as the institution navigated financial woes.
nytimes.com
it's pretty difficult to study the capital / imperialism intersection without this in mind, for what it's worth
Amanda Mull@amandamull.bsky.social · 2d agothere is a strain of lefty discourse where you can’t come to any unflattering conclusions about the populace—those must be explained away by how they are being acted upon by capital—but I think you’ll understand things better if you understand capital can also exploit weaknesses it didn’t create
In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court has decided in favour of the plaintiff in the case of Scrooge v Cratchit
Elon Musk said lots of antisemitic things and shared lots of antisemitic posts written by antisemites and then sprinkled on some sugar with two nazi salutes on telly and Jonathan Greenblatt said "no he's alright, he isn't one" and now has spent over a year painting Zohran Mamdani as Hitler Part II.
This level of spending actually makes me deeply angry. Let's never do this again in a primary ok
#StupidSuez@diplomatofnight.com · 15h agoUnfathomable
When Trump wins by 2% it's the unanimous Mandate of Heaven for the next 1,000 Year Reich, but when one dude in a Dem primary can't get shooed offstage despite being outspent by a factor of 8.75 fair and square, suddenly it's "divisive?" OK!1!!!1!
he won by the same margin as Trump, which represented "a huge mandate" back then.
Politico@politico.com · 13h agoProgressives didn’t get the big election night they wanted