Good morning friends. Hope you are enjoying the summer. I’m taking a break from self-promotion on here to promote something far worthier - Aine is trying to raise money to buy new books for her school library. Please do what you can to help, even if it’s just sharing the link:

AineMcCaul ✍🏼@ainemccaul.bsky.social · 2d ago

Hi Alom, I finally got a fundraiser set up and approved by the school board (thanks for that wonderful idea btw) and here is the link below. gofund.me/55e46e8ca

The narrativising of this is kind of maddening. OpenAI's model didn't "break free and hack HuggingFace." Meta's model didn't "break free and hack another company." Tech companies are blatantly doing illegal acts and saying their AI did it on it's own as a promotional stunt. That's it.

Alex Hanna@alexhanna.bsky.social · 10h ago

It keeps happening... It'd be great if these companies could spend a little bit more time on network security and a little less time vibe coding.

Can we call "Meta" a pedophile gang now? And make it clear that this gang is a threat to children that needs to be stopped?

Katie Drummond@katie-drummond.bsky.social · 15h ago

NEW: Meta has run dozens of paid ads that include explicit, AI-generated child sexual abuse material in recent months. Some as recently as this week. "These are ads that were reviewed, approved, and allowed to run by Meta, never encountering interference while the company collected the ad dollars."

Fascinating for WSJ to have this headline which implicitly suggests business leaders may have had too much influence in the past.

The Wall Street Journal@wsj.com · yesterday

New 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.

But by all means, let’s play footsie with the fossil fuel industry.

George Smeeton @gsmeeton.bsky.social · yesterday

British farmers are facing a "completely brutal" year, with analysis suggesting the 2026 harvest could be the worst on record due to extreme summer weather: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

www.thenational.scot/news/2641894... This is great and all, but the police already ignore it when Nazis turn up with Combat 18 flags and combat 18 has been banned since they went on a bombing spree in Muslim Jewish and Gay areas in London.

Petition launches to make Nazi salutes criminal offence in UK

A PETITION has been launched to make the performance of Nazi salutes a criminal offence in the UK ...

thenational.scot

If you show up to Bluesky without following anyone, you'll be treated to a series of posts about art, music, and dogs. If you show up to X without following anyone, you'll be bombarded with right-wing conspiracies and white supremacist slop. It's weird which one is seen as a "political bubble"

This is the literal definition of terrorism.

Oxford Clarion@oxfordclarion.bsky.social · 2d ago

Leaders of flag-raising group Raise the Colours Oxfordshire placed trackers on highway workers’ cars to find out their home addresses, the High Court has heard. RTC then attempted to intimidate the highway staff into no longer removing flags by repeating their addresses to them.

More cops have been arrested for using flock cameras to stalk women than there are transgender athletes in youth sports.

"This presents a problem for the right: If your winning issue is trans women in sports, and you're struggling to uncover trans women in any league that anybody has ever heard of, then how do you keep trans athletes at the top of people's minds? Answer: You invent them." defector.com/the-right-ha...

The Right Has Created Its Perfect Trans Athlete | Defector

A lot of people in and around the WNBA are talking about trans women. In the aftermath of Indiana Fever role player Sophie Cunningham’s negative comments about trans people playing sports in an ESPN p...

defector.com

The NAACP has released a statement while the Tarrant County Commissioners Court considers a proposal today that would cut the number of Election Day polling locations nearly in half "Let's call this what it is… voter suppression"

What I love about Bluesky is what I loved about old Twitter: if I want to find out about something (however recondite) there will be someone here (often with a PhD in it) and the time and patience to share their knowledge. /1

Mark Carney has: -scrapped consumer carbon tax -scrapped oil/gas emissions cap -cut $1.3B from environment Canada -weakened industrial carbon pricing -axed 2 billion trees program -approved 1M barrels/day pipeline -weakened greenwashing laws While this is happening:

Fraser Nelson reckons Rod Liddle was “the greatest satirist since Swift” while Michael Gove is comparing him to not just Swift but Orwell. Amazing the comparisons you can get if you’ll pump out exactly the racist opinions even they are too squeamish to commit to print.

Oh, as long as he was nice to *you*, that's ok! Really telling on yourself and, in fact, the whole media ecosystem here.

I see the “protect women” crowd are busy eulogising a man who at age 45 assaulted his 23 year old girlfriend when she was 20 weeks pregnant

This really boils my fucking piss. How many more people that I respect(ed) will show their true colours? Liddle was a racist shit who wanted to rape children and look at child porn. And now the "elites" tell you to stay silent - fuck right off. If you write that shit when alive you own it in death.

Ben Goldacre@bengoldacre.bsky.social · 3d ago

Sad to see people posting on social media negatively about Rod Liddle, who died yesterday. If I have disagreed with you very strongly in life - and you die - I hope I'll be either silent, or kind.

If we disagree and you are silent or kind then that's your choice. If, on the other hand, I am, like Rod Liddle, a vile piece of shit and you decide to tone police those pointing out I'm a vile piece of shit, then that says quite a lot about your values, none of which is positive.

Ben Goldacre@bengoldacre.bsky.social · 3d ago

Sad to see people posting on social media negatively about Rod Liddle, who died yesterday. If I have disagreed with you very strongly in life - and you die - I hope I'll be either silent, or kind.

I'm glad he's dead and hope he suffered immensely until his last breath.

Ben Goldacre@bengoldacre.bsky.social · 3d ago

Sad to see people posting on social media negatively about Rod Liddle, who died yesterday. If I have disagreed with you very strongly in life - and you die - I hope I'll be either silent, or kind.

A new study out of Canada looked at four youth gender clinics. Out of 445 patients only four who started gender affirming hormone therapy ceased taking it, and only one did so due to a re-identification with their birth sex. assignedmedia.org/breaking-new...

A New Study from Canada Again Finds Less Than 1 Percent of Trans Youth Detransition - Assigned Media

Out of 445 patients across four gender clinics only one who started hormone therapy stopped due to a change in gender identity.

assignedmedia.org

It's almost like we should trust people, including young people, with their own experience. [I'm being sarcastic because I'm infuriated by the cruelty of the anti-trans what-about-ism that often obliviously carries so much water for fascists.]

Assigned Media@assignedmedia.org · 3d ago

A new study out of Canada looked at four youth gender clinics. Out of 445 patients only four who started gender affirming hormone therapy ceased taking it, and only one did so due to a re-identification with their birth sex. assignedmedia.org/breaking-new...

WNBA (the org) courted this. They could have nipped this in the bud, but instead they placated anti-trans activists, so now bigots have glomed onto them. If you don't tell them their opinions are vile and are unwelcome, they will destroy you or leech on you forever. just ask amnesty international

taylr@taylordahlin.com · 4d ago

riley gaines is at the minnesota lynx vs indiana fever game posing with people courtside as they line up for photos

Part of the Nazi Germany analogy is the reality of how the people who thought they were in the same class and access of Nazis .. pretending nothing was happening Until it affected them And then rewriting history

The WNBA has never had a trans woman play in the league’s 30-year history and now the right and other anti-trans activists are hammering the league over something that has never been an issue, proving once again it isn’t about protection but exhibiting cruelty toward trans people.

In case anyone is wondering why a woman might offer to cook dinner for her abuser… it might be to keep herself and her child alive.

The Bulwark@thebulwark.com · 4d ago

Rep. Max Miller: "These are incredibly serious criminal accusations. If these accusations were true, I would be in jail — I would be. My former wife would not have been offering to cook me dinner and inviting me to playgrounds. Think about that."

When an org leads from the head not the bench

Cassidy Hettesheimer@cassidyhett.bsky.social · 4d ago

Cheryl Reeve’s shirt today:

Also, state killing of actual drug traffickers is still just murder.

Charles Keener@charleskeener.bsky.social · 4d ago

Trump and Hegseth have launched at least 67 airstrikes on small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 221 people, without any proof they are drug traffickers and, as the Washington Post reported, no evidence that the illegal killings have slowed the flow of drugs

I was today years old when I learned that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand attends a bible study group that teaches that Jewish people killed Jesus, which has been used to justify antisemitism and associated violence against us Jews.

Jonathan Larsen@jonathanlarsen.bsky.social · 5d ago

NEW: Corporate media zero in signs of antisemitism on the left. Meanwhile, one of Rep. Haley Stevens's most powerful backers in her Senate race attends a Bible study that teaches that the Jews killed Jesus...

The TOS being so strict that they control you offsite is the problem; sites like Patreon and Kofi have offsite clauses too. The social criminalization of the suggestion that somewhere you might be doing nsfw is a problem. It's branding a person as obscene and we need consumers to stand up for us

Sam Cole@samleecole.bsky.social · 6d ago

a bunch of popular ASMR artists lost their channels forever this week, after YouTube cited them for violating terms against "sexually gratifying" content: www.404media.co/youtube-asmr...

Hey so now the right is admitting that they outright want fascism .. dare we gonna see peopel admit that them capitulating being anti DEI and rescinding all diversity was aiding fascism? Or is everyone a good German who was stressed and had a good reason