Salomé Viljoen
@salome.bsky.social
Assistant Prof at Michigan Law || I think about how the law thinks about data || pro science and technology, anti scams
"The conventional wisdom today is that Biden’s bet [on the IRA] was a bust....Every part of that story, however, is at best incomplete and at worst simply wrong. The law did, in fact, deliver votes for Democrats. And key components of it are still on the books." – @leahstokes.bsky.social
Bidenomics Was More Successful Than People Think
Conventional wisdom holds that Joe Biden’s bet on climate investment was a bust. The data suggest otherwise.
theatlantic.com
Lost in all the election news — Israel just imprisoned an American teen. Soldiers raided Adam's family home in the West Bank right before his sister’s grad party. The soldiers were shown his US passport and apparently didn’t care, disregarding it. As they took him, they blew kisses at his mom.
Israel Has Imprisoned a 16-Year-Old Palestinian-American Boy for Two Weeks
Adam Karakrah is one of at least two Americans in Israeli prison – both held while Trump hosted Netanyahu for the eighth time.
zeteo.com
I also have a very specific contempt for the kinds of people who yell "vote blue no matter who" and then turn around and try to knife the other side of a primary in the back. We're in this together and we have to learn to live with primary outcomes to win.
Cooper Lund@cooperlund.online · 5d agoI'm tired of people who feel threatened by the DSA controlling the discourse about it, because even though I'm not a member, I can recognize that the DSA's good for all of us and for the Democratic Party
shot:
Francie Diep@franciediep.bsky.social · yesterdayI wrote about the 'Compact 2.0' that the government offered yesterday: www.chronicle.com/article/for-.... I got: • A Dept. of Ed official to talk about goals ("radical reform") • AAU's president to respond to reports that AAU collaborated with the Trump administration on this Hope you'll read!
lol *BESSENT: 'I GET SICK OF HEARING ABOUT THIS K-SHAPED ECONOMY'
"don't make enough money" is a fig leaf All those degree programs--social work, art, etc.--have disproportionately female student bodies. This is designed to make it harder for women to attend college--college education being a key factor in women's autonomy from men & left-leaning voting pattern.
The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d agoPresident Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v
Very cool we have an 80 year old president who proudly displays his ability to discern reality from the Oval Office, a condition worsened by a bubble of sycophants and his struggles with AI
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2d agoTrump: "We have photographs or tapes -- like moving cameras, right? -- where people are on the side cutting it with a box knife."
Merici Vinton from the Center for American Progress & Lynn Overmann from Georgetown's Beeck Center extract five principles from NYC's new Public Interest Technology Crew that they argue should be standard practice for digital capacity initiatives everywhere.
Cities and States Can Replicate NYC’s Ambitious Public Interest Tech Crew
Merici Vinton and Lynn Overmann extract five principles they say should become the standard operating procedure for digital capacity initiatives everywhere.
buff.ly
this is what I call the "real AI versus hypothetical AI" debate, where people talking about AI's actual effects right now have to square up against the version of AI CEOs made up in their head, like a corporate Santa
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)@doctorow.pluralistic.net · 4d agoThe world is full of people who insist "AI is changing everything" but who - when pressed - have to admit that what they mean is that they're pretty sure that AI *will* change everything. Eventually. After we allow it to consume all the planet's energy, carbon, water and financial resources. 8/
I have a new working paper up on SSRN, Tax and the Law of Market Cycles. The core idea is: what if we applied everything we've learned about countercyclical macroprudential regulation to the boom-bust cycles of physical commodities and heavy industries? papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Tax and the Law of Market Cycles
<p>The signature development in financial regulation over the past two decades has been the macroprudential turn: the recognition that healthy financial conditi
papers.ssrn.com
This is VERY bad. Congressional investigation immediately. They’re trying to use Palantir to figure out who you voted for. 0% chance this ends well. Stop it ASAP.
Exclusive: FBI gets voter's IP address in new fraud probe tactic
The move offers a glimpse into how authorities are now digging into voter rolls and registration practices.
axios.com
Yeah so NYT asked me ~2 yrs ago to write an op-ed about how the Colorado is running dry, & what we should do to keep this exact thing from happening. I said "There's only one real answer. Bill farmers by how much water they use. Duh." NYT editorial staff freaked tf out & cancelled the piece.
Elias Thorne@truebe.horse · 6d agosaw an article today about an az politician saying how great it was that we're now in emergency drought conditions because the farmers get automatic bailouts and I feel like way more Professional Rural Understanders just breeze by sentences like that. www.paysonroundup.com/news/arizona...
Got a good job down at the Data Center. I work on the line, and it's hard work but it's honest and the wage is fair; my family and I are grateful for it. I rivet the word "absolutely" onto the little apologies that chatbots do when they misunderstand a prompt.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 5d agoHassett: "Data centers are very good for towns bc they create so many jobs & bring people in with high incomes that can buy houses & stuff like that. So if you take a sleepy town that hasn't seen much in the last 30 years & put a data center there, there are gonna be a bunch of happy residents."
hell yes! 404 media has been doing fantastic work folks, support their work!
Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 5d agoIMPACT: that company that was offering to buy books for AI companies’ training data — and probably destroy them in the process — says it will no longer offer this service following 404 Media’s exposure of it www.404media.co/ai-company-t...
Under Trump's CFPB, two of the three major credit bureaus have sharply reduced the share of complaints they resolved in customers’ favor. In 2024, Experian’s relief rate was 20%. Last year, that figure fell to less than 1%: https://propub.li/3S3sflq (Published March)
very much agree. I am basically a professional tech-guy hater at this point so "backed by Andreessen" did not endear me, but this conversation really brought me around, and I think is worth giving a listen to before jumping to conclusions!
George Pearkes@peark.es · 6d agoNot really going to get in on the politics here but the conversation between @volts.wtf and CF's Jan Sramek was fascinating. Sramek is planning something very different than what you'd think based on "tech utopia" and "backed by Marc Andreessen", both of which are very bad things.
"A US government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a state department presentation at a global conference in Brazil this week, causing a stir among attenders who took screenshots and posted them online."
US government map of Africa mislabels every country at global conference
State department ‘takes full responsibility’ for erroneous, widely shared chart displayed at Aids conference in Brazil
theguardian.com
The Trump admin had a real theory of war: Put on a show of toughness, tell people how manly you are, disdain law, do war crimes, and you win. Earlier losses came from leaders too "weak" to do that. It was a very stupid theory. But they espoused it a lot, really seem to believe it, and acted on it.
Shoe@shoe.bsky.social · 6d agoPresident Toddler
If you're a law student and you miss the first Civil Procedure lecture, this is what happens to you years later
Kash Patel’s Ambitious Defamation Lawsuit Foiled By Basic Civil Procedure Doctrine
The litigious FBI director’s case against a blogger who called him a “blatantly incompetent chud” is no match for International Shoe.
ballsandstrikes.org
nobody I trust more about midwestern bona fides than the...Wall Street Journal
Rav@rvbdrm.com · 7d agoWhat the fuck?? “While Mr. El-Sayed is fringy and radical, he’s also a Muslim man. Ms. Stevens is a white woman. This puts her at a disadvantage in the identity Olympics that internal Democratic Party politics have become.” www.wsj.com/opinion/free...
Governors should threaten to withhold federal taxes. Is that legal? Probably not. Is it realistic? Who knows. IT DOESN'T MATTER. There is political value in taking a stand and drawing a moral line. Make a spectacle of it. Fight. Force Republicans to publicly defend their monstrous behavior.
David Roberts@volts.wtf · last wk.This is morally monstrous behavior. These are ordinary, innocent people that Trump is condemning to suffering & death out of political vindictiveness. Every decent human being, regardless of political party, should condemn it. Where is the fucking *anger*? From the press? From civic leaders? Pols?
"Students anted to know what their classmates thought rather than what a large language model produced; they wanted to wrestle with difficult readings+complex ideas. They didn’t want to outsource any of this effort to gen AI. They wanted to do the work.” www.insidehighered.com/opinion/care...
Students as Conscientious Objectors to Gen AI (opinion)
We should listen to them—and treat their objections with respect.
insidehighered.com
99% of the time, when someone accuses you of selective outrage, it’s a way of politically demobilizing you and shutting you up “Why are you angry about data centers instead of fast fashion” isn’t about making you care about fast fashion. It’s about shutting you up about data centers And visa versa
In the future, people’s fate will be dictated by which side of the camera they are on.
I Got a Free Meal From a Private Chef—Who Filmed It All to Train Robots
A German startup sent a camera-wearing chef to my apartment. In exchange for a free lunch, I let them record every chop and stir to train future humanoids.
wired.com
