Sara Baker
@sarabaker.bsky.social
tech/data/gender research, writing, and advocacy; organizational strengthening; gardening in TN | ex @Engnroom @takebackthetech @apc.bsky.social | she/her banner photo: purple graffiti on a white wall reading NO BORDERS, NO NATIONS
"perhaps most challenging of all, such proposals would require reimagining what AI is. It would require moving away from misleading anthropomorphic metaphors and narratives of inevitability, leaving behind “rogue AI agents” and embracing our own human agency to decide what we want AI to do for us."
This whole “Is AI sentient? Will it take over humanity?” discourse is just rich bros jerking each other off. Shut it down already. The rest of us have real problems to discuss.
Border Patrol is analyzing the financial data of Americans and getting local police to pull over citizens who havent been accused or convicted of any crime and without any probable cause.
404 Media@404media.co · 3d ago404 Media is revealing the name of Border Patrol's predictive policing units, which analyze financial data and have local cops pull people over. The people are not suspected of any particular crime.
Dolly Parton logged a combined total of 115 years of union membership. Throughout her working life, the “9 to 5” singer/songwriter carried the union cards of two major unions: The American Federation of Musicians Local 257 in Nashville — for 58 years. SAG-AFTRA — for 57 years. HAPPY LABOR DAY!
Opinion | Celebrate Dolly Parton's working-class solidarity
John Nichols: She carried two union cards, sang Woody Guthrie songs and mocked the bosses in "9 to 5."
share.google
Our society's unfathomable cruelty to homeless people is not just morally unjustifiable, but more expensive than housing people would be. Cruelty against the homeless is an unaffordable luxury. Abandoning homeless people to avoid offending the Protestant work ethic is an unaffordable luxury.
ProPublica@propublica.org · 6d agoProPublica spoke to dozens of people who had lived in homeless encampments when cities cleared them out in “sweeps.” We distributed notecards so people could tell us about the toll in their own words. ➡️ This is what they wrote:
Take a break from being depressed that everything you love is being destroyed by slop for a moment and let me tell you about the beautiful symbiotic relationship between graffiti writers, train yard workers, and model train enthusiasts.
would this administration stop taking “everything is gender” as a challenge please
The Washington Sun@washingtonsun.bsky.social · 7d agoHHS is canceling infant mortality and postpartum grants to focus instead on research related to what the department says are “root causes” like sperm counts and erectile dysfunction. https://www.notus.org/health-science/hhs-cancels-infant-mortality-postpartum-grants-focus-infertility
Put this alongside Musk’s comment about store-bought tomatoes being better than homegrown and it’s obvious these guys have empty lives with no real appreciation for anything but their own egos.
Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · last wk.Oh I missed this Once again I’m struck by the vacuous yet arrogant emptiness of these people, they are incurious and uncaring, and the world tells them they are special and wonderful for being like this
Join our open, free learning community 📣 Technofascism, Feminism and Democracy 📣 to explore: the rise of global authoritarianism; Big Tech, AI, & the billionaire class; how feminist & grassroots movements are proposing alternative democratic futures. technofascism.dataplusfeminism.mit.edu
My degrees in English and religion have served me well in my professional life and in my personal life. I have a nibling who is majoring in classics, and I couldn't be prouder.
Alexander Chee@alexanderchee.bsky.social · last wk.I am sad for all the talented students who assured me it was a clear path to a better life for them as they discarded study plans they loved and studied coding instead.
While we were all beautifully unified in our love and mourning for Dolly Parton last week, a couple of assholes used my post about how much she meant to us here in East Tennessee as an excuse to dunk on my state. Read the room, folks. Easy blocks.
madeline odent@oldenoughtosay.com · last wk.mates. pals. folks. friends. this is not a safe place for you to drive by dunk on southern USA states. it is not.
Even in 2011 while planning my brother-in-law's funeral, the funeral director tried to shame me for not taking my partner's last name when we married. We were discussing the obituary, and he lashed out at me. Thankfully, people don't react to our different last names anymore since it's quite normal.
Leah McElrath@leahmcelrath.bsky.social · last wk.Second wave feminism is understandably critiqued in retrospect, but it’s also important to recognize its accomplishments. One of those was to assert women’s identities as human beings separate from our relations to men. We regularly use “Ms.” now to do that—and Gloria Steinem is a big part of why.
As a new Harry Potter trailer makes the rounds, it bears repeating that there’s no way to watch this show without supporting J.K. Rowling’s bigotry and the structural violence she’s inflicting on the trans community.
There is no ethical consumption of HBO’s Harry Potter series
You can’t without supporting Rowling’s transphobic bigotry.
theverge.com
The issue of data centers is a key issue of environmental racism because data centers are intentionally placed in Black communities to pollute them & give the people there serious health problems that even risk their deaths. @hypervisible.blacksky.app
Anil Dash@anildash.com · last wk.I'll add some nuance here — most local pushback against data centers is actually quite fluent, and not grounded in the more wild-eyed rhetoric you see on social media. Very often, the core premise is a simple, correct one: you can't trust what Big Tech says in its promises to a local community.
Memphis gotta be one of the most egregious case studies that these AI freaks will promise literally anything to get the papers signed, and before the ink is even dry it’s “lol fuck your town, you can’t make me”
This is brilliant. Also, if you’re too shy to do ad reads, playing any very recognisable big-label pop music (Taylor, Billie Eilish, Beatles, etc) loudly in the vicinity will make the harasser’s video essentially unpostable
Regular Car Reviews@regularcars.bsky.social · 2w agoHow to stop Content Harassers and get them to leave you alone. You say these music words and it ruins their ability to make money off the video they shot.
The value of Graham Platner is that right up until all his red flags came toppling down upon him is that he is the most naked example of the amount of grace & credibility Simply Being White grants you. Compared to Abdul El-Sayed, who has to re-earn every ounce of credibility he has on a daily basis.
Hey, we got Flock cameras and license plate readers (except those in occupied cop cars) banned in Knoxville, Tennessee. Plus limits on drone numbers and uses. www.wbir.com/article/news...
wbir.com
Exactly why I’m putting together a workshop on communicating these surveillance issues to such a wide audience, how to not get too lost in the sauce on the technical details, and focus on organizing for concrete action you and your neighbors can take today.
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 2w ago“Flock's critics, which include left-wing anarchists, suburban soccer moms, libertarian computer dorks, and hardline far-right secessionists, have all claimed that the company's nationwide network of interconnected surveillance cameras violate Americans' right to privacy in new and frightening ways”
Imagine having enough cases of bestiality in your recruits that you have to loosen hiring rules to get enough of them in.
Mediaite@mediaite.com · 2w agoFBI Reportedly Loosens Hiring Rules So ‘Prostitution and Bestiality’ Are No Longer ‘Automatic Disqualifiers’
Hey friends, I have some fantastic news: you do not have to wait until utopia to celebrate small victories Not only is it OK to feel joy even if the world has not been fixed, it's really important to do so. You will burn yourself out and lose the ability to help us get to a better world
Colorado. ICE agents showed a man a warrant through the window of his car that had a different person's name on it. He said it wasn't him. In response, the ICE agents said they didn't care, smashed his window, and dragged him out of the car. bsky.app/profile/reic...
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 2w agoNEW: Evidence filed in a Colorado case reveals how ICE officers are arresting people without a warrant, which is illegal unless ICE determines the person is a flight risk. A man was dragged from his car after ICE showed him a warrant for someone else and refused to check his ID to see his identity.
If you are someone who claims to be an ally to the disabled, or claims to be a progressive or a socialist, or claims to care about people other then yourself and you aren’t regularly getting Covid boosters then you’re not any of those fucking things.
Erin Biba@erinbiba.bsky.social · 2w agoDespite the bloviating and sabotage attempts, Moderna’s updated COVID vaccine has been approved by the FDA. Despite the fact that it theoretically requires one preexisting condition, the list of conditions is enormously broad also if you want to JUST LIE. Personally I’ve never had a pharmacist ask
