So I just read Aristophanes /The Clouds/ and it was a banger, but I really struggle to think how its .. useful perspective could be used in today’s media environment
@smikes.bsky.social
I once read a comment saying something like "if you choose not to laugh at farts, your life will contain less laughter but still the same amount of farts". I think about that a lot.
Popehat@kenwhite.bsky.social · last yr.Some people are unhappy and always will be and deserve to be.
I'm muting this because there are only so many hundred times a guy can bear having the words "What in the ACTUAL fuck" in his mentions but I will note the original CTV article is fairly scant on details, this French interview has more details: www.noovo.info/video/je-me-... here's a rough summary:
I saw somebody on TikTok using the word 'slopper' as a slur for people who use ChatGPT, and that's a thing we should start doing.
A reminder to any who think they aren't affected by any of these "porn bans" need to read up on history. Purges of purity like this led to the Comics Code Authority, and the demonization of Horror as a genre across all mediums. "Smut" to the fascist is a pretty wide net for anything they dislike.
The Ugly Laws, a series of state laws at the turn of the 20th century, banned disabled, mentally ill and unhoused people from public places. This + other eugenic law like forced sterilization and interracial marriage bans were such comprehensive body of legislation the Nazis studied and cited them.
well how does that admission help anyone now senator
Jen Bendery@jbendery.bsky.social · last yr.NEW: Sen. Angus King admits he made "a mistake" when he voted Tuesday to confirm Josh Divine, an 35-year-old archconservative with a long record of attacking abortion rights, to a lifetime federal judgeship. “I took Josh Hawley’s advice." www.huffpost.com/entry/angus-... w/ @igorbobic.bsky.social
So here’s a thing. A contact (college friend’s spouse) just blew themself up on Facebook over .. the tone, I guess? .. of how my partner posted a news article. “I’m mad that you said, ‘your house is on fire’ instead of ‘excuse me, may I please tell you your house is on fire’!” Is my best analogy
Louder for the people in back.. Optimization requires stability, most processes never even get to the stage where they are stable. Even getting a process under control is distressingly rare.
JK@miniver.bsky.social · last yr.We should, in fact, develop reflexive skepticism of “optimization”
The leadership of Columbia University is contemptible Vichy scum. To its professors who stay: that’s who you choose to work for, the obeisance to totalitarianism you choose to promote? To students who stay: those are your values?
We’re at the part in the rise of fascism where the official Homeland Security account is posting neo-Nazi propaganda. Update your clocks accordingly!
Cameron 🇺🇸🗽🦅@cameroncorduroy.bsky.social · last yr.official DHS account posting fourteen word long tweets with the H's randomly capitalized groyper occupied government
YOU ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VERSIONS OF YOU THAT OTHER PEOPLE HAVE CREATED IN THEIR OWN MINDS.
A viewer sent me an email, asking me to look over a schematic for an autofire circuit that he had a generative AI create for him. This is the circuit he sent me. It doesn’t make any sense. I sent him a circuit that works from an old magazine I used before. Don’t fricking trust AI with anything.
We are selling our home in Edmonton, Alberta; it’s close to the University of Alberta, so might appeal to faculty escaping the USA.. DM for the listing.
Trump's detention plans depend on ICE leasing (or buying) cages from states or counties. We need to monkeywrench those processes and destroy those cages -- or as @silkys13.bsky.social puts it, "Unbuild Walls" www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2213-u...
Unbuild Walls
haymarketbooks.org
To everyone affected by the recent Microsoft (and other) layoffs, you didn’t deserve this. Let’s be clear: the state of the industry right now is not your fault.
current projections: 1) mao 2) stalin 3) hitler 4) roughly a tie between leopold II and elon musk 5) winston churchhill 6) pol pot 7) idi amin
Michael@fleerultra.bsky.social · last yr.elon musk’s body count will end up being higher than most wars and most of the worst most oppressive regimes in history
If I had said this last year, that Trump would try and deport US citizens in his first year, all Republicans and a nontrivial number of liberals and centrists would have attacked me for behind hyperbolic, and fear-mongering, and of having Trump Derangement Syndrome. And yet:
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last yr.Trump calls for deporting US citizens: "We also have a lot of bad people that have been here for a long time ... many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here too, if you want to know the truth. So maybe that'll be the next job."
bad news for Mamdani: i just imagined him shooting at my feet with two revolvers while shouting "dance! dance, ya varmint, dance!!" and then cackling so maniacally that his cowboy hat falls off. When will he go on TV to apologize for doing this
Jonathan Swift describing LLMs in Gulliver’s Travels: “by his Contrivance, the most ignorant Person at a reasonable Charge, and with a little bodily Labour, may write Books in Philosophy, Poetry, Politicks, Law, Mathematicks, and Theology, without the least Assistance from Genius or Study.”
We have to figure out how to take care of each other and fight alongside one another which means we have to actually, like, listen to each other.
If you say that America is poised to institutionalize a police state - that the reality of concentration camps and regularized disappearances will become an ongoing facet of life - you'll still receive eye-rolls and clucked tongues. But that is not a possibility of this budget, it is the purpose.
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · last yr.this is the level of funding where all the possibilities for American politics that have been described as hyperbolic over the past decades - the comparisons to Nazi Germany and other nightmares of the 20th century - become logistically possible and politically likely
Of course in America, there would be promotional merchandise for the concentration camp before it is even built.
Aaron Ross Powell@aaronrosspowell.com · last yr.The correct response to someone who wears something like this is to cut them out of your life. Even if they're a member of your family. The only way through this moment is to draw lines and hold to them.
The correct response to someone who wears something like this is to cut them out of your life. Even if they're a member of your family. The only way through this moment is to draw lines and hold to them.
Zack Hunt@zackhunt.bsky.social · last yr.Florida Republicans are now selling concentration camp merch. Absolutely vile and indefensibly repugnant.
I spent a decade writing about how these people were acquiring power and a lot of progressive leaders would come up to me and tell me I was wasting my time. I hate that I, and other journalists and activists, were right. But the warnings were there. And here we are.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg@theradr.bsky.social · last yr.This is the United States Government, y’all. It’s already a Christian theocracy. Not covertly. Not “in the process of.” Now. It is a theocracy. Now let’s talk about some of the stakes: