The temporary ceasefire has temporarily ceased

this is a terrific opening paragraph for a dystopian pulp novel released in 1997

amanda moore 🐢@noturtlesoup17.bsky.social · 2mo ago

“Loitering is not permitted in this area. Please proceed to a designated location. Thank you for your cooperation,” a surveillance machine tells a small cluster of National Guard members as they patrol the fenced off Reflecting Pool in the rain.

Fucking monsters to a person. I cannot wait until these criminals are held responsible on a level that makes Big Tobacco’s reckoning look like a slap on the wrist.

Techmeme@techmeme.com · 2mo ago

Sources: Meta lobbyists are urging California lawmakers to exempt social media platforms from legislation that would increase penalties in child-harm cases (Tyler Katzenberger/Politico) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Book Forum: "Paranoid Publics" @zahidrc.bsky.social @criticalnoise2.bsky.social criticalnoise.org/book-forum-z...

AKA Fa͍ͥ͒ͦͣ͑bi̗̼̣̦̳̊͐̏͊̇aͭn̜͕̜̠̼ͤ̐̏ Munié̼͙̭͉̫̌ͤ̑̓s͚͔̩̓̆a@provokedeconomy.bsky.social · 3mo ago

"Chaudhary tracks the ways in which the paranoiac state enjoys the fact of its own sense of being persecuted by limits by aggressively attacking those limits in the name of “freedom” from them" criticalnoise.org/out-of-your-...

Parts of this encyclical read like passages from Dialectic of Enlightenment

Rich Raho@richraho.bsky.social · 3mo ago

ENCYCLICAL LETTER MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE LEO XIV ON SAFEGUARDING THE HUMAN PERSON IN THE TIME OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (Full English Text): www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

"We must avoid the 'Babel syndrome,' the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance."

Tech hype isn't just marketing and PR—it's also alarm, paranoia, and propaganda. Fabian Muniesa argues today's hype matches what scholars Adorno and Horkheimer called reason's collapse into fascist madness.

Hype, Paranoia, and the Fascist Propensity in Tech

Tech hype quite visibly matches the traits once identified as the disease of modern reason and its collapse into fascist madness, writes Fabian Muniesa.

buff.ly

Do you know I actually think that these people are so inoculated from any public sentiment that they are legitimately shook by a handful of boos at commencements this week?

Wrote about the college kids booing AI, and how, in a moment rife with economic precarity, affordability crises, and collapsing job prospects, AI has become a new avatar of American capitalism

AI as the new avatar of American capitalism

Why

bloodinthemachine.com

Thoughts from me on technofascism, impunity, and The Epstein Class in the latest Parapraxis @parapraxismag.bsky.social and exciting contributions from some really excellent writers and thinkers

@parapraxismag.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Psychoanalytic cults. Cowboy churches. The Epstein Class. Iranian monarchists. Fascist liberals. Clinics and their radicals. Discipline and holding. Getting together, falling apart. Announcing Issue 08: Groups Available for pre-order: www.parapraxismagazine.com/store/p/para...

Psychoanalytic cults. Cowboy churches. The Epstein Class. Iranian monarchists. Fascist liberals. Clinics and their radicals. Discipline and holding. Getting together, falling apart. Announcing Issue 08: Groups Available for pre-order: www.parapraxismagazine.com/store/p/para...

I hear critical positions towards so-called «artificial intelligence» nowadays framed more and more as «rejectionism», and this is especially formulated as a critique of the left. The argument often goes something like this: Rather than seeing the potentials of AI, the left merely rejects it 1/

excited to announce 'legality and impunity in times of crisis' at UBC later this month. speakers will be discussing political and legal forms of impunity in the current international (dis)order. if you're in so-called vancouver, register to attend here: allard.ubc.ca/about-us/eve...

Legality and Impunity in Times of Crisis

This symposium will gather critical legal scholars, psychoanalysts, artists and political theorists from around the world to discuss legality, impunity and crisis in historical and contemporary forms,...

allard.ubc.ca

NPR: Israeli settlers force Palestinian family to exhume and rebury their father www.npr.org/2026/05/10/n...

Israeli settlers force Palestinian family to exhume and rebury their father

The relatives of Hussein Asasa described to NPR how they were forced to exhume and rebury their father when Israeli settlers interfered with his grave.

npr.org

The financial marketplace of ideas

The Harvard Crimson@theharvardcrimson.bsky.social · 4mo ago

SCOOP: Harvard is quietly asking donors for $10 million gifts to establish endowed professorships in a bid to reshape faculty under the banner of “viewpoint diversity,” according to two people familiar. Hugo C. Chiasson and Elise A. Spenner report. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

“Harvard is pursuing a more integrated strategy — placing new [right wing] faculty directly within existing departments.” You *know* you’re enjoying academic freedom when admins start picking dudes in blue blazers, throwing them into your department meetings, & making you call them your colleague

Becca Lewis@beccalew.bsky.social · 4mo ago

It’s honestly shocking that any scholarship still gets conducted at universities, given the circumstances www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

New in PN: Trump lost his war on Iran, bigly "The ability of the free press, much less regime propagandists, to grapple with the scale of the loss & its implications is very much in doubt. It’s worth, therefore, laying out the nature of the defeat, who's unwilling to describe it as such, & why."

Trump lost his war on Iran, bigly

His nonstop bullshitting can't change the facts on the ground.

publicnotice.co

Book Forum on Paranoid Publics: Psychopolitics of Truth, @fordhampress.bsky.social criticalnoise.org/symposium/

This is fundamental reading for anyone interested in a critical theory of so-called «generative AI» and its implications for our understanding of (visual) culture

Fabian Offert@zentralwerkstatt.org · 5mo ago

It's Easter so I thought it would be appropriate to be back from the dead to announce that this is coming out at the end of this month: www.upress.umn.edu/978151792167...

Earth not looking so hot

Pop Base@popbase.tv · 5mo ago

NASA shares 1972 vs 2026 photos of Earth.

This week's net.wars, "The Silicon Valley chronicles", notes the likely pending deathe of Meta's Oversight Board and reviews the shift in Silicon Valley politics laid out in Jacob Silverman's book, Gilded Rage: netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2026/04/03/t...

The Silicon Valley chronicles

We should have seen this coming. At Platformer, Casey Newton reports that Meta has discussed pulling funding for the Oversight Board after 2028 after already re

netwars.pelicancrossing.net

“As B’Tselem showed in its 2025 report Our Genocide, the dehumanisation of Palestinians is a long-term process. The debate is not about facts. It is about recognising Israel for what it is: a state that systematically kills Palestinians with impunity & erodes international law & basic moral norms.”

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 5mo ago

Israel’s death penalty law marks a new phase in its dehumanisation of Palestinians | Yuli Novak

This new edition of "Getting to Yes" is a game-changer!

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 5mo ago

Karoline Leavitt: "Some of the previous leaders are now no longer on planet Earth because they lied to the United States and they strung us along in negotiations, and that was unacceptable to the president, which is why many of the previous leaders were killed"

Since the headline is a bit confusing, the NYT is reporting that on the same day we hit the girl's school in Minab, we also sent a missile full of tungsten steel pellets at a girl's volleyball tournament hundreds of miles away in Lamerd. Twenty one dead. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/29/w...

New U.S. Missile Hit Iranian Sports Hall and School, Analysis Shows

nytimes.com

Really look forward to being in conversation with Prof. Deborah Thomas about On the Semicivilized, at the Middle East Center of U Penn on Tuesday March 31. If you are in Philly, please come by! mec.sas.upenn.edu/events/2026/...

This close reading of the historical record not only lays out what is at stake in the upcoming Supreme Court's consideration of "birthright citizenship," it also points to why the Trump administration is so adamant about censoring history. They can't handle the truth. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/30/o...

Opinion | Trump Says Birthright Citizenship Was for ‘the Babies of Slaves.’ He’s Wrong.

nytimes.com

“But after tens of billions of dollars of school spending…studies have found that digital tools have generally not improved students’ academic results or graduation rates. Some researchers &organizations like UNESCO even warn that overreliance on technology can distract students and impede learning”

Chromebook Remorse: Tech Backlash at Schools Extends Beyond Phones

nytimes.com

Open call for the full ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza on the Jerusalem Post. This is Israeli political culture, and as the author note: “This is not radical right-wing radicalism. It is merely sound and sober political science.” Genocide as as a science.

This happened to me yesterday when this company secretly recorded a scholarly seminar I hosted on Zoom and posted it. I was able to get it removed, but WTF.

Saeed Jones@theferocity.bsky.social · 5mo ago

“WebinarTV, a company that bills itself as “a search engine for the best webinars,” is secretly scanning the internet for Zoom meeting links, recording the calls, and turning them into AI-generated podcasts for profit.”

Text mining before the age of LLM training.