For those who don’t know, Alan MacLeod is referring to a leaked 2025 research project by the U.S. firm Stagwell Global (commissioned by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs), who concluded that fear-of-radical-Islam frames outperformed other tested approaches for shifting Western opinion over Israel’s reputational damage amid the Gaza “war”.
@AAronL1968
With AltText:
RE: https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog/117472765675018518
I haven't noticed this at all, which tells me I'm doing something right.
“Why are all of these evil billionaires…”
Well, let’s start with the billionaire part. Would someone who hasn’t a phenomenal asshole just keep accumulating wealth after the first couple hundred million? They don’t need it. They can’t use it. A human with empathy and a desire to do good would be spending it lifting others out of suffering.
Judge Orders Meta to Name Employees Who Approved Torrenting Anna’s Archive and LibGen https://torrentfreak.com/judge-orders-meta-to-name-employees-who-approved-torrenting-annas-archive-and-libgen/
Meta will have to name the people who greenlit its torrenting of pirated books. A federal magistrate judge has ordered the company to identify everyone who approved sourcing books from LibGen and Anna’s Archive. This goes beyond the employees who ran the downloads and includes whoever decided whether to seed the books to others.
RI FOLKS (and anyone else interested):
Two weeks left to help put an actual socialist in the state house (and boot this Trump-PAC funded nepo-baby Democrat too!)
If you haven't supported the campaign yet, now is the time!
---
Brittany For RI
https://brittanyforri.com/
I keep seeing people describe the character.ai bankruptcy as the first AI bubble domino, so I’m glad to see some reporting on what’s *actually* going on here: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/10/disney-found-a-way-to-buy-character-ai-without-buying-its-lawsuits/
This is a way for Disney to buy the company without really buying the company, so they can avoid antitrust. It also gets them out of inheriting the active lawsuits. Character.ai has been through this once already - what’s left of the company is kind of a shell after Google hired key employees & licensed their tech.
Congrats to #TheOnion
There are so many things over the last couple decades that Democrats could have done to prevent this nightmare scenario (don't forget about George W!). So what do we think is different now?
Where are the signs that they are planning to do anything useful? Are they willing to do something useful?
Where are the indications that they even know how to do something useful?
They've been doing fuck all about climate change, so I tell ya what, they aren't thinking about the long-term.
What's new?
Democratic politicians are like someone on the Titanic, using the confusion to grab whatever they can, frantically stuffing their pockets with gold.
The short-term gains are fantastic, but they are headed for an icy death, weighed down by their own greed.
They don't think about you, & they don't even think about their own future.
To switch metaphors: everyone in Congress knows that the planet is on fucking fire, & they are still lining their pockets instead of trying to put out the flames.
Imagine thinking that the 'right to defend yourself'
Justifies dropping bombs on civilians and hospitals, sieging a captive population, and shooting children in the head
But not resistance against billionaires looting your country, and the police using violence to defend their right to do it
If data centres are becoming military targets (as they have both in the Ukraine/Russia war, and in the Middle East, recently), then the expense of fortifying them (blast/missile proof exteriors, anti-drone measures etc.) is merely going to add the their expense; making the 'investments' even more expensive.
If, as a result the move to localised running of AI & associated technologies continues to accelerate, the data centre investment crash may be much nearer than we thought?
This is essentially murder, funded by JK Rowling.
Donations are being collected to fund a legal claim.
Stop trying to upgrade disabled people's body when the problem is your design!
@WeirdWriter argues that the tech industry needs to stop trying to sell useless expensive gadgets no disabled person wants, or can afford, and start fixing actual accessibility barriers, like bad code, and poorly designed infrastructures.
https://sightlessscribbles.com/posts/disability-dongle/
This hurts, because, it's true: "Silicon Valley will spend millions developing a glove that translates sign language into speech (badly), but they won't spend ten minutes adding Alt-Text to their images. They will build a headset that describes the room to me (poorly), but they won't use semantic HTML headings so I can actually navigate a webpage."
The only time I have seen them I also heard a woman say "are those camera glasses, don't film my kid"
"they're not on" He muttered. He looked so annoyed and full of contempt. But, no one seemed to take his side. The train just stared at him waiting to see what would happen. The guy took them off. He sighed dramatically. It was very funny.
This was on the 4 train almost two months ago.
Cratering #oil use in #China shows the death spiral that could end oil
New numbers released by the National Bureau of Statistics of China tell the tale: in Q2, oil use dropped by a whopping 9%, and an even more incredible 16% for transportation.
Combined, drop in oil use was enough to pull Chinese #CO2 #emissions down by 1%. A large portion is due to boom in #electricvehicles and collapse in ICE vehicle sales, meaning transportation is simply getting more efficient.
https://electrek.co/2026/09/03/cratering-oil-use-in-china-shows-the-death-spiral-that-could-end-oil/
its a shame people only know Chumbawamba for the one song. they're actually a very cool anarchist group
one time they let General Motors use one of their songs in an Italian car ad, took the money and gave all of it to anti corporate activist groups who used it to campaign against GM