@cwebber:
“The term #GenAI points at exactly what it's worst at: generating things. If we want to talk about finding problems, it's a different story. But even leaving aside the quality issues of the growing and wavering tower, there comes the problem of lack of understanding of how it is built, constructed, and maintained.

“The worst part of all this is you can't opt out. A colleague or an open source contributor sends you a "generous contribution" that is absolutely #AISlop and certainly not understood by the person who submitted it. You're left sitting there, parsing whether or not you're going to be rude even to ask if this is #LLM generated, or to unwittingly become a user of vibecoding workflows yourself by indirectly interacting with the agent through trying to respond to the issue/PR.

“You can't escape.”

https://dustycloud.org/blog/faulty-towers-vibe-sickness-and-the-vibe-bobsled/

#FreeSoftware #ArtificialStupidity

Money is very real, @pkw. Just like love is real, just like music is real.

It's a social construction, and is thereby real.

But it doesn't behave the way the fairy tales describe.

We need to be more robust against fairy tales told to us by stock market boosters and wealthy consultant economists.

@timnitGebru

The right wing lets the mask slip. They hate the poor and despise the thought of helping:

“Asked about the Coalition’s plan to [reduce #Australia National Construction Code] to 10 per cent of its current size, and whether that meant some low-income Australians would have to accept substandard housing,

“[Liberal party frontbencher Andrew] Bragg told ABC radio: “Yes, definitely … it’s more important to have a house than to not have a house. And so, given the affordability crisis we have in the housing system, we need to just build more houses.”’

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/liberal-frontbencher-ruffles-feathers-in-own-party-by-calling-for-economic-revolution-20260812-p60nqk.html

A total non-sequitur. Yes living in a house is better, yes we need to build them. Why not build them to robust safety standards?

#NeoLiberalism answer is: they oppose spending any money to improve real people's lives. Unsafe housing is cheaper.

The truth: #Australia issues Australian dollars any time they choose to, they can *always* choose to pay.

They just don't want to.

#PovertyIsAChoice #HumanRights #AusPol

@pluralistic:
“Admitting machines to the "personhood" club is a *tactical* mistake, on par with the mistake we made when we admitted *corporations* to the personhood club. We should absolutely consider expanding personhood to incorporate living things, including animals and ecosystems, but at the same time, we *must* purge these dead, artificial constructs from the club.

“[…] if we thought that some activity was unique to humans, or to living beings, and we manage to get a machine to replicate that activity, we should revise our view of the activity – not our view of the machine.”

https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/05/defining-humanity/

#CorporationsAreNotPersons #DeadThingsAreNotPersons #LLMsAreNotAlive #LLMsAreNotPersons #ArtificialStupidity #LLM #HumanRights #CorporateDeathSentence

“A world with #UniversalBasicIncome is more meritocratic than a world without one, because luck-based distribution — which is what we have now — throws away most of the talent in the room.

“A #UBI world isn’t a world that rewards laziness. It’s a world where the Einsteins and the Khns and the Kleks and the creatives you’ve never heard of yet actually get a shot at mastery that their talent deserves, instead of getting filtered out at age 19 because they couldn’t afford rent.”

https://www.scottsantens.com/the-angine-de-poitrine-argument-for-ubi/

Great result: an unreserved, unqualified, specific apology, and immediate correction.

Speaking out against a colonialist political movement (#Zionism) is not anti-semitic. Groups and institutions that try to equate those, are lying and racist. Refute and dismiss them.

> […] the Adelaide Festival Corporation published a statement announcing that it had decided to exclude Dr #RandaAbdelFattah […] because it would be culturally insensitive to allow her to participate.

> We retract that statement. We have reversed the decision and will reinstate Dr Abdel-Fattah’s invitation to speak at the next Adelaide Writers’ Week in 2027. We apologise to Dr Abdel-Fattah unreservedly for the harm the Adelaide Festival Corporation has caused her.

> Intellectual and artistic freedom is a powerful human right. Our goal is to uphold it, and in this instance Adelaide Festival Corporation fell well short.

https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/news/2025/statement-15-january-2026

#AusPol #AdelaideFestival

Breyer concluded with an appeal:
“Today proves that our protest has the power to stop a totalitarian #surveillance system that has no equal in the free world. But the threat is not gone.

“The proponents of #ChatControl will use every trick in the book and will not give up easily. We will keep fighting until this proposal is defeated once and for all, and the #privacy of our digital lives is secure for everyone.

“Freedom is only as valuable as our willingness to fight for it. Now is the moment to support the #CivilRights organizations that made this victory possible, so we are prepared for the fight ahead.”

https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/citizen-protest-halts-chat-control-breyer-celebrates-major-victory-for-digital-privacy/

#SurveillanceCapitalism #StateSurveillance #PeoplePower

An Electric Arc Furnace (#EAF) in #Algoma, #Canada, begins producing steel without #CO2 emissions from #FossilFuels.

“Algoma's $880-million transition to electric arc furnace steelmaking has been the most costly building project in the city since building permits were issued.

“It will replace the blast furnace technology and coke ovens used to produce Sault steel for the past 124 years.

“The company expects its new Volta steel will reduce its #CarbonFootprint by up to 70 percent and help fuel growth of a low-carbon #economy.”

https://www.sootoday.com/local-news/algoma-steel-announces-historic-first-arc-at-new-electric-furnace-10924461

#WeHaveTheTechnology #ClimateAction #ShareGoodNewsToo

Journalist #AntoinetteLattouf has won her case against online harasser Michael Dean.

“Dean pleaded guilty and, on Wednesday, Magistrate Georgina Darcy convicted him on the charge of using service to menace/harass/offend.

“He is required to stay on good behaviour for 12 months, as well as to provide security of $200 as part of being placed on the Commonwealth Recognisance order. If he complies with these terms, he will be released without sentence.”

“Lattouf said she feared that she would simply be told to “just log off” or that the abuse just “comes with the territory of a public job”.

““But my fear wasn’t minimised. I was supported,” she said.

““Online violence is real. It leaves scars. And women bear the brunt of it”.

“Women deserve to be safe. Online. Offline. Everywhere. And when they’re not, they deserve the full force of the law behind them,” Lattouf wrote.”

https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/journalist-antoinette-lattouf-wins-court-case-over-racist-online-abuse-from-61yo-man/

#ShareGoodNewsToo #Australia #NoRoomForRacists

“The discovery uses tiny micro batteries to break down the lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese from a battery, before using an amino acid to extract the metals.

“The use of glycine as the amino acid avoids using harsh chemicals for the recycling process, [and avoids] the creation of toxic byproducts.

“The newly developed system is able to recover 99.99 per cent of the lithium, 96.8 per cent of the nickel, 92.35 per cent of the cobalt and 90.59 per cent of the manganese from old batteries in just 15 minutes.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/battery-recycle-lithium-ion-environment-b2713723.html

#ShareGoodNewsToo #GreenEnergy #ReduceRepairReuseRecycle #Recycling

This week @pluralistic wrote this article, in response to the murder of #BrianThompson and the clear similarity of this situation to his _Radicalized_ short story (2019).

Years ago, Doctorow was wondering at the fact angry gunmen, frequently made financially desperate because of denial-of-care industries like #ForProfitHealthInsurance, somehow don't turn that rage against the industry profiting from their suffering:

“This is an industry that is practically *designed* to fill the people who interact with it with uncontrollable rage. I mean, if you're watching your wife or your kid die before your eyes because some millionaire CEO decided to aim for a $10 billion stock buyback this year instead of his customary $9 billion target, wouldn't you feel that kind of murderous rage?”

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/09/radicalized/#deny-defend-depose

The violent response to #BrianThompson, a CEO who profits obscenely from the torment and suffering of millions of customers.

It didn't need to happen. Those CEOs have had plenty of warning that oppressed people will be pushed only so far before seeking a violent response.

The title short story from collection _Radicalized_, by @pluralistic, details how people are corralled by the physical suffering of family members, exploited by an insurance industry deliberately designed to extract wealth while denying health care, and finally resort to violent terrorism in the absence of any other effective option.

CEOs have had this, and for decades many other, warnings that they must stop the ghoulish practice of denying health care to those who need it, while extracting wealth. A reckoning is coming.

https://craphound.com/radicalized/

#EndWealthCare #HealthCareIsAHumanRight #PolicyFailure #Radicalized

Of course, too many sites make a sham of #GDPR compliance; they make the dialogue scary and hide the “turn off all unnecessary #surveillance” option.

That's a failure of enforcement. The requirements are good, we just need to ensure the platforms actually comply.

#privacy

“According to the #ACCC's latest interim report [, consumers] do not engage with privacy policies and “in any event, usually have no choice but to accept the terms and conditions … to access a product or service”.”

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-21/accc-digital-services-data-report/103872726

This needs to be hammered home: If we can't simply turn off #surveillance *and* access the service normally, a great many services and platforms are effectively incompatible with #privacy at all.

This is what the #GDPR was designed to address: Make clear what surveillance is done, who it's shared with, and *for what purpose*; and, especially, users must be able to *continue using the service* without surveillance.

We need the equivalent, enforced here in #Australia also, to make these platforms either useful, or wither away if they aren't compatible with user privacy.

#AusPol

If the US #Democrat party continue to, for example, fund fossil fuel projects, or fund arms to an ongoing genocide? That's *the party's choice*, not the voters.

Citizens who rightly demand urgent change of policy, don't have the power to change that policy directly. They *do* have the power to demand change from election candidates, and express they won't be voting for the current demonstrated catastrophic policies.

And if the policy change doesn't happen, the citizens are *not* to blame when the Democrat party loses the general election.

That's on Biden and his administration. That's on the Democrat party. They have the power, they have the responsibility, they know what to to do get voters to come out for them. If they lose it, that's on them.

#USPol

Agitating to *change leadership* if policy is unacceptable, is also crucial to #democracy.

The US #Democrat party, not voters, has power and responsibility to put forward a candidate who can credibly present a policy *that appeals to voters*.

Those changes are needed *before* the general election, so that the candidate and their party can credibly appeal to voters. Hence the pressure, now.

Do the citizens threatening to withhold their vote, want Trump *more than* Biden? You can't conclude that, no. They're pressuring Biden's administration *because* that administration is the one which needs to change its policy.

#USPol

Agitating to *change policy* is crucial to #democracy.

Citizens who want that policy change, have a duty to *pressure* the candidates to change their expressed and demonstrated policy in order to appeal to those citizens.

But the responsibility *to change that policy* rests with the electoral candidate and their party. They have the power to change that policy; if they choose not to, that *is not* on the voters. It's on the party and the candidate.

#USPol

"Why are #USA people saying they won't vote for Biden in 2024, do they *want* Trump to take the office?!"

That rhetorical question is not clever, and doesn't make the point you think it does.

It expresses a flawed understanding of the role of citizens, and of electoral candidates, in a #democracy like the USA.

Participation in democracy is far more than merely "vote when the election comes around".

#USPol

> The siege of #Gaza is part of Israel’s broader system of what even mainstream international observers now liken to apartheid. Through its military occupation of the #Palestine #WestBank, the Israeli government and military supports establishing illegal, Jewish-only settlements, evicting Palestinians, bulldozing homes, and carrying out pogroms. Israel pushes Palestinians into ghettos and builds infrastructure for exclusive use by Jewish people.

> “Standing with #Israel” as it massacres Palestinians is unconscionable. We should instead stand with humanity, Israeli and Palestinian alike, in seeking to stop the violence.

https://jacobin.com/2023/10/gaza-israel-apartheid-war-crimes-us-solidarity-war/

Seriously, I want every journalist to ask this question from the New Statesman:
> CEOs are hugely expensive. Why not automate them?

To CEOs, to corporate boards, to government lawmakers. To anyone who advocates bringing bullshit "AI" automation into an existing business.

I predict that *any* justification that works for "oh we can't automate CEOs", will work even better for the actual workers. Press them until that is crystal clear to your audience.

And any remaining "justifications", I further predict will be flawed nonsense that justify nothing.

hat tip: @kcarruthers