This is about an hour away from my farm, so this'll be a fun conversation, and yet another great opportunity to tell a lot of people about what a huge problem we have with unregulated commercialization of orbit. (Also I just redid my slides for my public talk next week, this is going in!)
This talk by Meredith Whittaker is excellent. I originally clicked way from it without reading because the title is in German, but turns out the talk itself is absolutely in English.
> What we call AI today grew out of this toxic model – and must be understood primarily as a way of marketing the derivatives of mass surveillance and concentrated platform and computational power.
'As UN Secretary General Antonio Gutiérrez put it, “machines that have the power and the discretion to take human lives are politically unacceptable, are morally repugnant, and should be banned by international law.” '
Modi’s authoritarian Hindu nationalist party did not fare well in India’s recent elections. This unexpected result shows that polls and prognostications are certainly not infallible. What matters is the vote.
Indicted Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey is expected to file for reelection as an independent, two sources familiar with the matter said Monday.
The jurors in Trump’s New York business fraud case have demonstrated courage, integrity, and respect for rule of law. How disgraceful that no high ranking Republican elected official will call for Trump’s removal from the Republican ticket.
“Erik Prince, the founder of the military contractor Blackwater and younger brother of Betsy DeVos, invited around 650 of his contacts to join a secret, private group chat. And now it has leaked.”
@Migueldeicaza
'Off Leash’s participants want a “democracy” where the “plebs” vote the way they want in every election and the government only approves their preferred policies, which would give them the absolute certainty they want that their outsize wealth, privileges, and influence will be protected. That’s not the way democracy works, it’s the way dictatorships do, which no doubt feels comfortable to group chat members who have thrived doing business with corrupt, repressive regimes...'
Deliver us from warlords' mercenary armies funded by global capital, whose solution for every social, historical, and national problem is bombing with nuclear weapons, installing fascist dictatorships, and sacking the natural resources.
Off Leash. Military contractor Erik Prince started a private WhatsApp group for his close associates that includes a menagerie of right-wing government officials, intelligence operatives, arms traffickers, and journalists. We got their messages.
Netanyahu’s rant against the ICC quoted a biblical verse that warns against the dangers of not completely wiping out your enemy’s society. It doesn’t take much to figure out what this means for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
"...[Sara] says after her bag was searched she was... banned from all stores using the #Technology.
"I was just crying and crying the entire journey home… 'Oh, will my life be the same? I'm going to be looked at as a shoplifter when I've never stolen'.
"#Facewatch later wrote to Sara and acknowledged it had made an error..."
#Trump was booed repeatedly while addressing the Libertarian Party National Convention on Saturday night, with many in the crowd shouting insults and decrying him for things like his COVID-19 policies, running up towering federal deficits and lying about his political record.
