Author | Lightnews

Reposted by Becca

Embrace the Void @etvpod.bsky.social · 5d

Apparently some folks are playing real dumb about skull symbols so let’s play a little game I like to call “Nazi skull or not a Nazi skull”

First up, the Jolly Roger. This is a pirate skull, not a Nazi skull. It means you might get robbed, but prolly not genocided.

With me so far? 1/x

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Imani Gandy Corn 🎃 @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 2d

When Jacobin and the Pod Save bros are aligned on defending nazi tattoos, we’ve got a problem and it’s not going to be solved by you coming into my mentions and telling me I’m not seeing what I’m definitely seeing—

which is white people left, right, and center coming together to defend Nazi tattoos

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Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 3d

The superintelligence narrative wants us to ignore how deepfakes are one of many ways generative AI is poisoning the well of accurate information in our society. It’s threatening climate targets, enabling nudify apps, and sending people into mental breakdowns.

disconnect.blog/generative-a...

The problems with generative AI are endless. The environmental costs of the technology have been well litigated these past couple years, as the data centers that power it demand vast quantities of water and obscene amounts of electricity that creates pressure to build out even more fossil fuel power generation at a time we should be doing the very opposite. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Long before Connolly was targeted by a political deepfake, a far wider swath of people — particularly women and girls — were the victims of nudify apps and explicit deepfakes made possible by image generators powered by generative AI models. More recently, a wave of stories have been published about the mental health risks that can come with forming a dependence on chatbots, including everything from breakdowns and institutionalization to the worst possible outcome of young people taking their own lives — sometimes even with coaching from the chatbot on how to do it.

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Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 3d

The AI industry wants us to believe AI superintelligence is the real threat from generative AI.

But that narrative was crafted to distract from the many ways genAI is being used to tear our societies apart, as we saw this week when a deepfake video rocked the Irish election. It must be reined in.

Generative AI is a societal disaster

Governments are deluding themselves into believing investment justifies allowing AI to upend society

disconnect.blog

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Avery Edison @averyedison.com · 2d

the thing I love about the phrase “mom and pop landlords” is I have talked to people who consider themselves as such even though they literally own 100% of the buildings in an entire neighborhood. landlords are sick people who need every kind of curtailment possible

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Sarah Kendzior @sarahkendzior.bsky.social · 3d

I think a lot of Very Online folks don't understand that people are having conversations about all these topics Very Offline so that they're not surveilled and would certainly not share their views with a Very Online person who would blab them all over the place.

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Becca @beccastevens.bsky.social · 3d

100% same, especially since my spouse lost his job at the end of August.

Amanda Weaver @amandaweavernovels.com · 3d

My job carries my family's health insurance and pays our rent, so I have no choice but to keep focusing on it. Believe me, all of *this* is on my mind, but I can't let it consume me, because people are counting on me. I suspect most people are in the same place.

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers, Blade Wielding Bisexual (Lordean arc) @shengokai.blacksky.app · 3d

Fund Me Fridays is back!

In honor of Link, who remains unjustly banned, I will be reposting mutual aid links under this thread.

Drop your links and let’s meet some needs!

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Quinta Jurecic @qjurecic.bsky.social · 3d

ordinary americans are filming ice agents and trying to save their neighbors. for all the hemming and hawing during 2024 about how democracy was an elite concern, the elites gave up far more quickly than average people.

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Becca @beccastevens.bsky.social · 3d

Ew

Comfortably Numb @numb.comfortab.ly · 3d

ME: Teams can't possibly get any worse.

MICROSOFT: Hold my beer www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/mi...

Microsoft Teams is about to become a lapdog for your boss — automatically snitching on your live location when connected to the office Wi-Fi

The app will now let your boss know when you're in the office or not, based on your connection to the office's Wi-Fi network.

www.windowscentral.com

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Becca @beccastevens.bsky.social · 4d

What? No one is saying they hate you. What are you talking about?

Becca @beccastevens.bsky.social · 4d

Pretty sure he’s being sarcastic and insulting the racists. He’s saying you’d have to be lobotomized to think the same as them.

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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 5d

Liberals when candidates defend trans people: "We can't do this, it's too unpopular."

Liberals when candidates have a nazi ss tattoo: "it's ok, not all candidates are perfect."

Do y'all hear yourselves?!

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Mo Ryan @moryan.bsky.social · 5d

Get bent w the phrase “purity test” ffs. Do people not get what they’re saying is “do not have standards”? “Do not change your mind when you learn new facts that are v troubling — & stfu when a person’s actions & explanations around those facts are shifty, hostile & display a lack of maturity?” 🤡

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Lynn Zero | PlayNeoNeuro.neocities.org @lynnlandra.bsky.social · 5d

Yeah the options are:
1) He's too lazy and incurious to care what it is
2) He's too stupid to understand its significance
3) He is or was a nazi

In none of these cases should he ever hold office

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Boo-rat @thatsthatmespresso.bsky.social · 5d

"if this is nazi, everyone i know in the forces has nazi tattoos!"

yeah man, we have been saying the military harbors white supremacists and sucks at policing itself, for decades

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Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 5d

The idea that a grown man never thought to Google what his prominent chest tattoo that he probably looked at every day in the mirror actually meant is also not winning my confidence

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Becca @beccastevens.bsky.social · 5d

And the anthropomorphic language is a large part of the problem. It’s why the general public doesn’t under what this tech actually is and are vulnerable to the AI industry’s lies about it.

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Becca @beccastevens.bsky.social · 5d

They don’t think, they do very specific probability math on tokens that happen to be words in human natural language. It’s already apparent from the way the tech works that feeding an LLM on the dregs of the internet will result in it outputting similar dreck. That’s just how it works.

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Becca @beccastevens.bsky.social · 5d

I tried to read this, and I think I agree with it in principle. But I can’t get past the constant anthropomorphic language about LLM AIs. LLMs cannot experience cognitive decline, they don’t have cognition.

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Becca @beccastevens.bsky.social · 5d

Actually, this reads as extremely ignorant to me. The problems with LLM AI are numerous, but there is absolutely no way possible that souped up autocomplete can become a “superintellegence”, it’s not even actually intelligent now.

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 5d

I’ve seen the skeet about this principle. I concur. Seeing a preteen develop up close the last year or so has added a lot to my perspective on how adults behave. These people are truly just small humans having big emotions they cannot process because they have permissive emotionally absent parents.

Jimmy Malone @malonespeaking.bsky.social · 6d

The president has the maturity of a toddler and he has surrounded himself with other kiddies.
people.com/karoline-lea...

Karoline Leavitt Blasts Reporter by Posting Screenshot of His Private Texts. Now Her Bizarre Reply Is Going Viral

Karoline Leavitt is going viral for posting a private text exchange where she bashes White House correspondent S.V. Dáte.

people.com

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Becca @beccastevens.bsky.social · 5d

Why not until now? It’s never going to be enough to only a rectify a situation like this once you are caught. No one wants to ruin his life over it, but he’s disqualified from public office.

Becca @beccastevens.bsky.social · 5d

Dude, log off. WTAF?

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Becca @beccastevens.bsky.social · 5d

Why hasn’t he had the tattoo covered or removed? In 20 years, he never found out what the symbol really is until now? I fucking doubt it. The VA does tattoo removal, it’s not like it’s a hard service to find.

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