John Palowitch
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johnpalowitch.bsky.social
John Palowitch
@johnpalowitch.bsky.social
senior AI engineer @the internet archive. formerly @deepmind working on NLP, graphs, and computation social science.

ml.johnpalowitch.com
Reposted by John Palowitch
I take Wikipedia for granted. Reading this Jimmy Wales interview reminded me in our Fantasyland age what a remarkable and important creation it is. True pillar of civilization. Runs on only $200 million a year. Requires our support. So I’m finally donating. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/m...
The Culture Wars Came for Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales Is Staying the Course.
www.nytimes.com
November 30, 2025 at 1:51 PM
Reposted by John Palowitch
"Don't follow illegal orders" would be more meaningful if Democrats had prosecuted literally any of the prominent war criminals of the last 30 years instead of, you know, fucking campaigning with them
November 30, 2025 at 3:21 AM
Reposted by John Palowitch
lol. lmao even
November 30, 2025 at 3:15 AM
Reposted by John Palowitch
The White House’s new anti-media website includes denunciations of:

-ABC, which bribed the president
-CBS, which bribed the president and moved away from fact-based journalism trying to appeal to him and his fans
-WaPo, which spiked a Harris endorsement and tilts coverage in Trump’s favor

Fools.
November 30, 2025 at 3:15 AM
Reposted by John Palowitch
I keep thinking of that paper called "AI As Normal Technology," basically suggesting it could be a tool thats good for some things and not for others, which sounds so much more reasonable and accurate to my experiences with it than the claims it's actually Robot Jesus
Anecdotally on twitter seeing a big shift the last few days from every AI slop account saying every other creative field is “over” and they’re in control now to now posting about how nobody likes them and it’s not fair and they’ll persevere and real artists respect and uplift eachother
November 30, 2025 at 2:07 AM
Reposted by John Palowitch
The problem with fetishizing the rule of law is that people have to break the law to resist fascism, state violence, and oppression. This has always been true, and is very much the case RIGHT NOW.
November 29, 2025 at 1:44 AM
Reposted by John Palowitch
trump: “no see we HAVE to blow up those boats in the caribbean, they could be carrying drugs!”

also trump:
November 29, 2025 at 12:01 AM
Reposted by John Palowitch
Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea
November 25, 2025 at 1:57 AM
Reposted by John Palowitch
evergreen
November 22, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Reposted by John Palowitch
donald trump endorsed zohran mamdani before chuck schumer lmao
November 21, 2025 at 9:01 PM
Reposted by John Palowitch
once again joining the many people who have observed how much of a world-historical problem it is that Trump is so fucking funny
Q: Are you affirming that you think President Trump is a fascist?

MAMDANI: I've spoken about--

TRUMP: That's okay. You can just say yes. I don't mind.
November 21, 2025 at 9:27 PM
Reposted by John Palowitch
Trump frickin' loves this guy lmao
November 21, 2025 at 9:04 PM
Reposted by John Palowitch
Bellingcat’s contact email has always been a magnet for people with fairly unusual views; paranoid delusions, sprawling conspiracies, the works. But recently, the pattern has shifted, we’re seeing more and more emails clearly written with ChatGPT.
November 19, 2025 at 2:18 PM
Reposted by John Palowitch
“Using copyright claims to retaliate against critics is wrong, and it chills public debate about surveillance technology,” EFF’s @jmullin.bsky.social told @arstechnica.com.
He got sued for sharing public YouTube videos; nightmare ended in settlement
Librarian vows to stop invasive ed tech after ending lawsuit with Proctorio.
arstechnica.com
November 19, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Reposted by John Palowitch
Status update: fiber cut between data centers - trucks are rolling. Services are slow but functional, except for the Wayback Machine, which is still offline.
The Wayback Machine, openlibrary.org, and some other archive.org functions are offline because some network gear has failed.

We apologize and are working on it. More as it happens.
November 20, 2025 at 8:11 PM
Reposted by John Palowitch
Just wanna re-up in simple terms that when Biden talked to platforms, Jim Jordan launched years of investigations into everybody involved, said it was tyranny, censorship, etc.

And now they just straight up acknowledge that they talk to platforms too.

www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/crime/3...
DHS playing 'whack-a-mole' shooting down made-up ICE stories
The Department of Homeland Security is stepping up efforts to combat fake news, viral AI videos, and misinformation on ICE and Border Patrol.
www.washingtonexaminer.com
November 20, 2025 at 1:54 AM
Reposted by John Palowitch
Unprincipled and weak. The murder of journalists is perhaps the single most direct violation of the right to freedom of speech. (1/2)
Trump suggests Khashoggi had it coming: "You're mentioning someone that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about. Whether you like him or didn't like him, things happen. But he knew nothing about it. You don't have to embarrass our guest."
November 20, 2025 at 2:32 AM
Good, because most electeds with “experience in governing” right now are either fucking up or actively supporting elites and fascists

Who is this headline supposed to alarm @nytimes.com ?
November 17, 2025 at 8:12 PM
Reposted by John Palowitch
this is theranos-level fraud, but everyone with the power to do anything about it is on the take, apparently
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei thinks AI could help find cures for most cancers, prevent Alzheimer’s, and even double the human lifespan. cbsn.ws/4oRZ8Nm
November 17, 2025 at 1:22 AM
Reposted by John Palowitch
What, exactly, does this string of words mean? Why does everyone who stands to profit from selling "AI" love to repeat it? And what's the value of slogans that masquerade as history?

sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/...
"The Printing Press Democratized Knowledge": When Slogans Masquerade as History — Sonja Drimmer
The phrase is said so frequently it seems, like the mechanism it celebrates, to mechanically replicate itself.  It's become a favorite catchphrase among tech boosters of any sort (see my post on...
sonjadrimmer.com
September 10, 2025 at 7:51 PM
Reposted by John Palowitch
Silicon Valley, 1990s: Free and open access to all the world’s knowledge will usher a new utopian age of information!

Silicon Valley, 2025:
November 15, 2025 at 1:28 AM
Reposted by John Palowitch
Google has moved from moral cowardice (removing ICE tracking apps) to direct complicity in the violent, unconstitutional abuse of vulnerable people.

As a civil liberties lawyer who worked at Google for ten years, this one hits me in the gut.
Google Has Chosen a Side in Trump's Mass Deportation Effort
Google is hosting a CBP app that uses facial recognition to identify immigrants, while simultaneously removing apps that report the location of ICE officials because Google sees ICE as a vulnerable gr...
www.404media.co
November 14, 2025 at 3:28 PM
Reposted by John Palowitch
Never forget the same people defending pedophilia have spent years trying to convince the public that drag queens and trans people are a threat to children.

It’s all smoke and mirrors to allow the real predators to roam free.
November 14, 2025 at 12:21 AM
Reposted by John Palowitch
For folks (and journalists) who want to search the Oversight Committee email texts, I made a database for searching the 20k text files:

splendorous-chaja-f79791.netlify.app
Epstein Document Search
splendorous-chaja-f79791.netlify.app
November 13, 2025 at 1:12 AM
Reposted by John Palowitch
Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, co-creator of the TCP/IP protocols that built the Internet, celebrates the Internet Archive reaching 1 trillion pages & reflects on why preserving our digital history matters for generations to come.
More ⤵️
blog.archive.org/2025/11/12/v...

#Wayback1T
November 12, 2025 at 4:44 PM