Dave
mediocredave.bsky.social
Dave
@mediocredave.bsky.social
Communist.
This feels like another example of the dynamic where AI is able to do this because we have already spent years getting ourselves used to wading through human generated 'slop' - unrigorous, low-quality, formulaic, largely unaccountable content (see also: memes, workplace emails, journalism).
November 26, 2025 at 12:37 PM
I do not believe that justice exists as a metaphysical absolute that society has to try to live up to. I think justice is an ideology and, like all ideologies, it is a way of rationalising the material conditions of life imposed on us.
November 26, 2025 at 12:03 PM
We're at a point where reducing prosecutions and incarceration isn't a principled leftist stance, it's the only pragmatic way to keep the system functioning at all. This is an unpalatable reality for carceral ideologues so they have to grope around for magical fixes.
this ongoing crisis of the carceral state is such an infuriatingly blatant opportunity for a public conversation that the carceral state absolutely cannot permit to happen
November 26, 2025 at 11:50 AM
This is it: if the state is incapable of pursuing its prosecutions it can just drop them.
also while I argued the other day that the whole triable either way thing was a shitty loop hole that needed fixing because the cost of it is being passed on to all of us needlessly.

The so-called "back log" could be cleared over night if the prosecution just.... didn't pursue it?
November 26, 2025 at 11:18 AM
People on the left should not celebrate vile reactionaries on the rare moments you happen to agree with them about something.

More importantly, no one on the left should be agreeing with these reactionary narratives about the urgent defense of "Western civilization".
November 26, 2025 at 9:34 AM
Reposted by Dave
literally; outside of actually classified narcotics like cocaine and mdma

There is absolutely no medication/drug which is treated anywhere near like this. And this is before we even get to the fact that it's only banned SPECIFICALLY for trans youth.

cis youth? can still get it.
November 25, 2025 at 9:16 AM
Reposted by Dave
you can name basically any healthcare at all. ones with obvious known dangers, ones with lesser known dangers. From radiation being shot directly into your eyes to botulinum toxin injected into your lips. they're all available both on NHS or via private.

But not hormone blockers if you're trans.
November 25, 2025 at 9:08 AM
Being a tech journalist really distorts your impressions of what archetypical human behaviours are.
Archetypal example is “capitalism ground me down so I quit my job and set up a small business so that I’m my own boss”. You didn’t dislike capitalism! You disliked authority!
November 24, 2025 at 6:32 PM
Uh...huh? And we're saying that Taylorism is a program of coordinating efforts to ensure a better outcome for all, are we? Is that... Is that what we're going with?
“Capitalism forces you to wake up at 7am against your body’s natural rhythms” no that’s Taylorism and if you don’t like living in a society that coordinates effort to ensure a better outcome for all then I don’t think you’ll love the alternatives
November 24, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Reposted by Dave
Lumping them together as “AI” gives readers the impression that a single class of tool is discerning novel protein structures, teasing subtle patterns out of mountains of LHC data, writing a student’s History 101 paper, and arguing a ketamine-addled billionaire could post up Shaq in his prime. No.
November 22, 2025 at 5:10 PM
Reposted by Dave
Journalist challenge: Use “Machine Learning” when you mean machine learning and “LLM” when you mean LLM. Ditch “AI” as a catch-all term, it’s not useful for readers and it helps companies trying to confuse the public by obscuring the roles played by different technologies. 🧪
November 22, 2025 at 4:50 PM
Dunno about Mamdani but everything is so clearly just a game to Trump. And not even one he's particularly invested in playing.
Q: “Are you affirming you think Trump is a fascist?”

TRUMP: “That’s ok, you can just say yes.”

ZOHRAN: “Ok. Yes.”
November 21, 2025 at 10:18 PM
Reposted by Dave
TRUMP [after spending 5 minutes with Zohran]: surplus value, it’s a very wonderful thing, very wonderful, and they’re stealing it. Can you believe that?

We’re going to be looking very strongly at the bourgeoisie, what they’re up to
November 21, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Reposted by Dave
Trans people have exhaustively detailed the links between the anti-trans and anti-abortion movements, we warned that transphobia was a wedge issue for the religious right to roll back women's rights, only for us to be ignored, and of course UK TERFs are setting their sights on abortion.
Kathleen Stock has written an article against "abortion permissiveness". She claims abortion requires "justification" saying the state should limit "unacceptable decision-making" by women about their own bodies.

This is who anti-trans activists proclaim as the feminist thought leaders of our time.
November 21, 2025 at 12:55 PM
Reposted by Dave
the idea that any form of racism might be based on some legitimate grievance is poisonous, and the idea it can be defeated by addressing it on that basis is ridiculous bsky.app/profile/sund...
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood made more explicit her argument that when ethnic minorities face racism, "we have no choice but to ask: what is the cause of our division"

Her answer is the level of net migration, 2019-23 causes racism. (She on Monday said it was caused by the scale of asylum)
November 21, 2025 at 6:11 PM
The modern concept of inalienable human rights has, in practice, always been a mechanism for US global hegemony and here it is in absurdly heightened form.
November 21, 2025 at 9:24 AM
Reposted by Dave
And remember.
The tech that is producing that Grok tweet is propping up maybe 1/3rd of the stock market.
I'm sure nothing bad will happen.
November 20, 2025 at 9:26 PM
Just saw the front page of today's Mail which has a jibe about "Starmer's socialist paradise" and it's just so funny that Sir Keir thought he was a master strategist who could triangulate his way into a higher plane above such things.
November 20, 2025 at 10:23 PM
You can tell this is a shit policy because the minister barely talks about the cases that would actually be affected by it and instead focuses on serious sexual violence cases, hoping you'll just accept the flimsy premise that they're directly connected.
Another government of former human rights lawyers who forget that Judge Dredd was a satire, not a role model. Reminds me of the jury I was on where the forewoman said the defendant must be guilty because he ‘didn’t look sorry’.

www.theguardian.com/law/2025/nov...
MoJ to remove right to trial by jury for thousands of cases in controversial overhaul
Exclusive: Courts minister says change needed to stop criminals opting for juries to delay cases, sometimes by years, and clear huge backlog
www.theguardian.com
November 20, 2025 at 11:57 AM
Reposted by Dave
‘“Do we think that someone who has stolen a bottle of whisky from a minimart should receive the right to trial by jury?” she said.’

Just one problem with the Minister’s statement: how would you know that they did in fact steal the bottle of whisky until they have been tried?
Another government of former human rights lawyers who forget that Judge Dredd was a satire, not a role model. Reminds me of the jury I was on where the forewoman said the defendant must be guilty because he ‘didn’t look sorry’.

www.theguardian.com/law/2025/nov...
MoJ to remove right to trial by jury for thousands of cases in controversial overhaul
Exclusive: Courts minister says change needed to stop criminals opting for juries to delay cases, sometimes by years, and clear huge backlog
www.theguardian.com
November 20, 2025 at 11:40 AM
"active involvement despite scale" killed me
I guess one difference between me and Elon Musk is that, if I was gaming an AI to say these things about me, and everyone could see that I had done this, I'd have simply no choice but to set myself on fire.
November 20, 2025 at 10:46 AM
Reposted by Dave
if someone can show me where the automatic settlement and citizenship exists, can we have our fourteen grand in fees back please
November 20, 2025 at 7:45 AM
Reposted by Dave
This absurd oversensitivity about professors having sex with minors procured for them by sex criminals shows that campus cancel culture is out of control.

by Alan Dershowitz and Larry Summers
November 20, 2025 at 1:30 AM
It is impossible to create a policy banning trans women from women's spaces that is workable and enforceable on any practical level (much less evenhanded or 'fair').

So they just keep trying to steamroll through this impossibility, leading to bigger, blunter, and more brutal policies of exclusion.
I'm not exaggerating. It literally says trans people can be banned from all facilities entirely leaving them with nowhere to go at all. Since this covers public restrooms, workplaces, gyms, etc, this is effectively a full on ban on the participation of trans people in British society.
November 20, 2025 at 8:27 AM
Reposted by Dave
One of the things that the “immigration debate” in the UK really reveals is how little people actually know about how other people live. So much of immigration policy fails to work, even on its own terms, because it’s trying to solve problems that mostly exist in peoples heads
November 18, 2025 at 10:51 PM