I wonder how many of these folks cut their teeth on grand-strategy computer games — such as CIVILIZATION — where just deciding "we're no longer a democracy... we're now operating under despotism because that'll be advantageous" is just a mouse-click choice.

I think we got ourselves into this state as a society by believing in the tool-sellers’ promises and now they are pushing a way to make the chaos more unaccountable and less connected to our actual desires (AI) as a solution to the problem they made

I believe we need to be able to understand what is happening to us. That's the sole reason for my work on knowledge ecosystems over the years, including Covid Tracking Project. A lot of things *can* be known, even in this political blender. We deserve real knowledge, not close-enough flyby guessing.

Some affable space monsters.

I don’t know the name of that meme cat, or how to describe this expression, but it's hysterical how closely Tablo's face mirrors that one when Hilo is trying to steal his territory. "Try me. Please. I just need an excuse." is the best way to explain it.

Whistling when ICE is about to kidnap someone for no reason is incredibly effective. They know what they are doing is wrong and will scatter in the wind when too many witnesses gather.

🦀🦀🦀 #MarineLife

People are spontaneously posting up near any laborers or street vendors they spot. Just saw a rapid responder guarding a man working on a building exterior. Many things are terrible today but lord, this stuff matters.

Grandpa: I sent your grandma 57 handwritten love letters from the western front and she finally agreed to marry me when I returned from the war

Me: the computer told me to say "I had a good time last night" to this girl but it didn't work for some reason

We’ve covered eight tips so far in #OptOutOctober but there’s still plenty of time to catch up and take back some of your privacy. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...

'The Texas Military Department’s response was in response to questions from Task & Purpose about whether Guardsmen were being evaluated for height and weight standards as a result of the pictures.'

New @taskandpurpose.com from Jeff Schogol and myself
taskandpurpose.com/news/texas-n...

That seems to be the subtext - that it will "ask again later" and eventually you will run out of refusals.

FWIW according to the article, turning it off right now does not work at all, it throws an error and puts it back on.

This post needs an updated re-issue because AI companies have truly come up with some incredibly novel ways to push this technology that no one wants onto people.

"If the person is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter." -- Justice Kavanaugh

"We’ve seen this movie before, and Black communities have been telling America how it ends."

Because they keep getting infected with Covid and mainstream keeps downplaying the risks of post-Covid complications.

A shocking amount of men seem convinced that if they evince enough self pity they will be delivered of respect, status, and the sexual attention of women. Really can’t overstate that this is not how it’s going to work out.

High resolution images from satellite and from eddy-resolving ocean circulation models point to an ongoing decline of the Atlantic overturning circulation, a key ocean current for our climate. Read more about it in my new blog article. 🌊
www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar...

Much more generally, on a variety of fronts, we are seeing the attempted wholesale conversion of the coercive power of the state into a tool for extremely small, organized groups of people to command obedience (bullies, universities, schools, businesses, etc.).

Everyone knows witnesses won't come forward, people will suffer in silence, etc. The scope of this harm is hard to overstate--nothing short of millions of people enduring grotesque physical and sexual harm.

And this leads to one thing, among many, that scares me a lot now: Things were already very bad on this front, but the unhinged gestapo tactics of ICE grant enormous power to predators across society in positions of power to prey upon vulnerable people: employers, abusers, etc.

But when you realize that most violence is not by strangers (hence police violence being large %), you see why it's vital for cops to obscure it: no one believes more $$ for punishment bureaucracy is a solution to the reasons people **in some kind of relationship with each other** hurt each other.

A simple answer is that the news makes people extremely scared of strangers--the person next to you at CVS, the person walking down the street, the unhoused person in a tent, the anonymous burglar, etc. These are the kinds of crimes associated with surveillance, policing, etc.

First the basics: The vast bulk of physical and sexual violence in our society is *not* perpetrated by strangers, but by people who know each other. Obscuring this fact is a critical feature of copaganda in the news. People are shocked to hear it. Why?