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Cake day: November 17th, 2024

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  • Within the FBI:

    Under the plan being discussed, the FBI would treat transgender suspects as a subset of the Bureau’s new threat category, “Nihilistic Violent Extremists” (NVEs). (From Ken Klippensteins report)

    And with the heritage foundation report:

    The document takes pains to insist that the proposal would not label “all transgender individuals” as domestic terrorists. Instead, it claims it would only apply when someone is “motivated by an ideology that encourages, promotes, or condones violence” while “inciting unlawful violent action or threat.” But those qualifiers are deliberately elastic. Given the earlier definition of TIVE, even the most basic act of advocacy—like pointing out that anti-trans laws threaten transgender people’s existence—could be construed as “incitement.” The memo itself makes the danger plain: in its list of “typical characteristics” of supposed extremism, it cites a trans flag with the words “protect their right to exist.” (From erin in the morning)



  • I know that it is common to turn a symbol initially built against you into one which now benefits you, but I don’t think that’s whats going to happen with Clippy primarily because of message here isn’t “Clippy wants us to move into a future where we own our tech/social infrastructure” but instead “man, im really nostalgic for the way corporations used to treat us”

    I have no problem using a symbol developed my Microsoft to spread anti-big tech messaging. The problem is that to a lot of people, the messaging doesn’t feel ant-big tech or anti-capitalist so much as it is just nostalgic. Microsoft was never a nice company. Even in the 1990s they were exercising their E.E.E (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish) strategy to beat federated and decentralized platforms and technologies. The goal of these companies (and you can see it now in their attitudes towards AI) is to own as much social infrastructure as they can. From where you get your news to where you get your friends. The only way to work against this is to work against big tech. There is no other way.

    Part of me wonders if the message behind the current Clippy symbol can be bent into something more forward facing, but I also feel that that would be hard/would feel artificial because of the fact that Clippy is just now so connected to nostalgia.




  • if the U.S was to ethically and legally house the homeless it would cost much more because criminals, the homeless, as well as some other outgroups are the only groups whose dehumanization is legal, meaning that to ethically house (and therefore humanize) them would be much more expensive as humans require more than just cages to live.

    i agree with the tweet though, im just saying that the homeless can and should be provided with adequate housing and that we can and should imagine and work towards better then cages for our future.



  • I feel that although there are many issues with how machine learning/“AI” is being used, there isnt really as much of an environmental issue as we are led on to believe. Many will write about how AI consumes large amounts of energy, but will not mention how data centers only make 1-2% of energy consumption worldwide, and most data centers arent focusing fully on AI making the actual percentage of “worldwide energy used by AI” much much smaller.

    Alex avila actually argued this very well in his newest video essay, even showing that much of this worry about AI energy use is backed by companies with stakes in energy.








  • if we were to either replace all power on earth with nuclear, or replace all power on earth with wind, more people would die from- idk, falling out of wind turbines- then from deaths due to nuclear.

    Fukushima had a fucking earthquake and a tsunami thrown at it, AND the company which made it cut corners. It was still, much, much less bad than it could have been and the reactor still partially withstood a lot of damage.

    In the United States at least (and i assume the rest of the world) nuclear energy is so overegulated that many reactors can have meltdowns without spelling disaster for the nearby area. Nuclear caskets (used to transport and store wastes) can withstand fucking missle strikes.

    Im not going to pretend that there arent genuine issues with nuclear, such as cost and construction time(*partially caused by the over regulation), but genuine nuclear disaster has only ever resulted from the worst of human decisions combined with the worst of circumstances. Do i trust humans not to make shitty mistakes? No, with all this overegulation though i kind of do. Even counting Fukushima and Chernobyl, more people die from wind (and especially fossil fuels) then nuclear per terawatt of electricity production.