The next two days are potentially the most dangerous days in the history of humanity. I hope sense prevails—which can really only occur if Americans invoke Section 25 of their Constitution, or find some other means to remove Trump from office before the military follows his illegal orders.
blue bits. red rocks.
Yes, Therapy Sessions Are Being Used to Train AI
Last month, 2400 mental health care workers at Kaiser in Northern California went on a 24-hour strike. They were protesting what they say is an illegal new triage system in their mental health and substance abuse help line. Instead of having well trained therapists making judgment calls about people calling in who might be suicidal, now those calls are handled by high school graduates reading off a script and using a checklist.
When people try to sell you on the idea that the future is already settled, it’s because it is deeply unsettled. I think that this promise of an artificial intelligent future is really just a collective anxiety that very wealthy, powerful people have about how well they’re gonna be able to control us in the future. If they can get us to accept that the future is already settled—AI is already here, the end is already here—then we will create that for them. My most daring idea is to refuse.
The generative AI models that enable the production of slop require untold reams of human input for training, almost always stolen without permission. AI companies in turn sell the capabilities of these models as a way to produce sub-standard artificial reproductions of this cognitive labor at scale, directly competing with the current allocation of resources to the human creative labor that was harvested to train them.
Trump White House Pushes Satellite Firm to Withhold All Images of Iran War
The satellite firm Planet Labs told customers, including major news outlets, that it was acting on the Trump administration’s request as it announced it was implementing “an indefinite withhold of imagery” in Iran and across the Middle Eastern countries where the widening conflict started by the US and Israel is unfolding.
This is no rant. It’s a confession. I hate war. It’s the most repugnant, morally degenerate practice in human history. I hate what it does. It destroys human beings. It pours grief over the entire world. It wipes out countless hours and days of constructive labor and sets up cascades of untold suffering. And it turns people into liars … or fools. Justifying war. Sanctifying war. Treating war as somehow noble and redemptive. I hate the way it’s driven humanity into this corner. War has been the stimulant—more even than capitalism—for our most terrifying global impasses. Capitalism succeeded so effectively only because it was more efficient in the perpetual arms race.
Generative AI has made it cheap and easy to produce polished propaganda at scale, and just as easy to blur the line between official messaging and opportunistic imitation. Packaging war in the visual language of entertainment makes conflict propaganda more likely to spread, regardless of who made it. Social media is an open playing field: any government, proxy group, or anonymous account can compete for the same audience, and because users are active participants, the most compelling content wins the most reach regardless of its origin or intent.
I think Omar sets off a toxic bigotry chain reaction in Trump’s brain. On the one hand, she dresses in a way that conceals her hair and skin, which, to Trump, suggests not only disgusting non-European foreignness but also lack of sexual access. (Trump believes women should attempt to live up to male standards of beauty and be sexually accessible, although I suspect that he finds nearly all Black women unattractive.) On the other hand, this traditionally dressed Black woman takes no shit from Trump and pushes back whenever he or any other right-winger attacks her. This plays into a common stereotype amnog white male racists, especially those from the urban North: that Black women are mouthy and rude. (Womnen are supposed to be accommodating and deferential to men, you see. And they should smile more!)
