If the NDP came out as the national "Fuck AI" party of Canada, there would be such an orange wave

Imagining the world we could be living in if the best tech oriented minds of our time hadn't all been siphoned off into making better adtech for the last quarter century or so

Concept: Sam Altman being tried for his crimes with the same fury and hate and the same legal firepower that was applied to Aaron Swartz

Concept: a Masto filter to hide quote posts

I don't need the dunk format

Concept: potable water as a human right

Wishing that when people described themselves as "Jesus freaks" or "Bible-believing Christians" or whatever, that it meant something like "believes that god hates rich people and that wealth is incompatible with belief in Christ" and not usually just "white supremacist, homophobe, etc."

I can't just

"Not use AI"

AI is polluting the world and is a major driver of climate change, and even if I don't use it, it is still hurting me

AI is actively destroying the scientific literature that I need to work with, and even if I refuse to use it, it is still making my life worse

AI is deskilling my colleagues and stunting my students' growth in a way that I can't fight or compensate for

I don't use it for anything, but I still can't fucking "opt out"

It keeps happening

Tech company makes an anti-human/pro-capital decision

There's no way for regular humans to push back because the system is undemocratic

You can opt out or work around it, sure

You don't have to go along, sure

The old way still works, sure

But 99% of us don't have the energy to swim upstream

And then negative consequences show up from the tech company decision, but by now, everyone who still does it the old way is a "weirdo" with suspect motives and the tech company wins

Things I wish journalists knew

* If you report the right-wing dogwhistle, without explaining that it's a dogwhistle, all you're doing is right-wing propaganda

* CEO's/powerful people lie, and it's legal to remind your readers of this when you report on another lie

* Running at a loss due to private investment, then regulatory capture, followed by the inevitable rug-pull is the entire "tech" playbook, stop being naive

* Feel-good "success in adversity" articles are actually just victim-blamey

My superpower

I can remember stuff

Not even from that long ago, just remembering things that happened like 3 news cycles ago gives me a huge advantage

You: What was Musk's long-term plan for buying Twitter? What was his strategy?

Me: He didn't want to actually do it, he was playing a game of edgelord chicken and was forced to do so during a big legal battle when he tried to back out at the last second and it backfired on him