Alex Monea

Assoc Prof @GeorgeMasonU | Book: Digital Closet | LGBTQ+ Content moderation, platform studies, critical AI, data ethics | he/him

[Alex Monea @alex_monea]

Excited to announce my book #TheDigitalCloset won @SocHistTech's 2023 Sally Hacker Prize. My favorite scholars have won this award in the past and I'm honored to be in their company. Very grateful to the prize committee @akbarjenkins, @tsmullaney, and @merbroussard #SHOT2023

[Mahmoud Khalil | محمود خليل @mahmoudkhalel]

A federal judge just ruled that the Trump admin's use of immigration law to deport me and other noncitizen students for pro-Palestinian speech is unconstitutional. No one should fear speaking up for Palestine.

In a case brought by @TheFIREorg, the judge said: ‘Stated plainly, in the United States, freedom of speech belongs to the people. It is not the government’s to take.’

https://t.co/86xg7Buxya

[Alex Monea @alex_monea]

Happy to be featured @dav_huz's insightful new article for @Wochenzeitung on gooning https://t.co/3g1RVDve2G

[Alex Monea @alex_monea]

@joi___ai Your sample size was 10. Who gives a fuck what you “found”? Big whiff on what could’ve been a really cool opportunity to produce new knowledge.

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

The LAPD declined to renew its Flock contract after an internal audit found 161 false stolen-vehicle alerts in just two months — a 32.3% false-positive rate.

https://t.co/D1KWlW2urY

[John Scott-Railton @jsrailton]

USA TODAY is partnering with Palantir to de-anonymize & ID readers across 200 newspapers.

And turn them into "actionable intelligence."

That spy language from @USATODAY is a huge red flag.

I'm sure they are trying to stay profitable.

But media exists to hold power accountable.

Not to partner with defense intelligence contractors.

Or treat readers like intelligence targets.

By: @HanaaTameez
https://t.co/KHhSiwWq1J

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

Half of American parents plan to take on debt to get their kids back-to-school supplies this fall, according to a study from @Groundwork.

The report found that the upcoming school year will cost families close to $4,000 per child.

That's 11% more than last year.

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

Elon Musk’s xAI is suing Minnesota to stop a ban on apps that create sexualized deepfakes without consent.

The law—the first in the US to prohibit nudification technology—goes into effect in August.

Watchdog groups estimate xAI’s Grok has generated millions of sexual deepfakes.

[Adam Federman @adamfederman]

Prairieland defendants receive unusually harsh sentences in trial that featured mountains of flimsy evidence, a judge who tipped the scales, and the apparent withholding of key information and evidence by law enforcement including the FBI.
https://t.co/InQr7fdSpK

[Hannah Riley Fernandez @hannahcrileyy]

sentencing is happening now and 5 of the defendants have received 50 year sentences. chilling and should be a huge story

[Naomi Klein @NaomiAKlein]

“What she did…was to make me think why capitalism is not only efficient and practical, but also moral” - Alan Greenspan, speaking about his guru Ayn Rand in 1974.

It's worth understanding the role that this partnership played in unleashing the savageries of the modern market.

When Greenspan was still working in the corporate sector, Rand’s ideas about the “utopia of greed” infused him with a powerful sense of mission: apparently, making money wasn’t just good for him - it was good for society as a whole.

As for those who got trampled? Rand helped with that too: “Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should,” Greenspan wrote.

This mindset served him well as Fed Chair, where he supported shock therapy in Russia (72 million impoverished) and in East Asia after the 1997 economic crisis (24 million pushed into unemployment). Not to mention attacks on welfare and trade unions in the U.S....

JD Vance, with his tight concentric circles of "love," is just the latest manifestation of this worldview.

[Ben Norton @BenjaminNorton]

The US empire is waging a neocolonial assault all across Latin America.

The US blatantly meddled in Colombia's election. Trump and Marco Rubio backed the far-right, multimillionaire candidate Abelardo de la Espriella (a defender of fascist paramilitaries), and there are serious irregularities in the results.

Colombia's current left-wing President Gustavo Petro has been very pro-Palestine and pro-China. He cut relations with the genocidal Israeli regime and joined China's Belt and Road Initiative.

De la Espriella vows to form a close alliance with the US and Israel, and minimize relations with China. Just a few weeks before the elections, he was in Florida, meeting with far-right US politicians who are close allies of Trump and Rubio.

The same thing is happening across the continent. The US carried out a blatant electoral coup in Honduras, to put a drug cartel-linked, pro-US, pro-Israel, anti-China puppet in power.

The US is currently trying to steal the election in Peru, to put the daughter of the fascist former dictator in power.

The US empire already has far-right puppets in power in Argentina, Chile, and Ecuador. The leader of Chile is the Pinochet-defending son of a Nazi war criminal. The dictator of Ecuador is the son of the country's richest billionaire oligarch.

Brazil is the next target of the US empire's neocolonial assault, in this year's election.

This is the colonial Monroe Doctrine in the neo-fascist era.

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

Keir Starmer was not merely a disappointment. He is a mendacious figure of ethical decrepitude, a man who won the Labour Party leadership based on promises that he jettisoned five seconds after winning - a Labour leader who dared banish from the Labour Party not only his predecessor but also remarkable human beings like director Ken Loach - the gentleman who has taken the historic Labour Party and transformed it into a vessel for the very oligarchy it was elected to restrain.

Consider the litany of Starmer’s moral and logical failures. He promised a 'different Britain', yet his actions were a masterclass in Tory-lite politics—using the same maxed-out credit card analogies that once served the austerity brigades to justify his own failure of vision. He promised a human rights lawyer’s approach but he embraced a racist-lite version of Farage.

On Europe, Starmer promised Brexiteers that Brexit is Brexit yet stood before those who yearn to rejoin the European Union, winked at them to make them feel that Britain would gradually reconnect, even rejoin, with the EU while offering nothing of substance. This is not leadership; it is a fraud.

And then there's the manner in which Starmer and his government rushed to offer Israel unequivocal support in pursuing its genocide in Gaza, sacrificing precious political and civil liberties in the UK by imprisoning grandmothers, priests and peaceful activists who dared support Palestine Action, an organisation that Starmer and his minions proscribed as terrorists for practising the usual activist tactics of trespassing to spray paint military planes that had demonstrably aided in the genocide. To add insult to injury, Starmer performed the diplomatic pantomime of recognising a Palestinian state, in a manner that ensured it would never happen.

But above all else, this is a government that has learned nothing from the post-2008 era. Starmer and his Chancellor are playing the same tired austerity game while enabling and empowering the Finance Curse perpetrated by the City of London, throwing in forgood measure cuts in international aid to fund a military spending trickle under the guise of a "Strategic Defence Review" . It is the same old doctrine: austerity for the masses, socialism for the financiers and the arms dealers.

History will remember Mr Starmer as a man without conviction, a Prime Minister who offers not a shred of honesty, but merely the cruel illusion of change. He is ethically decrepit because he had chosen, consciously, to abandon principle for power. And for that, history will indict him. Good riddance, I say.

https://t.co/sGfebPkDXR

[gato fumante @KweenInYellow]

This is insane:
• UofM cracks down on and arrests anti-genocide student protesters
• Ann Arbor prosecutor Eli Savit declines to prosecute
• UofM recruits MI AG and Zionist lunatic Dana Nessel to personally prosecute the case—HIGHLY unusual for such low-level charges
• Nessel forced to drop all charges to preempt court finding her unable to fairly prosecute the case due to her bias against Arabs and Muslims as well as her ties to Zionist extremist groups caught attempting to influence the court
• Nessel (a Democrat!) turns to Trump DoJ and Kash Patel to bring felony conspiracy charges against the students

[David Sirota @davidsirota]

I never thought I’d see the day David Frum started tweeting out the playbook he used to lie America into the Iraq War

[Aaron Regunberg @AaronRegunberg]

To understand the stakes of the progressive vs. centrist fight to control the Democratic Party, just compare Zohran's term so far with Spanberger's.

Zohran:
- Free childcare for 2-year-olds
- Banned junk fees
- Filled 100,000 potholes
- New bike and bus lanes across the city
- Wealth tax on luxury second homes
- Millions of dollars won for tenants and thousands of apartments repaired

Spanberger:
- Vetoed bill to let public workers unionize
- Vetoed bill allowing class-action lawsuits
- Vetoed bill to stop warrantless arrests by ICE
- Vetoed bill legalizing cannabis sales
- Vetoed bill to lower prescription drug prices

Trump was defeated in 2020, only to return in an even more dangerous form four years later. So we already know that it is not enough to beat MAGA once at the ballot box.

If Dems don't pair their next electoral victory with Mamdani's commitment to positively improving people’s lives, rather than Spanberger's model of selling out to corporations, we are going to be right back in the maws of fascism one election later. And this time, we might not be facing an authoritarian as incompetent and self-defeating as Trump has been.
https://t.co/TugdQiSj73

[Alex Monea @alex_monea]

Spanberger disappoints on multiple levels. While she is better than Youngkin, her centrist status quo preservation tactics just pave the way for an even worse MAGA governor in 2029.

[carl beijer @_carlbeijer]

NEW: I looked at all of the vetoes from Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) over the last week, and they were even worse than you thought they were.

[Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein]

New White House national counterterrorism strategy targets:
- “left-wing extremists"
- “anti-Fascists"
- “radically pro-transgender”
https://t.co/OBCH8CB5bS

[Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein]

🚨 White House unveils pre-crime strategy to target the left, including pro-Palestinian protesters, "anti-Fascists," and "anti-American, radically pro-transgender ideologies."

Full document: https://t.co/OBCH8CB5bS

[Mapping AI @mapping_ai]

Who actually shapes AI policy in the U.S.?

We mapped 1,812 entities: 745 people, 918 organizations, 2,925 relationships. Frontier Labs, AI Safety orgs, Think Tanks, Government, VCs, and more.

https://t.co/6RDB1R0qNd

[sarah @sahouraxo]

Israel is blowing up entire civilian homes and residential blocks in Bint Jbeil, South Lebanon, and proudly sharing the footage itself.

Cheerfully broadcasting its war crimes to the world.

No global outrage. No condemnation. No accountability.