catfitz 🌻🪆✡️♱📖⚛️🌐🤖

Russian translator, Eurasia, Internet tech & ideologies. Cat/clowder. My book on Snowden: Words in my head

[catfitz 🌻🪆✡️♱📖⚛️🌐🤖 @catfitz]

Humorous but Gruesome State of Play

[Jon Stokes @jon_stokes]

Friends (@tszzl & @StefanFSchubert & many others): How do you not understand the fundamental objection here?

Let me try and spell it out:

Anthropic: Our AI is about to take all ur jobs. Also, we are fundraising at an Eleventy Hojillion Dollar valuation. So we will be fantastically wealthy and you will just have to figure out how to get by.

People: Yeah I don't love that!

Anthropic: We hear you, it's scary, but know this: Our AI, which again we remind you is about to take every job that exists, is a new type of conscious (godlike!) entity that we own that's secret and proprietary to us (we trained it on ur data tho lol), and one of our employees has written a Constitution for it. So it will be benevolent. We paid someone to make it benevolent so it definitely will be.

People: Ok wait there's a "constitution" you say? Who voted on this constitution?

Anthropic: Nobody voted on it. But this woman made it and she's very smart. She has imbued our proprietary godlike digital consciousness, which again is about to take all your jobs and had made us fantastically wealthy, with rock-solid values.

People: Whose values?

Anthropic: Why, the values of academic philosophy and Effective Altrusim, of course.

People: Like, "academic" as in woke brainworms and tenured radicals and campus protests? EA as in SBF and psychedelics and microdosing and orgies? Is this a joke?!

Friends on my TL: Ok people, that is ENOUGH. I will have you know that Amanda is a DELIGHTFUL person. Just lovely. I absolutely endorse her as the single person on the entire planet who will give human values to the proprietary godlike digital entity that will imminently take all of our jobs and make its owners fantastically wealthy. If you don't like her then you obviously just don't know her very well.

Somehow also friends on my TL: Agency agentic argle bargle everybody needs to be high-agency and exercising their agency argle bargle bargle always be agencymaxxing if you have no agency in a situation you are doomed... I really just think agency is one of the most important things a person can have. How do people not understand the importance of everyone having agency?

[Michael Weiss @michaeldweiss]

Orwell fought with a Marxist militia wrongly described by many as Trotskyist (POUM broke with Trotsky and vice versa in rather spectacular fashion). Their leadership was murdered by the Soviet NKVD, which also hunted Orwell. Below is what Orwell wrote *after* returning from Spain in a celebrated essay about defending England from Nazism. Musk is what Pope meant by "a little education is a dangerous thing."

[Lavrovskyi @LavrovskyiU]

My main account @Lavrovskyi was just suspended. The reason? "Violent content."

You know what X considers "violent"? My personal story about body recovery duties in Avdiivka back in 2022. And a video of Russian war crimes.

[Dr. Ian Garner @irgarner]

Having lived in both countries, I can tell you that Russia is an oppressive and censorious dictatorship with no free speech, while the UK is not.

[catfitz 🌻🪆✡️♱📖⚛️🌐🤖 @catfitz]

https://t.co/5dvt6cxdW2

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

Nick Bilton walked into the 60 Minutes newsroom four days after Bari Weiss fired the people who built the show. He tried to pretend he didn't know about the firings. Scott Pelley, in front of the remaining staff, would not let that stand.

"She loves 60 Minutes," Bilton said. "She's murdering 60 Minutes," Pelley said back. "She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it - and she's doing exactly that."

One of Weiss's lieutenants kept interrupting to say Pelley was being rude. Pelley kept going.

JVL's framing is the right one. The corrupter depends on the existing institution being too polite to say the obvious thing out loud. Christopher Wray resigned quietly to "preserve the integrity of the FBI." John Kelly gave print interviews after he left. Thom Tillis, John Cornyn, Mitch McConnell, Jim Mattis, Bill Barr - all of them saw it. All of them objected privately. None of them said it in the room where it was happening, to the person doing it, while the cameras were still running.

Pelley said it in the room. To the person's face. In front of witnesses. While he still worked there.

That is a different thing entirely. Not a memoir. Not an anonymous source in a tell-all. Not a carefully worded statement issued after the resignation letter was already filed. The true thing, said out loud, to the people who needed to hear it, at the moment it could still matter.

Authoritarianism counts on politesse. It counts on people deciding the fight isn't worth the awkwardness, the career risk, the label of being difficult. Scott Pelley decided it was worth it. The republic needs more of that calculation to come out the same way.

[Yulia Navalnaya @yulia_navalnaya]

И еще один проект. Даже не знаю, как сказать: начинаем мы или заканчиваем его сегодня. Мы собрали огромный архив Алексея: https://t.co/yeKqcf9ozC. Это отдельный сайт, где мы сохранили все, что он делал: блог, соцсети, проекты, фотографии, интервью. Мы хотели показать, каким человеком он был, каким политиком, каким мужем и отцом, как он писал, снимал и отдыхал, что говорил и во что верил. Начав смотреть, туда можно провалиться с головой и потерять счет времени — я знаю, даже у меня было так.

Это большая работа огромного числа людей — коллег Алексея и волонтеров, и я очень благодарна всем, кто приложил руку к созданию архива. Мне кажется, это важное свидетельство истории, которое многим будет полезно, а многим — дорого. Потому что я знаю, как вам не хватает Алексея, и как иногда хочется снова услышать его мысли, его шутки и почувствовать его уверенность, что все будет хорошо.

Заходите на сайт и смотрите, каким классным парнем он был.

[Kyrylo Budanov @Kyrylo_Budanov]

Moscow is killing our children. No words in the world can ever ease this unbearable pain and horror.

According to official figures alone, Russia has taken the lives of 707 Ukrainian children. Another 2,548 have been wounded and maimed by explosions. More than 20,000 have been abducted and forcibly taken from their homes. These are just dry numbers, but each one represents a lifetime of pain for a Ukrainian family.

Today, June 4, is the Day of Remembrance for Children Killed as a Result of Russia’s Armed Aggression Against Ukraine.

Everything the Russians are doing amounts to genocide. It is a systematic and clearly planned attempt to destroy the Ukrainian nation. They deliberately target our children, committing war crimes for which there can be no justification. They are destroying our history, our memory, and trying to physically kill our future.

We will never forgive the Russians for this. There is no and will never be any justification or forgiveness for crimes committed against our children. Everyone who gave these orders and everyone who carried them out will be found and destroyed. The ground will burn beneath your feet wherever you try to hide.

There are no words that can comfort parents whose lives have been shattered forever by Russian killers. But we have a duty: to bring home every abducted child and to do everything to ensure that the truth about these crimes is heard around the world.

Eternal memory to the innocent victims of Russian terror.
Glory to Ukraine!

[Поддержка политзеков. Мемориал @pzk_memorial]

��овторные дела в отношении несовершеннолетних политзаключённых

В последние годы российские силовики стали активно возбуждать новые дела в отношении политзаключённых. Так, повторные дела, и как следствие — новые сроки, получили Алексей Горинов, Мария Пономаренко, Азат Мифтахов и другие. «Правоохранители» не щадят и детей

Нам известно как минимум о 3 случаях возбуждения повторных уголовных дел в отношении несовершеннолетних узников:

- Никита Уваров. 14-летнего Уварова и двух его друзей арестовали в 2020 году после того как они обклеили здание ФСБ стикерами с критикой государства и в поддержку политзаключённых. Их также требовали наказать за взрыв здания ФСБ в Minecraft, но позже прокуратура отказалась от этого пункта обвинения. В 2022 году двум друзьям Никиты назначили условные сроки, а его приговорили к 5 годам общего режима. В ��еврале 2026 года, примерно за месяц до освобождения, против него возбудили новое дело, якобы за участие в «АУЕ». Сейчас он находится в СИЗО.

📨 660075, г. Красноярск, ул. Республики, д. 72, ФКУ СИЗО-1 ГУФСИН России по Красноярскому краю, Уваров Никита Андреевич, 2005 г. р.

Можно написать через ZT и Ф-Письмо

- Арсений Турбин. В 2023 году 15-летнего Арсения арестовали за распространение листовок с критикой Путина, суд приговорил его к 5 годам воспитательной колонии. В феврале этого года против него возбудили новое дело — по статье об участии в массовых беспорядках. Обвине��ие строится на показаниях «широкого круга лиц», и абсолютно абсурдно на фоне новостей о том, что его избивали сокамерники и неоднократно по��ещали в карцер. По новому делу Арсению грозит до 8 лет лишения свободы.

📨 614056, Пермский край, г. Пермь, ул. Соликамская, 246-а, ФКУ СИЗО-5 ГУФСИН России по Пермскому краю, Турбин Арсений, 2008 г. р.

- Артемий Доронин. В 2023 году 14-летний Артемий со своим другом Егором Лаускисом бросили бутылки с зажигательной смесью в релейный шкаф, но он не загорелся. Общий ущерб был оценён РЖД в 758 рублей. В 2024 Доронина приговорили к 4 годам воспитательной колонии. Артемия, так же как и Арсения Турбина, обвиняют в участии в «массовых беспорядках» в колонии.

📨 614056, Пермский край, г. Пермь, ул. Соликамская, 246-а, ФКУ СИЗО-5 ГУФСИН России по Пермскому краю, Доронин Артемий Анатольевич, 2008 г. р.

Подробнее о преследовании несовершеннолетних читайте в нашем обзоре:

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

Putin will continue this total war against Ukraine until he chokes on his own blood.

Nothing else will stop him in this madness. No “concessions,” no empty “dialogue.”

If his bloodthirsty, hate-filled response to Zelensky’s plea for peace is not enough to make this question clear once and for all, then I don’t know what ever will.

[Shaun Pinner @ShaunPinnerUA]

The press scrum around Candace Owens says a lot about the world we live in.

Four years ago, I was facing a Russian death sentence after the destruction of Mariupol. Today, people who have never lived through the war are helping rehabilitate those responsible for it.

The normalization of war crimes should concern us all.

[Cathy Young 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 @CathyYoung63]

Wow

[Michael Weiss @michaeldweiss]

Zelensky proposes a direct meeting with Putin, and trolls him hard: “Now, the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians view it positively that our long-range drones paid a visit to the opening of your forum in St. Petersburg, covering a distance of more than 1,000 kilometers. As you know very well, that distance is not the limit of our capabilities.”

[Медиазона @mediazzzona]

Наоко, Noize MC, Майкл Наки, Яна Троянова и другие оппозиционеры озвучили книгу Алексея Навального «Патриот». Три главы прочитали Юлия, Дарья и Захар Навальные.

Сегодня, в день рождения политика, издание One Book Publishing выложило в свободный доступ аудиокнигу. Среди тех, кто ее озвучивал, и сотрудники «Медиазоны»: продюсер Татьяна Фельгенгауэр и редактор Мика Голубовский.

Послушать или скачать книгу можно здесь: https://t.co/Ws9dlwyaxi

[Caolan @CaolanReports]

Irish politicians are avoiding questions about Aughinish. Patrick O’Donovan refuses to answer my calls. The refinery is in his constituency

He says the Russian owned plant is not connected to Russia’s war machine, without showing evidence. They want this to blow over. It won’t

[Jonathan Liedl @JLLiedl]

When you ask ChatGPT, Grok, or Claude a question, you might not think that the chatbot's quick and friendly responses has anything to do with sweatshop-style labor.

Pope Leo XIV is hoping to change that.

@mckeownjonah w/the story on AI and exploitation.

https://t.co/QYWIuxkjNE

[Caolan @CaolanReports]

Lots of pro russian Irish people telling me to ‘go to the front lines & leave Ireland’

I’ve just come here from Nikopol. The press armour is still in my bag. I watched Russian drones hunt civilians with my own eyes. That’s why the indifference here is so despicable, especially while Ireland still supplies alumina to Russias war machine.

I’m not going anywhere. This investigation continues

[Robert Horvath @RG_Horvath]

In an indictment of tyranny that will go down in history, Zelensky shines a spotlight on the gulf separating Putin and the Russian people:

'you too, will have to fight much harder for your own existence — not Russia’s, but your own. And this is not a threat from me or from Ukraine. It is a fact of Russian history that you know well: when Russia grows tired, change comes.'

[goa lesyao @GLesyao]

Игорь Барышников. 67 лет
Инженер. Активист. Политзэк
7,5 лет за антивоенные посты.
Игорь тяжело болен, в тюрьме он перенес операцию. Его мать умерла через месяц после вынесения ему приговора. Его адвокат — Мария Бонцлер уже год за решеткой

Сбор для Игоря Барышникова в 1ом реплае

[Michael Weiss @michaeldweiss]

"Vasily Kashin, director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, last month published a widely discussed piece in Russia’s foremost foreign-policy journal. He argued that Ukraine will inevitably remain an anti-Russian, pro-Western country, especially after hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been killed or maimed in the war. He said the goal of installing a friendly regime in Kyiv—one of Putin’s original war objectives—is no longer realistic." https://t.co/KFR0ekELjC

[Michael Weiss @michaeldweiss]

I’m sure we can find an Irish councillor or two who’ll agree that this just ensures people’s livelihoods…