chewiron

Hoarder of knowledge (BEng, BA, MA, Postgrad DipSci, PhD ongoing), Mum, plant-based, climate activist, suppress covid-19, 🇵🇸

[chewiron @ChewIron]

@redpillb0t What Bill Gates represents is vile. Do not support anything to do with him or the Gates Foundation. https://t.co/1RYG9McGNx

[Gabbar @Gabbar0099]

"Bill Gates doesn’t donate to save the world, he invests to own it! By capturing seed banks, He is working on owning the entire seed banks in Agriculture sector, he invest a little bit, get the patent done & control the entire system"

Must watch this.

[chewiron @ChewIron]

@zhao_dashuai @Rakoonin These are pretty big claims you are making, outlandish. Accusations even. Can you explain them?

[chewiron @ChewIron]

@68eclipseg @GUnderground_TV Explain please

[chewiron @ChewIron]

@pezz65848 @GUnderground_TV You could say that he was amongst the 1st to put us face to face with the ugliness of what we are or can be. He showed us the dark underbelly of capitalism. His efforts arent wasted. There are things we can do like not participate in economies that feed into massive corporations

[George Tsakraklides @99blackbaloons]

“This absurd  civilization has become nothing but a cult of self-destruction. It is made up of people forced to do jobs they don’t like, told to buy things they don’t need, emit carbon from forests they never saw, and genocide people whom they’ve never met”

From my book THE BIOLOGY OF COLLAPSE

[Bruce King @CrowdvBank]

🍉ℹ️ Events today for Palestine🇵🇸 in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland:
🌦️ now-1 pm Waiheke stall🧺🇵🇸
https://t.co/UWwrd1RPjP
🌦️ now-1 pm Sunnynook Road Bridge banners🌉🪧🇵🇸
https://t.co/UWwrd1RPjP
🌦️ 2 pm Rally & March🪧🚶☮️
https://t.co/WD6JmLyuXt
👇👇 More events this week in AoNZ🇳🇿🇵🇸

[CoronaHeadsUp @CoronaHeadsUp]

Spain: Sick leave is skyrocketing and CCOO warns that it is an 'effect of Covid'

"The increase in sick leave is undeniable; it has almost tripled between 2018 and 2024."

https://t.co/5FowJK6wX3

[Richard Medhurst @richimedhurst]

Half the US' power comes from the inaction of other countries. If you don't stand up for yourself, you are telling the US that your sovereignty and your security are negotiable.

They will take advantage of that.

So where does the blame lie then?

[Sultana 💙 @SultanaBhatti1]

@CraigMurrayOrg Donation link here

https://t.co/jXUSScv2S9

[No More Glyphosate NZ @NoGlyphosateNZ]

Canterbury has one of the highest rates of Crohn's disease ever recorded anywhere on earth.

Not one of the highest in the South Pacific.
Not one of the highest in the Southern Hemisphere.
One of the highest anywhere on earth.

One in every 150 Canterbury residents now lives with inflammatory bowel disease. Cases have nearly tripled since 2006. Nationally, ~20,000 New Zealanders have IBD, projected to exceed 40,000 by 2045. New Zealanders with IBD die at a rate 69% higher than the general population.

Gastroenterologists say they're "surprised" by the trajectory. Genetics can't explain a rise this fast.

We're not claiming glyphosate causes IBD — the evidence doesn't support that. But a 2026 study found glyphosate at the regulatory "safe" level worsened colitis in mice by disrupting gut bacteria and activating an inflammatory pathway already targeted by IBD drugs. That's a real, biologically plausible mechanism.

New Zealand is one of the heaviest glyphosate users in the developed world. Our residue limits were built to catch acute toxicity — not chronic effects on the gut microbiome.

So we're asking a simple question: is anyone actually investigating this?

@SimeonBrownMP — as Minister of Health, is IBD's rise in NZ, and its possible environmental drivers, on your radar?

@TeWhatuOra — you hold the diagnostic data on IBD across the country. Has anyone cross-referenced it against agricultural chemical exposure?

@MPI_NZ @toddmcclaymp — does MRL-setting for glyphosate account for gut microbiome effects at all? Will you commission research into agricultural chemical exposure as a factor in NZ's IBD epidemic?

The data infrastructure already exists to answer this.

What's missing is the will to ask the question.

Full investigation ⬇️

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

After reflection, this new narrative by Palantir is probably much more consequential than people may assume.

Palantir is basically being the canary in the coal mine announcing the death of two major assumptions propping up the US economy right now:

1) that AI labs will be able to extract significant economic rent - as opposed to AI models being mere commodities

2) that other countries can accept structural dependency on US technology and services without pushing back on sovereignty concerns

Why are Palantir specifically starting to be vocal about this?

First off, major middle-powers, even US “allies”, are one by one showing them the door. In June, France announced that the DGSI - its domestic intelligence agency, which had relied on Palantir since the 2015 Paris attacks - would replace it with French firm ChapsVision, with Prime Minister Lecornu explaining (https://t.co/SLhEGprBZC) that France “cannot accept new strategic dependencies in the digital sphere” and shouldn't depend on the goodwill of companies “capable of turning off the tap.”

Germany moved even earlier: its domestic intelligence service, the BfV, also selected ChapsVision over Palantir (https://t.co/pDZVj4SYUY), and the German military has said it will no longer use Palantir at all. Then, just this week, Spain instructed state-controlled companies - including strategic firms like Telefónica, Indra and Navantia - to avoid signing any new contracts with Palantir (https://t.co/0ik4UAFrT7).

Even in the UK, Washington's most loyal vassal, the NHS's £330 million data contract with Palantir is under review following parliamentary pressure (https://t.co/uJl6g4BMsW), and London Mayor Sadiq Khan blocked a proposed £50 million Palantir contract with the Metropolitan Police.

Palantir making a lot of noise around them caring about sovereignty makes a lot of sense: it's damage control since they keep being told they're a sovereignty risk.

I doubt it will work - because it's true: they are a sovereignty risk - but the fact that they feel the need to be vocal around this tells you where the wind is blowing: they're not shaping the narrative, they're reacting to one they're losing.

What they're saying against closed-source AI (basically a broadside attack on OpenAI and Anthropic), is again highly self-serving. Palantir's sudden love of open-weight AI models conveniently coincides with them launching 2 days before a partnership with Nvidia to sell exactly that: open models models (NVIDIA's Nemotron) in sovereign environments.

So it's essentially a product launch.

It doesn't make what they're saying wrong: it is factual that the value proposition of closed-source AI labs looks increasingly unsustainable. I mean: you're paying 10X the price of Chinese open-source AI models for something that's not really better (or just marginally) and on top of that you have zero control over your data, or the models themselves.

When Palantir says that "the architecture that maximally preserves sovereignty is one that enables institutions to own their tribal knowledge, and to compound it as alpha," they're right. I'd add that this also means you shouldn't trust Palantir either with that "tribal knowledge"... they obviously left this part out 😉

When you take a step back, these two things have major implications on many other US companies.

SpaceX - which just went public at the largest IPO valuation in history - is one clear example as I describe in my latest article on the new space race with China (https://t.co/JK3ELAyEVO).

If countries like France concluded with Palantir that they couldn't depend on a company “capable of turning off the tap” when it’s merely analyzing their data, what should they conclude about a company that aims to literally control their entire connectivity - at one man's whim, from space?

What percentage of SpaceX's crazy market cap is based on the assumption that foreign governments will not do to Starlink what they're currently doing to Palantir?

And SpaceX - or Palantir - aren't alone: a significant proportion of the top US tech giants, who rose in a world where no one questioned American technological hegemony, now face an environment that's much less conducive to the kind of lock-in their business models - and valuations - depend on.

When you pair this with the fact that it increasingly looks like the US made a wrong bet with closed-source AI - an extremely expensive wrong bet - the picture that emerges is of a country that bet its economic future on two things - proprietary AI and captive allies - and is losing both at the same time.

And to compound the problem, it doesn't help that the official narrative of the US government - via the voice of Jacob Helberg, the Under-Secretary of State (https://t.co/Z1rotPl9Ee) - is to be vocally opposed to "AI Sovereignty": essentially telling everyone "you know what, your worst fears are real, our tech companies are really out to undermine your sovereignty."

Read Helberg's post (the one I linked) and put yourself in the shoes of - say - a European or Asian leader and ask yourself how you'd react to being told that building your own AI capabilities is "marching in perfect formation into the past," that your pursuit of sovereignty is really just "synchronized mediocrity," and that your only path to the future runs through American technology.

If it was me in a position of power, I'd read this as a massive wakeup call: when another country's official position is that your sovereignty is a problem, history says you're about to need it.

So yes, it looks like - unexpectedly - Palantir, of all companies, is being quite the canary in the big tech mine. Yes they obviously do this for self-serving and cynical purpose, and yes they're of course also very much part of the problem and not the solution. But it doesn't make them wrong: sometimes it takes a vulture to tell you something is dying.

[chewiron @ChewIron]

@jaraparilla @RnaudBertrand His opening line should be "welcome to the matrix"

[Nick Young @nickofnz]

UPDATE: The deadline for submissions has been extended to 12pm (midday) on 13 July.

There is still time to make your submission and have your voice heard!

Greenpeace has made it really easy, and quite fun👇
https://t.co/0OdQOhu6Uz

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

Regrettably, I find myself forced to step down as external member to the International Justice and Human Rights Research Centre at Edge Hill University (UK). This follows the University’s dismissal of a distinguished scholar - also mother of two young kids (name undisclosed for privacy purpose) - on "grounds of attendance", due to her being treated for CANCER. I find absolutely outrageous that a place that teaches int'l law and human rights can take such an appalling decision, at such a critical moment in someone's life. I urge once again the University to immediately reinstate the employee and ascertain any responsibilities associated with her dismissal. @edgehill @ehudismissal

[chewiron @ChewIron]

@abbeylinegold @kennardmatt You aren't going to convince us in the same way that the vast majority of the world are unlikely to convince you

Its ok to be a delusional abbey. Just dont expect anyone to believe you at this stage. Pro-israelis have lost the righteous ground the N@zi movement brought them.

[chewiron @ChewIron]

@AmirAminiMD https://t.co/q9kpNCBev2

[chewiron @ChewIron]

@clashreport We had a pandemic. It was COVID. It still is COVID. You can't clearly eliminate covid as a complicating factor to any health issue anymore.

Wear a respirator and spare yourself at least a couple of infections. You'll be better off healthwise compared to those who don't.

[chewiron @ChewIron]

@clashreport We had a pandemic. It was COVID. It still is COVID. You can't clearly eliminate covid as a complicating factor to any health issue anymore.

Wear a respirator and spare yourself at least a couple of infections. You'll be better off healthwise compared to those who don't.

[chewiron @ChewIron]

@AryJeayBackup Iran must surely have expected the mou to fail immediately much like it did? If only I had a crystal ball and could see what Iran was slow walking us to. I'm sure they have plans.
https://t.co/eS4i2y3v8h

[Patrick Henningsen @21WIRE]

As we said this week on @Dialogue_NRA interview: the MOU was a ruse by Washington & Israel, they had zero intention of engaging in any serious negotiated settlement pathway. Trump & @JDVance have been running fake negotiations in bad faith, fundamentally dishonest & deceptive charlatans….

[Patrick Henningsen @21WIRE]

As we said this week on @Dialogue_NRA interview: the MOU was a ruse by Washington & Israel, they had zero intention of engaging in any serious negotiated settlement pathway. Trump & @JDVance have been running fake negotiations in bad faith, fundamentally dishonest & deceptive charlatans….

[Sarah Wilkinson @swilkinsonbc]

Edinburgh students walk out of their graduation ceremony to protest the university's ties with the genocidal israelis to a rapturous applause

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

This is really disturbing.

@LloydsBank have debanked @TheCanaryUK - with no explanation.

This is a frightening precedent - where banks can pull the plug on media outlets without even saying why.