Mike Mann 🇵🇷

Unfolder of software and music.

[Mike Mann 🇵🇷 @grokmike]

It's not easy being green.

[Mike Mann 🇵🇷 @grokmike]

Totally. I wish I could hear more people talking about this. Generative AI services are built on (massively) collective labor. How can we all fairly benefit from it while we honor respect creativity?

[Vernon Reid @vurnt22]

Capitalism won’t address it at all if automation that doesn’t need to eat or take a break increases productivity & corporate profits.

[They Might Be Giants @tmbg]

the work of Mr. Todd @toddalcott Alcott

[Worthi 🦇 @Worthikids]

WIZARD BEER

[Joseph @JoeCody]

@westonpagano Right on... lol

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

CNN Goes To Gaza

CNN’s Clarissa Ward and her crew became the first western journalists to enter Gaza independent from Israeli forces since October 7, briefly visiting a 150-bed hospital that was recently constructed in a soccer stadium by the United Arab Emirates in the southern part of the enclave before leaving to report on the footage from Abu Dhabi.

Overall the segment on Ward’s visit is beneficial, providing some much-needed visuals to a mainstream audience for whom the human butchery in Gaza has largely been more of an abstract idea. CNN shows maimed victims of Israeli airstrikes in all their suffering and distress, and Ward interviews them with compassion, noting correctly that “record numbers of civilian casualties” have been inflicted by “Israel’s frenzied bombardment”. Ward emphasizes the “heroic, extraordinary work” of Palestinian journalists who’ve been covering what’s been happening in Gaza over the last two months, accurately noting that these reporters have been getting killed at an unprecedented rate in this onslaught.

So it’s an objectively good thing that this segment was made and that Ward and her crew did the work that they did. But because it’s CNN, there was also a lot of narrative distortion thrown on what people were shown which happens to benefit the information interests of the US empire.

Ward rightly stresses the fact that the hospital she and her crew visited is “not a microcosm” of the conditions of healthcare facilities in the rest of Gaza because it’s so new and has been supplied by the UAE, noting that other hospitals in Gaza are barely functioning at all. What Ward does not say is that this problem is largely due to the fact that Israel has been systematically attacking hospitals in Gaza since October 7, rendering dozens of them nonfunctional.

In fact, in a CNN segment about the death and suffering that’s being caused by an Israeli military operation, Israel itself plays a surprisingly small role. By my count the word “Israel” or “Israeli” was only mentioned six times in the entire 14-minute segment, with long stretches going by where the death and destruction is discussed more as a passive occurrence like the weather, rather than as a deliberate act of mass-scale violence.

For example, as CNN is arriving at the hospital an Israeli bomb goes off nearby, which a doctor says happens “at least twenty times a day”. But the word “Israel” never comes up, even when discussing it after the fact — when wounded are brought in from the bombing that happened ten minutes earlier, Ward refers to it as “the strike”, not “the Israeli strike”.

We’ve been seeing this bizarre divorcing of attacker and attack all the time in Gaza since October 7, with news outlets sometimes going entire articles speaking only of “blasts” and “bombings” without ever actually mentioning the state who is inflicting them. This failure to attribute the source of an attack is not something you see in places like Ukraine, where the words “Russian” and “Putin” always punctuate the reporting like freckles, and it’s certainly not something you ever see in discussions about October 7. At no time will you ever go minutes watching a news report about the Hamas attack without hearing any mention of who the attackers were.

While mentions of Israel are scant in CNN’s reporting, mentions of the United States are missing altogether. At no time in the 14-minute segment does Ward or anyone else make any mention of the fact that this relentless massacre can only happen because it is being backed by the US, and that the Biden administration could end it at any time by withdrawing that backing. It’s downright surreal watching an American outlet talking about the US-sponsored destruction of Gaza as though it’s some separate foreign conflict that Washington is just passively witnessing.

Contrast this type of missing attribution with the ubiquitous use of the phrase “Iran-backed” in the mainstream western press when talking about non-US-aligned forces in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. The fact that the US is backing Israel’s assault on Gaza is much, much more well-evidenced than any claims of Iranian backing ever are, but you never see phrases like “US-backed airstrike” or “US-backed bombing campaign” in western reporting on Gaza.

Another distortion in the CNN clip comes when Ward talks about civilian casualties in Gaza.

“The death toll in Gaza as a result of Israel’s frenzied bombardment currently hovers at roughly 18,000,” Ward says. “If you do the math, extrapolating as the UN says that two-thirds of the casualties are civilians, that is about 11,800 civilians who have been killed in just over two months.”

This of course incorrectly assumes that all the men being killed in Gaza are Hamas fighters. Ward’s segment is full of footage that shows her surrounded by men who are plainly noncombatants, and if they’re killing women and children in Gaza then they’re also necessarily killing a lot of civilian men. Pointing out the number of women and children being killed in this operation is useful because it shows the indiscriminate nature of the killing, but this number should never be interpreted as the sum total of civilian deaths.

Watching the sloppy propagandistic spin of the western press reminds me of how grateful I am for all the real journalists in Gaza who’ve been doing the heavy lifting, even while their lives are in serious danger. Still, every little bit helps, and if the CNN segment opens one more pair of western eyes to what’s going on, I’ll take it.

[NWS Pittsburgh @NWSPittsburgh]

We just heard thunder at our office...and it is December 3rd...that's not normal. Lol.

[Greg Palast @Greg_Palast]

This week, Scorsese releases his film Killers of the Flower Moon: the true story of the mass murder of the Osage and the theft of their oil wealth. But the story doesn’t end when the credits roll. For 27 years, I've been investigating what happened next... 🧵

[Greg Palast @Greg_Palast]

It’s said that behind every great fortune is a great crime. It was this Osage oil that created one of America’s greatest fortunes: the Koch family, whose wealth is calculated at over $120bn.

[Mike Mann 🇵🇷 @grokmike]

Food and Drink https://t.co/ecWq07VpIj
Thanks, @BenLevinGroup

[Valdemar Danry @valdemardanry]

🚨NEW RESEARCH🚨 Can AI make us better thinkers? 🧠🤔 The future of #AI systems like #ChatGPT might be in asking us, not telling us the answers! 💡 In our recent paper at #CHI2023 we found that AI systems that ask questions can make people better thinkers.📚🔍 (1/5)

[Eric Feigl-Ding @DrEricDing]

17) Reminder— Norfolk Southern @nscorp chose to do a $10 billion stock buyback instead of investing on worker pay or train safety—especially needed brake replacements. Never forget — we need to sue NS executives to the ground.

https://t.co/n3hLLO29tZ

[Eric Feigl-Ding @DrEricDing]

14) over 1,000,000 pounds of Vinyl Chloride leaked, spilled and burned. We are talking about an ecological disaster for years to come… water and soil … agriculture and human health disaster. Thanks @nscorp - thanks for skimping on train upgrades and skipping new brake system.

[Eric Feigl-Ding @DrEricDing]

7) the real long term health effects won’t be know for years or decades down the road. By then insurance companies and corporations and politicians will have moved on. The untold risks are rarely uncovered (unless by diligent epidemiologists… yes, us again) who research it.

[Eric Feigl-Ding @DrEricDing]

12) Years ago, I created a free early warning website called Toxin Alert. Back then there was no interest. I might bring it back if people are interested… I’ve been warning about these stuff for years.
https://t.co/9vkLhemjmo

[Vernon Reid @vurnt22]

A few tunes with notable instrumental intros pre first verse-NOT ranked
Time
Ashes To Ashes
Baba O’Riley
Free Will
1999
Master Of Puppets
Close To The Edge
Betcha By Golly Wow
The Great Curve
The Rain Song
Sweet Child
Sir Duke
Hot For Teacher
War Pigs
Mighty Mighty

[Mike Mann 🇵🇷 @grokmike]

Sir Robin Saxby explained: “The reality is, if we look at our planet, in each country we have the best of the best in something. It’s only in collaboration that we get the best result. That’s the only way for the future.”

[Mike Mann 🇵🇷 @grokmike]

A history of ARM, part 3: Coming full circle https://t.co/4l5guoDrYQ

[Mike Mann 🇵🇷 @grokmike]

“I’m a great believer that in any team,” he [Robin Saxby] told me, “any member is better at something than somebody else, so to get the team to perform you want everyone to perform on their best axis. Teams that work well together work better.”