Alex Ⓥ

🌱🤘✊✊🏽✊🏿

Religion is poison for your mind,
as are traditions for civilisations;
questionably fine in tiny potions,
albeit deadly in larger quantities.

[David Sirota @davidsirota]

I talk openly about the mistakes I’ve made in my life, and have apologized when I’ve been wrong. Contrition is part of who I am. It always has been. It was taught to me at a very young age. That’s why I deeply distrust those who ruined our world and who have never once apologized or renounced what they did.

The necon arsonists monetizing themselves as firefighters. The Obama folks who betrayed their promises, created the Trump backlash, and then got rich suddenly pretending to lead a resistance to the crisis they manufactured. These people have never once bothered to take responsibility for what they did.

They exemplify the elite impunity destroying our society. They don’t actually care if Trump’s authoritarianism is stopped. They don’t actually care about extinguishing the infernos they ignited. They care only about themselves and their lucrative grift — and when they effectively scream the quiet part and admit that, we should listen. We can perhaps welcome their momentary and fleeting support of a popular front against Trump, but we absolutely should not trust them with our political future.

They rely on the culture of elite impunity never holding them accountable. That culture is the crisis fueling every other crisis in our society.

[GOŁƊ @vidxn_]

NAOMI KLIEIN to SAM ALTMAN:

"...you ingested the entire written output of human civilization without consent, without compensation and without credit to build a system whose primary commercial application is eliminating the jobs of the people whose work you consumed.

You are not 'liberating human creativity' -- you are strip-mining it and selling it back at a markup while calling the theft 'training data'."

[Poetic Outlaws @OutlawsPoetic]

"Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history mankind has been bullied by scum...

They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty.

Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us."

~ PJ O'Rourke

[Alex Ⓥ @localhost]

So, I come back from underground… and the world is still mad, or even more so‽

[Alex Ⓥ @localhost]

@MBWorkhouse ps: Look at me! 2 months delay!

[Alex Ⓥ @localhost]

@MBWorkhouse You will always be a writer. Some say, writing is more procrastination, than writing. So you're an even better writer by definition. ;)

[sek @SekAndTheCity]

It's time for a change.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

They're trying to make us worse. These billionaire generative AI corporations reap profits by making us worse human beings.

They want us to become less human. Less connected. Less creative. Less capable. Less wise. Less intelligent. They want to atrophy our ability to speak, write, research, relate, draw, make music, and cultivate intimate connections with the most important people in our lives, and then sell those things back to us at the hands of some chatbot.

Their entire business model is built around turning us into a bunch of soup-brained narcissists who can't manage our own lives and our own relationships, and then being the crutch that we use to compensate for that self-inflicted debilitation.

The product they are selling us is not the chatbot itself. The actual product they're selling is freedom from cognitive and emotional discomfort. From the discomfort of learning new skills. From the discomfort of personal growth. From the discomfort of taking risks. From the discomfort of pushing past that intimidating blank page to get something written. From the discomfort of having to think about other people and consider their interests and feelings. From the discomfort of having to interact with other humans and maybe say the wrong thing sometimes. From the discomfort of leaping into the unknown.

But all the best things in life sit on the other side of discomfort. Love. Romance. Intimacy. Art. Creativity. Growth. Healing. Rising beyond our limitations. Liberating ourselves from the illusion of the ego. They all require us to push through discomfort to the treasure on the other side. An aversion to discomfort is an aversion to a fulfilling human life on this planet.

But that's exactly what these chatbot companies are nudging people into. They're encouraging us to spend our lives curled up in impotent little balls of emotional infancy and intellectual stagnation so that they can sell us machines which act as digital prostheses for the sacred parts of ourselves we have amputated.

We mustn't let them do this to us. We must remain human. We must hold fast to all those precious aspects of our humanity they're trying to extract and commodify.

So let's stay human.

Let's face our discomfort.

Let's face our fears.

Let's take that risk.

Let's tell our crush we fancy them.

Let's go in for that kiss.

Let's get our hearts broken.

Let's write that poem.

Let's learn to draw.

Let's learn to surf.

Let's learn the saxophone.

Let's learn all sorts of new things.

Let's learn about the people in our lives.

Let's nurture our relationships.

Let's heal our wounds.

Let's become better people.

Let's sink our toes deep into the earth and feel these wonderful terrestrial bodies of ours in each moment.

They're trying to pull us away from our humanity, so we must plunge deeper into it.

As things get more and more dystopian, simply holding fast to your humanity becomes an act of rebellion.

[Stephen Barlow @SteB777]

Can I just clarify something. I do not claim to know the precise state of climate change, ecology or biodiversity. My certainty, that we are in the midst of a climate and ecological emergency, is not because of any ideology, anything I've read, even my university education in ecology, it is from direct observation.

I am a lifelong nature observer, naturalist, since I was a young child in the 1960s. I came to realize that our modern civilization was living unsustainably and destroying the natural systems, that sustained us, when I was only 10 years old. That was 56 years ago. I have over half a century, of following this situation, when I first had this insight. I wish I was mistaken, I do not want to believe that our civilization is heading towards self-induced, ecological suicide. I so wished our leaders would see sense.

I have looked very closely, hope against hope that I was wrong, mistaken. No one could have been more sceptical, testing whether my insight was correct or not. I spend most of my time, out in nature. I am a very good observer of the natural world. I have seen massive declines in our biodiversity over my lifetime, it has been heartbreaking. I didn't want to see this, and hoped against hope, it would be reversed, but it just keeps getting worse.

With climate change, I've followed the science on this since it started to become better known in the 1980s, and a bit before that. I know what the projections were. I studied it formally at university as part of my ecology degree from 1992 onwards, and a bit before this as I prepared to go to university as a mature student.

I have seen all those warnings from 40 years back confirmed, with it getting warmer, more and more extreme weather. The reality has always been worse, and faster, than the rather conservative science predicted. My certainty comes from direct observation, not some ideology, what I have read and been taught.

I laugh in the face of idiotic, ideologically motivated climate change deniers and anti-environmentalists, that try telling me that I am mistaken, ideologically motivated, left wing, a catastrophist. It is much, much worse than I could ever put into words. All these deniers are beyond stupid and ignorant. I have yet to encounter any denier, who has anywhere near my level of experience, and knowledge with the natural world. It really is absurd that these stupid people trying telling me I am wrong, without any real experience or knowledge about the natural world. I have no caution in calling such people utterly stupid, ideologically motivated morons, and ignoramuses.

I do so, not out of any sort of arrogance, or sense of superiority, but out of over half a century of watching it all unfold with my own 2 eyes. This is where my confidence about it comes from. I know of no really experienced nature observer, who is not a fanatical ideologue, who sees it any different. All the naturalists, nature observers I respect, because of their experience and knowledge, see it the same. I know of no exception to this. Indigenous peoples see it the same. Only ignorant fools and fanatical ideologues, see it differently.

Only those with profound ignorance of the natural world, dispute the evidence and engage in denial. I care very much about not only the natural world, but humanity. I have nothing but utter contempt for those trying to gaslight, people without this level of knowledge and experience, into believing that climate change is not real or driven by human activity. Who try to gaslight the less knowledgeable into believing that biodiversity is not declining, and people saying the climate and biodiversity crisis is real, are motivated by left wing ideology. Shut your mouths you filthy liars and stop misleading the public! What you are doing spreading this disinformation is utterly evil, and endangering humanity. Deniers are a bunch of con-artists and liars, who do not have a sincere and honest bone in their bodies. They all have hidden agendas.

[David Attenborough @fandom_david]

The strange thing about humans…

We spend billions trying to discover life on other planets,

while treating the only living planet we’ve ever found as if it’s replaceable.

[elsa @callmeMaharani]

most males are cowards when it comes to confronting their male friends about mistreating women, because they value male approval more than women’s safety.

[❄️ Snow 🔻 Himbo ☭ @SnowHimbo]

I love the economic model where we are told that paying supermarket cashiers a living wage will instantly collapse the global economy, but a CEO getting a $50 million exit bonus for ruining a company is just standard market health.

[Alex Ⓥ @localhost]

@carbon_cats @itchio Same error here, really annoying.

[Alex Ⓥ @localhost]

@Pinboard Thanks for the info! I was already worried it would vanish. (old https://t.co/fy0KUoy0q3 user here ;D )

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

The human species has essentially been transformed into a giant profit-generating machine for corporations.

Under capitalism, humanity exists to serve the interests of the corporation. We are all livestock; beasts of burden used to carry margin expansion forward from quarterly statement to quarterly statement. Enjoyment of life has no value other than the extent to which it can be used to increase the net worth of the shareholders.

That’s why everyone’s so unhappy. We’re not living with purpose. We’re not working together to build a better world and a better future, we’re just pulling levers to turn gears to make the arrow line go up on the graph in the conference room. It’s a hollow, pointless way for people to live.

It makes our whole culture vapid and soulless.

Music is made to be as profitable as possible, which means giving it the broadest possible appeal using formulaic song structure calculated to cause a chemical response in the largest number of human brains.

Movies are designed to draw the largest possible box office revenue at the lowest possible risk to studios and investors, often by just rehashing a movie that’s already proven successful in the past or by slapping together a story about an IP with pre-existing mass appeal.

Food is made to be fast and addictive rather than nourishing.

Healthy human connection has been commodified as social media intertwines with friendships and dating apps insert themselves into the development of romantic relationships.

Human sexuality is being warped and twisted as internet porn normalizes violence and degradation for the maximum number of clicks.

Attention and engagement have been monetized, creating an information ecosystem dominated by conflict and gossip designed to appeal to our baser instincts.

Advertisement is injected into every possible corner of our waking sensory experience, with any available space where the eye might rest or the ear might listen being flooded with psychological manipulation compelling us to consume. They’ll start running commercials in our dreams the instant they have the technology to do so.

You spend eight hours at the office working to generate corporate profits, then you come home and consume products to profit other corporations. You need your beer and snacks to unwind, your streaming services and social media to distract your mind from the stress of it all, your online clothing purchase to try to feel good about yourself, and your prescription drugs to get to sleep at night. People live their entire lives like this.

And that’s those of us who are lucky enough to be living in the global north. In the global south you get wage slavery and exploitation with far more toil, far less relaxation time, and no cheap products made by impoverished workers on other continents with which to comfort yourself.

All of humanity has been roped into this mess. And for what? To make the numbers in some bank accounts increase. To get some green arrows pointing upward on the stock exchange. To enable a few billionaires to buy islands and elections.

All while destroying the biosphere we all depend on for survival.

This, we are told, is the best possible system we could possibly be living under.

I personally do not believe this is true. I personally believe we can have better. Those who benefit from this current arrangement are going to assure us it’s impossible and do everything they can to stop us from changing it, but we do have the means to reclaim the wealth, dignity and happiness that they have stolen from us.

They built this whole machine on our backs. All we need to do is stand up.

[Thomas Fazi @battleforeurope]

Crazy that this is getting barely any coverage. This year’s European Press Prize was just awarded to an investigative report by the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. It is entitled “What the Wounds Tell” and in it the journalists Maud Effting and Willem Feenstra document the cases of 114 children in Gaza under the age of 15 who were struck by a single bullet to the head or chest. Almost all of them died or were left severely disabled. They chose to document only the cases of boys and girls under the age of 15 (though often much younger: aged 3, 4 or 7) because these are children who can be immediately identified as such. “A single bullet in these parts of the body is a clear indication that these children were deliberately targeted“, the two journalists write.

This is the article: https://t.co/YkZrpqBWBQ

[Mélania @MelaniaFrance]

Toute la tristesse de la destruction de l'environnement résumée en une photo 😥

[Steve Sweeney @SweeneySteve]

Today I$rael tried to kill me in a targeted airstrike in southern Lebanon as I was reporting on was the targeting of bridges and the forced displacement of 1 million people, an ethnic cleansing operation on a larger scale than the Nakba

I have absolutely no doubt that this was deliberate. Despite claims there were no warnings ahead of the strike and no notifications sent to the Lebanese Army who allowed us to film

As we have seen in Gaza they want to silence journalists who document and report their war crimes

It is the western powers who provide political and military support for I$rael, arming it to the teeth to carry out genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing here in Lebanon. They are not simply complicit, but active participants and should be held accountable for their actions.

But if I$rael thinks today’s strike will silence us and keep us out of the field they are very, very mistaken

[Beyond FPS @beyond_fps]

So ... turns out that those studios that "made" those DLSS 5 clips didn't know anything about it, either.

It was obviously Nvidia, hence why they all look the same.