Mark Barnett

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[they/them might be giants ☭ @babadookspinoza]

The myth of democracy can’t survive into the age of trillionaires—the ruling class isn’t even pretending it will. They’re busy preparing for an entirely different future than the one they’re selling us on. In fact most of us don’t appear in their future at all. This may be our last moment of choice.

[onion person @CantEverDie]

calirornia voters boldly asked “could we get a governor worse than gavin newsom” and they discovered yes, easily

[Ben Norton @BenjaminNorton]

The world's richest centi-billionaire oligarch used his power to change the rules, so he could dump his garbage company (which is cartoonishly overvalued, unprofitable, and incinerating cash) on retail investors, using trillions of dollars in retirement funds as exit liquidity, all in order to become the first trillionaire.

This is the perfect metaphor for the US economy as a whole, which is entirely based on bubbles and scams.

[Alex Veremeyenko @alex_verem]

Let me trace the timeline here because nobody's connecting it.

Step 1: Scrape the entire internet. Every book, every article, every conversation, every piece of art, every forum post. Do it without asking. Do it without paying.

Step 2: Train a model on all of it. Call it "artificial intelligence."

Step 3: Go to BlackRock's Infrastructure Summit and announce: "We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter."

Step 3 is where you sell people's own knowledge back to them. On a meter.

They took the collective output of human thought, compressed it into a model, and now they want to charge you by the token to access a version of what you and everyone you know already created.

One Reddit user put it perfectly: "They stole all this data from us, the people, our life's work, creativity, art, by devouring the internet and blowing through all copyright laws. Now they want to sell it back to us in the form of a utility."

Imagine if someone photocopied every book in the public library, burned the library down, and then opened a subscription service for the copies.

That's the metered intelligence business model.

And they're pitching it to infrastructure investors as though they invented water.

[tori 🌹🌻🐈‍⬛ @plantbasedagony]

“Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it.”

[Stop the Nonsense @kasthomas]

Bezos ended shopping malls. Big box stores. Family owned boutiques, book stores, and businesses of all kinds. He strip-mined the US economy and left you in poverty, a slave to your internet connection. All you've got now is that fucking cell phone. You'll never own a house or buy another new car because of this jackass and his broligarch friends.

[barbarism critic @barbarismcrit]

I think we all know why

[Séamus Malekafzali @Seamus_Malek]

The Abu Muhammad al-Jolani that once spoke derisively of Arab rulers rushing to worship America is, 10 years later, tweeting about Trump cologne.

[Mamane Gondwana @mamaneshow]

"Se débarrasser des archives papier et les remplacer par des archives numériques leur permet de supprimer l’histoire. Un jour, vous trouverez le message « la page n’existe pas », et le lendemain, vous les verrez nier que cela ait réellement eu lieu".
Julian Assange

[Zito @_Zeets]

The promise of the digital world was that things would last. But that’s been proven to be a big lie. Entire archives are deleted in the blink of an eye each day.

[Moshik Temkin @moshik_temkin]

Mind-boggling corruption. The resistance historians won't talk about this, but THIS is actually how a democracy dies completely, by becoming an open plutocracy in which billionaires simply bribe their way out of justice.

[The Serfs (youtube.com/theserftimes) @theserfstv]

Data centers are a two fold mechanism for fast tracking water and energy privatization. It's why billionaires and politicians are forcing them as quickly as possible.

They undo all the progress we've made on climate change and increase the cost of electricity and water forever

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

Literally every part of our lives is covered in billionaire dust. These 'family offices' invest in a locust class who look at things to destroy - bowling alleys, youth hockey, HVAC installers, airport pushcarts - whatever.

[Michael Galant @michael_galant]

New York Times change in headline 🤔

[Aaron Regunberg @AaronRegunberg]

Can you imagine being a supposed leftist and having an opportunity to write a piece in the NYTimes about the big problem with Dems’ strategy and choosing to say what they need to do, of all things, is shut up about climate change, an issue Kamala literally never mentioned once.

[Mark Ames @MarkAmesExiled]

Trump Cartel’s corruption is so vast and grotesque and shamelessly out in the open that it has an almost paralyzing effect on the senses, made worse by the fact that there’s no systemic pushback, no “opposition party” or elite resistance or even the hint of accountability.

[Adam Johnson @adamjohnsonCHI]

peak Tapper here: a segment ostensibly critical of Trump casually says Mahmoud Khalil "called for genocide" which is a complete fabrication and libel. But it won't matter because the subject of his lie is Arab/Muslim and, for CNN, they don't count as humans.

[National Homelessness Law Center @homeless_law]

BREAKING: Louisiana has advanced one of the cruelest anti-homeless bills in the country. It would force homeless people to choose between jail and involuntary treatment, make them pay for it, and if they can't pay, force them to perform unpaid labor. https://t.co/0J9rBRtKkA

[Mark Ames @MarkAmesExiled]

Turning the US into an online hyper casino is an insanely reckless accelerant to all the social destabilization already well underway, yet another example of just how dangerous the US ruling classes are
https://t.co/FG6PZ6y8DR