Celeste Ng

So when thousands of women (and children) were being duplicated--including in non-consensual AI porn--it was no big deal. But it took "only a 15-sec clip" of these two famous white men to draw outrage and fear. Gotcha. Cool cool.

The New York Times @nytimes.com

It took only a 15-second clip of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt duking it out on a crumbling rooftop — made by A.I. with a two-sentence prompt and the click of a button — to draw swift outrage, and sizable fear, from Hollywood. "It’s nothing short of terrifying," one scriptwriter said.

Why an A.I. Video of Tom Cruise Battling Brad Pitt Spooked Hollywood

A 15-second clip created by an artificial intelligence tool owned by the Chinese technology company ByteDance appears more cinematic than anything so far.

Your periodic reminder that one way to think about privilege is: who's allowed to make mistakes?

Had convos w/ multiple people in the past 4 days who DID NOT KNOW that
1. AI doesn't "think" or know anything; it's a probability machine
2. It was created using massive amounts of work stolen from actual people including me
3. The environmental costs are astronomical
Spread the word, every time!

*Jon Ossoff* just announced he's voting no. You think that happened out of nowhere? CALL YOUR SENATORS. 👇

If your boss or company tells you to do something unethical: don't say yes. Make them write it down.

I explained it to several young teens today: imagine we wanted you to become more self-sufficient in the kitchen, so we decided to charge you $20 every time you got takeout. But also we have no food in the house, we won't let you go to the store, and also you don't know how to cook.

Me: I will just relax for a few minutes by playing a mindless game on my phone

Phone: Cool, every 90 seconds you will just need to watch a little animated snuff film featuring a mother and child freezing to death, or a king slowly being crushed against a spiky wall by piles of falling rubble

Libraries are one of the most radical social institutions we have, because they’re based on the idea that *everyone* has the right to information, for free. It’s also what makes them crucial to democracy. I will never stop yelling about this!

Reply to @pronounced-ing.bsky.social

Been thinking about this a lot (not tagging the sender, for their privacy). Most of us won't have the chance for for grand, capital-R Resistance heroics. But every one of us will have a thousand small choices to make about how to live our lives and where to draw lines. Use them well.

Got a printer? You can start fighting fascism. Here's a thread of things you can print and distribute. 👇

I promise doing something--even this--feels better than raging silently. And maybe it'll show you that standing up is possible and open you up to more things you can do.

Okay, I cannot recommend 5calls.org enough. Enter your address and it will find all your reps (federal and state). AND give you a list of issues to call about AND which reps to call about each of them AND a little script for each, in case it's helpful. They have an app, too.

5 Calls

Spend 5 minutes. Make 5 calls. Make your voice heard.

Throwing sand in the gears of terrible machinery is also resisting.

If you're looking for a concrete action to take today--and you're a Visa cardholder--take 2 min and send an email to them today. 👇

Amy Lynn Smith @alswrite.bsky.social

If you’re a Visa cardholder you can let them know you won’t be any longer if they do business with fElon. I called and they said they’re taking comments at [email protected]. Maybe if enough of us complain they’ll pull the deal.

Elon Musk's X begins its push into financial services with Visa deal

Visa will enable X users to move funds between traditional bank accounts and their digital wallet and make instant peer-to-peer payments, like Zelle or Venmo.

In the past day I’ve heard two people who really should know better say they asked ChatGPT for factual info.

ChatGPT is not a search engine. It is predictive text based on other people’s stolen writing; its whole job is to make stuff up. Please do not ask it for facts. Tell a friend.

The Guardian @theguardian.com

Don’t know what to buy your loved ones for Christmas? Just ask ChatGPT

Don’t know what to buy your loved ones for Christmas? Just ask ChatGPT

Santa has a new little helper. But can an AI-powered shopping assistant really master the subtle art of gift giving? Some people love buying Christmas presents. Polly Arrowsmith starts making a note of what her friends and family like, then hunts for…

"But I'm a citizen," you say. "This doesn't apply to me." It's a pretty short step from deporting lawful residents without due process to "show me your papers, you don't LOOK like a real American to ME" on the street.

I head someone explain this as “Good weird is being weird about your own business, bad weird is being weird about other people’s business” and I thought that summed it up pretty well.

Blue Heron Farm @blueheronfarm.bsky.social

Stop being the bad kind of weird. This place is for the good kind of weird only. 🦋

The mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu, apparently worked all morning before going to the hospital to have a baby in the afternoon. 😳 That is some dedication. (Also, congrats Mayor Wu and family!)

So no joke: the dictatorship in 1970s Argentina once banned Venn diagrams. Because they could be seen as finding common ground between two (apparently) different groups, and if you’re a dictator, unity is a threat. There’s an artist whose work revolves around this!

Subversive Mathematics: The Outlawing of Venn Diagrams in 1970’s Argentina

Adelaide Blair invites you to a performance of Subversive Mathematics: The Outlawing of Venn Diagrams in 1970’s Argentina. It is about the Argentinian Dirty War, the subsequent outlawing of Venn di…

I must have walked by this fence hundreds of times but today I noticed that the posts are crowned with little snail sculptures of varying sizes and poses.

If you think COVID vaccines should continue to be available to all: take 5 min and add your comments at the link below. (Advice for what to say in the linked thread.)

"We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement. The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights." FINALLY. Thank you, @harvard.edu, for FINALLY taking a stand.

My hometown’s river is no longer flammable because of public policy! And our lake (Erie) was once considered dead and now it is slowly recovering, thanks largely to environmental regulations.

Public policy works, pass it on.

Reposting with alt text. In case it inspires anyone else out there to hold the line.

Abby Vesoulis @abbyvesoulis.bsky.social

An EEOC admin. judge sent a fiery all-department email this AM alleging: 1. Trump's exec orders & instructions to target private citizens with them are illegal. 2. the judge had sent an earlier email with a similar tone yesterday that later vanished from their sent folder & colleagues' inboxes.

Yup. Writing is thinking. So if you write a shitty first draft, you did some thinking and are on your way! If you got “AI” to write the draft, you haven’t thought AND now you’re trying to fix up what some non-thinking robot “thought.” You just put yourself 30 yards behind the starting line.