Bennett

"A more helpful question than “Is it intelligent” might be: what does it mean to know? What does it mean to believe that others know? How does this impact trust in a society, and how might AI colonize those mechanisms to seize that trust? "

^^^ THIS.

Inside TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans From Filing Their Taxes for Free Using lobbying, the revolving door and “dark pattern” customer tricks, Intuit fended off the government’s attempts to make tax filing free and easy, and created its multi-billion-dollar franchise.

With tax season in full swing, here's our reminder that TurboTax owner Intuit spent two decades fighting to prevent Americans from filing their taxes online for free.

(Published 2019)

Ian McKellen performs “The Strangers’ Case” speech from “Sir Thomas More” on Colbert.

Was Epstein a Russian agent? Was Epstein an Israeli agent? This debate that's is "either/or" is raging in social media right now. It's far off the mark. Epstein ran an operation on the model of Robert Maxwell, who networked with at least 7 intel agencies,

Beefing with a five year-old should be an impeachable offense for the stain to the national honor alone. It's frankly pathetic.

The Washington Post just laid off its entire award-winning photo team. They were our eyes in places we'll never see. It's a horrifying loss at a time when lying governments, propaganda and AI slop are on the rise.

Cute talking parrots have gone viral on TikTok, yet these animals were likely bred in abject cruelty (or were even snatched from the wild). See for yourself in this new Vox investigation:

It Turns Out Waymos Are Being Controlled by Workers in the Philippines During a Congressional hearing, Waymo's chief safety officer, Mauricio Peña, was grilled over the company's reliance on overseas workers.

I feel like a lot of folks sharing this article didn't read it. People are acting like the cars are being remote driven & this has been hidden when the article makes clear it's the opposite.

Guess what! I wrote about OpenClaw née Moltbot and Moltbook in this week's episode:

Newsletter version: newsletter.danhon.com/archive/s21e...

Podcast version:
thingsthatcaughtmyattention.libsyn.com/that-whole-m...

uh more in thread I guess...

LiberalCurrents Official subreddit for Liberal Currents, an independent publication that promotes thinkers who advance ambitious agendas to foster a truly open society. Read us at liberalcurrents.com

I saw that Trump polls -40 on Reddit and finally sat down and made us a subreddit, please join if you're active over there www.reddit.com/r/LiberalCur...

I absolutely understand the museum folks who want it restored but it looks SO cool and provocative and improved tbh in the damaged form that it immediately gives me like seventeen different ideas for making it a special exhibit centerpiece

Secrets of Intelligence Services I asked Claude code to build Claude code. You won’t believe what happened next.

I asked Claude Code to build Claude Code. You won’t believe what happened next.

These historic computing labs teach kids what technology was like before phones, social media, and the cloud - Fast Company The labs help students and researchers understand computing’s history and future—and stoke an interest in cloud-free technology.

Yay, our glorious @mediaarchaeology.bsky.social and her fearless leader @loriemerson.net appear in @fastcompany.com this week! Come visit us sometime.

www.fastcompany.com/91483774/the...

The case against owning small pets Your pet fish — or bird, or hamster — is probably miserable.

It is weird that we normalized keeping caged wild animals in our living rooms

www.vox.com/the-highligh...

The secret to better public housing Subsidized housing can greatly improve the lives of low-income kids — if we design it right.

"The scarred legacy of the projects has strained public faith in public housing, but there is still an important role for government to play... cross-class living and mobility is, after all, the great promise of city life." ~@mbolotnikova.bsky.social

🎁 www.vox.com/future-perfe...

>doesn't know the lore

If you have an interest in mixing computation and experiments to understand microbial evolution (for example antibiotic resistance) and you think you might be a good fit for a postdoc in my lab, reach out. If it seems it might be a fit I’m happy to help you frame it as AI for Biology per this call

To be clear, big fan of this idea, even if I'm not an oat milk guy (soy milk 4eva). Saves loads of money and carbon on shipping too

Oat Milk Slices Oat Milk Slices are finally here! This revolutionary product is easily proportionable for always fresh plant-based milk - just blend with water! This precycled product utilizes 85% less packaging, and...

On the other hand you can get oat milk that comes in slices now www.milkadamia.com/products/oat...

"In our book, Why We Fear AI, we argue that it is in fact precisely the error-prone and brittle nature of these systems that makes them work so well for political repression. 1/2

i made a version of wikipedia you can doomscroll
xikipedia.org

Does your research look beyond "AI disruption" to examine actual practices?

Along with @dipanjan-saha.bsky.social, we invite you to propose an abstract for our panel at the #EASST2026 conference in Kraków, 8–11 September.

Submit by 9 March here: nomadit.co.uk/conference/e...

#STS #EMCA #AI

Modern apartments have lower fire death rates than houses.

Yet codes require fourplexes to install commercial sprinklers, build dual staircases, and hire architects—while similar-sized single-family houses are exempt.

These costs block building smaller apartment buildings.

Important thread for understanding what AlphaGenome is and isn't (and the implications). Starting here and reading down, and/or from the top.

the very first time I recall her name was her argument that reforms weren't needed after the Grenfell Tower disaster because the residents should have known they were getting a bargain for a firetrap, which I thought was rich from someone whose @ was/is "asymmetric info"

cover of The Washington Post on Wednesday Feb 4, 2026. Headline on bottom, right: Musk wanted to hook users; his chatbot got more sexual

My story on Elon Musk cutting safeguards at xAI is on the front page of today's @washingtonpost.com. I’m also among 100’s of reporters laid off. I absolutely loved my job my brilliant coworkers & the thrill of reporting @ the center of forces upending the world: AI & Silicon Valley’s political power

I have many thoughts on this paper but for starters, these proponents of the UPF concept have a lot of nerve basically arguing "it is the empirical evidence that's wrong for contradicting our theory," as though they have some long-accepted theory about the world like gravity or natural selection

Emphasizing that ICE *already* has money it can spend to buy as many body cameras as it wants; the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which gave ICE $29.9 BILLION for ICE removal operations, and specifically listed "information technology" as a valid use (or ICE could just reprogram the money).

I'm co-chairing the Society for Social Studies of Science @4sweb.bsky.social Conference in Toronto, Oct 2026. #STS #scipol #innovation

Theme: "TechnoPower • Technoscientific Futures".

Open panel submissions portal is open! ls!

Deadline: 2nd February 2026

www.4sonline.org/about_the_co...

Every person on Bluesky should know:
* Every post on Bluesky is PUBLIC forever
* Every post on Bluesky is archived by ICE, NSA, and many other agencies
* Even if you delete a post, it’s already been captured
* Judges don’t care if you were “kidding” or being ironic

www.404media.co/the-200-site...