@astra
Author of a growing pile of books (Solidarity; The Age of Insecurity; Remake the World; Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss it When It's Gone; The People's Platform), maker of documentaries, schemer with the Debt Collective, editing at Hammer & Hope.
RESULT: Over & over, Democratic lawmaker Shelly Willingham helped the North Carolina GOP override the vetoes of Governor Stein & Cooper.
He lost just now to a progressive challenger, 56% to 44%.
(And he's likely one of several in this position. Stay tuned.)
There's been a lot of debate within the Democratic establishment about what rhetoric to use via ICE.
Well, an incumbent doesn't lose by 48 percentage points very often—and her vote on collaborating with ICE was the defining issue here.
The Beginning Comes After The End
Don’t miss @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social in conversation with @billmckibben.bsky.social, hosted by @thirdactorg.bsky.social
Tuesday, March 10 at 7:00 pm ET
RSVP to attend:
it's 2016: north carolina introduces a bill to ban trans people from using bathrooms safely. there's a national outcry; companies withdraw business up to and including the NCAA cancelling a publicized game. the bill fails.
it's 2026: kansas passes a law nullifying trans people's licenses. crickets.
To do this, anti-trans lawmakers in Kansas moved fast to change the law, overrode the governor’s veto, and pushed for the legal changes to go into effect nearly immediately. That kind of power—to void gender on official documents, to compel gender conformity—is terrifying and it will not stop here.
interesting how JD is the opposite
New drone footage from @floodlightnews.org - the fossil methane power plant Musk built specifically to create abusive and racist material on his social media website is still wildly breaching EPA regulations even after a ruling against using them -->>>
floodlightnews.org/thermal-dron...
The new batch of Epstein files make me retch. They reveal the rot of abuse & corruption at the highest levels of government, finance & tech.
As Rebecca Solnit observes, it feels like: “rapists all the way down, and enablers all the way up.”
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
The pace at which US wealth concentration is rising is simply staggering
The concentration of AI wealth into the hands of a few tech barons + plutocratic capture ==> unchartered territory
that needs to be our mantra.
Some very powerful people want us to believe human labor is obsolete & way too many people are buying it.
Don’t let them make you think that you are disposable.
Time to revive the idea of a job guarantee. They just created a bunch of fascist ICE jobs overnight. Imagine that for work that matters.
“Confusion” doesn’t begin to describe our emerging predicament. Seventy-two percent of American teens have turned to A.I. for companionship. A.I. therapists, coaches and lovers are also on the rise. Yet few people realize that some of the frontline technologists building this new world seem deeply ambivalent about what they’re doing. They are so torn, in fact, that some privately admit they don’t plan to use A.I. intimacy tools. “Zero percent of my emotional needs are met by A.I.,” an executive who ran a team mitigating safety risks at a top lab told me. “I’m in it up to my eyeballs at work, and I’m careful.” Many others said the same thing: Even as they build A.I. tools, they hope they never feel the need to turn to machines for emotional support. As a researcher who develops cutting-edge capabilities for artificial emotion put it, “that would be a dark day.”
Developers I spoke to said the same incentives that make bots irresistible can stand in the way of reasonable safeguards, making outright abstention the only sure way to stay safe. Some described feeling stuck between protecting users and raising profits: They support guardrails in theory, but don’t want to compromise the product experience in practice. It’s little wonder the protections that do get built can seem largely symbolic — you have to squint to see the fine-print notice that “ChatGPT can make mistakes” or that Character.AI is “not a real person.” “I’ve seen the way people operate in this space,” said one engineer who worked at a number of tech companies. “They’re here to make money. It’s a business at the end of the day.”
But even if companies can curb serious dependence on A.I. companions — an open question — many of the developers I spoke with were troubled by even moderate use of these apps. That’s because people who manage to resist full-blown digital companions can still find themselves hooked on A.I.-mediated love. When machines draft texts, craft vows and tell people how to process their own emotions, every relationship turns into “a throuple,” a founder of a conversational A.I. business said. “We’re all polyamorous now. It’s you, me and the A.I.”
A genuinely alarming piece in the NYT about how the developers, scientists and assorted techbros behind "AI companions"/"synthetic care" do not even know or understand the potential harms of the tech they're developing but they're too greedy to stop themselves from developing it.
North Carolina lawmakers have voted to remove all college campus voting sites. Specifically at the largest HBCU in the US NC A&T. They now have to walk 30 minutes to their nearest polling place. Students are protesting this - pls share and support.
www.tiktok.com/t/ZThx29BJ9/
not the most comfortable conversation...but no one I'd rather have it with than @arielleangel.bsky.social
So… big news.
(Keep reading.)
Well done
the statute that Jeanine Pirro reportedly tried to indict congressional Dems under, 18 USC 2387, was originally passed as part of the 1947 Smith Act, a notorious law used to clamp down on free speech during the Red Scare
ridic to say that. so much damage and it's so hard to rebuild
unbearable
omg
This guts me
Wall Street Journal, y'all
One hero teen in this story is not only driving her parents to work at 4 am for max safety but texting her friends her notes live from class since she’s the only one who dares attend in person
Horrifying, and I also would like to join this girl’s political campaign whenever she’s ready to run
Massie accused Lutnick of being in business with Epstein “many years after” his conviction in 2008.
Brilliant piece, and a public service to put these foul and upsetting pieces together.
Woo hoo!
My book Why Sound Matters is just out in the UK and EU. Here is a new excerpt, “Backstage” dadadrummer.substack.com/p/backstage
“Independent” is doing too much work in this first wave. They are arresting journalists and just like everything else they’ve done, they’re testing the limits of our resistance by starting wt vulnerable margins.
DHS should be embarrassed that their ICE agent hires are so soft they can’t handle being videotaped, even while masked, so they resort to pepper spraying women at close range.
And we should be proud of the Santa Barbara women who stood their ground anyway.
