Does anyone have recommendations for a language learning app/platform? Something like Duolingo, but that hasn't sold out to genAI replacing real translators and educators at its core? Willing to pay for quality and AI avoidance.
A Dutch newspaper reported stranded travellers in the Middle East organising evacuation flights to Europe. Open-source checks suggest the story may be false: the organiser’s image appears AI-generated, and there is no evidence the flights existed.
www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/03...
erm.. how do y know he dint steal it..?
Comrade Public Library 🫡
Back in 2023, @australiainstitute.org.au research showed most Australians either don’t know what “woke” means or think it’s a positive thing.
Time to find a better way of talking about those who disagree. australiainstitute.org.au/post/woke-up...
I don't know if others have already cited her in this context, but Tonia Sutherland's Resurrecting the Black Body feels even more urgent. www.ucpress.edu/books/resurr...
Kindleberger trap
I can’t walk out
I’m not the hegemon, baby
Why can’t you see
What you’re doing to me
My security umbrella’s tearing
We can’t go on together
Strait of Hormuz is mined
Can’t keep the sea lanes open
With suspicious mines
I'm using Google Translate a lot to work out how to say certain things in French and sometimes when a sentence involves the second person it chooses the wrong form for what I need (tu vs vous) but it turns out I can get it to use the desired form by ending the sentence with either "buddy" or "sir" 🙃
From the river to the beach, Australia won't have free speech
www.deepcutnews.com/p/a-list-of-...
Those Tomahawks the US is using to blast Iran? They were first developed at Johns Hopkins.
So the shoegate I understand it is this:
1. Trump equals shoe size to dick size
2. Trump asks Rubio, Hegseth and the rest of the ilk about their shoe size.
3. They all yell, like 10, 11, big, huge.
4. Trump buys those for them, and they shamble around in shoes twice their size.
NYT headline: How Trump and His Advisers Miscalculated Iran’s Response to War In the lead-up to the U.S.-Israeli attack, President Trump downplayed the risks to the energy markets as a short-term concern.
Sorry NYT headline. To miscalculate, one must actually have made an attempt at calculation.
I am always curious about what it is like for the subset of political appointees with genuine ideological beliefs to see their most significant work dismantled by goons, and I got to ask Julie Su that question.
www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/julie-sus-...
I'm still thinking about this - hackers thinking their prompt injection attacks are sophisticated and Bruce Sterling out here pre-poisoning the models in 1985
Look I know centrists are uncomfortable with a "wealth tax," but how about "bail?" You all love bail. We can make them the same thing.
The senator demands a 50% increase in US weapons spending to counter China’s 7% increase.
Here are the two military budgets as a share of GDP. China hasn’t fought a war since 1979; we all know the US record.
And you’re worried about aggression from which country again?
So much ink will be spilled but bookmark this from @abuaardvark.bsky.social which probably explains 99% of it. The other 1% was Witkoff and Kushner.
Bombing freedom to Middle East was always grotesque but is just absurd from party that is bringing US to authoritarianism. Bringing free markets and democracy to Iran and state capitalism and authoritarianism to US.
After revelations that companies like Ring have been selling home security footage to ICE, the most common defense of keeping a camera up seems to be, “But what if I’m stalked?”
And as a violence researcher, I’m just here to state for the record that police do not care about your security footage.
Okay, all the obvious “wtf” stuff aside, this isn’t even what they say it is?
(Good or popular) writers are not guaranteed to be good editors.
In fact, most of them are good & popular because of a good editor.
So it’s not offering “editing” advice.
It is telling you how to mimic the writer.
Remember the mystery a few weeks ago, about how and why xAI was spitting out people's government names, even people who have only *ever* used a pseudonym professionally?
Special Military Operation update: fuck
try to enjoy it for the craft, run your own race, and believe half of what you see and none of what you hear from industry pundits.
things people post online are to influence -- not necessarily the truth. I remember when coding bootcamps were gonna make everyone a programmer. now vibecoding is, etc
Good words of warning here. AI models are generally designed to read and incorporate (and, in a sense, believe) virtually everything they find online, with very few guardrails. The information can get divorced from its original source, context, & rebuttals or retractions. That's a really big problem
crucial coverage from The Guardian that features our collaborative, movement-building website
against-a-i.com
The security of other NATO states and European partners like Ukraine and Moldova cannot rely on continued alliance with a US whose leadership consistently put Russia first, even in relation to US interests. No amount of European diplomacy is going to change that.
6/ reminder that even while fighting to maintain a safe climate & wanting to quit fossil fuels ASAP, any energy system/price shock is bad, and worse the poorer or more vulnerable you are. Recessions hurt, and energy underpins economic activity.
See @isabellamweber.bsky.social i/v
White man wearing suit with fire towering behind him and translucent skull overlay with the words “Widespread death and suffering” in all caps
4/ gonna point out here that kinetically stopping a fifth of global oil supply is unprecedented and kinda *unimaginable* which is probably why markets were slow to react last week and why @sky.skymarchini.net ‘s oil pals sent these such responses to questions about the outlook:
And embrace joy.
Whenever possible.
The older I get the more I realise life doesn't give you much in the way of joy and pleasure.
Don't miss those opportunities.
I know our expectations for this administration are in the basement but it is INSANE they started a war without a plan for the Strait of Hormuz.
