throughline from covid through epstein through genAI is CONSENT. our ability to engage in meaningful consent over our lives and collective futures is one way we describe our relative freedoms or liberation as communities
KENNEDY: You said, 'Republicans think can troll their way to ethnic cleansing.' Did I read that correctly?
BIER: DHS tweeted for 100m deportations. That would be ethnic cleansing!
K: You don't think it's hyperbolic?
B: I think advocating 100m deportations is ethnic cleansing. Yes. Your time is up
Did they say they were Christians? There certainly are some at Unitarian Universalist churches/congregations, but most of us aren’t. If someone comes up to you and just says “hey, Satanists come to my Unitarian Church, you should check us out!” They aren’t necessarily Christian. A bit forward? Sure.
Billionaires backed Clinton, and so had to catch up on getting into Trumps good graces. But in 2024, they backed him over Biden/Harris from the start. Plus, 8 years of widening inequality makes things worse. Makes me wonder, who did billionaires back in 2020?
Strongly suspect that as this war and its negative effects escalate, we're gonna see a massive increase in disinfo and unsourced "news" - starting right the hell now.
PLEASE don't share "breaking" news from rando or disreputable accounts who provide no links.
Driving has gotten *significantly* worse since covid began, and I think it’s a combination of factors.
1) people got out of the habit and a lot of us never went back to commuting
2) literal covid brain damage
3) people decided in those years we are no longer a society
Heat map of CDC levels and PMC estimate of prevalence, 1 in 87 estimated actively infectious.
PMC COVlD Update, Week of Mar 9, 2026 (U.S.)
This week we will likely see the 100th consecutive day above 500,000 estimated new daily infections.
However, the 12th wave is winding down. CDC levels are Moderate in 18 states, High in 7, and Very High in 0.
🧵THREAD 1 of 4
Great so can we just switch everything to be off by 30 min in between DST and not? Like the important thing is that we stop defying nature and just have consistent clocks throughout the year.
We might start by noting that this is not at all what is happening. “Liberals will always side with fascism over socialism, because facism protects capital” it is claimed. But both historically and today liberals never do this (conservatives often do). Nor, for that matter, do fascists always protect the interests of business elites—think of Trump’s tariffs. And to the great disappointment of apocalypticists everywhere, we are not faced with a choice between two dramatic pivots from liberalism. Rather, countries around the world are balkanising into ‘normie progressive liberal’ and ‘unhinged internet fascist’ factions.
This is a long, but really great read.
(Do note that he is talking about political conservatism and liberalism, and that the lessons, themes, landscapes, etc, are not necessarily the same when taking about theological or religious conservatism vs liberalism.)
a. piece. of. software. is. not. the. type. of. entity. that. can. gain. consciousness.
Graphic with a pink-to-orange gradient background and dotted design accents. Large yellow text at the top reads, “SIX WAYS to attend.” Below, gray text reads, “UUA GENERAL ASSEMBLY” and “June 14–21, 2026.” The large letters “GA” appear in pink with white connecting lines and glowing nodes, suggesting a network. Along the bottom, silhouettes of diverse people holding hands—including children, adults, and a person using a wheelchair—stand in front of the GA letters.
Graphic titled “SIX WAYS to attend GA 2026” on a pink-to-orange gradient background. Three rounded text boxes list options 01–03 with yellow number markers. 01: “Online from Home — Join live sessions as they happen — right from your own space.” 02: “Satellite Site — Join a local host congregation for a shared GA experience.” 03: “Community Gathering — Organize or join a watch party or a full weekend of shared participation.” The large pink “GA” with white network lines appears behind the text. Silhouettes of diverse people holding hands stretch across the bottom. A yellow banner at the bottom reads “uua.org/ga.”
Continuation graphic titled “SIX WAYS to attend GA 2026” on the same pink-to-orange gradient background. Three rounded text boxes list options 04–06 with yellow number markers. 04: “Studio Site (Louisville, KY) — Be there at the Galt House — GA’s main in-person and production site.” 05: “GA EduCenter — Explore live and on-demand learning opportunities.” 06: “Mix & Match — Combine approaches — join live when you can and watch recordings later.” The pink “GA” with white connecting lines and glowing nodes appears behind the text. Silhouettes of diverse people holding hands line the bottom. A yellow banner reads “uua.org/ga.”
Promotional graphic with a pink-to-orange gradient background. Large yellow headline reads, “Meet the Moment Together Everywhere!” Below is a large pink “GA” with white network lines and glowing connection points. Silhouettes of diverse people holding hands—including children and a person using a wheelchair—stand across the bottom. Text reads, “UUA GENERAL ASSEMBLY June 14–21, 2026.” A yellow banner at the bottom says, “Register at: uua.org/ga.”
GA 2026 is Together Everywhere — with six ways to attend. Join online, gather locally, attend the Studio Site in Louisville, explore the EduCenter, or mix & match to fit your schedule.
Wherever you are, you can be part of GA!
Learn more + register: http://uua.org/GA
#UUAGA #TogetherEverywhere #UU
I see the sense in what t you’re describing as an end goal, but I wonder if his proposal constitutes a strategic place to start the negotiations. Better to start here, and then concede to what you describe, than to start at “reasonable” and be compromised into oblivion?
Sorry I'm not more open-minded about LLMs, it's just some fucking maniacs shoveled out a bunch of useless bloatware featuring that technology, did not give me any chance to opt out, reorganized the entire economy around it, zeroed out gains made by green energy, and made it impossible to buy RAM
A lot of people say AI isn't very good for the world and its outputs are routinely unreliable, but these haters fail to see how it's revolutionizing how we incinerate schoolchildren.
Daily reminder that calling ai dead labor and stolen labor is literal.
If some people don’t have enough money to live, then we don’t live in a free society. If some people have too much money, then we don’t live in a free society.
You mean “Antithetical to living in a free society?”
No Kings Sat, March 28, 12-3 pm, Genesee Gateway Park, 151 Mt. Hope Ave, 14620. We're Not Going Back.
Just realized that with Abolish ICE at +11, it's polling over 30 percentage-points ahead of Trump approval. Guess that means if the media wants to be representative, it should give at least like 40% more airtime to people who support abolishing ICE to Trump supporters
Full Moon - In the fullness of the moon, may we appreciate the wilderness that still exists, protect it and those who dwell within it, and wildlife outside those wilderness spaces wherever they are and go #WorldWildlifeDay #fullmoon
What's scary about this story is the surveillance it hints at. This trans woman had changed her name, legally, but chose not to change her gender marker. She was apparently flagged in the DMV system as trans and her license was invalidated under a law that supposedly only concerned gender markers.
As a wise colleague said: “The frontline against ICE is wherever you are.”
And much more of the state is not northern Virginia than is Virginia, I think even by population? Like the nova-dc-Maryland dynamic is one thing, but I’d also assume there’s plenty of strong college grads from state (and private) colleges across the state that do not want to stay in small town Va.
84% of the time, “ChatGPT Health” killed a customer using their paid service as advertised
“Support the Troops” comes so much easier to most politicians than “End the War,” even though the best way to support the troops is to end the war.
We're no more than a few hours away from the next phase of digital propaganda: unverified videos of "liberated people celebrating" will go viral. Many of these videos will later be revealed to have predated the illegal war, or be entirely unrelated to current events
Upshot: verify before amplifying
Democracy starts by establishing the basic rights that can never be lost or upended by the loss of an election. Without that guarantee, the electoral stakes are too high for anyone to tolerate or accept an electoral defeat. Democracy does not mean minorities must freely surrender their freedoms.
You can’t wander into the Thirty Years War and just decide to settle the matter by voting. The Protestants get 51% of the vote, so now all the Catholics have to convert. That’s not what democracy is. Democracy is when no one has to convert no matter who wins the next election.
DO NOT LET ANY MEMBER OF CONGRESS WALK AROUND THINKING THEIR CONSTITUENTS DON’T CARE
