Astra Taylor

I think this deserves at least as much sustained attention from US media as Claudine Gay's dissertation

Trump’s War With Iran Is Also a Climate War Fossil fuels are structurally embedded in modern warfare.

"At a time when civilization is hurtling toward irreversible climate breakdown, to overlook the climate consequences of three of the deadliest militaries on earth going to war would be journalistic malpractice."

newrepublic.com/article/2073...

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.

Topic Rebecca Solnit Discusses "The Beginning Comes After the End" With Bill McKibben Third Act Advisor Rebecca Solnit discusses her latest book The Beginning Comes After the End, with Bill McKibben, Founder of Third Act Her latest book is a thrilling account of the sheer breadth and ...

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 Jeffrey Epstein cover-up is an affront to US democracy | Rebecca Solnit Democracy means a society and system in which everyone’s rights matter. Rapists count on this being untrue – and Trump is proving them right

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.

Even without an on-campus voting site, NCAT students still marched to the polls. 💙💛 Students at North Carolina A&T showed that barriers won’t stop their voices. When access isn’t easy, they organize. ... TikTok video by HBCU Student Action Alliance

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 Calls For Lutnick To Resign Over Epstein Connection Massie accused Lutnick of being in business with Epstein “many years after” his conviction in 2008.

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!

Backstage An excerpt from Why Sound Matters

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.