Rowley @Rowley@qoto.org

Chuck Todd presuming to take a victory lap after the all the absolute fucking horror he blithely stenographed and bleached over ten years is like Judith Miller taking a victory lap over all the mass graves she helped dig in Iraq.

The both of them can fucking rot.

I was hanging out with a bunch of college buds last weekend and - as a cultural frame for the reader - we went to school in the mid-1980s, and at some point someone started looking up the ages of the B-52s and just one small and seemingly insignificant nugget of advice I want to impart to people is maybe don't fucking do this.

You have so much information in your pocket, available with a few clicks - don't use it to be sad.

One of my favourite British traits that I’ve held onto over the years: if I buy a product and it’s crap, I’ll often buy the exact same thing again if I need another one, rather than taking a chance of finding a better alternative, just because this time around I’m prepared for the level of crapness, and won’t be disappointed

Fans of the #Sopranos will remember the #BustOut as a mob tactic in which a business is taken over, loaded up with debt, and driven into the ground, wrecking the lives of the business's workers, customers and suppliers. When the mafia does this, we call it a bust out; when Wall Street does it, we call it #PrivateEquity.

--

If you'd like an essay-formatted version to read/share, here's a link to pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farbenizers

1/

I'm currently making a program that displays pride flags on an embedded system, by modifying a copy of doom.

this may be one of the most foone things I've ever done. if I deliver the binary by floppy disk, I think I'll win at fooning

A few months back, I had a question: If Dobbs was the Supreme Court reversing itself on the right to abortion — essentially taking a right they had codified — what other rights do we hold based on past S.C. rulings, and where do current justices fall on them?

@ProPublica has a guide for that now: https://projects.propublica.org/supreme-risk/

6 (!) years ago, @timnitGebru put forward a profound idea for AI research: document your training data. To say she was treated like shit would be putting it lightly. If she had been respected like her male peers were, imagine what a different path AI could have taken.

i too am a volatile organic compound

apparently I’m getting some class action compensation from Zoom, haven’t been following the case but can only assume it’s for the emotional distress of having heard “can you all see my screen?” 72 million times over the past 3 years

An Octopus sits down at table on the outdoor patio of a coffee shop. The Octopus turns to the Cow at the next table and says, "Hey, wanna hear a joke?"

The Cow is wary, never having met the Octopus before, and knowing all the ways that this kind of thing might go bad, but the Octopus is in good colours, displaying inviting and cheerful concentric rings, so the cow decides to chance it and says, "Sure, why not."

"All right," says the Octopus, "and stop me if you've heard it already: So it seems that dozens of women, Black people, disabled people, LGBTQIA+ folx— just a bunch of marginalized folx, across the board— well they were trying to tell everyone about the social and philosophical implications and potential horrors of technology, both as a general thing, but specifically about what people think of as 'A.I.,' in specific. Then six white dudes walked in— several of whom were the direct cause of so many of those horrors—and, though not acknowledging those marginalized folx even a little bit at all, said the EXACT same things."

Here, the Octopus' coffee arrives, so the Octopus stops and sips at the very hot, very well-prepared Cubano in its tiny cup, and stares off into the distance.

After a few moments, the Cow is a little confused and says "…Is that it? How's the rest of it go?"

Startled, the Octopus looks over at at the Cow and, sadly smiling, says, "Oh. About like you'd expect."

Oh no! Look at all these Old Montréal businesses not generating any profit because of the streets being closed for cars. Utterly devastating move by the city to prevent people from accessing these businesses by having nowhere to park. How dare they doom the economy like this?

—
#urbanplanning #montreal #cities #fuckcars

Business leaders: We can't find enough workers!

Workers: You could pay more.

Business: Nope.

Workers: Better benefits?

Business: No.

Workers: More flexible hours?

Business: No way.

Workers: Treat your current employees better to build your employer brand?

Business: Never.

Workers: Well, what's left?!

Business: Child labor!

https://apnews.com/article/iowa-governor-child-labor-laws-e8cb29e2a45b956489c4a192b7ddeba5

Meine Kapuzenjacke hatte ein Loch, dort wo die Tasche aufgesetzt ist. Es ist eine blöde Stelle für ein Loch. Aber ich mag diese Jacke.
Also habe ich das Beste daraus gemacht - und weil ich Drachen mag, guckt jetzt ein Drache aus der Tasche.
Leider sind die Bilder etwas durcheinander geraten.
#upcycling #sticken #embroidery #Handarbeit

Florida, SB 254, total HRT ban for adults: 5/25/2023 update

Note that in the span of two days, we have had to revise this policy map (1) from:
- including one last way (green) for adults in Florida to get refills (no new prescriptions) from an MD/DO

To (2):
- removing the one last green endpoint, and replacing it with red/yellow stripe because it actually is unknown whether even refills can be prescribed by MDs/DOs; and because of that unknown, MDs and DOs are choosing not to provide refills either.

There are now NO ways for trans adults in Florida to even obtain refills of their established HRT prescriptions.

This is based on the reports we're receiving of trans people's current experiences attempting to fill their established prescriptions since 5/17/2023 - in a complete vacuum of any information for patients who just lost access to their medication, whether from state agencies or even from the state LGBT organizations that were supposed to protect us from exactly this happening to us.

This shouldn't come down to us alone. WE NEED YOU TO STEP UP.

TRANS ADULTS IN FLORIDA ARE NOT ABLE TO GET THEIR HRT PRESCRIPTIONS FILLED OR REFILLED ANYWHERE.

WE HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO DO SO SINCE WEDNESDAY MAY 17

IT HAS BEEN 8 DAYS

THE CLOCK IS RUNNING

The choice of the term “hallucination” to describe what is happening with these language models is fundamentally misleading, and feels calculated to obscure their probabilistic nature.

Characterizing the fabricated output as “hallucination” means, by implication, that correct output is “knowledge”—that the incorrect results are aberrations, not the result of the exact same processes that sometimes produces factually sound results.

I mean... I agree with her.

"Lauren Boebert says fighting 'hate and antisemitism' is code for going after conservatives"

#politics #antisemitism #BlackMastodon #BlackFedi #BlackTwitter

https://www.rawstory.com/lauren-boebert-hate/

It's hard to describe how unscientific the Sackett v EPA SCOTUS ruling was today. By insisting that regulated waters only apply when there is "continuous surface connection" goes against everything we know about wetlands, runoff, and groundwater in watersheds.

Early in my career I did research on perchlorate, which was dumped en masse in the desert outside Las Vegas, many miles from any river. But somehow it found its way to the drinking water of Southern California...by magic? No, there are pathways that aren't obvious to the casual observer, which is why the Clean Water Act is based on science.

Regulatory authority without science is just what the MAGAs want to insist upon, because it then becomes gutted under responsible leadership, and dictatorial under them
https://www.vox.com/2023/5/25/23737426/supreme-court-clean-water-act-epa-pollution-wetlands-sackett-alito
#EPA #Sackett #SCOTUS #CleanWater

#HappyTowelDay everyone! #DontPanic and take a towel with you 🧣🧻 #FortyTwo #HitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy #TowelDay

“Until a drag queen walks into a school and beats eight kids to death with a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird, I think you’re focusing on the wrong shit.”

- Wanda Sykes