Barbara 🇺🇦 @babs_at_masto@qoto.org

Meta is deploying chatbots powered by AI to impersonate humans in its discussion groups. The chatbots make stuff up—that is their nature. One invents a nonexistent child. Another pretends to have nonexistent merchandise. It shouldn’t be necessary to explain how vile and poisonous this is, but Casey Fiesler spells it out:

https://theconversation.com/ai-chatbots-are-intruding-into-online-communities-where-people-are-trying-to-connect-with-other-humans-229473

#Meta #AI

Facebook bots invading forums where people are trying to have conversations with other people is a genuinely evil development.

https://theconversation.com/ai-chatbots-are-intruding-into-online-communities-where-people-are-trying-to-connect-with-other-humans-229473

The Nation magazine devotes its current issue to how Trump and his army of extremist apparatchiks would turn the U.S. into a sicker, more violent version of Orban's Hungary -- or worse.

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/project-2025-democracy-fcc-fec/

This is journalism that does what we need right now.

It is journalism aimed at saving our democracy -- and, by extension, freedom expression, which is one of the most threatened rights should the right wing take full control.

It is the kind of reporting we need from all journalists.

"Rather than visiting red-state diners," writes Rick Perlstein with his standard brilliance, "reporters ought to journey to the venerable conservative message board where the talk after the Trump verdict was nihilistic and bloody."

https://americanprospect.bluelena.io/index.php?action=social&chash=e0688d13958a19e087e123148555e4b4.2748&s=cdaeb39801506c81595dd2c142301827

The extreme right -- increasingly endorsed by the Republican Party -- is already violent, and it's planning a massive escalation.

But Big Journalism refuses to see it.

Wake the hell up, media.

“Addressing modern environmental crises requires an understanding of deep history – not just written human records, but also ancient connections between humans and the natural world.”

More from an archaeologist who studies long-term human interactions with nature:

https://theconversation.com/humans-have-been-altering-nature-for-thousands-of-years-to-shape-a-sustainable-future-its-important-to-understand-that-deep-history-226106
#environment #climatechange

Dairy farmers get vast subsidies from taxpayers -- ridiculously high subsidies.You would imagine that would persuade them to do their civic duty in reporting possible bird flu cases. Nope.

https://www.notus.org/healthcare/farmer-bird-flu-cases-hide-cows-federal-government

If bird flu breaks out widely in humans, it will be beyond catastrophic.

Huge protests in Tbilisi tonight against a law that would copy a Russian law against "foreign agents." But they are happening for a more serious reason: Georgians don't want to become part of the Russian world

New: OpenAI—a company that has indiscriminately scraped vast amounts of human knowledge to build a company valued at roughly $80 billion—has made a copyright complaint against the ChatGPT subreddit because it used OpenAI’s logo.

https://www.404media.co/openai-files-copyright-claim-against-chatgpt-subreddit/

Jess Piper reports – from the ground in rural Missouri and Arkansas – about how, since it knows it cannot win fair and square, the Republican party is resorting to tricks, subterfuge, and outright lies to try to impose its minority position on abortion on the majority who believe that abortion should not be made illegal.

She recently went to a Democratic rally in Arkansas, and encountered a woman handing out cards with QR code.

#abortion #Republicans
/1

https://jesspiper.substack.com/p/if-the-gop-cant-keep-voters-from

Finally found it. The cartoon I saw that summarizes my feeling about the Hamas-Netanyahu disaster:

If you consider yourself prolabor you should be doing what you can to drastically limit your purchases from Amazon. Ditto for Starbucks.

https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2024/05/02/legal-challenge-to-amazon-uks-new-one-click-to-quit-the-union-tool/

Guess what? The classified documents at Mar-a-Lago weren’t sent there by GSA to set Trump up, contrary to what his apologists are trying to suggest. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/30/trump-documents-case-rumor-false/

Previously: As #drought rages across #Texas, a high-tech chemical company has purchased the last available #water in the Nueces River to make hydrogen and ammonia for export. https://www.texasobserver.org/water-energy-environment-corpus/

#ClimateChange #environment #news #politics #SouthTexas #USpol #pollution

Wisdom is the queen of all seabirds, the oldest wild bird known to science at 72. When her longtime mate disappeared a few years ago, the people who monitor her colony on Midway Atoll thought she might be done breeding. And that would be fair enough. She's laid at least 50 eggs and mothered 30 chicks in her life.

But big news - she's dating again! She has been spotted dancing with new males this year.

#wisdom #birds #seabirds #albatross

(USFWS Instagram link:)
https://www.instagram.com/p/C5rJMsqLDRb/?igsh=MTlmb2trMmJpYmxweg==

To absolutely no one’s surprise, Trump’s USD 175 million bond payment is a fraud too.

In New York, a company which offers a bond cannot offer a bond worth more than 10 percent of the company’s own value, and Knight Specialty Insurance does not live up to that requirement — in fact, if the company ends up having to pay the bond, the bond is worth more than the company, meaning they would not be able to pay.

Trump now has 10 days to come up with a new solution.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-york-ag-questions-if-dollar175-million-bond-insurer-can-save-trump

PRRI has new research on the decline in American religiosity. One finding? Half of those who gave up a religious tradition say that LGBTQ intolerance was a reason why. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/27/religion-polling-lgbtq-views/

You won't be surprised that one of the Trump era's most ardent and prolific liars, and key election denier, has been hired by NBC "News" -- because that's how Big Journalism rolls these days. https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/22/media/ronna-mcdaniel-nbc/index.html