Martin Ruskov @mapto@qoto.org

From distant times, probably when Disney was still a person and not a moneymaking machine

https://youtube.com/watch?v=8BqnN72OlqA&pp=ygUPbWF0aCBtYWdpYyBsYW5k

Very interesting reflections on how AI slop is overtaking influencers. It seems to me that most shortcomings of slop mentioned here are going to get overcome (under the assumption that money poured continues to be practically unlimited). Probably the one that is not mentioned here but is going to stay, is the lack of integrity across video cuts.
https://www.theverge.com/entertainment/839494/ai-literacy-tiktok

This article suggests that research in 3D rendering contributed to machine- assisted assassinations of children in Gaza.

It is a topic very close to my heart. When I was starting my academic career at the dept. of Digital Storytelling of ZGDV in Darmstadt, Germany, I took a lot of inspiration by colleagues from the Institute of Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California. Their work was funded by DARPA and a lot of it was about military training. Let alone the fact that training military personnel through storytelling is not about assassinations at all, we've had conversations about this. In one we were told something along the lines of: You European have [what is now Horizon]. In the US our federal funding is DARPA [coming from the US DoD].

This incident is one of several that persuaded me to a widespread narrative in information security. It states that making research open access is a way to contain its destructive use. I still tend to believe so. Research at Pixar and the ICT we all publicly available at their websites. Would you agree that tracing the blame down to people that invented technologies that have subsequently emerged as dual use is misleading? I still think that assassinations of children and civilians in Gaza or elsewhere are a direct consequence of a chain of political, commercial and military decisions. This is where responsibility needs to be investigated.

https://english.elpais.com/technology/2025-12-02/how-pixars-technology-helped-develop-more-lethal-military-drones.html

The Chinese side of AI safety is glimmer than Musk's dreams
https://www.aspi.org.au/report/the-partys-ai-how-chinas-new-ai-systems-are-reshaping-human-rights/

UN report: Israel silently tolerates torture and murder in its prisons
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/29/israel-has-de-facto-state-policy-of-organised-torture-says-un-reportses

"The number of women globally who commit violent crimes is very small – in 2021 they were responsible for just 10% of homicides. Indeed, women are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators. But when women do kill, in many cases the victim is a male partner or family member and there is a history of domestic abuse."
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/nov/28/why-women-kill-prison-domestic-violence-abuse

Quite exciting talk:
EFF presents: Rewiring Democracy with Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders in conversation with Cindy Cohn
3 December, online
https://www.eff.org/event/rewiring-democracy

The AI bubble has now dragged the market of RAM into its whirlpool
https://www.theverge.com/news/828337/ram-memory-shortage-crunch-market-prices-central-micro-center

I don't think I've ever written an #introduction here. Now, I'm doing it elsewhere in the context of my research in the #DigitalHumanies, so, also sharing it here:
I'm a technical researcher coming from #edtech, based in #Milan, Italy and with interest in multidisciplinary collaborations. Due to the shoot-in-the-foot nature of Italian politics (https://en.ilsole24ore.com/art/crui-manoeuvre-cuts-mean-country-does-not-need-universities-AGBrKdx), my (not yet tenure-track) 4-year collaboration with #UniMi was suspended until further notice and I'm currently collaborating with the Minors on the Move project (https://prinminorsonthemove.wordpress.com/team, my role is interactive geomapping) on behalf of #UniGe. Previously, I've worked on societal values (https://doi.org/10.46298/jdmdh.13120), Early Modern English (https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3865/#02_paper), history of publishing (https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3558/#paper774, https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3937/#paper14) and Old Church Slavonic (https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3937/#short8, http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3246/#03_paper-6921). Typically, I bring together expertise from usability and information awareness to develop new collaborative approaches to data exploration and technology dissemination.