tobychev @tobychev@qoto.org

American democracy is now declining at a faster rate than in Hungary and Turkey. I spent the past week talking to Staffan Lindberg, the founder of the V-Dem Institute in Gothenburg, about their alarming new annual report on global democratic decline, which was released today.

My latest piece for The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2026/mar/17/trump-is-aiming-for-dictatorship-thats-the-verdict-of-the-worlds-most-credible-democracy-watchdog

"Afghanistan says 400 killed in strike by Pakistan on Kabul hospital [...] treating drug users"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/16/afghanistan-accuses-pakistan-of-kabul-hospital-strike-killed

"We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter..." -- Sam Altman

https://x.com/TheChiefNerd/status/2032012809433723158

There you go, there it is. Yup.

There are only two strategies which are acceptable: either AI model output is completely illegal because of copyright stuff (this is unlikely to happen because there is now too much money behind it), or AI model output is fully in the public domain, which has its own problems but at least is an even playing field.

There won't be a middle ground that is safe. Because they want something that looks like a "middle ground", but really, all it does is lock in the big players' control over information, forever.

The one thing that my students remember from stats

An insolvency judge in England tossed out testimony after discovering a witness was being coached on what to say in real time through a pair of smartglasses. When the voice of the coach started coming through the cellphone after it was disconnected from the glasses, the witness blamed the whole thing on ChatGPT.

Insolvency and Companies Court (ICC) Judge Agnello KC in Britain wrote up the incident after it happened in January and the UK-based legal research blog Legal Futures was first to report it. The case considered the liquidation of a Lithuanian company co-owned by a man named Laimonas Jakštys. Jakštys was in court to get his business off an insolvency list and to put himself back in charge of it. It didn’t go well.

“Right at the start of his cross examination, he seemed to pause quite a bit before replying to the questions being asked,” Judge KC wrote. “These questions were interpreted and then there was a pause before there was a reply. After several questions, [defense lawyer Sarah Walker] then informed me that she could hear an interference coming from around Mr. Jakštys and asked if Mr. Jakštys could take his glasses off for a period as she was aware smart glasses existed.”

There was a Lithuanian interpreter on hand to help Jakštys talk to the court and she, too, said she could hear voices from Jakštys’s glasses. The judge pointed out they were smart glasses and asked him to take them off. “After a few further questions, when the interpreter was in the process of translating a question, Mr Jakštys’ mobile phone started broadcasting out loud with the voice of someone talking,” Judge KC wrote. “There was clearly someone on the mobile phone talking to Mr. Jakštys. He then removed his mobile phone from his inner jacket pocket. At my direction, the smart glasses and his mobile were placed into the hands of his solicitor.”

Jakštys showed up the next day in the glasses again and the judge told him to turn them off. “Jakštys denied that he was using the smart glasses to receive the answers that he was to give in court to the questions being asked,” the judgement said. “He also denied that his smart glasses were linked to his mobile phone at the time that he was giving evidence before me.”

During the court appearance, Jakštys claimed his mobile phone had been stolen but couldn’t provide a police report for the incident. He also repeatedly received calls on his smartglasses-connected phone from a number listed as “abra kadabra.” The call log showed that many of the calls occurred when he was on the witness stand. The judge asked him about the identity of “abra kadabra” and Jakštys said it was a taxi driver.

“When he was pressed as to why all these calls were made…Mr. Jakštys stated that he was not able to remember. This was a reply which he also gave frequently during his evidence,” Judge KC said.

In the end, the Judge tossed out all of Jakštys’ testimony. “He was untruthful in relation to his use about the smart glasses and in being coached through the smart glasses,” the judgement said. “In my judgment, from what occurred in court, it is clear that call was made, connected to his smart glasses and continued during his evidence until his mobile phone was removed from him. When asked about this, his explanation was that he thought it was ChatGPT which caused the voice to be heard from his mobile phone once his smart glasses had been removed. That lacks any credibility.”

This incident in the London court is just another in a long line of bad behavior from people wearing smartglasses. CBP agents have been spotted wearing them during immigration raids and Harvard students have loaded them with facial recognition tech to instantly dox strangers.

The EU insists on a tuition fees cut as the price of a Brexit reset.

Brussels is insisting that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer agree to a cut in tuition fees for EU students as the price of his Brexit reset.

EU officials say they are frustrated that the UK is yet to engage on the topic in talks — which are meant to finish by the summer.

“It needs to be worked out before talks can be concluded,” one EU official told POLITICO.

https://mediafaro.org/article/20260313-the-eu-insists-on-a-tuition-fees-cut-as-the-price-of-a-brexit-reset?mf_channel=mastodon&action=forward

#Brexit #Education #Trade #UK #EU

All signs continue to point to an exceptional, long-duration, and record-breaking to (in some cases) record-shattering March heatwave initially centered across U.S. Southwest but expanding to much broader region next week. This is effectively a full-on summer heatwave in March.

Antimatter Trucker is finally a job title! But don’t worry, this isn’t going to be “The Wages of Fear, 2026”:

“The device on Cern’s truck will carry about 1,000 antimatter particles, weighing about a billionth of a trillionth of a gram. Should the containment fail, and the antimatter make contact with normal matter, the resulting pulse of energy would be so feeble, the load doesn’t even warrant a radioactive label.”

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/mar/14/please-drive-carefully-scientists-plan-to-transport-volatile-antimatter-for-first-time

A Pentagon recruiter openly offers corruption: “unmatched access to top-level government officials and privileged information flow — whatever you need, you can get.” www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/u...

Wall Street Bankers Offered Lu...

Lagrådet har svarat på lagrådsremissen som gäller skärpta regler för unga lagöverträdare, alltså fängelse för 13-åringar.

Jag rekommenderar verkligen läsning. Det visar med all önskvärd tydlighet hur vilse regeringen är i den här frågan, hur illa det beretts och vilka oerhörda konsekvenser det får.

För att göra det lättare för dig att läsa har jag extraherat texten från pdf:en och lagt på denna webbsida. Det funkar alltså att läsa texten med skärmläsare, och det går att läsa i mobilen. PDF-formatet gjorde annars detta svårt.

Idag är det 109 dagar tills 13-åringar ska placeras på fängelse.

Lagrådet skriver:
”Detta sätt att parallellt bedriva flera lagstiftningsprojekt som direkt påverkar förslaget om sänkt straffbarhetsålder medför att det inte funnits ett beredningsunderlag som möjliggjort för remissinstanserna att samlat kunna bedöma och ge synpunkter på innebörden av förslaget om sänkt straffbarhetsålder. Beredningen uppfyller därmed inte de krav som följer av 7 kap. 2 § regeringsformen. Det är särskilt allvarligt när det gäller ett förslag som förändrar grunderna för det straffrättsliga systemet och möjliggör frihetsberövanden i form av häktning och fängelse för barn från 13 års ålder.”

https://pm.axbom.se/lagradet-straffbarhetsalder/

Den röda linjen ska bort – Liberalerna öppnar för att sitta i regering med Sverigedemokraterna, bekräftar källor för Dagens ETC. https://www.etc.se/inrikes/l-kaellor-svaenger-om-sd-igen?utm_source=mastodon

@_elena @timnitGebru @emilymbender @alexhanna @DAIR @jaredwhite @tante I would clarify also that I am not quite #NoAI in terms of AI tech, but I am definitely opposed to the *AI industry* and this hype wave. There may be various useful things from this tech, but the net version of things with it being forced upon society right now in this hype wave is that everything is getting much worse, and sickeningly so.

Several more pieces need to be added to the puzzle to make "AI" tech more useful, and I'm also simply opposed to a direction in society that dismisses and devalues creative endeavors, which a lot of this hype is putting at the center of itself. Creativity is what makes life largely worthwhile. I'm not willing to give that up.

I have no problem with OpenImageDenoiser in Blender, which speeds up renders through machine learning, and in no way devalues creativity. But something which made it so I just typed a few words into Blender and it did all my artwork for me, I would oppose.

Since getting to the US is way too dangerous for too many people, they are moving the IgNobel prize to Zurich (and them probably moving it around Europe in the next years).
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/mar/09/ig-nobel-prize-europe

Stop bombing schools
Stop bombing hospitals
Stop bombing homes
Stop bombing children

Stop bombing.

- 158 people killed in 188 days. Guilt for a non-capital crime unknown.
- 42 separate attacks.
- 27 in the Eastern Pacific. 13 in the Caribbean. 2 unspecified.
- 17 listed as at Donald Trump's orders. 16 at Pete Hegseth's orders. The last 9 at the orders of Southcom's Gen. Francis Donovan.

I'm in a pagan group. One evening during a sea ritual at the beach one of our more prominent members said that she heard a song in the waves that was in another language, and everyone was awestruck. In fact, it was just me singing a song from Moana. I can't tell anyone.

🤡

#India

Indian Railways has electrified 99.4% of its broad gauge by January 2026, significantly cutting diesel consumption. This shift helps India reduce reliance on imports and insulates the economy from global fuel price shocks. It also advances the country's climate commitments with massive economic savings

https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/business/3828697-india-steps-up-electrification-of-railways-nears-completion

#ClimateChange #GlobalWarming #UpheavalClimate #ClimateInstability #MassAtrocity #pollution #ecology #environment #climate