Paul Sutton @zleap@qoto.org

Brian Eno: "The biggest problem about AI is not intrinsic to AI. It’s to do with the fact that it’s owned by the same few people, and I have less and less interest in what those people think, and more and more criticisms of what the effect of their work has been."
https://musictech.com/news/music/brian-eno-ai-problem/

#BrianEno #AmbientMusic #Music #AI #GenerativeAI

US universities face choice to surrender or fight back against Trump’s ‘takeover’
‘Extraordinary fear’ takes hold at universities as Trump campaign threatens investigations or loss of federal funds https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/20/universities-trump-administration

I hear so many voicing concerns over Trump policies, saying "they haven't thought it through", "it will have negative consequences", "so many people will get hurt", etc.

It is the other way around:

They have thought it through, and the cruelty is not an unforeseen side effect — it is the objective.

You do not round up 238 Venezuelans, deport them to a foreign prison facility and shave them bold on camera by accident.

You do so too spread fear.

Columbia should have said, ‘see you in court,’ not ‘yes, Mr President.’ | Margaret Sullivan
Institutions must resist thuggish bullying. There is no satisfying Trump. He will move the goalposts again and again

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/22/columbia-university-trump-demands
fuck Columbia U

Facebook not showing more than one post in most feeds. X-fka-Twitter missing Post and + buttons.

Very hard to tell if it's just me, because search is useless in both sites. Although there do seem to be other people complaining as well.

T'internet is broken, I tell, 'ee. It's a javascript dystopia.

'Mars Attack - How Elon Musk's Plans for Mars Threaten Earth'

This is a really great read, and presented in the scroll storytelling format (I love this style).

By Dr Kelly Weinersmith & Zach Weinersmith (who wrote the excellent 'A City on Mars' book)

https://thebulletin.org/2025/03/mars-attacks-how-elon-musks-plans-to-colonize-mars-threaten-earth/#post-heading

#SpaceExploration #Mars #Astrodon

People captured by ICE, are not being sent "home", they are being detained, why?

The For Profit prison system has contracts with the US government worth 100's of millions, they are currently doubling bed capacity as we speak. They were major contributors to the Trump campaign, as always, it's greed.

Oxygen Detected in the Most Distant Known Galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0.

Two different teams of astronomers have detected oxygen in the most distant known galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0. Discovered last year, JADES-GS-z14-0 is the most distant confirmed galaxy ever found: it is so far away, its light took 13.4 billion years to reach us, meaning we see it as it was when the Universe was less than 300 million years old, about 2% of its present age.

https://theorkneynews.scot/2025/03/22/oxygen-detected-in-the-most-distant-known-galaxy-jades-gs-z14-0/

Tax the fucking rich.

That's it, that's all that really needs saying.

Hmm, I wonder how this started?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendiary_incidents_in_Europe_2024

1. For the past thirty years I've had the best job in the world.


I've had the opportunity to follow my curiosity; explore the workings of nature and society; mentor students and junior colleagues in the same process; and teach generations of students about it all.

Curiosity-driven research isn't just fun; it led us to develop tools that thousands of scientists use to find meaningful patterns in massive datasets (e.g. www.mapequation.org). 





Separately, I've had the opportunity to be part of the largest collective intellectual effort in human history.

In 2020, the scientific community came together—remotely, by necessity—in response to the COVID pandemic, to understand how this disease spreads and what that it does to people, to find of returning life to a semblance of normal amidst a pandemic, to develop a vaccine in record time.

And I've been able to teach 1000s of students. I've written a popular textbook about evolution; developed a class and book about critical thinking that is used around the world; and most recently launched a humanities course about LLMs that will be taught at scores of schools in the fall.

But right now my job doesn't feel like the best job in the world. 

Targeted attacks on university funding have put every US institution into a severe crisis. As of now, there is no way we will be able to continue doing the biomedical research, the conservation science, etc. that we always have.

*DO NOT TRAVEL TO THE US!*

“‘I learned with concern that a French researcher,’ on a mission for the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), ‘who was going to a conference near Houston was banned from entering American territory before being expelled,’ said the Minister of Higher Education and Research, Philippe Baptiste, in a statement sent to Agence France-Presse (AFP). ‘This measure was allegedly taken by the American authorities because this researcher's phone contained exchanges with colleagues and friendly relationships in which he expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration's research policy,’ he added.”

https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2025/03/19/etats-unis-un-chercheur-francais-refoule-pour-avoir-exprime-une-opinion-personnelle-sur-la-politique-menee-par-l-administration-trump_6583618_3210.html

#USA #fascism #EU #France #science #freedomOfSpeech #privacy #travelWarning

So, science friends.

When in the 1930s would you have decided “no, I’m not going to go to that conference in Germany”?

Because the question now needs to be posed looking westwards across the Atlantic.

If your phone can be taken on arrival & searched for messages critical of the government & then you can be denied entry (or perhaps worse in the future), why would you even think of going in the first place?

Absolutely horrifying slide into totalitarianism.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/trump-musk-french-scientist-detained

Americans to face more disease and death due to Trump’s air quality rollbacks, health experts warn.

American families will face increasing rates of environmental-related illnesses including lung and cardiovascular diseases, due to the Trump administration’s sweeping rollbacks of air quality regulations, health professionals warn. #ClimateChange

https://www.thenewlede.org/2025/03/americans-to-face-more-disease-and-death-due-to-trumps-air-quality-rollbacks-health-experts-warn/