Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Conspiratorialism and neoliberalism; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/19/systemic/
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David
IT security student. Programmer of digital duck tape, learning to write digital plumbing. Aspiring cryptographer. Personal research interests include zero-knowledge credentials (to counter online antisocial conduct while protecting privacy) and AV/image non-repudiation (to counter deepfakes).
Anti-exceptionalist egalitarian. Empirical pragmatist: evidence over ideology, results over rationalization. Theory is as good as the least of its falsifiability, its internal consistency, and its withstanding of attempted disproof. It is as useful as one is willing to revise or replace it when it falls.
David boosted:
Simple people prefer simple explanations for complex problems and seek simple answers to solve them. The problem with that?
There are no simple answers to complex problems. And the set of complex problems includes *every problem involving human beings*.
David boosted:
A hugely underdiscussed effect of the creeping fascism of ICE is that debt collectors and landlords are filing more cases against immigrants, even when they're inflated or outright falsified, because they know immigrants are too fearful of deportation to show up to court to fight them.
David boosted:
Until people can find the spine to do simple boycotts and not support Nazis we’re screwed.
"But I like that show"
"But free shipping"
You’re supporting Nazis.
David boosted:
NEW: I broke down the deliberate sturm und drang of the Trump administration over the last few days and why Epsteingate may spiral into some of the darkest fantasies of QAnon and MAGA.
“Obama arrested” may not be as ridiculous as it should be.
https://www.mind-war.com/p/the-sturm-has-arrived-how-far-will
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Why is this 2020 article getting so little attention? There IS a “there there” and it paints an accurate portrait of #epstein and #Maxwell not as aberrations but as archetypical of the soulless world they inhabited and others still do. #motherjones
David boosted:
"The mission of all patriots now, while we can, is to do anything we can to make people aware of what is happening in our names so a) everyone knows and b) no one can claim they didn’t know."
Concentration camps will be filled -- with us.
(Hello, journalists?)
David boosted:
Of all the amazing parts of this screenshot, the idea that a man .. checks screenshot … marrying a woman …checks screenshot again… makes him gay, may be the most amazing. https://bird.makeup/users/dieworkwear/statuses/1946377565247266904
@TonyStark Imagine a world where it weren’t exceptional for legislators to work properly on legislation to benefit the people they represent, not on going viral on TikTok and Twitter while genuflecting to billionaires. Wouldn’t that be strange.
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Lauren Underwood passes bills in her sleep and has been consistently since she got into office.
Yet somehow other people get all the attention who are mostly talk.
This is what you should look for in future leadership.
H.R.248 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): Baby Changing on Board Act | Congress.gov | Library of Congress
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/248
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Enacting age verification laws with the purported goals of stopping bots and protecting children reflects “not a lot of deep thinking about the nature of the problem,” and impacts all users’ privacy and free speech, EFF’s @davidgreene told @fastcompany.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91370158/internet-regulation-is-entering-its-hall-pass-era
David boosted:
US-based Canadian artist Carol Milne creates glass sculptures that mimic the patterns of knitting and yarn.
Her method involves aspects of knitting, lost-wax casting, mold-making, and kiln-casting to achieve the intricate, seemingly pliable forms of knitted glass.
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Fascinating poster from the American Holocaust Museum. Thank goodness we aren't exhibiting any of these right now.
David boosted:
Update. In March the president of the #RoyalSociety, Paul Nurse, asked Elon #Musk to “step in and reverse" the #Trump administration attacks on US science. Musk played dumb and asked for details on those attacks. In May Nurse "suggested" that Musk resign as an RS fellow. Musk did not reply and that seems to be that. Nurse shared the "substance of the correspondence" with members but stands by his position not to discipline Musk for violating the RS code of conduct.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jul/17/royal-society-elon-musk-resign-science-fellowship-tesla
David boosted:
The end of Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ has implications beyond late-night TV
The facts are these: The highest-rated show on late night was nominated for an Emmy on Tuesday. On Thursday, Paramount/CBS announced its cancellation.
Stephen Colbert announced at the Thursday evening taping of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” that he’d found out, only the night before, that his show would be canceled at the end of the season, in May 2026,
and that no one would be replacing him. “It’s the end of ‘The Late Show’ on CBS,” he said. “This is all just going away.”
It was a shocking announcement. It feels, for one thing, like an institution is ending — one David Letterman helped define in reaction (and opposition) to “The Tonight Show” in 1993.
And it’s not, from the business side, that big a surprise;
late-night television has been languishing for some time.
CBS canceled “The Late, Late Show with James Corden” in 2023 and Taylor Tomlinson’s show “After Midnight” in March.
But it’s hard to ignore a larger, troubling pattern here with potential implications for far more than late-night TV.
On July 1, the announcement came that the network’s parent company, Paramount Global
— which needs Donald Trump’s administration to approve the pending sale of the company to Skydance Media
— was settling (rather than fighting) the president’s lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” interview of the-candidate Kamala Harris.
⭐️They will be paying the president $16 million.
Before the settlement, CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon and “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens both left (or were made to) after registering their disapproval.
Those who remain are clearly shaken.
“Can you hold power to account after paying it millions?” John Dickerson,
the anchor for “CBS Evening News,” said while reporting on the deal the day the settlement was announced.
“Can an audience trust you when it thinks you’ve traded away that trust?”
David boosted:
A data breach that exposed the names of Afghans who helped the UK military during the Afghan war was far larger than previously thought.
The leak also exposed the personal data of UK spies and special forces.
The leak originated at the UK Special Forces headquarters.
David boosted:
The Urgent Voice Security Gap Every Enterprise Must Address
🗣️🎤 Voice #AI technology has advanced rapidly while remaining underappreciated compared to text-based language models, creating significant security vulnerabilities.
https://thedataexchange.media/why-voice-security-is-your-next-big-problem/
@nanianmichaels @skuebeck You're right that geographic data residency on its own is insufficient, and there is a potential solution to this: The EU would need to require the formation of a EU-headquartered company—say, Microsoft Europe—which is not a subsidiary of Microsoft, which has only EU citizen and resident officers and controlling owners, and which is bound to Microsoft [US] through contracts, shared source code, irrevocably license agreements, and cryptographic keys, such that Microsoft [US] has no legal, organizational, or technological means to cause Microsoft Europe to violate EU or member state law.
A similar principle could require a Google Europe, or a Microsoft Canada, with the same constraints. The non-US company can be a minimal structure—just enough to administer the hardware—but its existence, with a sufficiently separated legal and technical structures, provides a check against the US government trying to throw its weight around outside its own jurisdiction.
David boosted:
Seems like every time Netanyahu's corruption trial resumes, he bombs a neighboring country, and the trial is delayed again...
https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-trial-paused-as-syria-bombed
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