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jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

time for an early Spring walk

Soft whispers of dawn,
Foxes dart through budding grass,
Squirrels chase the breeze.

via https://arghstudios.com/

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
randahl ("Randahl Fink") wrote:

"While I am destroying democracy, people are throwing Molotov cocktails at my car dealerships. It is all very surprising."

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
futurebird@sauropods.win ("myrmepropagandist") wrote:

"I'm not a 'Stanley Girl' I'm more of a 'Columbia Girl'"

(soto voice: Columbia sports-ware uses Endeavour marketing/investing the same exact west coast firm as Stanley. You do *not* need to choose an insulated drink-ware product to define who you are, although this statement seems to imply this is the case. You do, however, need to choose a favorite species of ant. Are you a 'Camponotus Girl' or more of an 'Atta'?)

I should really go harder with my pro-ant viral marketing. Go all in. Why not?

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
maartje@blahaj.social ("Maartje") wrote:

Xodus in Belgian public transport! The secret committee of all Belgian public transport operators decided to quit the Xitter today!
A step in the right direction!!

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
neuralreckoning@neuromatch.social ("Dan Goodman") wrote:

My institution is now blocking access to the Exchange server that hosts my work calendars to any app except Outlook. This is an organisational nightmare given that I also have Google calendars and I want to see events in the same place. Anyone know a workaround without sharing access to your data?

Currently thinking about running an emulated android tablet because apps on Android can put their calendars into a global one. Seems slightly insane but can't think of another way.

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

every time I look at this I am reminded of how pissed I am at the tepid reactions of supposed Congressional "leaders".

they bring a wagging finger to a gunfight.

kornel ("Kornel") wrote:

Energy usage of LLMs used through an individual chat interface doesn't seem worrying to me. It's not worse than energy usage of a high-end PC, and it's limited by how much a human can ask and read.

But deployment of LLMs as "autonomous #agents seems like a floodgate for wasteful large-scale usage. It makes it easy to run lots of them, without time limits. Getting only summarized outputs hides how much effort was spent in the process of getting it.

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

idiocy: "The Gravely, which is more than 509 feet long, is larger than vessels in the Coast Guard fleet and carries dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles, which are long-range missiles designed to strike land-based targets." https://elefanti.co/@adam/114186449886556334

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

if it looks like a duck, and it talks like a duck, and it walks like a duck...

this immigrant, who grew up in apartheid-era one-party dictatorship South Africa as the privileged child of a rich white family, is probably... a duck.

pzmyers@octodon.social ("pzmyers 🦑") wrote:

Oh boy. Ken Ham's hand-picked heir has left Answers in Genesis. Chaos at the top!

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/03/19/fun-times-at-aig/

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
SrRochardBunson@universeodon.com ("Sir Rochard 'Dock' Bunson") wrote:

"You don’t fight fascism because you are going to win, you fight fascism because it is fascism."

Jean-Paul Sartre(?)

https://fightfascism.glitch.me/
@stefan

#Fascism #Quote #Sartre

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

Truth:

"Open Carry - For when you want to play Army but were too big a pussy to enlist"

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

london advert campaign https://x.com/i/status/1899827201203225002

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

"Tesla Swasticar" ad on side of UK bus shelter

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

Non Sequitur is spot on today

fribbledom ("muesli") wrote:

I don't have many standards, but when I do, they're double.

kornel ("Kornel") wrote:

When Google released their Gemma 3 model, they've reported estimated emissions from pre-training to be 1497.13 tCO2eq to train. I've noted down the number, but now I can't find the source, ugh (it was some PDF).

It's rare for LLM companies to talk about their environmental cost, so it's nice to have a datapoint.

Boosted by jwz:
ErikJonker ("Erik Jonker") wrote:

An FTC commissioner was fired illegally by Trump, read his statement.
#trump #ftc

Boosted by jwz:
erosalie@infosec.exchange ("E Rosalie") wrote:

France gave us the talking to that we sorely needed.

Boosted by jwz:
simple_sabotage ("Simple Sabotage Field Manual") wrote:

Work slowly.

Boosted by jwz:
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

Tired: I didn’t get your joke.

Wired: I got your joke, but am worried that others, who are not as smart and well-informed as I am, might not. Therefore, I would like you to make the following clarifying edits to your joke, as well as adding these links to provide proper context. …

Boosted by jwz:
jwz wrote:

@davidgerard EFF has been a bed-shitting machine for years now.

From taking the position that it should be illegal for businesses to require proof of vaccination in 2022, to framing "you must report your income to the IRS" as a "cryptocurrency surveillance provision" in 2021, the electronic frontier is a land of contrasts.

If taxation didn't exist they would reflexively oppose it on privacy-maximalist grounds.

I wonder what they think of gun registration these days.

Boosted by jwz:
alissaazar@kolektiva.social ("Alissa Azar") wrote:

Mahmoud Khalil speaks out for the first time since his arrest. This letter was dictated over the phone from the ICE detention facility in Louisiana:

My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.

Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the
Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his
family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.

Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.

On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours — I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.

My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free
Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s
ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.

I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land
since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being
Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention — imprisonment without trial or charge — to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.

I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being
targeted.

While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled
my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean
Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining
pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns — based on racism and disinformation —
to go unchecked.

Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due
process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration's latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students — some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation — and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.

If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change — leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.

The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.

Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.

https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2025/03/Letter%5Ffrom%5Fa%5FPalestinian%5FPolitical%5FPrisoner%5Fin%5FLouisiana%5FMarch%5F18,%5F2025.pdf

Boosted by jwz:
batkaren@mastodon.online wrote:

Pretty done with stories about dudes snogging chicks who were drugged unconscious—let’s return to simpler tales where if a guy saw a woman bathing naked, she turned him into a stag and set his own hounds upon him to rip him limb from limb.

Boosted by jwz:
mcswys@threads.net ("McSweeney's") wrote:

"My brethren, soldiers may leap out of that statue tonight and kill me, but what’s leaping out at me right now is our total disregard for norms. What you see as an enemy threat, I see as a one-of-a-kind statue of a mare."
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/senator-schumer-votes-to-let-the-big-wooden-horse-into-troy

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
mjg59@nondeterministic.computer ("Matthew Garrett") wrote:

When Twitter launched encrypted DMs they were bad. They haven't improved. The person behind them is now a senior member of DOGE and getting appointed to the board of a government-backed mortgage giant: https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/71188.html

Boosted by isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:"):
daisy@cloudisland.nz ("Daisy Leigh Brenecki") wrote:

With the power of AI, you too can take your startup from “fucking around” to “finding out” in as little as two days!

Boosted by jwz:
OGjester@stranger.social ("Official Kakistocracy Jester 🪓") wrote:

@flexghost I do enjoy rolling this one out:

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

time for a CQ

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
raymondpert@mastodon.cloud ("R. Scott Pert") wrote:

Markets: According to Bank of America: "biggest drop in US equity allocation ever."

> A new survey from Bank of America shows that global fund managers are moving out of domestic companies in what analysts at the financial giant describe as the "biggest drop in U.S. equity allocation ever." The reason: growing pessimism about the country's economic outlook as the Trump administration beats the drum for a #tradewar with #Canada, #Mexico, #China and other countries
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/stocks-down-trump-tariffs-trade-wars/ #stocks