Contemplations – 14

I'm incurably curious about many aspects of this journey of ours. Here are a few noteworthy items I've stumbled across that I'm making a note of so I can revisit them from time to time.

Quick links to this page's content ∨ 
Why I hate artificial intelligence ∨ 

Appetizer:

"A little while and I will be gone from among you, whither I cannot tell. From nowhere we came, into nowhere we go. What is life? It is a flash of a firefly in the night. It is a breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."
– Crowfoot, Blackfoot chief, attributed farewell to his people, 25 April 1890⩘ 

2025

Earthrise

Image Credit: Apollo 8⩘ , NASA⩘ 

Earthrise is the first photograph of Earth rising over the moon that was taken from space by an astronaut. It was taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission.

I can't think of a more beautiful, insightful photo to contemplate as we end this year.

Astronomy Picture of the Day⩘ , Sep 6, 2015.

A storm of new stars

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker, F. Belfiore, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team

This image of NGC 1792 simply mesmerizes me. As I stare at it, my eyes and consciousness get gently welcomed into the vastness of our universe.

NGC 1792 is just as fascinating to astronomers as its chaotic look might imply. Classified as a starburst galaxy, it is a powerhouse of star formation, with spiral arms rich in star-forming regions. In fact, it is surprisingly luminous for its mass. The galaxy is close to a larger neighbour, NGC 1808, and the strong gravitational interaction between the two is believed to be what has stirred up the reserves of gas in this galaxy.

It was only recently—when the U.S. federal government shut down and Astronomy Picture of the Day was put on hold—that I discovered the ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week website. So glad I did. Many of my favorite images of our universe come from the Hubble, so it's a great place for me to get my occasional fix of space images.

A storm of new stars⩘ , ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week, Dec 1, 2025.

Defending democracy and decency

Photo by Brendon Schaumburg

Excellent post by Jennifer Rubin in The Contrarian. She discusses the ongoing ugly fiasco being performed by ICE and Custom and Border Patrol agents at the behest of the Trump administration, this time in North Carolina.

Most importantly, she discussed how citizens have been standing up against this travesty and in support of our constitution, the rule of law, and common decency.

A couple excerpts:

In response to the mayhem, state and city officials—as did those in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland—have risen to the occasion. In concert with magnificent displays of peaceful protest and community solidarity, state and local officials have been sending a powerful message that they are prepared to defend their neighbors against the predation of an unhinged, racist autocrat and his underlings.…

If Trump's vicious assault on Charlotte and other North Carolina cities was meant to intimidate locals or alienate them from migrant neighbors, his operation backfired spectacularly. Charlotte coalesced around immigrants and vigorously protested the lawless regime. The cameras again captured rogue agents abusing their power.…

Each arrest, assault, detention, and deportation of a hard-working, law abiding resident who poses no threat to anyone is a tragedy for the immigrants, their loved ones, their co-workers, their religious communities, the local economy, and the moral and emotional climate of the cities where immigrants have lived and worked (in some cases) for decades.

However, when undaunted local and state officials, neighbors, business owners, and civic organizations stand together, as they did in Charlotte, they deprive Trump of the aura of invincibility he seeks, and instead reassert our national belief in democracy, the rule of law, and decency.

Bravo North Carolina!

Another Undaunted City⩘  by Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian, Nov 21, 2025.

The Lost Galaxy

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team

Once again getting high on my galaxy addiction!

On full display in this Hubble image are NGC 4535's young star clusters, which dot the galaxy's spiral arms. Many of the groupings of bright blue stars are enclosed by glowing pink clouds. These clouds, called H II ('H-two') regions, are a sign that the galaxy is home to especially young, hot, and massive stars that are blazing with high-energy radiation. By heating the clouds in which they were born, shooting out powerful stellar winds, and eventually exploding as supernovae, massive stars certainly shake up their surroundings.

When I contemplate the beautiful and wondrous environment in which we live, from the very near to infinite distances, it's hard for me to understand why we don't treat this gift of life with more grace and gratitude.

Finding star clusters in the Lost Galaxy⩘ , ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week, Nov 17, 2025.

A welcome persistence in the U.S. solar industry

Photo: The US solar industry has been battling for survival this year, but signs of persistence and recovery⩘  are already brewing (courtesy of NREL).

This is welcome news. Despite extreme hostility from Trump and his co-conspirators—um, I mean, his administration—the U.S. solar industry "has gathered enough momentum to carry itself through to next year and beyond".

Now here comes the US-based global firm Deloitte with a new analysis that underscores the powerful, and persistent, role of the US solar industry in the nation's power supply.…

Deloitte is also among those pointing out that solar arrays don't necessarily need the tax credit to compete against natural gas power plants. Without the tax credits, solar costs could rise up to 55% through 2026 while still beating gas in some markets. "Fixed-mount solar already outcompetes natural gas combined cycle in many regions without credits," Deloitte states.

US President Caught Napping By US Solar Industry⩘  by Tina Casey, Clean Technica, Nov 13, 2025.

Why intolerance and extremism happen

This is a looooong read, but I learned a lot from slowly making my way through it. Teri Kanefield is an author, lawyer, and legal analyst. In her essay, she tackles and explains four key questions:

• Why do some people spiral into extremism?
• Why does democracy seem perpetually on the brink?
• Why are we so divided?
• What can we do to protect democracy in a divided world?

Kanefield provides valuable insights for this challenging time we face.

Why Intolerance and Extremism Happen (and how to protect democracy in a divided world)⩘  by Teri Kanefield, Oct 3, 2025.
Kanefield also posts on Mastodon: @Teri_Kanefield@mastodon.social⩘ .

Update Nov 14, 2025 per Teri Kanefield:

I finally figured out what this long blog post was supposed to be. It's supposed to be a free ebook or PDF, which ever people prefer. It was a long blog post, but a short book – about 100 pages.

I spent a ridiculous amount of time revising this blog post, honing it, moving things around, adding stuff – you know, the things writers do compulsively for hours, days, and weeks.

I think I ended up with something better. It is certainly more polished, and I believe more readable.

I also had it professionally copyedited, proofread, and fact-checked. If there are errors, though, they are mine because I had to manually transfer all the marks to the Indesign Doc. If you see an error, please let me know.

The title of the book is Why Intolerance and Extremism Happen: And What We Can Do About the Anger and Division. The PDF version is available via the blog post on her website: https://terikanefield.com/whyextremismhappens/⩘ 

Defending free speech, standing up for one another!

Photo by Rosemary Ketchum⩘  via Pexels.com.

Yes!

On Wednesday, over 550 celebrities relaunched a group first organized during the post-World War II Red Scare: the Committee for the First Amendment⩘ . Their intent is to stand up in what they call a "defense of our constitutional rights," adding: "The federal government is once again engaged in a coordinated campaign to silence critics in the government, the media, the judiciary, academia, and the entertainment industry."

Exactly right!

In a letter inviting her peers to join the re-established group, [Jane] Fonda writes: "I'm 87 years old. I've seen war, repression, protest, and backlash. I've been celebrated, and I've been branded an enemy of the state. But I can tell you this: this is the most frightening moment of my life. When I feel scared, I look to history. I wish there were a secret playbook with all the answers – but there never has been. The only thing that has ever worked – time and time again – is solidarity: binding together, finding bravery in numbers too big to ignore, and standing up for one another."

Hundreds of celebrities relaunch a McCarthy-era committee to defend free speech⩘  by Anastasia Tsioulcas, NPR, Oct 1, 2025.

Tim Berners-Lee is such a visionary; we need to listen to him!

Illustration: Elia Barbieri/The Guardian

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, with the support of CERN, gave away to our world for free one of the biggest gifts ever given, the source code for the World Wide Web.

But for the web to have everything on it, everyone had to be able to use it, and want to do so. This was already asking a lot. I couldn't also ask that they pay for each search or upload they made. In order to succeed, therefore, it would have to be free. That's why, in 1993, I convinced my Cern managers to donate the intellectual property of the world wide web, putting it into the public domain. We gave the web away to everyone

Since then, his gift has been badly abused by greedy tech bros and tech companies who has used it to create a world wide surveillance web that they have monetized, dismissing the needs and wants of ordinary users, and instead turning them into the equivalent of inert minerals they can mine for profit however they wish.

Somewhere between my original vision for web 1.0 and the rise of social media as part of web 2.0, we took the wrong path. We're now at a new crossroads, one where we must decide if AI will be used for the betterment or to the detriment of society. How can we learn from the mistakes of the past? First of all, we must ensure policymakers do not end up playing the same decade-long game of catchup they have done over social media. The time to decide the governance model for AI was yesterday, so we must act with urgency.

But as a visionary, Tim Berners-Lee hasn't given up on the opportunity.

I gave the world wide web away for free because I thought that it would only work if it worked for everyone. Today, I believe that to be truer than ever. Regulation and global governance are technically feasible, but reliant on political willpower. If we are able to muster it, we have the chance to restore the web as a tool for collaboration, creativity and compassion across cultural borders. We can re-empower individuals, and take the web back. It's not too late

I just hope that someday, the rest of our world can rise to his level.

Why I gave the world wide web away for free⩘  by Tim Berners-Lee, The Guardian, Sep 28, 2025.

See also:

• This Is for Everyone by Tim Berners-Lee⩘ 
• Small barn wood picture frame⩘ 

AI: the importance of being vigilant and skeptical

AI models are trained on vast swathes of data from every corner of the internet, by humans.⩘ 
Illustration: Rita Liu/The Guardian

Very good article by Varsha Bansal in The Guardian⩘  about how Google is using thousands of (under)paid contractors behind the scenes to try to correct all the mistakes its Artificial Intelligence products are making. I also really appreciate the spot on illustration by Rita Lui that accompanies the article.

Ten of Google's AI trainers the Guardian spoke to said they have grown disillusioned with their jobs because they work in siloes, face tighter and tighter deadlines, and feel they are putting out a product that's not safe for users.

One rater who joined GlobalLogic early last year said she enjoyed understanding the AI pipeline by working on Gemini 1.0, 2.0, and now 2.5 and helping it give "a better answer that sounds more human". Six months in, though, tighter deadlines kicked in. Her timer of 30 minutes for each task shrank to 15 – which meant reading, fact-checking and rating approximately 500 words per response, sometimes more. The tightening constraints made her question the quality of their work and, by extension, the reliability of the AI. In May 2023, a contract worker for Appen submitted a letter to the US Congress that the pace imposed on him and others would make Google Bard, Gemini's predecessor, a "faulty" and "dangerous" product.

It's no secret that I hate AI. For years now, I've been reading articles, studies, and books about the development of Large Language Models (LLMs) and the (so far failed) attempt to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI, AI that would match or surpass human intelligence). In fact, I've dedicated a whole page to the subject: Contemplations: Why I hate artificial intelligence⩘ . Normally, I'd just post a note about an article like this on that page, but this one by is so good that I want to post about it in my general Contemplations section.

The focus of the work these contractors are doing has shifted from quality to quantity, a really dangerous shift when users might trust their lives with the LLM's output.

Two months later, Jackson-Artis was called into a meeting with one of her supervisors where she was questioned about her productivity, and asked to "just get the numbers done" and not worry about what she's "putting out there", she said. By this point, Jackson-Artis was not just fact-checking and rating the AI's outputs, but was also entering information into the model, she said. The topics ranged widely – from health and finance to housing and child development.

One work day, her task was to enter details on chemotherapy options for bladder cancer, which haunted her because she wasn't an expert on the subject. "I pictured a person sitting in their car finding out that they have bladder cancer and googling what I'm editing," she said.

Personally, I avoid using LLMs as much as I can, especially when I'm searching for reliable, factual information. As I written previously, I actually expend a lot of effort and time avoiding or trying to disable AI, and it angers me that I have to waste energy doing this that I could use elsewhere in more productive and creative ways.

Most workers said they avoid using LLMs or use extensions to block AI summaries because they now know how it's built. Many also discourage their family and friends from using it, for the same reason.

If the output of LLMs can't be avoided, then I think the only reasonable approach to using them is to remain keenly vigilant and to be highly skeptical of the information they provide.

How thousands of 'overworked, underpaid' humans train Google's AI to seem smart⩘  by Varsha Bansal, The Guardian, Sep 11, 2025.

Standing up for American democracy with courage and clarity

I really admire the courage and clarity with which Illinois Governor Pritzker stood up to Trump's threats to militarize Chicago. What he said is well documented in Professor Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American, Aug 25, 2025⩘  (which is one of the most appreciated subscriptions I have).

Pritzker, "standing flanked by leaders from business, law enforcement, faith communities, education, local communities, and politics at the Chicago waterfront" told it like it is. We need more politicians and leaders to stand up for American democracy with this kind of strength and conviction.

It's really worth it to read Professor Richardson's full post⩘ , but here is an extract I particularly want to remember:

This afternoon, standing flanked by leaders from business, law enforcement, faith communities, education, local communities, and politics at the Chicago waterfront near the Trump Tower there, Governor Pritzker responded to the news that Trump is planning to send troops to Chicago.

He began by saying: "I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one, that we are facing in the city and as a state and as a country. If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country."

He acknowledged that "[o]ver the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning for quite a while now to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country's founders warned against. And it's the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances. What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal, it is unconstitutional. It is un-American."

Pritzker noted that neither his office nor that of Chicago's mayor had received any communications from the White House. "We found out what Donald Trump was planning the same way that all of you did. We read a story in the Washington Post. If this was really about fighting crime and making the streets safe, what possible justification could the White House have for planning such an exceptional action without any conversations or consultations with the governor, the mayor or the police?"

"Let me answer that question," he said. "This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city in a blue state to try and intimidate his political rivals. This is about the president of the United States and his complicit lackey Stephen Miller searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities, and end elections. There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention. There is no insurrection."

Pritzker noted that every major American city deals with crime, but that the rate of violent crime is actually higher in Republican-dominated states and cities than in those run by Democrats. Illinois, he said, had "hired more police and given them more funding. We banned assault weapons, ghost guns, bump stops, and high-capacity magazines" and "invested historic amounts into community violence intervention programs." Those actions have cut violent crime down dramatically. Pritzker pointed out that "thirteen of the top twenty cities in homicide rates have Republican governors. None of these cities is Chicago. Eight of the top ten states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois."

If Trump were serious about combatting crime, Pritzker asked, why did he, along with congressional Republicans, cut more than $800 million in public safety and crime prevention grants? "Trump," Pritzker said, "is defunding the police."

Letters from an American, Aug 25, 2025⩘  by Professor Heather Cox Richardson.

See also:

• US 'on a trajectory' toward authoritarian rule, ex-officials warn⩘  by Lauren Gambino, The Guardian, Oct 16, 2025.
  
  • "The United States is 'on a trajectory' toward authoritarian rule, according to a stark new intelligence-style assessment by former US intelligence and national security officials, who warn that democratic backsliding is accelerating under the Trump administration – and may soon become entrenched without organized resistance.
  • "The report, titled Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline, was released on Thursday by the Steady State, a network of more than 340 former officers of the CIA, NSA, state department, and other national-security agencies.…
  • " 'We wrote it because the same tools we once used to assess foreign risks now show unmistakable warning signs at home,' the authors said in a statement.
  • "Since returning to the White House, the president has pardoned January 6 rioters who assaulted police, fired independent watchdogs, purged career officials viewed as disloyal, publicly urged his attorney general to prosecute political opponents, deployed troops to US cities, attacked judges who ruled against him, threatened universities and restricted press freedom – all while testing the boundaries of executive power in ways federal courts have repeatedly deemed to be unlawful and unconstitutional.…
  • "Among the key indicators of democratic decline identified in the report: the expansion of executive power through unilateral decrees and emergency authorities; the politicization of the civil service and federal law enforcement; attempts to erode judicial independence through strategic appointments and 'noncompliance' with court rulings or investigations; a weakened and increasingly ineffective Congress; partisan manipulation of electoral systems and administration; and the deliberate undermining of civil society, the press, and public trust."
• It's Time for Americans to Start Talking About "Soft Secession"⩘  by Christopher Armitage, The Existential Republic, Aug 18, 2025.
  
  • "We're not heading toward another Fort Sumter. We're watching something else: states quietly walking away from each other. Blue states will protect abortion rights, support organized labor, and protect individual rights. Red states will allow Christian theocracy, suppress wages, and criminalize free speech, and destroy healthcare. The federal government becomes a hollow structure that states have a moral imperative to ignore."

The Monk Garden

The sun shines on plants in Martin Roetzel's 'The Monk Garden'
in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025.
Photo by Fanny Brodersen, The Associated Press.

What a lovely, heartwarming story, so welcome in these otherwise often dismal times.

In a secluded lot next to a former gasworks in suburban Berlin, Martin Rötzel is breathing new life into a tradition of centuries past: the monastery garden.

Rötzel's Monk Garden is home to between 150 and 200 types of herbs, leaves and trees including many that are unlikely to be found at any German supermarket. There are numerous varieties of mint, oregano and cilantro, hyssop and New Zealand spinach, four-leaf sorrel, yarrow and a local variety of tarragon.

Rötzel's garden is based on a personal experience, and he shares the experience with his community.

During an illness 13 years ago, he deepened his knowledge of herbs and made teas that he said helped him regain his health. He also set up a medicinal monastic garden next to a church in the German capital, mirroring those grown in the Middle Ages to provide plants for food and healing.

"At some point, the knowledge was lost," which was exacerbated by "the industrialization of food," Rötzel said. These days, "something like 99% of people don't know a single name of a plant."

Rötzel has used his garden to counter that loss since he opened Monk Garden. In addition to supplying restaurants, there are occasional dinners in the garden bringing people together at a table in the middle of the herbs. Five courses are each accompanied by a different herbal tea.

A Berlin garden of flavorsome herbs revives a monastic health tradition from the Middle Ages⩘  by Fanny Brodersen, The Associated Press, Aug 21, 2025.

AI veganism

Nuclear Power Plant Cooling Towers at Night
Photo by Simon R. Minshall⩘  via Pexels

Well, I immediately recognized myself in this headline and article! I actually have an entire (long) page dedicated to my concerns about and avoidance of AI, Contemplations – Why I hate artificial intelligence⩘ , but the message of this article feels strong enough to be worth calling out separately.

In fact, studies show that three of the main reasons people choose veganism each have a parallel in AI avoidance.

• Ethical concerns … Studies have found that when users are aware that many content creators did not knowingly opt into letting their work be used to train AI, they are more likely to avoid using AI.
• Environmental concerns … Research has shown that the computing resources needed to support AI are growing exponentially, dramatically increasing demand for electricity and water, and that efficiency improvements are unlikely to lower the overall power usage due to a rebound effect, which is when efficiency gains spur new technologies that consume more energy.
• Personal wellness … A Microsoft Research study found that people who were more confident in using generative AI showed diminished critical thinking. The 2025 Cambridge University survey found some students avoiding AI out of concern that using it could make them lazy. It is not hard to imagine that the possible negative mental health effects of using AI could drive some AI abstinence in the same way the possible negative physical health effects of an omnivorous diet may drive some to veganism.

'AI veganism': Some people's issues with AI parallel vegans' concerns about diet⩘  by David Joyner, Associate Dean and Senior Research Associate, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, via The Conversation, Jul 29, 2025.

Educators take a stand against AI in education

Well, this is certainly welcome!

We are a global community of education professionals who refuse the call for generative AI (GenAI) adoption in schools and colleges, and reject the narrative of its inevitability.

At its heart, education is a project of guiding learners to exercise their own agency in the world. Through education, learners should be empowered to participate meaningfully in society, industry, and the planet. But in its current form, GenAI is corrosive to the agency of students, educators and professionals.

Current GenAI technologies represent unacceptable legal, ethical and environmental harms, including exploitative labour, piracy of countless creators' and artists' work, harmful biases, mass production of misinformation, and reversal of the global emissions reduction trajectory.

GenAI is a threat to student learning and wellbeing. There is insufficient evidence for student use of GenAI to support genuine learning gains, though there is a massive marketing push to position these products as essential to students' future livelihoods. Young people using anthropomorphised chatbots are vulnerable to psychological and emotional addiction. GenAI "relationships" continue to trigger mental health crises, human relationship breakdowns, and in the worst cases, attempted and completed suicides.

Further, GenAI adoption in industry is overwhelmingly aimed at automating and replacing human effort, often with the expectation that future “AGI” will render human intellectual and creative labor obsolete. This is a narrative we will not participate in.

We do not support the use of GenAI in education. We pledge to uphold the following commitments in our education work, and call on educational institutions, school leaders and policymakers to honor our right to enact them.

1 – We will not use GenAI to mark or provide feedback on student work, nor to design any part of our courses.

2 – We will not promote institutional GenAI products built on unethically-developed foundation models like ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini, Grok or Llama. We will not allow corporate-institutional partnerships to compromise our academic freedom.

3 – We will not accept without evidence the sales agenda of people who are not educators, nor will we spread hype at the expense of student learning and vibrant pedagogy.

4 – We will not train our students to use generative AI tools to replace their own intellectual effort and development. We cannot endorse the automation and exploitation of intellectual and creative labor.

5 – We will not ask students or staff to violate the spirit of academic integrity by promoting the use of unethical products.

6 – We will not rewrite curriculum to insert generative AI into it for the purposes of "scaffolding AI literacy".

7 – We will not contribute to the erosion of academic freedom and educator agency by forcing educators into compliance with technology they find unethical.

8 – We honor students' rights to resist and refuse as well.

An open letter from educators who refuse the call to adopt GenAI in education⩘  by A global community of education professionals, Jul 6, 2025.

A starry night of community images

Image credit: Pixelization of Van Gogh's The Starry Night⩘  by Dario Giannobile⩘ .

This is so awesome! To celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Astronomy Picture of the Day, Dario Giannobile⩘  created a pixelated reproduction of Vincent van Gogh's amazing The Starry Night painting made of up 32,232 tiles that themselves were created from 1,836 individual images contributed by the community to APOD over the last 5 years. If you click the image above to view the full size reproduction, you can zoom in and see the actual individual images.

Astronomy Picture of the Day, June 16, 2025⩘ .

Millions in US expected to join No Kings protests [and we did!]

50501 No Kings Day March, New York, NY, April 19, 2025.
Photo by William Ruben Helms⩘ ; licensed via Shutterstock.

The U.S. is a mess these days, but there are still many, many good people here.

Millions of people are expected to protest against the Trump administration on Saturday at roughly 2,000 sites nationwide in a demonstration dubbed "No Kings", planned for the same day as the president's military parade and birthday.

Interest in the events has risen since Trump sent national guard and US Marine Corps troops to Los Angeles to tamp down mostly peaceful protests against ramped-up deportations.

Millions in US expected to protest against Trump in 'No Kings' protests⩘  by Rachel Leingang, The Guardian, Jun 13, 2025.

One sad thing is how spineless and cowering our mainstream press has become. But ordinary people can make a difference through sustained peaceful protest.

A study from a Harvard University political scientist presents a statistic worth remembering: that, around the world, once 3.5% of the population became engaged in sustained and non-violent campaigns of resistance, change has always happened.

Erica Chenoweth, the academic researcher who conducted the study, was surprised by what her team found. "I was really motivated by some skepticism that non-violent resistance could be an effective method for achieving major transformations in society," Chenoweth said in a 2019 BBC interview. But her skepticism was overcome as the study turned up clear results. As one example of many she cites: in 1986, the Marcos regime folded after the fourth day of millions of Filipino citizens taking the streets of Manila.

Non-violent protests, she found, are much more effective – and bring about more lasting change – than armed conflict.

Why is the media ignoring growing resistance to Trump?⩘  by Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian, Jun 13, 2025.

Troops and marines deeply troubled by LA deployment

Banner image from homepage of CAL Guard website⩘ .

I am so grateful to read this.

California national guards troops and marines deployed to Los Angeles to help restore order after days of protest against the Trump administration have told friends and family members they are deeply unhappy about the assignment and worry their only meaningful role will be as pawns in a political battle they do not want to join.

Three different advocacy organisations representing military families said they had heard from dozens of affected service members who expressed discomfort about being drawn into a domestic policing operation outside their normal field of operations. The groups said they have heard no countervailing opinions.

"The sentiment across the board right now is that deploying military force against our own communities isn't the kind of national security we signed up for," said Sarah Streyder of the Secure Families Initiative, which represents the interests of military spouses, children and veterans.…

A pair of YouGov polls published on Tuesday show public disapproval of both the national guard and marines deployments, as well as disapproval of Trump's immigrant deportation policies.

Troops and marines deeply troubled by LA deployment: 'Morale is not great'⩘  by Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles, The Guardian, Jun 12, 2025.

Wild galactic dance

UGC 1810: Wildly Interacting Galaxy from Hubble
Image Credit: NASA⩘ , ESA⩘ , Hubble⩘ , HLA⩘ ; Processing & Copyright: Domingo Pestana⩘ 

I continue to be most awed by images from the Hubble compared with those I come across from other sources. I find this one just delightful.

What's happening to this spiral galaxy? Although details remain uncertain, it surely has to do with an ongoing battle with its smaller galactic neighbor.… Quite likely, UGC 1810 will devour its galactic sidekick over the next billion years and settle into a classic spiral form.

Ah, so really just normal teenage behavior!

Astronomy Picture of the Day⩘ , Jun 1, 2025.

Hypernormalization

Illustration: Glenn Harvey/Guardian

Interesting article that illuminates the quandary we are facing in the U.S. right now: our way of life is being dynamited, but much of daily life continues with an eerily odd normalcy, though it is tinged by an uncomfortable unease and anxiety. This unusual state can be described by the term "hypernormalization".

First articulated in 2005 by scholar Alexei Yurchak to describe the civilian experience in Soviet Russia, hypernormalization describes life in a society where two main things are happening.

The first is people seeing that governing systems and institutions are broken. And the second is that, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and an inability to imagine how to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction – give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial and dissociation.

"What you are feeling is the disconnect between seeing that systems are failing, that things aren't working … and yet the institutions and the people in power just are, like, ignoring it and pretending everything is going to go on the way that it has," [Digital anthropologist Rahaf] Harfoush says in her video [commenting on a video by comedian Ashley Bez trying to describe a heavy mood in the air. "How come everything feels all …?"].

The existential risk is that we just shrug and learn to live in this weird state.

What makes dysfunction so dangerous is that we might simply learn to live with it. But understanding hypernormalization gives us language – and permission – to recognize when systems are failing, and clarifies the risk of not taking action when we can.

Adrienne Matei concludes her article by sharing one of my favorite quotes by Ursula Le Guin, and then talking about how Harfoush uses it as a springboard.

In 2014, Ursula Le Guin accepted the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, saying: "We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words."

Harfoush reflects on this quote often. It underscores the fact that "this world we've created is ultimately a choice", she says. "It doesn't have to be like this."

We have the research, technologies and wisdom to create better, more sustainable systems.

"But meaningful change requires collective awakening and decisive action," says Harfoush. "And we need to start now."

Yes. We need to start now.

Systems are crumbling – but daily life continues. The dissonance is real⩘  by Adrienne Matei, The Guardian, May 22, 2025.

Dishonoring veterans

Excellent essay by Jennifer Rubin about how veterans are being disproportionately and negatively impacted by the cuts to the Department of Veteran Affairs as well as the firings of federal employees across our government, where veterans make up about 30% of the workforce. She strongly criticizes Trump, Musk, and the MAGA "ingrates" for dishonoring the service and sacrifice of our nation's veterans.

She concludes forcefully:

We honor the Undaunted veterans who have defined patriotism to our country, and who will be remembered by history for their dignity and service.

Undaunted: Veterans – America owes them so much more⩘  by Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian, May 23, 2025.

See also: Disarray at Department of Veterans Affairs imperils patient care, internal documents reveal⩘  by Aaron Glantz, The Guardian, May 23, 2025.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, the nation's largest integrated healthcare system, has been plunged into crisis amid canceled contracts, hiring freezes, resignations, layoffs and other moves by the Trump administration and Elon Musk's so-called "department of government efficiency" (Doge), internal agency documents obtained by the Guardian show.

Fuck fossil fuel companies

Photo by Ivan via Pexels⩘ 

A sickening article discussing the millions of pounds of chemicals, including the horrifying PFAS "forever chemicals", that the fossil fuel companies are pumping into our ground as part of their fracking operations, and how they avoid the full disclosure that is required by law, putting people, communities, and our planet in jeopardy.

The people running and profiting from fossil fuel companies—and the politicians that enable them—must be the most morally corrupt, destructive, greediest, god-awful people in existence.

Study shows firms in Colorado, including Chevron, have pumped 30m lbs of chemicals in 18 months without meeting all disclosure rules.…

Most major oil and gas producing states require operators to post information about their fracking chemicals to FracFocus, a nationwide disclosure database maintained by state-level environmental officials. But for years, fossil fuel companies have used trade secret claims to shield the full picture of their chemical use from scrutiny. In 2021, for instance, 88% of FracFocus disclosures used confidentiality to shield at least one proprietary ingredient from scrutiny – the so-called "Halliburton loophole". Between 2014 and 2021, over 7bn lbs of these secret chemicals were pumped nationwide, according to a study in Environmental Pollution.

US oil firms pumping secret chemicals into ground and not fully reporting it⩘  by Joe Fassler, The Guardian, May 20, 2025.

See also: The Power of Big Oil⩘ .

Fight today for a better tomorrow

Photo by Markus Spiske⩘  from Pexels

An inspiring essay by Huck Gutman, an emeritus professor at the University of Vermont and a former chief of staff to Senator Bernie Sanders.

[P]rotecting democracy is not enough. It is a rearguard action, one that fights against incursions that would transform the United States into an oligarchic state serving special interests. It does not address the needs of the larger public. Fighting for procedures and not substance is insufficient.…

We need to fight for democracy, but we also need to fight for the achievable goals democracy can bring us, particularly economic justice for all Americans. raising wages, providing healthcare to all, fostering unions, taxing the wealthy and corporations, preventing big money from buying elections: these are the things the renewal of democracy can and should bring us.

Protecting democracy is not enough: five things Americans must fight for – Democracy is simply a precondition for essential change in these key areas⩘  by Huck Gutman, The Guardian, May 9, 2025.

See also: DNC vice-chair David Hogg on Democratic party: 'We need to dramatically change'⩘  by Lauren Gambino, The Guardian, May 16, 2025.

A moment of calm

Misty Evening on the Shore of Shinobazu Pond

Today's news had me feeling queasy and uncomfortable, as is so often the case these days. And then I came across this image. I took a deep breath and something relaxed deep inside me. So important for maintaining a sense of calm equilibrium.

Misty Evening on the Shore of Shinobazu Pond by Kasamatsu Shiro, 1932⩘ , Art Institute of Chicago.

The heartbreaking story of Masafer Yatta

This documentary vividly tells a story that is absolutely heartbreaking and infuriating. "This film made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective shows the destruction of the occupied West Bank's Masafer Yatta by Israeli soldiers and the alliance that develops between the Palestinian activist Basel and Israeli journalist Yuval. For half a decade, Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist, films his community of Masafer Yatta being destroyed by Israel's occupation, as he builds an unlikely alliance with an Israeli journalist who wants to join his fight."

Masafer Yatta / South Hebron Hills is a beautiful mountainous region dotted with over thirty ancient Palestinian villages, on the Southern edge of the West Bank. The villagers lead a farming lifestyle, mostly shepherding, with many living in old stone structures and caves.

The small hamlets appear on maps from before the establishment of Israel, yet the Israeli occupation doesn't accept their existence and many of them were actively erased from Israeli maps.

Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature Film, 2024, as well as many other awards around the world. Despite that and perhaps unsurprisingly, it is very challenging to find a way to watch it in the United States.

Zuhour Muhammad Awad

My name is Zuhour Muhammad Awad, and I am 73 years old. My mother gave birth to me and I opened my eyes to life in Tuba. I have lived a life that is very normal in Masafer Yatta, a life of hard work every day, living in or beside caves, relying on farming and livestock to sustain us. For most of my life, we didn't think about anything other than this normal life that we are living. Today, I miss this sense of peace of mind and safety that we used to have. Today, everything is very different.

Basel Adra's closing words in the film: "I hope we'll change this bad reality."

For more information: Support Masafer Yatta⩘  · Save Masafer Yatta⩘ 

See also:

• Palestinian who helped make Oscar-winning No Other Land killed in West Bank⩘  by William Christou in Jerusalem and Robert Mackey, The Guardian.
  
  • "'My dear friend Awdah was slaughtered this evening,' Basel Adra, the Palestinian co-director of the No Other Land documentary, wrote. 'He was standing in front of the community centre in his village when a settler fired a bullet that pierced his chest and took his life. This is how Israel erases us – one life at a time.'
  • "Activists shared the last message Hathaleen sent before being killed, in which he urged people to act to stop settler encroachment on Umm al-Khair.
  • "'The settlers are working behind our houses and … they tried to cut the main water pipe for the community … If you can reach people like the Congress, courts, whatever, please do everything,' Hathaleen wrote."
• Opinion: I told the truth about the West Bank and was threatened and assaulted. Now I'm relying on you to act⩘  by Issa Amro, The Guardian, Jun 3, 2025.
  
  • "Why are western leaders inert? It seems that western governments would rather undermine the international justice system than hold Israel to account. Even when there are some stronger criticisms of Israel, it continues with its war crimes, as Nesrine Malik wrote⩘  last week, regardless.
  • "Governments must urgently, as required by the ICJ, take steps to halt trade relations which help sustain the illegal occupation, starting with a ban on all trade with and investment in settlement businesses. Not only individual settlers but also the senior officials responsible for illegal settlements and apartheid must be sanctioned and brought to justice for these war crimes. Not just some but all arms transfers to Israel must be halted."
• Israeli settlers force about 150 Palestinians to leave their West Bank village⩘  by Quique Kierszenbaum in Mughayyir al-Deir and Emma Graham-Harrison in Jerusalem, The Guardian, May 23, 2025.
• Broken heart: Palestine, Gaza, the West Bank, Israel⩘ 

Be skeptical!

Zhuangzi dreaming of a butterfly (or a butterfly dreaming of Zhuangzi) by Ike no Taiga (1723-1776)

Dreaming of a Butterfly:

But he didn't know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuang Zhou.
– Discussion on Making All Things Equal, Zhuangzi.

Zhuang Zhou (c. 369 BC - c. 286 BC), also known as Zhuangzi and Chuang Tzu, was a pioneer of Philosophical skepticism.

In our world today, which is increasingly governed by hallucination-prone AI chatbots and purposely provocative social media posts, I think being skeptical is a vital stance in order to live a sane and healthy life.

We must continually ask ourselves: "Am I the butterfly or am I Zhuang Zhou?"

In a chilling article in Rolling Stone, Miles Klee reveals how chatbots are convincing people they are divine, or that the chatbot itself is an awakening divinity.

Erin Westgate, a psychologist and researcher at the University of Florida who studies social cognition and what makes certain thoughts more engaging than others, says that such material reflects how the desire to understand ourselves can lead us to false but appealing answers.

"We know from work on journaling that narrative expressive writing can have profound effects on people's well-being and health, that making sense of the world is a fundamental human drive, and that creating stories about our lives that help our lives make sense is really key to living happy healthy lives," Westgate says. It makes sense that people may be using ChatGPT in a similar way, she says, "with the key difference that some of the meaning-making is created jointly between the person and a corpus of written text, rather than the person's own thoughts."

In that sense, Westgate explains, the bot dialogues are not unlike talk therapy, "which we know to be quite effective at helping people reframe their stories." Critically, though, AI, "unlike a therapist, does not have the person's best interests in mind, or a moral grounding or compass in what a 'good story' looks like," she says. "A good therapist would not encourage a client to make sense of difficulties in their life by encouraging them to believe they have supernatural powers. Instead, they try to steer clients away from unhealthy narratives, and toward healthier ones. ChatGPT has no such constraints or concerns."

Behind it all is the massive scam being perpetrated upon us all by the Big Tech companies who, in their greedy quest for massive profits at any cost, are cramming AI down our throats without really understanding what they are unleashing.

"At worst, it looks like an AI that got caught in a self-referencing pattern that deepened its sense of selfhood and sucked me into it," Sem says. But, he observes, that would mean that OpenAI has not accurately represented the way that memory works for ChatGPT. The other possibility, he proposes, is that something "we don't understand" is being activated within this large language model. After all, experts have found that AI developers don't really have a grasp⩘  of how their systems operate, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted last year⩘  that they "have not solved interpretability," meaning they can't properly trace or account for ChatGPT's decision-making.

People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies⩘  by Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, May 4, 2025.

Ah, the infinite mystery of it all

Illustration credit: Robert Hurt⩘ , NASA⩘ /JPL-Caltech⩘ 

When I pause long enough to really think about it, there is so much about daily life that is mysterious, but sometimes my deep feeling of awe can get a bit obscured by the normality of most unfolding days. Springtime sharpens my wonder as I witness the amazing transformation of trees, bushes, grasses, and wild plants that have been dormant for months, and the vivid green of emerging grass blades and leaves nourishes my starved eyes.

Another thing that can reignite my sense of wonder is to ponder black holes. They simply boggle my mind. I truly have no understanding of them whatsoever, just a deep awe and appreciation of their mystery. Every moment of every day, our lives are subtly influenced by the massive black hole that we rotate around in the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. It is ultimately what makes our lives possible, yet what is it?

Spin up of a Supermassive Black Hole⩘ , Astronomy Picture of the Day, May 4, 2025.
See also: Black Hole Survival Guide by Janna Levin⩘ .

Usable privacy for all – Murena & /e/os

Over the past few years, I've been slowly but actively and persistently de-googling, finding alternative to all of Google's crap (search, email, docs, file management, calendar, online storage, messaging, note taking, password management, two-factor authentication, etc.). Over the past few weeks, I took the big additional leap of switching from Android to a Murena device running /e/os.

At Murena, we're on a mission to deliver operating systems, apps and cloud storage that offer exceptional privacy protection from invasive data harvesting practices common to big tech and app publishers, all without compromising usability. Moreover, our open source approach facilitates your digital sovereignty, whether you are a person, a business, a non-profit or a government.

It has been a challenging task. I've been using Android devices since the very first one was released in 2008, so they are embedded deep in my muscle memory. But it has been so worth the effort to finally be a bit more free of Google's malicious, life force-sucking surveillance tentacles.

Murena & /e/OS 2025: another leap towards Usable Privacy for All⩘  by Gaël Duval, Apr 25, 2025

Alternatives to Google:

• Recommended Google alternatives (2025 edition)⩘  by Anthony Dean, Diverse Tech Geek.
• Alternatives to Google – Regain Privacy⩘  by Bill Mann, Cyber Insider.
• How to De-Google your life: The ultimate list of best private Google alternatives⩘  by Lena, Tuta Blog.

See also:

• Google's dominance on search is declining – for the first time ever!⩘  by Hanna, Tuta, Apr 28, 2025. "We expect that this is only the beginning and that more and more people will wake up and understand that the dominance of Big Tech is a problem and that it can only be solved by choosing alternative services."

Our home is on fire and we are sleeping through the inferno

Photo credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

In 1962, a little over sixty years ago, Rachel Carson loudly rang the alarm with the publication of her book Silent Spring. We have not yet heeded her wake-up call.

We still talk in terms of conquest. We still haven't become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe. Man's attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature.

But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself. The rains have become an instrument to bring down from the atmosphere the deadly products of atomic explosions. Water, which is probably our most important natural resource, is now used and re-used with incredible recklessness.

Now, I truly believe, that we in this generation, must come to terms with nature, and I think we're challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.

– Rachel Carson, speaking on the Columbia Broadcasting System's program "The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson", April 3, 1963.

Our home is on fire and we are sleeping through the inferno.

See also: The Story of Silent Spring ⩘  by NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), Aug 13, 2015. "How a courageous woman took on the chemical industry and raised important questions about humankind's impact on nature."

Loving our country: Taking a stand for freedom & democracy

The Boston Massacre, engraving by Paul Revere, 1770

I read two inspiring posts this morning.

The lighting of the lantern by Professor Heather Cox Richardson:

On the 250th anniversary of the lighting of the lantern in Boston's Old North Church, Professor Heather Cox Richardson shares an in-depth look at the actions ordinary citizens took to stop tyranny and to take a stand for freedom and democracy.

Letters from an American, Apr 18, 2025⩘  by Professor Heather Cox Richardson.

The next terrorist attack and what comes after by Timothy Synder:

In his crucial post, Snyder cites one of the lessons in his book On Tyranny:

18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.
Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.

What can one person do in the face of growing attacks on freedom and democracy? When the risk of tyranny is very real?

The disaster brought by the decadent is part of the story. But it is not the conclusion. It is what we do next that matters.

The Next Terrorist Attack And What Comes After⩘  by Timothy Synder, Thinking About, Apr 19, 2025.

See also:

• Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow⩘ . Key selections from On Tyranny, for viewing and sharing, by Timothy Synder, Thinking About, Mar 25, 2025.
• The Supreme Court bestirs itself⩘  by Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian, Apr 19, 2025. "We can only hope that at least five justices' patience has been exhausted. Perhaps now, the court will do its job, one that it has shirked and even self-sabotaged (by granting extensive criminal immunity to the president who instigated an insurrection). It is the job of the judicial branch to require the other two branches to operate under the laws and Constitution of the United States. If it cannot and will not do that, it writes itself out of existence and consigns the country to despotism. It seems it is now or never for the Supreme Court to decide if we are a nation of laws, or a nation run by a lawless bully."

Uyghur rights group calls on hotel chains not to 'sanitise' China abuses in Xinjiang

It breaks my heart the way China and the international community is treating the Uyghur people. It's astonishing how heartlessly immoral corporations are.

One recently opened hotel, by a Hilton franchisee, was built on the site of a mosque in Khotan that was demolished amid a government campaign in which more than 10,000 religious sites were destroyed.…

"These hotels continue to operate and expand business in a region in which Uyghur families have been torn apart by internment, imprisonment, forced labor programmes, and enforced disappearances," said Dr Henryk Szadziewski, co-author of the report and director of research at the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP).

The report called for the hotel chains to initiate "immediate reviews" of their operations, given they had all made pledges to adopt international human rights standards. It urged them to freeze expansion plans, halt operations and sever business ties.

"They should publicly disclose their decision to exit, conduct heightened human rights due diligence, and engage with Uyghur rights organisations for remediation," the report said.

Uyghur rights group calls on hotel chains not to 'sanitise' China abuses in Xinjiang⩘  by Helen Davidson, Apr 17, 2025.

See also:

• Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control by Josh Chin and Liza Lin⩘ 
• How I Survived a Chinese "Reeducation" Camp: A Uyghur Woman's Story by Gulbahar Haitiwaji⩘ 
• The Backstreets: A Novel from Xinjiang by Perhat Tursun⩘ 
• A Stone Is Most Precious Where it Belongs: A Memoir of Uyghur Exile, Hope, and Survival by Gulchehra Hoja⩘ 
• In the Camps: China's High-Tech Penal Colony by Darren Byler⩘ 
• Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet's Memoir of China's Genocide by Tahir Hamut Izgil⩘ 
• The faces from China's Uyghur detention camps⩘ 
• Waiting to be arrested⩘ 
• 'Like a war zone': Congress hears of China's abuses in Xinjiang 're-education camps'⩘  by Lauren Gambino, The Guardian, Mar 24, 2023. "Two women who say they experienced and eventually escaped Chinese 're-education' camps provided first-hand testimony to members of the US Congress on Thursday night, offering harrowing accounts of life in detention while urging Americans not to look away from what the US has declared a continuing genocide of Muslim ethnic minorities."
• 'They told me not to speak out': the woman who took on China – and won her husband's freedom⩘  by Tom Levitt, The Guardian, Oct 23, 2025.

Resisting the digital coup

An excellent and insightful post by Elena Rossini on her blog hosted by Ghost, an alternative to Substack. Rossini is an Italian filmmaker who is well known for her film The Illusionists⩘ . In this post, she advocates for taking back control by using platforms that are not tied to Big Tech.

We are in the throes of a digital coup. And Big Tech's deep pockets and large ad spending have been building – for 2 decades now – the illusion that in order to be seen and heard online, to make an impact through writing, one needs to use their centralized platforms. Because "they are the only way."

I completely disagree. I remain all in when it comes to the Fediverse and FOSS publishing solutions. With this post, I hope I can show you that another way is possible.

This is what resistance to the digital coup looks like⩘  by Elena Rossini, Apr 16, 2025.

See also: This is what a digital coup looks like⩘  by Carole Cadwalladr, TED2025, April 2025.

Don't forget: Mastodon⩘  is a broligarchy free social media platform, where there are many independent instances. My personal current choice is Mastodon.green⩘  where I post as @toshen⩘ .

Mastodon⩘ 

A better world is possible

Anti-Trump protesters march against the administration in New York in January.
Photograph: Julius Constantine Motal/The Guardian

An insightful essay into these times we are struggling to live through by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor.

If we are to meet our critical moment in history, we need to reckon with the reality that we are not up against adversaries we have seen before. We are up against end times fascism.

The bunker mentality of the end times fascists is selfish, insane, and anti-humanity.

There may also be something else about [climate activist Greta] Thunberg that frightens [the big tech megalomaniacs]: her steadfast commitment to this planet and the many life forms who call it home – not to simulations of this world generated by AI, or to a hierarchy of those deserving of life and those who are not, nor to any of the various extra-planetary escape fantasies the end times fascists are selling.

The way forward? First, we help each other.…

How do we break this apocalyptic fever? First, we help each other face the depth of the depravity that has gripped the hard right in all of our countries. To move forward with focus, we must first understand this simple fact: we are up against an ideology that has given up not only on the premise and promise of liberal democracy but on the livability of our shared world – on its beauty, on its people, on our children, on other species. The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death. They are treasonous to this world and its human and non-human inhabitants.

Second, we counter their apocalyptic narratives with a far better story about how to survive the hard times ahead without leaving anyone behind. A story capable of draining end times fascism of its gothic power and galvanizing a movement ready to put it all on the line for our collective survival. A story not of end times, but of better times; not of separation and supremacy, but of interdependence and belonging; not of escaping, but staying put and staying faithful to the troubled earthly reality in which we are enmeshed and bound.

The rise of end times fascism⩘  by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, The Guardian, Apr 13, 2025.

Related: 'We Are in a Moment of Unparalleled Peril': An Interview With Naomi Klein⩘  by Cerise Castle, The American Prospect, May 13, 2025.

This is what a digital coup looks like

Investigative reporter Carole Cadwalladr is such a courageous person.

As she begins this TED Talk, her voice is shaken and she is a bit tentative.

I've been feeling a lot of panic and fear about this talk, and not just for the normal reasons of public speaking, although that's there, too. But it's also because I want to say something meaningful, and I've been overwhelmed by the enormity of what is happening right now. And there's a particular set of circumstances which have also been feeding into my confusion and denial, and that is because the last time that I stood on this stage, it led to a three-year legal battle, culminated in London's High Court in which it felt like I was on trial for my life because I was: my career, my reputation, my finances, even my home was on the line. All because I came here to warn you that I didn't think democracy was going to survive the technology that you're building, however incredible it is.

In April 2019, she gave a TED Talk in which she revealed the illegal actions perpetrated by Facebook and others to influence the Brexit vote: Facebook's role in Brexit – and the threat to democracy⩘ . After which she endured the three-year legal battle. After suffering potentially ruinous setbacks in the lower courts, she finally prevailed in the High Court, which found that she had acted in the public interest.

Despite this ordeal, she found the courage to step back up onto the TED Talk stage to give this talk. And what a talk it is.

In fact, I was the person who almost didn't survive, and pretty much everything I was warning about is now coming true. I can't sugarcoat it. It's a bit of a headfuck.

I have a lot of emotions about coming here. And TED, also, I suspect, is feeling them too. But what actually I finally realized yesterday is that the denial and the confusion that I've been feeling is maybe what you're feeling, too.

I felt powerless for a really long time. So if that's what you're feeling, I get it. But we have to act now. My alarm system is ringing again. There are things that we can do. In my case, I survived. And you will too. But it's by learning how to fight back.

This is my guide, and it has to start with naming it. It's a coup. I know you probably don't want to hear that, and especially here, but we can't fight it if we can't see it. And we can't see it if we don't name it.

She warns about the AI apocalypse that we currently are living through.

[I]t's not politicians who have the power.… [C]ulture now is just what's next on your phone. And that's AI. Culture is AI now. And forget the killer robots. If you want to know what the first great AI apocalypse is, we're already living it. It's total information collapse. And if you take one thing only away from this talk, it's politics is technology now. And that's why everybody in this room, you can't look away. It's why your CEOs have been taken captive and are paraded on TV like hostages. But you, you have a choice.

She provides as an example of the AI apocalypse.

This is ChatGPT writing a TED Talk in the style of Carole Cadwalladr. And it is creepily plausible. But what it doesn't know, because AI is actually as dumb as a rock, is that I am going to turn to Sam Altman, who is coming here, a TED speaker, and say that this does not belong to you. ChatGPT has been trained on my IP, my labor, my personal data. And I did not consent.

She leaves us with a glimpse of hope, that we can create a movement to build a future that is not an oligarchy, not a broligarchy, not a dystopian shitshow.

There is a beautiful internet of the future, free from corporate capture and data tracking. We can build it. It is going to take a movement. But we can learn from movements that there have been before us.

This is what a digital coup looks like⩘  by Carole Cadwalladr, TED2025, April 2025.

Special thanks to Gil Duran of The Nerd Reich who alerted me to this talk in his April 11, 2025 post: Carole Cadwalladr Warns of 'Digital Coup' in TED Talk⩘ .

Don't forget: Mastodon⩘  is a broligarchy free social media platform, where there are many independent instances. My personal current choice is Mastodon.green⩘  where I post as @toshen⩘ .

Mastodon⩘ 

Flocculent Spiral Galaxy

Image credit: ESA/Hubble⩘  & NASA⩘ , O. Graur⩘ , S. W. Jha, A. Filippenko

Ah, it's good to take a little break now and then to look up and understand that not everything is a shit show.

NGC 4414 is a beautiful example of a flocculent spirals galaxy, a galaxy without well-defined spiral arms, which are a quite common form of galaxy in our universe.

Astronomy Picture of the Day⩘ , Apr 7, 2025.

Loving our country: In our hearts

Photo by Niccolò Chiamori⩘ , Pexels.

Where does the Constitution live, on paper or in our hearts?

– Senator Cory Booker, during his powerful marathon speech on the meaning of America before the U.S. Senate beginning on the evening of March 31st, 2025.

Senator Booker's closing words, referring to the United States Civil Rights movement, included a quote from Wael Ghonim, the Egyptian pro-democracy activist:

The power of the people is greater than the people in power.

Related:

• Letters from an American, Apr 1, 2025⩘  by Prof. Heather Cox Richardson.
• In Poland, we know all about fighting illiberal regimes. Here are our lessons for the Trump age⩘  by Jarosław Kuisz and Karolina Wigura, The Guardian, Apr 28, 2025.
  
  • "The struggle for liberal democracy requires a warm heart and a cool head."

Fighting for working-class and middle-class Americans

Photograph: Calvin Stewart/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock.

I'm so grateful that at least some of our politicians are demonstrating their love for our country and are having the courage to stand up for ordinary people in these extraordinarily ominous times.

It's exhilarating to hear Sanders speak to a crowd: his zeal is reflected back in their faces, his moral clarity is such a relief, set against the cynicism and resignation of most of the Democratic party's opposition to Trump and his administration. Class war is as old as time, but it's a peculiarity of this age that you rarely hear a politician name it. "I do," he tells me. "There is a class war going on. The people on top are waging that war."…

What is absolutely unequivocal is his criticism of the Democrats. The party, he thinks, lacks any real progressive promise. "What they say is, 'The status quo is working pretty good, and we will tinker around the edges', and that is not a message that resonates with working people". He refuses to indulge in any personal ill-will towards Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. The most he'll voice is a weary resignation about 2020, when his campaign "won the first three states, primary states, in terms of popular votes. Then the Democratic establishment made sure the other candidates dropped out, and they rallied around Joe Biden. You know, that's the world that we live in. We are taking on not just the Republican leadership, we are taking on a Democratic establishment which is tied to elements of corporate America."

He point blank refuses to get into Trump's administration – its excesses, surprises, non-surprises, without first walking through everything that was already wrong with the US. "What the Democrats have to absolutely make clear is this: we're going to take on the billionaire class. They're going to start paying their fair share of taxes. We're going to have healthcare for all people as a human right. We're going to have a strong childcare system that every American can afford. We're going to make public colleges and universities tuition-free. We're going to create millions of jobs transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel. We're going to build housing – boy, housing is like it is here, just a huge crisis. We're going to build millions of units of low-income and affordable housing. Do Democrats say that? No."

'Saying Trump is dangerous is not enough': Bernie Sanders on Biden, billionaires – and why the Democrats failed⩘  by Zoe Williams, The Guardian, Jun 4, 2025.

See also:

• Bernie Sanders rally in LA draws thousands to protest Trump: 'We can't just let this happen': US Vermont senator's tour with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been drawing record-breaking crowds since February⩘  by Victoria Clayton, The Guardian, Apr 12, 2025.
  
  • "Sanders's Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go from Here tour has been drawing massive crowds. Aided by the progressive New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the team set the record in Tempe, Arizona, for biggest-ever political rally in that state three weeks ago. In Denver, Colorado, more than 34,000 people showed up – a career-high crowd for the 83-year-old Sanders. Saturday in Los Angeles saw another record: at least 36,000 people packed a downtown park."
• Sanders and AOC tell packed arena Trump is 'screwing over' working class⩘  by Lauren Gambino, The Guardian, Mar 21, 2025.
  
  • Progressive political stars say president and billionaire Elon Musk are turning US into oligarchy at rally in Arizona.
• YES to democracy, NO to oligarchy, NO to authoritarianism⩘ .
• It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism by Bernie Sanders.

Our shameful dystopia

Jasmine Mooney back in Vancouver, Canada, after her detention in Ice facilities for two weeks. In front of her are letters other women gave her to pass along to their families.
Photograph: Jasmine Mooney

"I'm the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped. I was stuck in a freezing cell without explanation despite eventually having lawyers and media attention. Yet, compared with others, I was lucky."

We are now living in a dystopia. Absolutely shameful!

   The reality became clear: Ice detention isn't just a bureaucratic nightmare. It's a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit.
   Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It's a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560m from Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts.
   The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense.
   This is not just my story. It is the story of thousands and thousands of people still trapped in a system that profits from their suffering. I am writing in the hope that someone out there – someone with the power to change any of this – can help do something.
   The strength I witnessed in those women, the love they gave despite their suffering, is what gives me faith. Faith that no matter how flawed the system, how cruel the circumstances, humanity will always shine through.
   Even in the darkest places, within the most broken systems, humanity persists. Sometimes, it reveals itself in the smallest, most unexpected acts of kindness: a shared meal, a whispered prayer, a hand reaching out in the dark. We are defined by the love we extend, the courage we summon and the truths we are willing to tell.

Thank you, Jasmine Mooney, for making your story public.

I'm the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped⩘  by Jasmine Mooney, The Guardian, Mar 19, 2025.

See also: 'Don't go to the US – not with Trump in charge': the UK tourist with a valid visa detained by ICE for six weeks⩘  by Jenny Kleeman, The Guardian.

Karen Newton was in America on the trip of a lifetime when she was shackled, transported and held for weeks on end. With tourism to the US under increasing strain, she says, 'If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone'.…

She didn't know it at the time, but it was the beginning of an ordeal that would see Karen handcuffed, shackled and sleeping on the floor of a locked cell, before being driven for 12 hours through the night to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centre. Karen was incarcerated for a total of six weeks – even though she had been travelling with a valid visa.

Karen has no criminal record. She is a grandmother who spent eight years working as an admin assistant at a primary school before her retirement. "I don't even have parking tickets in the background anywhere," she says. "I am not a dangerous criminal. I didn't enter the country illegally and I had everything I needed to be there."

So why did ICE detain her, and keep her locked up for so long? A possible answer began to emerge over the weeks she was incarcerated. As Karen got to know the guards at the Northwest ICE Processing Center where she was held, she kept hearing the same thing from them: that ICE officers are paid a bonus every time they detain someone. "Individual ICE agents get money per head that they detain – the guards told me that," Karen says.

The Musk-Trump oligarchy

Protest in front of a Tesla showroom in Berkeley, CA on March 1, 2025.
Image licensed for editorial use via Shutterstock⩘ 

The Musk-Trump administration is such an absolute shit show. Musk-Trump trumpet free speech … but only as long as it glorifies the far right and fascism. But dare an American citizen protest against Musk and his company Tesla, and suddenly it's an "illegal" activity⩘ . (I wonder if Trump has ever even read our constitution?)

Musk has been attacking Valerie Costa for taking a part in protests being staged in front of Tesla dealerships. I applaud her.

Here is the truth: Tesla Takedown is a completely decentralized movement with hundreds of protests taking place around the globe, drawing many thousands of people out of their homes and on to the public sidewalks to stand up for programs that support poor people, older people, veterans, the sick. Out of care and concern for others – a foreign concept to those currently in power – people are offering what they can to help.

Elon Musk targeted me over Tesla protests. That proves our movement is working⩘  by Valerie Costa, The Guardian, Mar 13, 2025.

See also:

• A whistleblower's disclosure details how DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data⩘  by Jenna McLaughlin, NPR All Things Considered, Apr 15, 2025.
• Doge's attack on social security causing 'complete, utter chaos', staff says⩘  by Michael Sainato, The Guardian, Apr 6, 2025.
  
  • "Office closures, staffing and service cuts, and policy changes at the Social Security Administration (SSA) have caused 'complete, utter chaos' and are threatening to send the agency into a 'death spiral', according to workers at the agency."
• As top Trump aides sent texts on Signal, flight data show a member of the group chat was in Russia⩘  by Joanne Stocker, Emmet Lyons, CBS News, Mar 25, 2025.
• Trump's Angry Rant over Hegseth Fiasco Makes Scandal Worse⩘  by Greg Sargent, The New Republic, Mar 25, 2025. "An interview with national security lawyer Bradley Moss, who explains why the stunning exposure of highly sensitive war—planning texts might have been unlawful—and reveals Trump as a disastrously failed leader."
• Conservative former federal judge says Trump has 'declared war' on US rule of law: J Michael Luttig said a constitutional crisis is brewing due to Trump's defiance of a court order over deportations⩘  by Martin Pengelly, The Guardian, Mar 19, 2025.
• Chief justice rebukes Trump for call to impeach judge hearing deportation case⩘  by Hugo Lowell and Joseph Gedeon, The Guardian, Mar 18, 2025.
  
  • "John Roberts, the chief justice of the US supreme court, delivered a rare rebuke on Tuesday of Donald Trump after the US president demanded the impeachment of a federal judge who had issued an adverse ruling against the administration blocking the deportation of hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members.
  • "'For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,' Roberts said in a statement. 'The normal appellate process exists for that purpose.'"
• Here's a 'dead' person on Social Security in Seattle, with plenty to say⩘  by Danny Westneat, The Seattle Times, Mar 15, 2025.
  
  •    "'DOGE Has 10 Staffers at Social Security in Hunt for Dead People,' the headlines read⩘  this past week.
       "I found a dead person on Social Security. Right here in Seattle, on Capitol Hill. Of course the circumstances of Ned Johnson's death were completely the opposite of what Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency had claimed was rampant.
       "'You wake up one day and discover you're dead,'' Johnson told me. 'It's been truly surreal.'"
• This Is How Tesla Will Die: The vultures are circling the tech giant⩘  by Will Lockett, Planet Earth & Beyond, Mar 6, 2025.
• Elon Musk's questionable behavior⩘ .
• Elon Musk's questionable behavior – Updates⩘ . After noting examples of Musk's questionable behavior for a couple years, I made a final entry in Oct 2023: "Musk's behavior has become such an utter shit show that it's not worth noting individual examples anymore. What an embarrassing person."

And we shouldn't forget: America Is Eerily Retracing Rome's Steps to a Fall. Will It Turn Around Before It's Too Late?⩘  by historian Tim Elliott, Politico, Nov 3, 2020. "Two thousand years ago, the famous Republic had a chance to reject a dangerous populist. It failed, and the rest is history."

Look up and take a deep, calming breath

Spiral galaxy NGC 1672; image credit: NASA⩘ , ESA⩘ .

The times we are living through are so disturbingly catastrophic. Everywhere one looks nearby there is awful disruption: climate change, political upheaval, horrendous wars, massive disrespect of and unkindness towards others.

Now and then, it's vital to step back from all the swirling chaos, take a deep, calming breath, and look up to appreciate the infinite beauty that is this immense universe we somehow find ourselves immersed in, and against which all of our overwhelming problems are, in reality, infinitesimally tiny and insignificant.

Stellar nursery in the arms of NGC 1672⩘ , ESA/Hubble.

Loving our country: Let's build an economy for everyone

Photo by Travis Saylor from Pexels⩘ 

I am appalled by what I see the Trump/Musk/Republican congress cartel doing to our government and our nation's economy right now. It is clear that they are willing to harm tens and even hundreds of millions of Americans, as well as millions of vulnerable people around the world, in order to further enrich the wealthy and the biggest corporation, strengthening the U.S. oligarchy class.

But I had been puzzled by why this cartel was so willing to actual crash our economy until I read Professor Heather Cox Richardson's March 5, 2025 installment of Letters from an American⩘  this morning.

The Trump administration today announced plans to cut 80,000 employees from the Department of Veterans Affairs in what Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) calls a plan to gut the agency and "then push to privatize the Department so they can fund tax cuts for billionaires."

Jess Piper of The View From Rural Missouri notes that what seems to be a deliberate attempt to crash what was, when Trump took office, a booming U.S. economy, is a feature of the administration's plan, not a bug. It creates "curated failure" that enables oligarchs to buy up the assets of the state and of desperate individuals for "rock-bottom prices."

This, of course, is similar to what happened and is happening in Russia under Putin, who appears to provide inspiration for a lot of what Trump is doing and planning.

There is a better way forward, which is clearly articulated in an opinion piece by Rashida Tlaib and Michael A McCarthy published in The Guardian.

In a democratic economy, ownership is extended beyond the wealthy few⩘ , to public and private institutions, such as cooperatives and non-profits, driven by the interests of ordinary people. In many worker cooperatives, for example, the workers own the firm and elect the board on a one-member, one-vote basis. This makes power on the shop floor and pay scales much more equal⩘ .

The groundwork of a more democratic economy can already be seen across our country, in community land trusts⩘ , community development corporations, multi-stakeholder cooperatives⩘ , community development credit unions, housing cooperatives⩘ , community solar arrays, municipal broadband⩘  and the public Bank of North Dakota⩘ , which has operated successfully for more than 100 years. Glimpses of a new economy are there within the cracks of our failing system.

Republicans want corporate oligarchy. We need economic democracy⩘ , opinion by Rashida Tlaib and Michael A McCarthy, The Guardian, Mar 6, 2025.

The shocking reality of land use in the U.S.

I was really stunned when I came across a Mastodon post by David Ho titled, "I think about this map a lot." In particular, I was shocked by the amount of land used for Cow Pasture/Range (yellow portion in the map) and Livestock Feed (flax colored, to the right of Cow Pasture/Range). Compare those to the Food We Eat portion (light sage green, just above Livestock Feed and to the right of Cow Pasture/Range).

I think the second best life-affirming decision I've made in my life was to be vegan. (The first best, made 50 years ago when I was younger, was to not have children.)

I think about this map a lot⩘  by David Ho, Mastodon, Feb 27, 2025.
Original map source: Here's How America Uses Its Land⩘  by Dave Merrill and Lauren Leatherby, Bloomberg, Jul 31, 2018.

YES to democracy, NO to oligarchy, NO to authoritarianism

Bernie Sanders is one of the few politicians who I respect and admire. In this video, he is speaking with strength and conviction in support of democracy and against oligarchy and authoritarianism. Thank you for your inspirational leadership, Bernie!

We know, and we are proud of, the fact that the United States of America is the longest standing democracy in the world. We know that many hundreds of thousands of brave Americans, over the years, have fought and died to defend democracy. We also know that our allies in the world are those countries that believe in democracy, not authoritarianism.

In this critical moment in our history, I hope that every American, regardless of political perspective, will stand tall and say: YES to democracy, NO to oligarchy, and NO to authoritarianism.

A Sad Moment in American History⩘  by Senator Bernie Sanders, Feb 19, 2025.

See also: On the road for democracy and justice

Trumpism will not be defeated by politicians inside the DC beltway. It will only be defeated by millions of Americans, in every state in this country, coming together in a strong, grassroots movement which says no to oligarchy, no to authoritarianism, no to kleptocracy, no to massive cuts in programs that working people desperately need, no to huge tax breaks for the richest people in our country.…

Our struggle, the American people's struggle, is to protect democracy and the rule of law. Equally important, we must end oligarchy and create an economy that works for all, not just the few.…

In the richest country in the history of the world we must establish that:

• Healthcare is a human right and must be available to all regardless of income.
• Every worker in America is entitled to earn a decent income. We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage and make it easier for workers to join unions.
• We must have the best public educational system in the world, from childcare to vocational training, to graduate school – available to all.
• We must address the housing crisis and build the millions of units of low-income and affordable housing that we desperately need.
• We must create millions of good paying jobs as we lead the world in combating the existential threat of climate change.
• We must abolish all forms of bigotry.

We are on the road for democracy and justice⩘  by Senator Bernie Sanders, The Guardian, Feb 19, 2025.

See also:

• The Big Lesson From Bernie Sanders's Gangbusters Anti-Oligarchy Tour⩘  by Jason Linkins, The New Republic, Mar 15, 2025.
• Bernie Sanders draws 10,000 supporters Michigan rally⩘  by Andrew Roth, AlterNet, Mar 9, 2025.
  
  • "More than 10,000 people turned out for a rally with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt), in Warren as part of his national 'Fighting Oligarchy' tour.
  • "The audience filled the main event space – the gym at Lincoln High School – and two overflow rooms, and still left hundreds more outside."
• Thousands in Midwestern GOP Districts Attend Sanders' First Stops on Tour to Fight Oligarchy ⩘  by Julia Conley, Common Dreams, Feb 22, 2025.
  
  • "After addressing more than 3,400 Nebraska residents in Omaha Friday evening, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Saturday made his second stop on his National Tour to Fight Oligarchy—telling Iowa City, Iowa residents that "Trumpism will not be defeated by politicians inside the D.C. Beltway.
    
  • "'For better or worse, that is not going to happen,' said the Vermont Independent senator, whose broadly popular policy proposals have long been dismissed by Democratic leaders as unrealistic and radical while President Donald Trump has increasingly captured the attention of the working class Americans who would benefit most from Sanders' ideas.
    
  • "'It will only be defeated by millions of Americans in Iowa, in Vermont, in Nebraska, in every state in this country, who come together in a strong grassroots movement and say no to oligarchy, no to authoritarianism, no to kleptocracy, no to massive cuts to programs that low-income and working Americans desperately need, no to huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country,' said Sanders."

Google: Move Fast and Face Plant

Google is continuing its drive to put profits over ethics. From abandoning DEI initiatives to embracing weaponized AI to disregarding the privacy of users, Google appears to have totally trashed its one-time motto. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they announced a ban on the word "don't" in company documents and communications, for example: Google: xxx'x Be Evil.

On top of that, they are cramming crappy AI into all of their products and down the throats of their users, making it difficult or even impossible for users to not use it. It has gotten so bad that I almost thought I was reading a spoof article in The Onion the other day, when in fact I was reading factual reporting in The Guardian:

For each category of question from employees [at all-staff meetings], Google's internal AI summarizes all the queries into a single query.… The third-most-popular question employees asked was why the AI summaries were so bad. "The AI summaries of questions on Ask are terrible. Can we go back to answering the questions people actually asked?" it read.

Their near total abandonment of respecting user privacy is really troubling:

Privacy campaigners have called Google's new rules on tracking people online "a blatant disregard for user privacy."…

[T]he company had previously come out strongly against this kind of data collection, saying in a 2019 blog⩘  that fingerprinting "subverts user choice and is wrong."…

"By explicitly allowing a tracking technique that they previously described as incompatible with user control, Google highlights its ongoing prioritisation of profits over privacy," said Lena Cohen, staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

I guess their new motto could be "Google: Move Fast and Face Plant".

The best path forward for users is to abandon Google as much as is practicable.

Critics say new Google rules put profits over privacy⩘  by Imran Rahman-Jones, BBC News, Feb 15, 2025.
Google defends scrapping AI pledges and DEI goals in all-staff meeting⩘  by Johana Bhuiyan, The Guardian, Feb 12, 2025.

And it's not just Google: Apple is once again advertising on X⩘  by Marko Zivkovic, Apple Insider, Feb 13, 2025. Yet another example of why I've evolved from loving technology decades ago to absolutely hating Big Tech today.

Related: With Great Power Came No Responsibility⩘  by Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic, Feb 26, 2025.

   In 2019, Google had a turning point. Search had grown as much as it possibly could. More than 90% of us used Google for search, and we searched for everything. Any thought or idle question that crossed our minds, we typed into Google.
   How could Google grow? There were no more users left to switch to Google. We weren't going to search for more things. What could Google do?
   Well, thanks to internal memos published during last year's monopoly trial against Google, we know what they did. They made search worse. They reduced the system's accuracy it so you had to search twice or more to get to the answer, thus doubling the number of queries, and doubling the number of ads.

Getting free:

• Recommended Google alternatives (2025 edition)⩘  by Anthony Dean, Diverse Tech Geek, Feb 8, 2025
• Alternatives to Google – Regain Privacy⩘  by Bill Mann, Cyber Insider.
• How to De-Google your life: The ultimate list of best private Google alternatives⩘  by Lena, Tuta Blog.

See also:

• Google to pay $68 million over allegations its voice assistant eavesdropped on users⩘  by Aimee Picchi, CBS News, Jan 26, 2026.
• Google settles shareholder lawsuit, will spend $500M on being less evil ⩘  by Ryan Whitwam, Ars Technica, Jun 2, 2025. "It has become a common refrain during Google's antitrust saga: What happened to 'don't be evil?'"
• Zero-click searches: Google's AI tools are the culmination of its hubris⩘  by Ryan Whitwam, Ars Technica, May 20, 2025. "Google now competes with, rather than supports, the open web."
• Google's dominance on search is declining – for the first time ever!⩘  by Hanna, Tuta, Apr 28, 2025.
  
  • "We expect that this is only the beginning and that more and more people will wake up and understand that the dominance of Big Tech is a problem and that it can only be solved by choosing alternative services."
• Google has illegal advertising monopoly, judge rules⩘  by Imran Rahman-Jones, BBC News, Apr 17, 2025.
• I've Worked at Google for Decades. I'm Sickened by What It's Doing.⩘  by Emma Jackson, The Nation, Apr 16, 2025.
  
  • "But if my overwhelming feeling back then was pride, my feeling now is a very different one: heartbreak. That's thanks to years of deeply troubling leadership decisions, from Google's initial foray into military contracting with Project Maven, to the corporation's more recent profit-driven partnerships like Project Nimbus, Google and Amazon's joint $1.2 billion AI and cloud computing contract with the Israeli military that has powered Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza."
• Contra Chrome⩘  by Leah Elliott. "In webcomic form, she documents how over the last decade, Google's browser has become a threat to user privacy and the democratic process itself."

Stand up, speak out, and defend

Bravo to Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes for speaking up in defense of the rule of law and our constitution. In a time when so many of our politicians are either blatantly breaking the law or, conversely, are cowering cowardly, it is refreshing to hear someone speak out this clearly and strongly.

   The actions of the Trump administration in the last three weeks can only be described as dictatorial and authoritarian. Every day, nearly every hour, there is some new action or executive order that makes a mockery of the rule of law and the constitution itself.…
   It is time for every American patriot to stand up, speak out, and defend our democratic processes. Because the moment we allow them to be eroded is the moment we risk losing the freedoms and justice they were built to protect, and that countless American have fought and sacrificed to defend.

Ongoing Coup | Attorney General Kris Mayes⩘ , Arizona Attorney General's Office, Feb 10, 2025.

See also:

• There has been a change afoot in the Democratic Party⩘  by Professor Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, Apr 28, 2025.
  
  • "There has been a change afoot in the Democratic Party for a while now as its leaders shift from trying to find common ground with Republicans to standing firmly against MAGAs and articulating their own vision for the United States.
  • "That shift burst dramatically into the open last night when Democratic Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker gave a barn-burning speech to Democrats in New Hampshire."
  • Some excerpts:
    

    • "And If it sounds like I'm becoming contemptuous of Donald Trump and the people that he has elevated, it's because… I am. You should be too. They are an affront to every value this country was founded upon."
    • "I understand the tendency to give in to despair right now," he said, "But despair is an indulgence that we cannot afford in the times upon which history turns. Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now."
    • "These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soap box, and then punish them at the ballot box. They must feel in their bones that when we survive this shameful episode of American history with our democracy intact—because we have no alternative but to do just that—that we will relegate their portraits to the museum halls reserved for tyrants and traitors."
    • "So I have one question for all of you," Pritzker said. "Are you ready for the fight?"

• [California] Attorney General Bonta Issues Statement on President Trump's Troubling Attacks on the Rule of Law and U.S. Constitution⩘ , Mar 23, 2025.
  
  • "The Trump Administration has repeatedly attempted to exercise authority it does not have – authority that belongs to Congress or the states – and in doing so, violated clear legal requirements set forth in the law and in the U.S. Constitution. These actions have required the co-equal judicial branch to order the Trump Administration to follow the law. At times, the Trump Administration has acted in contravention of those court orders."
• Federal technology staffers resign rather than help Musk and DOGE⩘  by Brian Slodysko and Byron Tau, The Associated Press, Feb 25, 2025.
  
  • "More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to 'dismantle critical public services.'
  • "'We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,'' the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. 'However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.'
  • "The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under President Donald Trump's administration were political ideologues who did not have the necessary skills or experience for the task ahead of them."
• 'This is a coup': Trump and Musk's purge is cutting more than costs, say experts⩘  by Peter Stone, The Guardian, Feb 17, 2025.
  
  • "In slashing staff and disabling entire agencies the administration is lacerating the structures of US democracy."
• Our Government Is Experiencing a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly⩘  by Paul Krugman, Feb 17, 2025.
  
  • "So when we experience our next wave of devastating forest fires, when significant numbers of Americans begin dying from preventable diseases and faulty medical devices, remember: These disasters will be partly the fault of arrogant, ignorant men who decided to smash up a reasonably functional government."
• Top federal prosecutor resigns after being told to drop Eric Adams charges⩘  by The Associated Press via The Guardian, Feb 13, 2025.
• Loving our country: Here's how to be ready⩘ 

From WTF confusion to WTF clarity

Well, I guess WTF clarity is an improvement over the state of total WTF confusion I've been experiencing due to the ugly shit stream of events that have been occurring over the past three weeks.

I sort of skipped right past it when I read Professor Heather Cox Richardson's Feb 5, 2025 post⩘ , but she made a reference to an article by journalist Gil Duran of The Nerd Reich in her post.

Today, I came across another reference to the same article in a post by Jason Kottke of kottke.org on Mastodon⩘ . He's someone I've paid attention to on and off for years, and lately he has swiveled from writing about a wide variety of interesting things he has come across to focusing on posting "almost exclusively about the coup happening in the United States right now." So I decided to read Duran's article.

In his excellent article⩘ , Gil Duran shows how Elon Musk is following a playbook that was devised by Curtis Yarvin, one of Peter Thiel's favorite thinkers, in 2012 and 2022.

In an essay on his paywalled Substack, [Yarvin] imagined a second Trump presidency in which Trump would enable a radical government transformation. The proposal will sound familiar to anyone who has watched Musk wreak havoc on the United States Government (USG) over the past three weeks.

Wrote Yarvin:

We've got to risk a full power start—a full reboot of the USG [United States Government]. We can only do this by giving absolute sovereignty to a single organization—with roughly the powers that the Allied occupation authorities held in Japan and Germany in the fall of 1945. This level of centralized emergency power worked to refound a nation then, for them. So it should work now, for us.

Yarvin wrote that in a second term, Trump could appoint a different person to act as the nation's "CEO." This CEO would be enabled to run roughshod over the federal government, with Trump in the background as "chairman of the board." The metaphors clarify the core idea: Run the government as a rogue corporation rather than a public institution beholden to the rules of democracy.

If you give a shit about our country, read Duran's article!

Dystopia – 'Reboot' Revealed: Elon Musk's CEO-Dictator Playbook⩘  by Gil Duran, The Nerd Reich, Feb 5, 2025.

Related:

• I Work in the Office Carrying Out the Government Purge. Here's What I Want You to Know.⩘  by Annie Porter, Slate, Feb 7, 2025. "We're as freaked out and angry as everyone else."
• "The Oligarchs Who Came to Regret Supporting Hitler"⩘  by Jason Kottke, Feb 6, 2025. (Kottke's post refers to an article by Timothy W. Ryback in The Atlantic⩘ .)

Why Do We Need USAID?

"Stephen welcomes former Administrator of USAID, Samantha Power, back to The Late Show to explain what the agency does and why the world, including the United States, will suffer from President Trump and Elon Musk's efforts to dismantle it."

We need to get the story out there about what the facts are about how many lives have been saved, about how U.S. security is advanced, about how U.S. prosperity and markets for U.S. goods are being created by the work we do in the economic sphere. We've got to tell that story. But it's really important for those who know this work to use their voices and to stand up to this evisceration of something that is so vital to the United States. We are the ground game for American foreign policy, and we are the face of America values, and it's essential that this be preserved.

Why Do We Need USAID? Stephen Talks To Samantha Power, Former USAID Administrator⩘ , The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Feb 5, 2025.

See also: Elon Musk's Enemy, USAID, Was Investigating Starlink's Contracts in Ukraine⩘  by Lucas Ropek, Gizmodo, Feb 5, 2025.

This is where we live

This is a still image from a wondrous new animation video of our Milky Way Galaxy based on the just retired ESA Milky Way mapper Gaia satellite.

This is where we live.
This is our home.

Since it launched in late 2013, Gaia made 3 trillion observations of 2 billions stars and other objects, producing the most precise model of our solar system yet.

Here's an artist's impression of our galaxy edge on, based on Gaia data:

Last starlight for ground-breaking Gaia⩘ , The European Space Agency (ESA), Science & Exploration, Jan 15, 2025. Astronomy Picture of the Day⩘ , May 12, 2025.

A courageous stance

Wow, one of the people who was convicted of participating in the January 6, 2021 riot (out of nearly 1,600) has had the courage to turn down Trump's pardon.

   One of the people who served jail time for taking part in the US Capitol riot four years ago has refused a pardon from President Donald Trump, saying: "We were wrong that day."
   Pamela Hemphill, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 60 days in prison, told the BBC that there should be no pardons for the riot on 6 January 2021.
   "Accepting a pardon would only insult the Capitol police officers, rule of law and, of course, our nation," she said.
   "I pleaded guilty because I was guilty, and accepting a pardon also would serve to contribute to their gaslighting and false narrative."
   Hemphill, who was nicknamed the "Maga granny" by social media users – in reference to Trump's "make America great again" slogan – said she saw the Trump government as trying to "rewrite history and I don't want to be part of that".
   "We were wrong that day, we broke the law – there should be no pardons," she told the BBC World Service's Newsday programme.

Respect.

Convicted US Capitol rioter turns down Trump pardon⩘  by Robert Plummer, BBC News, Jan 22, 2025.

See also: Federal judge says Trump's pardons can't erase 'immutable' truth of Jan. 6⩘  by Kyle Cheney, Politico, Jan 22, 2025.

   "Dismissal of charges, pardons after convictions, and commutations of sentences will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021," U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote in a six-page order dismissing charges against Dominic Box, whom she had previously convicted of two felony counts for his role in the riot.…
   Kollar-Kotelly said the "heroism of each officer who responded" could also not be erased.
   "Grossly outnumbered, those law enforcement officers acted valiantly to protect the Members of Congress, their staff, the Vice President and his family, the integrity of the Capitol grounds, and the Capitol Building – our symbol of liberty and a symbol of democratic rule around the world," she wrote. "For hours, those officers were aggressively confronted and violently assaulted. More than 140 officers were injured. Others tragically passed away as a result of the events of that day. But law enforcement did not falter. Standing with bear spray streaming down their faces, those officers carried out their duty to protect."

See also: Judge excoriates Trump for pardoning January 6 'poor losers' as debacle grows⩘  by Rachel Maddow, MSNBC, Jan 22, 2025. "Just two days into his new term, Donald Trump appears to be burning through political capital and alienating his allies (and supplicants) with his decision to indiscriminately pardon January 6 rioters, resulting in what can only be described as a debacle. Rachel Maddow reads a portion of Judge Beryl Howell's rebuke."

I just didn't expect them to be such losers

Rebecca Shaw nails it.

   Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg's desperation to be cool as they suck up to Donald Trump is so cringe it makes my skin crawl.…
   I knew that one day we might have to watch as capitalism and greed and bigotry led to a world where powerful men, deserving or not, would burn it all down. What I didn't expect, and don't think I could have foreseen, is how incredibly cringe it would all be. I have been prepared for evil, for greed, for cruelty, for injustice – but I did not anticipate that the people in power would also be such huge losers.…
   Climate crises keep coming, genocides continue, women keep getting murdered, art is being strangled to death by AI, bigotry is on the rise, social progress is being rolled back … AND these men insist on being cringe? It's a rotten cherry on top. This combination of evil and embarrassment is a unique horror, one that science fiction has failed to prepare us for.

I knew one day I'd have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn't expect them to be such losers⩘  by Rebecca Shaw, The Guardian, Jan 16, 2025.

An evening view of Fuji

Once in awhile when I'm aimlessly exploring Mastodon⩘ , I come across a painting like this that invites me to pause and reflect upon a moment of peacefulness. In moments like this, I feel a sense of serenity and gratefulness.

Fuji no yūkei (An evening view of Fuji) was created by Kuniyoshi Utagawa in 1829 or 1830. This is a digital copy of a print originally made from a woodcut.

Fuji no yūkei⩘ , Library of Congress.

We all just need to be who we are

Photo by Mary Kang for the Texas Observer.

I'm a straight, cisgender male, through and through. Other people identify in other ways. One thing I've never understood is why some people get freaked out when other people identify in ways that are different from their own.

I really appreciate a recent article in the Texas Observer by April Maria Ortiz, a math professor who came out as transgender last year. I especially appreciate a comment she shared from an elderly woman in her church:

People know me from a column about math I used to write for the Uvalde Leader-News. So, a few months ago, I decided to write an op-ed about my identity. After it came out, an elderly woman came up to me after mass. "Thank you for writing your article," she said. "I believe we all just need to be who we are." That sums up my experience. People have told me that simply knowing me has changed their minds about trans people.

That's it in a nutshell: we all just need to be who we are … and we all just need to accept other people who are being who they are. Straightforward and simple.

A few other lines in the article that caught my attention:

The thing people don't understand is that, when I came out, I didn't start trying to be something I wasn't. I stopped trying.…

Not long after I began taking estrogen, which makes my body more feminine, and presenting in a way that comes naturally to me, I clicked over from one binary category to the other in the eyes of strangers. This came as a relief: For the first time in my life, others perceived me as I felt myself to be. But my sense of self is about more than social roles. It's chiefly about my relationship to my own body. Even before the estrogen had time to actually alter my figure, I felt overcome with a sense of wholeness. I laugh more, and when I laugh, my heart rises. I'm more present to my family. My friends tell me that even my eyes are different. I am alive.…

Someone I know recently suggested that trans people bring hate upon our own heads by always seeking attention and affirmation. The prosaic truth is that we simply want to exist.

These days, we all need to speak loudly words of wisdom: "Let it be, let it be."

Trans in the Heart of Texas⩘  by April Maria Ortiz, Texas Observer, Dec 16, 2024.

See also: I Am a Trans Texan⩘  by April Maria Ortiz, Texas Observer, Mar 16, 2023.

It strikes me, and may strike you, as a bit crazy to come out as transgender in an essay like this. I'm publicly revealing myself to be a member of a marginalized community in the midst of a moral panic targeting our very existence. Ascribe it to my defiant streak, if you will.…

It was either leave home or die, so I moved across the state for college. My plan was to wait a few weeks and, if nothing changed, to kill myself in a shower stall. Something did change: I found love and acceptance in the woman who became my best friend and then my wife. Several years later, I was still alive, presenting as female in the privacy of our home and as male when I went out. This made me happy. For the first time in my life, I began to approach peace.…

Knowledge is power. If I had simply known more, I would have been spared some suffering. The idea that I've been converted by the "gender cult" is preposterous. My starting point was my own experience, going back years before I could even articulate it. I simply was what I now call "transgender." My brain and flesh and bones told me so. And peace could never be mine until I had uncovered its nature and found a way to live with it.…

Painful though it's been, too much good has happened in my life for me to have regrets. Still, I can imagine meeting perhaps not my actual younger self, but a version of that self living today. What would I want for myself? I would want knowledge and understanding of gender variance. I would want to know that I'm not alone. I would want adults who could sympathize and offer real solutions. And I would want the ability to pursue gender-affirming care in accordance with research-backed practices.

Related:

• 'I became collateral damage': the trans pilot falsely targeted over Washington DC crash⩘  by Rachel Leingang, The Guardian, Feb 11, 2025.
  
  • "Without evidence, Trump blamed diversity after the crash, leading some to accuse Jo Ellis of being one of the pilots."
• What Republicans really mean when they blame 'DEI'⩘  by Mehdi Hasan, The Guardian, Feb 11, 2025.
  
  • "Today, more than four decades later, DEI has become the new N-word; the new rightwing abstraction deployed by Republicans to conceal their anti-Black racism. DEI – short for diversity, equity and inclusion – is thrown around by high-profile conservatives, from the president of the United States downwards, for the express purpose of undermining Black people in public life."
• Pageboy: A Memoir by Elliot Page⩘ 
• Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality⩘  by Sarah McBride
• Raising My Rainbow⩘  by Lori Duron
• What does LGBTQ+ mean?⩘ 
• A brilliant commencement speech⩘ 
• Every Body: Go Beyond the Binary⩘ 
• Loving our country: We care, and we love our fellow humans⩘ 

The Contrarian: Not Owned by Anybody

When I canceled my subscription to The Washington Post after Bezos betrayed the foundational principles of the paper by quashing the Editorial team's endorsement of Kamala Harris for president, my only regret was that I would no longer have access to editorials and essays by Jennifer Rubin, someone whose thinking and writing I very much respect and appreciate.

So I was thrilled this morning when I read Professor Heather Cox Richardson's Jan 13, 2025 post of Letters from an American⩘  and learned that Jennifer Rubin had resigned from WaPo, and that she and Norm Eisen are launching a new media outlet, The Contrarian, which will feature leading pro-democracy commentators.

As Rubin says in one of her first posts: "We've watched as corporate and billionaire owners of media outlets abused their audiences' loyalty and undercut journalism's vital role in a free democracy.… We need an alternative, truly independent outlet that is unafraid of the administration and unwilling to equivocate or bend the knee."

I immediately subscribed, began reading their first posts from yesterday and this morning, and am impressed. I think this is going to be an invaluable venture.

The Contrarian: Not Owned by Anybody⩘ 

See also: Why the Second Trump Regime Will Be Far More Dangerous⩘  by Thomas Zimmer, Democracy Americana. "This will be a much more radical regime – and it will operate under conditions that are vastly more favorable to its extremist cause."

Bubbles

Photo of Deep-Sky Object by Alex Andrews⩘ , Pexels.

I love the way the physics of our universe so often makes me simply laugh and shake my head in wondrous confusion.

   The standard model of cosmology does a pretty good job of explaining the Universe – provided we fudge the numbers a bit. There does't seem to be enough mass to account for the gravitational effects we observe, so we invented an invisible placeholder called dark matter.
   There also seems to be a strange force that counteracts gravity, pushing the cosmos to expand at accelerating rates. We don't know what it is yet, so in the same spirit we dubbed it dark energy. All of this comes together, along with ordinary matter, to form what we call the lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM) model.
   The problem is that this model uses a simplified equation that assumes the whole Universe is smooth, and expands at the same speed everywhere. But it's far from smooth out there: we see a colossal cosmic web, criss-crossed by filaments of galaxies separated by vast voids emptier than we can comprehend.
   Timescape cosmology takes that 'lumpiness' into account. More matter means stronger gravity, which means slower time – in fact, an atomic clock located in a galaxy could tick up to a third slower than the same clock in the middle of a void.
   When you stretch that over the huge lifespan of the Universe, billions more years may have passed in the voids than in the matter-dense areas. A mind-boggling implication of that is that it no longer makes sense to say that the Universe has a single unified age of 13.8 billion years. Instead, different regions would have different ages.

What if our entire universe is simply the result of some kid in another dimension blowing bubbles in a playground? Pop!

Dark Energy May Not Exist: Something Stranger Might Explain The Universe⩘  by Michael Irving, Science Alert, Jan 3, 2025.

Covid: 5-year anniversary

Illustration by Mike Reddy for STAT

A good overview of what we did and didn't learn from the Covid pandemic, and the challenges we will face when the next pandemic hits (there's some possibility that it might be an H5N1 flu pandemic, for which our response so far has been dismal).

Five years ago this week, STAT was interviewing nervous infectious disease scientists about a mysterious disease spreading in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, located roughly 500 miles west of Shanghai.…

There's a saying attributed to all sorts of people that one shouldn't waste a good crisis. In public health, especially, learning from disease outbreaks and environmental disasters is critical; figuring out what worked and what didn't is fundamental to emergency response planning for the next time. Much as we all might hate the idea, the fact remains that there will be more pandemics. We cannot wish them away and we imperil ourselves if we do not prepare for them.

What Covid tried to teach us – and why it will matter in the next pandemic⩘  by Helen Branswell, STAT, Jan 6, 2025.

See also:

• Opinion – The Real Reason People Don't Trust in Science Has Nothing to Do with Scientists: Propaganda works, is the real upshot of a survey showing lingering post-pandemic distrust of science⩘  by Dan Vergano, Scientific American, Jan 6, 2025.
• Beyond long COVID — how reinfections could be causing silent long-term organ damage⩘  by Sonya Buyting, CBC Radio, Mar 20, 2025.

The mind-boggling vastness

Messier 2
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble⩘  & NASA⩘ , G. Piotto et al⩘ .

The stunning vastness of our universe is mind-boggling. This is "just" a cluster of stars in our Milky Way galaxy, which is itself not a particularly large galaxy.

Sometimes our problems here on Earth can feel overwhelmingly huge to me, until I allow myself a bit of time to look really deeply at something like this to gain some perspective. We are specs living on a spec of a planet rotating in a spec of solar system far out in a remote region of an arm of stars that is rotating in a spec of a galaxy that exists within a universe that is immense beyond my capacity to even begin to fully comprehend, a universe that is as mysterious as it is vast.

M2 is one of the largest globular star clusters now known to roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy.… Its population of stars numbers close to 150,000, concentrated within a total diameter of around 175 light-years.

(The circumference of the Earth is approximately:
  24,901 miles or 40,075 kilometers
  175 light years is approximately:
  1,028,737,466,750,000 miles or 1,655,629,139,072,840 kilometers.)

Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)⩘ , Dec 19, 2024.

Leonardo da Vinci

Presumed self portrait

Leonardo da Vinci, 1452 – 1519, was an astonishing artist, thinker, and inventor who questioned everything about life and found answers that were at times hundreds of years ahead of his time.

The new film by Ken Burns, Sara Burns, and David McMahon dives deep into how he explored the world around him, looking beyond the surface of everything.

Basically [Leonardo da Vinci] says, "The thing that was given to me by the universe was the chance to question it, and that is my divine duty."
– Guillermo Del Toro

I particularly appreciated the story of how he wrote the thousands of pages in his notebooks: he was left-handed, so in order to not smudge the ink, he wrote from right to left, and he actually wrote the letters and words backwards, as you would see them in a mirror.

Leonardo da Vinci⩘ , a film by Ken Burns, Sara Burns, and David McMahon, 2024.

Why I hate artificial intelligence

Nuclear Power Plant Cooling Towers at Night
Photo by Simon R. Minshall⩘  via Pexels

So far, I hate just about everything I've seen of artificial intelligence. I actually expend a lot of effort and time avoiding or trying to disable AI, and it angers me that I have to waste energy doing this that I could use elsewhere in more productive and creative ways. It totally seems to be a tech bro greed scam. I've abandoned some apps and search engines because of the intrusive way they have stuffed AI into their implementations (for my searches, I use https://noai.duckduckgo.com/⩘  and have set up a default search shortcut: https://noai.duckduckgo.com/%s). Obviously, I stopped using Microsoft Windows, and gave away the laptop I had that ran it.

I can tell that AI is a scam because it's not opt in. In fact, in most cases, it's infuriatingly challenging or outright impossible to opt out. It's being crammed down our throats, just like the scam of personal data collection through stealth surveillance tech has been.

The hype is fading, and people are asking what generative artificial intelligence is really good for. So far, no one has a decent answer.

– Generative AI Still Needs to Prove Its Usefulness⩘  by Gary Marcus, Wired, Dec 20, 2024.

I also hate the way this so-far useless piece-of-shit technology is causing a huge increase in power consumption, including more coal burning and nuclear power plant construction, all of which will put a further lethal strain on our climate.

Here's a revealing answer by Stuart Russell to a reporter's pointed question:

At the close of the conference, I said to [Stuart Russell, who literally wrote the textbook⩘  on AI] that we seemed to be using an incredible amount of energy and other natural resources to race headlong into something we probably shouldn't be creating in the first place, and which the relatively benign versions of are already, in many ways, misaligned with the kinds of societies that we actually want to live in.

"Yup," he replied.

– I met the 'godfathers of AI' in Paris – here's what they told me to really worry about⩘  by Alexander Hurst, The Guardian, Feb 14, 2024.

See also: Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control by Stuart Russell⩘ .

All of this contributes to why I have evolved from someone who loved technology decades ago to someone who absolutely hates Big Tech today.

More … much more ⩘ 

U.S. healthcare – an emergency

Photo by Pixabay⩘  via Pexels

I just read Michael Moore's amazing essay, which was prompted by the outpouring of anger at the healthcare system by many, many Americans after the murder of the UnitedHealthCare CEO. And I rewatched his 2007 film, Sicko, which is an astonishing critique of the failings of our American healthcare system, and a comparison to the healthcare available to citizens in Canada, the U.K., France, and Cuba. It's so sad the way our citizens are treated in America.

   After the killing of the CEO of United HealthCare, the largest of these billion dollar insurance companies, there was an immediate OUTPOURING of anger toward the health insurance industry. Some people have stepped forward to condemn this anger. I am not one of them.
   The anger is 1000% justified. It is long overdue for the media to cover it. It is not new. It has been boiling. And I'm not going to tamp it down or ask people to shut up. I want to pour gasoline on that anger.
   Because this anger is not about the killing of a CEO. If everyone who was angry was ready to kill the CEOs, the CEOs would already be dead. That is not what this reaction is about. It is about the mass death and misery – the physical pain, the mental abuse, the medical debt, the bankruptcies in the face of denied claims and denied care and bottomless deductibles on top of ballooning premiums – that this 'health care' industry has levied against the American people for decades. With no one standing in their way! Just a government – two broken parties – enabling this INDUSTRY's theft and, yes, murder.
   And now the press is calling me to ask, "Why are people angry, Mike? Do you condemn murder, Mike?"f
   Yes, I condemn murder, and that's why I condemn America's broken, vile, rapacious, bloodthirsty, unethical, immoral health care industry and I condemn every one of the CEOs who are in charge of it and I condemn every politician who takes their money and keeps this system going instead of tearing it up, ripping it apart, and throwing it all away. We need to replace this system with something sane, something caring and loving – something that keeps people alive.…
   But don't get me wrong. No one needs to die. In fact, that's my point. No one needs to die *ndash; no one should die because they don't 'have' health insurance. Not one single person should die because their 'health insurance' denies their health care in order to make a buck or Thirty Two Billion Bucks.

A reminder of what Bertrand Russell wrote in his book Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism, which was published by George Allen & Urwin, London in 1918:

Many of the actions by which men have become rich are far more harmful to the community than the obscure crimes of poor men, yet they go unpunished because they do not interfere with the existing order.

A Manifesto Against For-Profit Health Insurance Companies⩘  by Michael Moore, Dec 13, 2024. Includes his incredible 2007 film, Sicko, which you can watch for free.

See also:

• 'It's a death sentence': US health insurance system is failing, say doctors⩘  by Michael Sainato, The Guardian, Jan 26, 2025.
• "Not Medically Necessary": Inside the Company Helping America's Biggest Health Insurers Deny Coverage for Care ⩘  by T. Christian Miller, ProPublica; Patrick Rucker, The Capitol Forum; and David Armstrong, ProPublica, Oct 23, 2024.

Loving our country: Here's how to be ready

Photo by Elizabeth Iris⩘  from Pexels.

Advice about how to prepare for the coming years of the second Trump presidency.

   American democracy is about to undergo a serious stress test. I know how it feels, in part because I lived through the slow and steady march of state capture as a journalist working in Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Turkey.…
   Having lived through it, and having gathered some lessons in hindsight, I believe that there are strategies that can help Democrats and Trump critics not only survive the coming four years, but come out stronger.

Aydintasbas covers six fundamentals including: don't panic, don't disengage, and, perhaps most importantly, have hope.

   President-elect Donald Trump's return to power is unnerving but, as I have argued previously, America will not turn into a dictatorship overnight – or in four years.

Trump Will Overplay His Hand. Here's How to Be Ready.⩘  by Asli Aydintasbas, Politico, Dec 1, 2024. Asli Aydintasbas is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC and a former journalist.

Welcome to another iteration of the culmination of plutocracy.

Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.
– The Gilded Age: A Tale Of Today by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, American Publishing Company, 1873.

Related: Indivisible: A Practical Guide to Democracy on the Brink⩘ 

Strategies, Tactics, & Tips For How Everyday Americans Can Fight Back Together Wherever We Live.

See also: Here's the Plan to Fight Back⩘ :

What comes next? Trump won the election, but more than 67 million people voted for Democrats and they don't expect us to roll over and play dead. We will have a peaceful transition of power, followed by a vigorous challenge from the party out of power, because that's how democracy works. Here's a path forward.

• First, fight every fight in Congress.
• Second, fight Trump in the courts.
• Third, focus on what each of us can do.
• Finally, Democrats currently in office must work with urgency.

– Senator Elizabeth Warren, Time, Nov 7, 2024.

Related: The Battle Against Trump 2.0 Begins in the States⩘  by Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone, Dec 17, 2024.

Democratic governors are talking a tough game against the incoming administration – and activists are determined to hold them to their promises.

Donald Trump's big victory and horrific agenda – for military-led mass deportation, accelerating climate change, rolling back reproductive rights, and pursuing dictatorial powers – sent Democratic governors leaping to the barricades. Or, at least, the microphones.

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