zx3 @zx3@driveinsaturday.org

anti-paywall link to WP article: https://archive.ph/6w1v4

"HOUSTON — Employees at the Texas Department of Public Safety in June received a sweeping request from Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office: to compile a list of individuals who had changed their gender on their Texas driver’s license and other department records during the past two years."

every single article about the fusion breakthrough is like "... and this is the first big step towards privatization and commercialization, where private business can generate profit!" said with the most gleeful of tones.

unequivocally, every single aspect of fusion power should be public domain. and the generators themselves should be nationalized and unionized in-perpetuity.

we should be treating this like the invention of fire or agriculture. to hell with energy companies.

The world is awash in a poisonous tide: the irrational, the hateful, the greedy, the venal. I vow to push against it, in my words and in my actions, in my thoughts and in my deeds. As long as some of us are willing to fight, as long as we stand together, this tide can be turned.

As praxis, calling yourself “anti-woke” would signal to everyone that you’re not humane, that you’re willing to use violence to force people to conform to your worldview, and force people to assimilate into a culture that dehumanises them.

To be anti-woke is to be authoritarian. As for me, there’s only one way to respond to that: Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me.

To be anti-woke is to be wilfully ignorant. The response to virtuous behaviour shouldn’t amount to bigotry.

It was appropriate to punch Nazis in 1941, and it's still appropriate in 2022.

Just remembering how Jack Kirby was inundated by threats and complaints from Nazi sympathizers after the publication in 1941 of his famous cover showing Captain America punching Adolph Hitler.

No reason.

RIP Angelo Badalamenti, composer of the Twin Peaks music. The music was such a large part of this work. Always loved this video of him: https://youtu.be/e-eqgr_gn4k

As we watch Elon Musk slide into rightwing radicalization in real time, I’m reminded of this 1941 piece by Dorothy Thompson.
“Who goes Nazi?”

In short: it is the people who love money and status and power that are at risk.
Those who resist the urge are the people who have a solid family life; a job they love for the work, not the money; a moral framework based on pluralism and equal access to opportunity.
Worth a read. #nazi #Twitter #liberal

https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/

AI art isn't.

It's pictures.

Art is when you set out to cause an emotional response in an audience using a constrained medium. (If not constrained then it's social.)

None of the AIs accept "I want to feel sad with hope for the future" as a prompt. They accept "toucan with a monocle in the style of Van Rijn" as prompts.

No emotional intent? Not art.

Pictures? Yeah, it's a picture blender, but it's only an effective when it's got a lot to work with and that's both narrow and discontinuous.