How the 'politicization of the courts' is used to 'erode democracy': analysis https://www.alternet.org/autocracy-courts-applebaum/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon
My beliefs are simple, and hardly radical: Libraries are critical infrastructure. Access to information is a human right. When you buy a book you should truly own it. When a library buys a book, they should be able to lend it. Readers should be able to read without any third parties spying over their shoulders, or preventing them from accessing the materials they have legally obtained.
The War on (Some) Drugs is re-escalating, and in the abusive ways it's always punished the wrong people.
Here, hospitals are using crap tests on pregnant women, making bogus findings, and doing nothing as law enforcement takes kids from their parents.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/09/09/drug-test-pregnancy-pennsylvania-california
Great reporting from the @marshallproject --
🧵 I forgot to tell you guys!! I discovered something *amazing* during the legal research last month. There's an #OSHA law called HAZWOPER that required Apple to inform us about our NPL #Superfund office, formally train us, monitor exposure, & develop health/safety plans!! ⬇️
I'm appalled that after so many conversations with state & US #EPA & OSHA, they all claimed no law like this exists. It exists!!!!! All the things I told Apple to do were actually expressly required by law. Eat that, Apple.
At Least Two #Saudi Officials May Have Deliberately Assisted 9/11 Hijackers, New Evidence Suggests
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Newly revealed information also raises questions about whether the #FBI and #CIA mishandled or downplayed evidence of the kingdom’s possible ties to the plotters.
@realTuckFrumper As opposed to "acceptable" killing of American Protestor?
@brouhaha True, but reality ruins the joke! ;)
Listening to Dr. Marshall Kirk McKusick describe his funding challenges and the hoops through which he jumped to get paid while he was at UC Berkeley makes me think that even with the UCB grants, they were a pittance relative to the Herculean efforts the BSD/CSRG devs put in, he couldn't even double up to combine his work on the TCP/IP stack to make it the subject of his doctorial dissertation.
Instead his advisors made him do that on something else, which was on MC68000 register allocation. During MeetBSD 2014 he guessed maybe only six people had read that thing.
I'm pretty sure I was one of those people. I looked up the dissertation afterwards and was like, "oh, I think I read this when I was trying to hone my 68k asm chops."
Back in the 2000s, this guy used to leave long, unhinged, occasionally racist comments on my blog. Eventually had to ban him. Good to know the state of Tennessee has been paying him to litigate away trans rights.
www.wired.com/story/lawfai...
He Worked for a Law Firm Consu...
@peterhoneyman And it probably had an easily replaceable battery, wasn't glued shut.
My problem with Patch Tuesday rn is...who the frack cares if the meatballs are overdone when the house is on fire?
@realTuckFrumper Why is this even possible? The Senate should not act as a private club.
***** The AI nightmare is already here, thanks to our own governments. *****
It's important to understand the specifics of the AI nightmare that yes, has now arrived. We know that these AI systems being pushed by #Google and other firms are not actually intelligent, and that they frequently misunderstand input data and spew forth answers or other output that often appear reasonable even when frequently completely wrong or riddled with errors.
Government agencies rushing to use these systems to cut their workloads -- processing unemployment applications, creating transcripts of police encounters based on body camera audio -- and so on, are creating a perfect storm for these AI systems, being hyped to the hilt by desperate Big Tech firms -- to horribly impact people's lives in major ways. THIS is the real danger of AI today -- much more so than (bad enough!) inaccurate and nonsensical Google Search AI Overview answers.