Lou Katz @lou@entropyservice.com

“what are you thoughts on the constitutional crisis?”

“which one, you’ll need to be more specific?”

“the one from today”

“morning or afternoon?”

@tomjennings
I don't think you're likely to be successful at prohibiting corporations outright. The secretary of state of whichever state in which the business was incorporated might take offense.
You might want to only prohibit the corporation from copying your work.

The Nobel Prize lost all meaning once it was awarded to Henry Kissinger.

By now you know that Microsoft is now defaulting to saving new Word documents directly to OneDrive. I guess Excel will be the next inline. The cynical take is that this is incredibly convenient for them, especially if they plan on using that data to train future LLMs. Imagine paying for software only to have your data automatically funneled into their cloud. Plus, what happens when you're offline and need those files? Just use the LibreOffice and just say no to all Microsoft products.

A purported leader reacting angrily to a country song seems weak, not strong.

“OpenAI is very seriously underestimating people’s creativity when it comes to harassment,” EFF’s @evacide told the Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/10/07/sora-cameo-deepfake-consent/

Of course getting upset about a country song seems fairly normal for someone struggling with dementia.

Parallel Bus vs Serial Bus

Propaganda and media thread 🧵

"While right-wing propaganda has its roots in the 1930s, it wasn’t until the ’70s that Republican thought leaders truly began seeding the notion that any media criticism of Republican policy exhibited a “left-wing bias” and should be discarded as unreliable. In reality, as media critic Parker Molloy notes, most mainstream U.S. journalism skews center-right."

https://www.damemagazine.com/2025/01/02/americas-right-wing-propaganda-problem-might-be-terminal/

Even the New York Times is now reporting that Israel lied about Hamas "stealing aid" and in reality Netanyahu has been deliberately blocking aid, killing thousands of Palestinians by starvation—which is a war crime.

So, how disgusting that American politicians and media are more upset with Zohran Mamdani for a phrase he never said than they are with Andrew Cuomo for joining Netanyahu's legal team to defend him against charges of documented war crimes in Gaza.

White supremacy is a helluva drug.

#uspol Columbia gives up academic freedom for $400M

Colleges in 1930s Germany thought giving in to government demands would save them…

What made the #German university capitulation so devastating wasn’t just the individual policy changes, but how quickly institutional autonomy collapsed once the principle was breached. Columbia’s agreement follows this same pattern: transferring disciplinary authority from faculty to administrators, adopting government-mandated speech definitions, submitting to external monitoring, screening international students for ideological compliance, and reviewing curriculum content. The university justified each concession as necessary for survival, just as German institutions did.

https://www.alternet.org/universities-in-nazi-germany-and-the-soviet-union-thought-giving-in-to-government-demands-would-save-their-independence/

The agreement effectively allows the federal government to dictate campus speech policies, disciplinary procedures, and academic content through funding leverage, fundamentally altering #Columbia’s institutional governance structure.

https://apnews.com/article/columbia-trump-deal-00eef5dca9f003e593d2cb151f5cce17

@academicchatter
@histodons
#trumpizm #usfascism

Frightening to see how widely applicable this quote is these days:

“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” —Omar El Akkad

@oatmeal @academicchatter @histodons
Appeasement never works. Did no one learn the basic lessons of WW2?

Latest reminder that if you buy an appliance of any kind that has an Internet connection, you are not the owner. You should understand that the seller can -- and many do -- remotely disable it or extort a "subscription" fee at any point.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/07/firmware-update-hinders-echelon-smart-home-gym-equipments-ability-to-work-offline/

This should be illegal, period.

When I look back at immediate post-WW2 Germany, I don't think that most Nazis suddenly realized that they had been wrong, or really had a change of heart at all....I think that a lot of humanity just adjusts their thinking to be on the "winning side".

This is why I think it is a waste of time to try to convince Conservatives of the error of their ways.

Since the destruction of Earth's biosphere is not progressing quickly enough, I'm launching a new AI platform built on blockchain smart contracts.

Israel’s Ever-Expanding War Machine Is Financed Through International Bond Sales https://twp.ai/E6AFwa

Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?