I wonder if the headline was written by an AI

Hey now. The deranged right aren’t all bad.

They gave us AI and vaccine denial and climate change, which I’ve been raised to believe are all good things.

The Life and Times of Reading Toxic Men #14 | George Orwell: The Colonial Cop and the Cynic of Power

Incidentally, Orwell never got to see his books truly take off. He died of tuberculosis at age 46. However, his more explicitly anti-communist works were picked up by Allen Dulles, at the CIA and turned into children’s cartoons.

In 1950, after Orwell’s death, the CIA arranged for an animated film to be made based on the book. However, it pushed several changes. It transformed Orwell’s generally positive depiction of Snowball (Leon Trotsky), emphasized that the animals on some neighboring farms were perfectly content with their treatment by the human farmers, and changed the ending to show the other animals rising up to overthrow the pigs. The adaptation was unpopular in theaters, but it was widely shown in US and UK classrooms and was translated and distributed in other countries.

In an ironic twist, the books about state manufactured propaganda and national indoctrination became tools of state manufactured propaganda and national indoctrination.

Real “Don’t Build The Torment Nexus” moment.

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Broke: Using an AI to arbitrarily blacklist books based on a black box algorithm.

Woke: Banning 1984 because it’s capitalist propaganda written and published by war criminals.

Glad to hear it. Was playing that game just last night.

Lots of fun, but it’s still very rough around the edges with the interface, the visuals, and the single player campaign.

US Lenders: “Hey, you want some money from the infinity free money spigot”

A handful of nerds paying attention: “Well, if they drink from the money fountain, we’re leaving!”

I’m checking enough that I stopped counting

Been a die hard for New Balance since college. It’s just a good shoe, dad-ness not withstanding

⬆️ This guy’s a dad

Bonus point

Who doesn’t love Farscape?

Rachel Bloom, banger

Darling Meet Me Under the Cum Tree

like in the old days of illegal wiretapping when throughout the conversation one would randomly say “bomb”, “arson”, “nuke” etc.

What they’re doing is laudable. But these boats are tiny compared with what the Cubans need to survive.

These appear to have arrived before the US tightened the blockage in earnest. Their plan was for a 2 GW combined installation, of which this represents maybe 1%.

Traditionally, these pilot programs operate as a marketing program rather than an educational program.

You’re going to see a class of students enter the system with enormous supplemental aid and resources. The AI will be included but largely incidental. The students will be cherry-picked for media optics, rather than randomly selected from within the school district. Tons of paid professionals will write long-winded hagiographies about the affordability and effectiveness of the program. Some Ivy League University or Fortune 500 business will make a big show of admitting the most charismatic and saleable student graduates.

Then the program will be rolled out to the rest of the country as quickly and sloppily as possible. AI will be jammed down people’s throats. You’ll get an earful about stupid idiot parents hysterically complaining about their dumb baby children, because they’re afraid of The Terminator movies. This will be book-ended with Steven Pinker and Bill Gates calmly explaining how AI turns dumbies into geniuses. A string of movies and TV shows will be released about kids getting AI education and becoming too smart (and time traveling or getting magic powers or some other silly bullshit).

The YIMBY coalition of very informed TV nerds will be assembled to scream at anyone who doesn’t like AI. If you don’t like AI you’re Ableist or a Bigot or Not Serious About Education. Meanwhile, we’ll get an earful about how certain migrants and POCs are incapable of learning from AI because of their inferior genes. School districts will be told to either adopt AI or lose their funding / get taken over by the state / federal agencies. National media will be saturated with “AI is normal” media content until people stop resisting.

And all of this will culminate in more school privatization, more public education defunding, and more militant policing of young people. Because that’s always been the real end goal.

No. They learned that distance learning was an excellent tool for busting unions and commoditizing education.

Thankfully solar and other supplies are being given to Cuba in large quantities

That’s news to me. Was just listening to a podcast interviewing a local Cuban journalist, suggesting help was not - in fact - on the way.

Incidentally, Belly of the Beast does some excellent domestic Cuban coverage. But everything they are reporting suggests these supplies have not been forthcoming, on account of the military blockade of the island. Like, you cannot sail ships into and out of the major harbors (shy of outright smuggling or armed escort).

Much like with the Gaza Blockade, there are ongoing efforts to build political pressure by assembling relief and directing it at the island. There’s no reason to believe it will actually arrive.