C-suite hopefully got a taste of reality when OpenAI and Anthropic tried to charge token-based rates that covered their actual costs. Suddenly nobody was willing to pay and rates had to be slashed again! (I think this was all in the last month or two.) More and more enterprises will probably be downloading one of the free open-weight models and developing their own in-house setup (which would at least be more resource efficient).

They’re not done digging their financial holes so they’d just spend a bailout right away and keep on digging. It’s not that they got into a debt that’s hard to keep up with. It’s that the entire industry has no working model that covers the cost of doing business. Ed Zitron has laid this out in multiple articles and interviews (and probably on his podcast).

Michael Walker of Novara Media had an interesting segment yesterday where he talked about this interaction and then introduced three notable people (yes, one of them was Jack Ma). (Youtube | Invidious)

Someone from the UK trans community would know best but from the news I’ve been following, “Your Party” (i.e. the people aligned with Zarah Sultana at least) could turn out to be the most dedicated to trans rights but they’re probably the least likely to win a seat anytime soon, while the Green Party has the right to self-identify on the platform for both trans and nonbinary folks, and is gaining in momentum. Plaid Cymru in Wales also has this.

I believe there already is a coalition of people in favour of human rights and hopefully they can make a difference somehow, but the problem is that the country has gone so fascist that the majority of people are in favour of this kind of content and rhetoric. It’s not just bad apple soldiers and prison guards.

There have been many interviews, polls, and other public cultural instances to document that most of the public is largely in favour of ethnic cleansing, prisoner abuse, and even more war. There need to be arrests of war criminals, but also some kind of psychological intervention to get the ones who weren’t actively involved to realize how much of their humanity they’ve been discarding. De-Kahanification, I guess you could call it.

I get the reference on the one hand but I’m concerned what people who don’t follow the series might think that flag means. (I can think of other sorts of imagery from One Piece that might have been a lot better to reference, honestly, like either the

flag or all of the subtle

variants that appear throughout the series.) I appreciate the article providing other examples of young adult protests that made pop culture references. Nice to hear more about the different trends among young protesters abroad.

Also, professor Suyanto’s analysis:

“And I see it as effective … their voices became louder and many political elites have responded, though whether [their] response meets the public expectations is another matter.”

“They don’t need to take to the streets, confront authorities, or face police batons.”

I do think there’s a benefit to using a term to distinguish between the denialist side of Zionism that many diaspora Jews subscribe to (knowingly or unknowingly), and the explicitly, gleefully racist Jewish supremacy-movement that’s prominent in Israeli political thought. You might encourage people to use the term Kahanist instead. Same shit as nazism, different übermensch. So it’s more accurate and gets to the heart of the issue.

I had to actively seek sources out for my own sanity. The people compiling it don’t cover every area I’d like, but there’s good news happening too. Two sources I know of are Sam Bentley and Good News.

Yikes, proper waste handling could use more attention in the news, despite the seemingly endless flow of other problems. (Lots of good news too, but that gets even less attention.)

The term sodomy on its own usually means anal sex, but in this particular case, the verb form “sodomize” is indeed referring to

I had it here in Canada, decades ago. My memories are vague but I remember thinking it wasn’t bad at all. (Probably no lung, but there was definitely stomach.)

I probably wouldn’t have tried durian or nattou if I didn’t know what they were, but maybe I’ll notice some exception some day. (I might have still tried haggis since I don’t recall it having any smell to it, but I wouldn’t feel better not knowing what it was.)

I don’t know if it has that effect normally or you mean it would be laced, but they probably wouldn’t eat a strong-smelling food in the first place. (Speaking for myself though, I sure would try as long as I know what it is.)

The reasoning is in the article.

All I’m saying is that you should say what you mean then (as you did in this reply), and not what can very easily be used against you.

“Death to [geographical place]” shouldn’t be said by anyone. However it’s meant, it’s way too easy for people to take literally, and it provides cover for the few that actually do mean literal harm. Maybe you mean “down with Israel,” but even that can be taken the wrong way. (Much like saying “down with [monarch]” would historically be understood to mean that monarch should die as opposed to stepping down.)

We already have too many narcissistic leaders everywhere because they can be superficially charming and build up loads of useful connections. It makes sense to have a cut-off for who gets funding at all, but they should all get the same amount of exposure.

Or he Xed it out.

Instead ICE has the gall to round up indigenous people.

They know it’s best for them not to be seen gathered together all at once. They’ve all been playing a patient long game (even if some among their followers don’t).