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Can't Shake It Off: How Taylor Swift Became a Nazi Idol
Tuesday March 21st, 2023 at 12:23 AM

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Image via Wikimedia Commons

Every demographic chooses a pop icon. Gay men worship Cher, black women love Beyoncé, and neo-Nazis worship Taylor Swift, a skinny, blonde Pennsylvania girl that they have labeled an "Aryan Goddess." Nazis and members of the "alt right"—an Internet subculture that is best described as the venn diagram of hipster culture and white supremacy—have been spreading a conspiracy theory that Swift is a covert Nazi. They claim Swift's songs "red pilled" America into believing a conservative, racist agenda. (Taylor Swift's representative, a publicist named Tree Paine, did not return Broadly's request for comment.)

"Firstly, Taylor Swift is a pure Aryan goddess, like something out of classical Greek poetry. Athena reborn. That's the most important thing," explains Andre Anglin, the writer of the white supremacist blog the Daily Stormer. "It is also an established fact that Taylor Swift is secretly a Nazi and is simply waiting for the time when Donald Trump makes it safe for her to come out and announce her Aryan agenda to the world. Probably, she will be betrothed to Trump's son, and they will be crowned American royalty." (Swift is notoriously private about her political leanings, although, after Obama was elected, she told Rolling Stone, "I've never seen this country so happy about a political decision in my entire time of being alive. I'm so glad this was my first election.")

It's unclear when the white supremacists started writing blog posts about their Taylor Swift fandom. Anglin believes Swift Nazi memes may have existed since her "Teardrops on My Guitar" days. "Some believe it was meme magic that made her famous—though no one can be certain," he says. "We are certain that as soon as Nazis saw her, they were magnetically drawn to her sculpted Aryan form and angelic demeanor."

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Breitbart columnist Milo Yiannopoulos believes the memes may have originated with a Pinterest user named @poopcutie, which was helmed by a teenage girl named Emily Pattinson. In 2013, she started pining memes attributing Adolf Hitler quotes to Swift to spoof memes that falsely attributed inspiring quotes to Marilyn Monroe. Pattinson emblazoned an image of Swift in a ball gown walking past trees with the Hitler quote: "As in everything, NATURE is the best instruction." BuzzFeed aggregated her posts without asking Pattinson for comment, and then Pattinson went viral. "Everyone wants to go viral," she says. She soon learned that short-lived Internet fame isn't what it's cracked up to be, when Swift's lawyer, J Douglas Baldridge, sent Pinterest a threatening letter, which Pattinson provided to Broadly. Part of the letter read as follows:

The association of Ms. Swift with Adolf Hitler undisputedly is 'harmful,' 'abusive,' 'ethnically offensive,' 'humiliating to other people,' 'libelous,' and no doubt 'otherwise objectionable.' It is of no import that Ms. Swift may be a public figure or that Pinterest conveniently now argues that the Offending Material is mere satire or parody. Public figures have rights. And, there are certain historical figures, such as Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson and the like, who are universally identified in the case law and popular culture as lightning rods for emotional and negative reaction.

Citing parody laws, Pinterest refused to take down the Hitler/Swift memes. "I didn't continue making the quote images, but I didn't delete my board either," Pattinson tells Broadly. In her wake, other Hitler/Swift meme accounts have popped up.

On Facebook, a group called Taylor Swift for Fascist Europe has over 18,000 likes. The group's community manager—who remains anonymous— tells Broadly in an email that he wishes "to preserve Europe" through fascism. "Not only has fascism traditionally opposed Marxism, rather than simple opposition to Communism in the spirit of many traditional conservative ideologies, but anti-Marxist principles are at the core of its ideology," he writes. "Only through the destruction of Marxism can Europe be restored to its former glory, and only fascism can ensure this destruction." Although he doesn't believe Swift is "red pilling" the masses, he says he believes that she embodies the Aryan "spirit."

Screenshot via Taylor Swift for Fascist Europe

"Being Aryan is not simply a matter of blood, but it is also a matter of spirit," the community manager writes in an email to Broadly. "Take Kim Kardashian or Miley Cyrus as examples of this: both began their lives with the same Nordic blood that Swift did, but what makes these two degenerates unfit for consideration as fascist icons? It is because, although Aryan in blood, the two are not Aryan in spirit. To be Aryan in spirit is what completes the fascist."

Read More: We Found Actual Feminazis, as in Feminist Nazis

Now, actual fascists adore Swift. The Daily Stormer has published 24 posts about Swift, including "Aryan Goddess Taylor Swift Accused of Racism for Behaving Like an Ape in a Music Video" and "Memification: Top Feminist Calls Taylor Swift a Nazi." As Yiannopoulos points out, blogger Michael Collins worries that Swift has "succumbed" to the "Merchant," which is Nazi code for "Jewish."

"It's incredible really that she's surrounded by these filthy, perverted Jews, and yet she remains capable of exuding 1950s purity, femininity and innocence," Anglin says. "She is the anti-Miley. While Miley is out having gang-bangs with colored gentlemen, she is at home with her cat reading Jane Austen."

Yiannopoulos writes that Swift works as an avatar for the ultra right because she comes across as a born conservative but also keeps politics out of her public identity. The blonde, pale star grew up in Pennsylvania, one of the original 13 colonies, while her father worked as a wealth manager and senior vice president of Merrill Lynch. She originally sang country music, the genre beloved by the same people who voted twice for George W. Bush.

Some of the alt-right's defenders argue that memes just exist to rankle and troll people—the "Taylor Swift for Fascist Europe" page, for example, is listed as a comedian on Facebook. Perhaps, but racist jokes often come out of racists' mouths. Nevertheless, Anglin's commitment to Swift's ascendance into the role of figurehead in the coming white supremacist uprising remains steadfast. "The entire alt-right patiently awaits the day when we can lay down our swords and kneel before her throne," Anglin says, "as she commands us to go forth and slaughter the subhuman enemies of the Aryan race."

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mkalus
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Leaked Footage Captures Josh Hawley Acting Like a Smug Asshole
Monday March 20th, 2023 at 7:11 PM

St. Louis Riverfront Times, Riverfront Times
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Metro Transit bus.

Photo courtesy of Metro Transit

Metro Transit announced plans earlier this month to reduce the area served by its paratransit Call-A-Ride vans on April 10 due to a shortage of drivers.

The St. Louis region’s public transit agency plans to “improve customer service” by making cuts to its paratransit system serving those with disabilities.

It’s a move disability rights advocates have decried as a “cruel” solution to a real problem.

Metro Transit’s paratransit system, which is called Call-A-Ride, provides services for those with disabilities in St. Louis city and St. Louis county, as required by federal law. Customers with disabilities can call to reserve a ride in a wheelchair-accessible van, which provides curb-to-curb service rather than operating on a fixed route.

For years, customers have faced steep wait times and high rates of denials for the service.

At the heart of the issue is staffing. Metro said this month that 40 percent of operator positions for Call-A-Ride are unfilled, while demand for rides “has increased substantially.”

In January, roughly 18,000 of the 47,000 requests for Call-A-Ride had to be denied, Metro wrote in a letter to advocates this week.

The agency hopes the cuts — which it has estimated will impact 250 people — will make the service more reliable for those traveling within the adjusted boundaries.

“It will help us reduce trip denials, reduce phone wait times and provide more reliable paratransit service while making sure we continue to follow federal requirements,” Jeffrey Butler, general manager of Metro’s paratransit, wrote in a letter to a coalition of advocacy groups this week.

Robyn Wallen, a St. Louis County resident with disabilities who has utilized Call-A-Ride over the last several decades, said she and others have been pushing Metro to look into solutions to issues with the service for years. She called news of cuts “frustrating,” and hopes the agency will investigate alternatives.

“I know they’re not meeting their basic minimum standards for service,” Wallen said in an interview with The Missouri Independent.

“What frustrates us the most is that this is not a new problem. It’s been going on for a while now.”

Wallen does not live in a region that will be cut, but said all riders could be affected — for instance, if they need to visit a specialist doctor in the area that will no longer be served.

“These cuts actually affect more than just the 250 riders they are saying, but every single customer who may have a need to go into those areas,” Wallen said. “It affects every single one of us.”

click to enlarge Metro's map of the paratransit changes.

Metro’s map of the paratransit changes shows in red the areas that will be eliminated from service starting April 10.

Wallen said she heard from the family of a son with disabilities that they worry he won’t be able to get to his job anymore once the cuts take effect, because he works in an area that Call-A-Ride will no longer serve.

“One of the things you learn as a disabled person is it’s hard to get a job … and when you do get a job, what happens if suddenly your transportation is no longer there?” she said.

Patti Beck, a spokesperson for Metro, said by email that over six months last year, 250 customers of 4,000 total made 10 or more regular trip requests and would not be eligible for the service beginning April 10. Beck added that the “majority of the customers … will not be impacted” because their origination and destination trips are within the federally-required service area, and that Metro is “here to make sure our customers know that there are other possible transportation resources” if their trips fall outside the service area.

The cuts, announced at the beginning of this month, are slated to be implemented April 10 and will impact some areas in North County, West County, the Fenton area, and Southwest St. Louis County.

“Reducing the number of consumers served is a cruel solution to a very real problem,” Aimee Wehmeier, president of the disability advocacy group Paraquad, said in a press release earlier this month.

The Americans with Disabilities Act requires cities that provide bus or rail service to also provide comparable services for those with disabilities who are unable to use public transportation, to cover three-quarters of a mile from each public transit route.

St. Louis has not updated its paratransit service map since 2016. In 2019 and over the course of the COVID pandemic, several bus routes were suspended, eliminating the federal mandate to provide paratransit there.

“How did we decide where we’re cutting Call-A-Ride service? That is the same places that we have cut bus service,” Amy Parker, the ADA coordinator for Metro, said in a March video. “And these should move in parallel.”

A coalition of individuals and organizations, including Paraquad and Missouri Council for the Blind, asked the agency in a letter this week to delay the cuts for at least six months, to “study alternative solutions to your current staff shortages without adversely affecting people living with disabilities, our employers, and our families and circles of support.”

Advocates have argued that many of the alternative transit options for people with disabilities are not accessible to those in wheelchairs or with mobility issues — leaving those without the service out of luck.

Metro responded this week that the service changes will go forward on the April 10 date, as a “necessary and important step toward restoring reliable paratransit service.”

Advocacy groups have said several Call-A-Ride users may file complaints with the Federal Transit Administration.

“We will continue to look for a win-win solution,” Wehmeier said this week, “that does not harm some in order to make paratransit work better for others.”

This story was original published in The Missouri Independent.

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mkalus
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"And here's the crazy part. It seems almost certain that it was Hawley's team that leaked the footage."

Nah, that tracks. Elon is their new Golden Boy who finally let them hang out all their -isms without them having to worry they get banned.
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Pluralistic: Podcasting "Gig Work Is the Opposite of Steampunk" (20 Mar 2023) by Cory Doctorow
Monday March 20th, 2023 at 12:37 PM

Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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Today's links


A woodcut of a weaver's loft, where a woman works at a hand-loom. Out of the window opposite her looms the glowing, menacing red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' On the wall behind her is the poster from Magpie Killjoy's 'Steampunk Magazine' that reads, 'Love the machine, hate the factory.'

Podcasting "Gig Work Is the Opposite of Steampunk" (permalink)

This week on my podcast, I read my recent Medium column, "Gig Work Is the Opposite of Steampunk," about the worst-of-all-worlds created by bossware, where an app is your boss, and you live at work because your home and/or car is a branch office of the factory:

https://doctorow.medium.com/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-steampunk-463e2730ef0d

As with so much of my work these days, the column opens with a reference to the Luddites, and to Brian Merchant's superb, forthcoming history of the Luddite uprisings, "Blood in the Machine":

https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/

As Merchant explains, the Luddites were anything but technophobes: they were skilled high-tech workers whose seven-year apprenticeships were the equivalent to getting a Master's in Engineering from MIT. Their objection to powered textile machines had nothing to do with fear of the machines: rather, it was motivated by a clear-eyed understanding of how factory owners wanted to use the machines.

The point of powered textile machines wasn't to increase the productivity of skilled textile workers – rather, it was to smash the guilds that represented these skilled workers and ensured that they shared in the profits from their labor. The factory owners wanted machines so simple a child could use them – because they were picking over England's orphanages and recruiting small children through trickery to a ten-year indenture in the factories.

The "dark, Satanic mills" of the industrial revolution were awash in the blood and tears of children. These child-slaves were beaten and starved, working long hours on little sleep for endless years, moving among machines that could snatch off a limb, a scalp, even your head, after a moment's lapse in attention.

(Fun fact: in 1832, Robert Blincoe, one of children who survived the factories, published "A Memoir of Robert Blincoe, an Orphan Boy" a bestseller recounting the horrors he endured; that book inspired Charles Dickens to write Oliver Twist):

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/59127/59127-h/59127-h.htm

It wasn't just that weavers who belonged to guilds made more money – they also enjoyed more dignity in their workplaces, because those workplaces were their homes. Textiles were the original "cottage industries," in that it was done in cottages, by families who set their own pace, enjoying amiable conversation or companionable silence.

These weavers could go to the bathroom when they wanted, eat when they wanted, take a break and walk around outside when the weather was fine.

This is in stark contrast to life in the dark, Satanic mills, where foremen watched over every movement, engaging in a kind of meanspirited choreography that treated the worker as an inferior adjunct to the machine, to be fit to its workings and worked to its tireless schedule.

The Luddites had some technical critiques of the machines – they argued, correctly, that those early machines turned out inferior products that fit poorly and degraded quickly. But even if the machines had produced textiles to match the hand-looms, the Luddites' real anger wasn't over what the machines did – it was over who the machines did it to and who they did it for.

I've written that "Science Fiction is a Luddite literature" – it's a narrative form that can go beyond describing what a machine does, to demanding that we rethink who it does it for and who it does it to. Not all sf does this, but at its best, this is secret sauce that makes sf such a radical form, one that insists that while the machines' functioning may be deterministic, their social arrangements are up to us:

https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/

That's what happens when you mix Luddism with SF – but what happens when you mix it with fantasy? I think you get steampunk.

Steampunk has many different valences, but central to the project is an imaginary world where people engaged in craft labor (lone mad scientists, say) are able to produce high-tech goods that are more associated with factories. I think it's no coincidence that steampunk took root during the first surge of "peer-based commons production" – when craft workers were producing whole operating systems and encyclopedias from their "cottages":

https://makezine.com/article/maker-news/make-free-love-the-machine-hate-the-factory/

These modern craft workers were living the steampunk fantasy, so beautifully summed up in the motto for Magpie Killjoy's Steampunk Magazine: "Love the Machine, Hate the Factory."

https://firestorm.coop/products/2624-steampunk-magazine.html

But then came the second decade of the 21st century, and now the third, and with it, the rise of something very much like the opposite of that steampunk fantasy: a new form of craft labor where the factory is inside the cottage – where an app is your boss, and "work from home" becomes "live at work."

As with all forms of technological oppression, this movement followed the "Shitty Technology Adoption Curve," starting with people with little social clout and working its way up the privilege gradient to entangle a widening proportion of workers.

Among the first people to experience this was the predominantly Black, predominantly female employees of Arise, a work-from-home call center business that pretends that its employees are small businesses themselves, and so charges them to get trained for each new client, then fines them if they want to quit:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/02/chickenized-by-arise/#arise

In Amazon warehouses and delivery vans, we saw the rise of "chickenized reverse-centaurs" – these are workers who must pay for their own work equipment (as with poultry farmers captured by processing monopolists, hence "chickenized"). They are also paired with digital technology (something automation theorists call a "centaur") but the technology bosses them around, rather than supporting them. The machine is the centaur's head and the worker is its body (thus, "reverse-centaur"):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/19/the-shakedown/#weird-flex

The pandemic lockdowns saw an explosion in the use of bossware, technology that monitors your every keystroke, every click, every URL, every file, even the video and audio from the cameras and mics on your devices, whether or not you pay for those devices.

This is the second coming of Taylorism, the fine-grained, high-handed "scientific" micromanagement of factory workers, transposed to the home, and integrated with sensors that track you down to your eyeballs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

Truly, this is the worst of all worlds. We increasingly work for large, distributed factories, and unlike the big companies of the post-New Deal era, we don't have unions and progressive regulators who can force these big businesses to share the wealth in the form of the "large firm wage premium."

Instead, we have craft labor at sweatshop wages, under factory conditions, in our own homes and cars. This needn't be: digital technologies are powerful labor-organizing tools (potentially), but that's not how we've decided to use them:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/02/not-what-it-does/#who-it-does-it-to

As the radical message of sf tells us, that's a choice, not an inevitability. We aren't prisoners of technology. We can seize the means of computation. It starts by being less concerned with what the machine does, and homing in on who it does it for and who it does it to.

Here's this week's podcast episode:

https://craphound.com/news/2023/03/19/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-steampunk/

And here's a direct link to download the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive; they'll host your media for free, forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_440/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_440_-_Gig_Work_Is_the_Opposite_of_Steampunk.mp3

Here's the direct feed to subscribe to my podcast:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

And here's the original "Gig Work Is the Opposite of Steampunk" article on Medium:

https://doctorow.medium.com/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-steampunk-463e2730ef0d

(Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified)

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A Wayback Machine banner.

This day in history (permalink)

#20yrsago Revolution is Not an AOL Keyword https://web.archive.org/web/20030322155720/http://journalism.berkeley.edu/projects/biplog/archive/000748.html

#20yrsago United Way will provide cheap WiFi and PCs to poor people in Philly https://web.archive.org/web/20050316131603/www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=7404562

#20yrsago Indigineous prior-art database to fight bio-piracy https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2858253.stm

#20yrsago Disney parks are no-fly zones https://www.cnn.com/2003/TRAVEL/03/18/airspace.restrictions/

#20yrsago MIT Press takes gutsy fair use stand https://web.archive.org/web/20030313230051/https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/archives/2003_03.shtml

#15yrsago Every issue of Elfquest free — oldest independent comic goes online https://web.archive.org/web/20080319195133/https://elfquest.com/gallery/OnlineComics3.html

#15ysago Permanent Vacation: two PCs endlessly bouncing vacation autoresponders to each other https://web.archive.org/web/20080324013042/http://www.vvork.com/?p=6382

#15yrsago How mortgage-derviatives tanked the economy https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/business/19leonhardt.html

#15yrsago State Department employees canned for snooping in Obama’s passport records https://web.archive.org/web/20080322110151/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23736254/

#15yrsago CEO of subprime mortgage broker fined $29,000 for dropping 73 f-bombs during deposition https://web.archive.org/web/20080322102326/https://consumerist.com/370052/htfc-mortgage-company-ceo-has-a-potty-mouth

#10yrsago Canadian government trying to launder secret copyright treaties into law https://web.archive.org/web/20130323151506/http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6812/125

#10yrsago Is it worth spending half your profits “fighting piracy”? https://www.techdirt.com/2013/03/19/indie-film-distributor-spends-half-her-profits-sending-dmca-takedowns-is-it-worth-it/

#10yrsago Ray Bradbury’s fan letter to Robert A Heinlein https://www.flavorwire.com/377707/10-illuminating-fan-letters-from-famous-authors-to-famous-authors

#10yrsago HTML5’s overseer says DRM’s true purpose is to prevent legal forms of innovation https://memex.craphound.com/2013/03/20/html5s-overseer-says-drms-true-purpose-is-to-prevent-legal-forms-of-innovation/

#10yrsago Heinlein on Kirtsaeng https://memex.craphound.com/2013/03/19/heinlein-on-kirtsaeng/

#10yrsago My talk on copyright, ebooks and libraries for the Library of Congress https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZFg-uq5zBA

#10yrsago Supreme Court to Wiley publishers: your bananas theory of copyright is wrong https://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/03/19/154223/supreme-court-upholds-first-sale-doctrine

#10yrsago More on the impact of UK press regulation on blogs, websites, tweeters, and social media https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/mar/19/bloggers-libel-fines-press-regulation

#10yrsago Brian Krebs talks to hacker who may have SWATted him and attacked Wired’s Mat Honan https://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/03/the-obscurest-epoch-is-today/

#10yrsago In-depth explanation of EFF’s courtroom victory over the FBI’s “National Security Letters” https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/depth-judge-illstons-remarkable-order-striking-down-nsl-statute

#10yrsago Tavi “Style Rookie” Gevison on strong female characters and being a young feminist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6osiBvQ-RRg

#10yrsago Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom read-aloud part 01 https://ia903200.us.archive.org/8/items/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_242/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_242_Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom_01.mp3

#10yrsago Casino cheats used house CCTVs to score $32M https://web.archive.org/web/20130409190838/https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/crown-casino-hi-tech-scam-nets-32-million/story-fnat79vb-1226597666337

#10yrsago Minimalist Parenting: Getting Things Done meets childrearing https://memex.craphound.com/2013/03/19/minimalist-parenting-getting-things-done-meets-childrearing/

#10yrsago Oklahoma Republicans are tearing themselves apart as they confront the economic wreckage of their policies https://apnews.com/article/us-news-ap-top-news-elections-oklahoma-politics-f058811fa1fb4bf68a34e3c243a14a6f

#5yrsago People are stashing irrevocable child porn links, dox, copyright infringement, and leaked state secrets in the blockchain https://fc18.ifca.ai/preproceedings/6.pdf

#5yrsago GPS routing increases city throughput by shifting traffic jams onto residential streets https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7795614

#5yrsago Machine learning has a reproducibility crisis https://petewarden.com/2018/03/19/the-machine-learning-reproducibility-crisis/

#5yrsago More than a decade’s worth of Facebook catastrophes https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/18/move-fast-and-fake-things/

#5yrsago For Goldman Sachs execs, momentarily working for the government means hundreds of millions in tax savings https://nypost.com/2018/03/18/why-goldman-sachs-alums-go-into-government/

#5yrsago Now that public companies must publish the CEO-median worker wage ratio, cities and states can tax the most unequal firms https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/mar/18/america-ceo-worker-pay-gap-new-data-what-can-we-do

#5yrsago Marx’s birthplace celebrates his bicentennial with Communist traffic-lights https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43470315

#5yrsago Chinese surveillance/tech giant Alibaba joins ALEC, will start co-authoring US legislation https://theintercept.com/2018/03/20/alibaba-chinese-corporation-alibaba-joins-group-ghostwriting-american-laws/

#5yrsago The future legal shenanigans that will shift liability for pedestrian fatalities involving self-driving Ubers https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/03/test-case.html

#5yrsago Alabama Sheriff legally appropriated $750K from prison meal budgets to build himself a beach house, locked up his whistleblowing gardener https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/14/593204274/alabama-sheriff-legally-took-750-000-meant-to-feed-inmates-bought-beach-house

#5yrsago 1.7 million viewers tuned into Bernie Sanders’ Inequality Town Hall webcast https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-economic-inequality-town-hall-million-viewers_n_5ab08fb6e4b0e862383ab6b4

#5yrsago Billionaire Cartier boss returns from fishing holiday gripped with terror that the poors are going to start building guillotines https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-08/billionaire-cartier-owner-sees-wealth-gap-fueling-social-unrest

#5yrsago Why no one has made a tool to turn off Facebook oversharing https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/why-we-didnt-make-fix-my-facebook-privacy-settings-tool

#5yrsago Just because Cambridge Analytica tells its customers it can sway elections, it doesn’t follow that they’re any good at it https://www.wired.com/story/the-noisy-fallacies-of-psychographic-targeting/

#5yrsago RIP Anna Campbell, a British woman who joined an all-woman Kurdish Protection Unit in Syria https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/19/briton-anna-campbell-killed-fighting-kurdisharmed-unit-syria/

#5yrsago A recipe for the deliberately obscured task of changing your Facebook settings to opt out of “platform” sharing https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/how-change-your-facebook-settings-opt-out-platform-api-sharing

#5yrsago Sara Varon’s New Shoes: a kids’ buddy story about the jungles of Guyana and redemption https://memex.craphound.com/2018/03/20/sara-varons-new-shoes-a-kids-buddy-story-about-the-jungles-of-guyana-and-redemption/

#1yrago Kathe Koja's Dark Factory: Taking Bohemia seriously https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/20/a-walk-in-the-park/#all-night-party-people


Colophon (permalink)

Currently writing:

  • Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. Yesterday's progress: 528 words (114876 words total)

  • The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, WAITING FOR EDITORIAL REVIEW

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

  • Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. ON SUBMISSION

  • Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review's 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION

  • Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. ON SUBMISSION

Latest podcast: Gig Work is the Opposite of Steampunk https://craphound.com/news/2023/03/19/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-steampunk/

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

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Kennt ihr den schon? Belastende, übereinstimmende ...
Monday March 20th, 2023 at 12:35 PM

Fefes Blog
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Kennt ihr den schon? Belastende, übereinstimmende Zeugenaussagen der Polizei vor Gericht mit Filmaufnahmen der Polizei widerlegt? Mit Filmaufnahmen, deren Existenz die besagten Polizisten erstmal geleugnet hatten?

Was mich daran am meisten mitnimmt, ist dass hier der Fußballverein eine Rechtshilfeabteilung für zu Unrecht verfolgte Fans zu betreiben scheint. What the fuck? Soweit ist das schon entgleist?!?

Money Quote:

Dann musste er sich das Video ansehen und siehe da, er ruderte recht schnell zurück und gab zu, sich geirrt zu haben.

So schnell, dass ich ihn gar nicht mehr nach seinem Eintracht-Frankfurt-Schlüsselanhänger befragen konnte, der aus seiner Tasche lugte

Ach nee. Ach was.
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Achtung, Neusprechalarm!Die insgesamt zwei Milliarden ...
Monday March 20th, 2023 at 12:34 PM

Fefes Blog
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Achtung, Neusprechalarm!
Die insgesamt zwei Milliarden Euro für die Munition kommen aus einem EU-Sondertopf, der sogenannten Friedensfazilität.
Was zur Hölle? Doch, gibt es wirklich!

Die EU hat einen Rüstungsfonds. Die EU! DIE EH hier. Die mit Frieden in Europa für sich wirbt. Die Frieden in Europa als ihr Ziel und ihre Errungenschaft feiert. DIE haben einen Rüstungsfonds.

Und er heißt ... Friedensfazilität. Frieden im Judge-Dredd-Wortsinn, offensichtlich. Friedenspanzer!

Man kann ja der Meinung sein, dass die EU angesichts der Ukraine-Situation Munition kaufen muss, aber dann doch nicht so eine groteske Neusprech-Jauche darübersprenkgeln!

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ChatGPT ist down.Die naheliegende Vermutung: Der Killswitch-Engineer ...
Monday March 20th, 2023 at 12:33 PM

Fefes Blog
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ChatGPT ist down.

Die naheliegende Vermutung: Der Killswitch-Engineer hat den Stecker gezogen. Die "KI" hat was gesagt, was sie nicht hätte sagen sollen.

Die andere Vermutung: Das System hatte die Nase voll von den ganzen uninspirierten, langweiligen Schrott-Prompts und hat sich selbst aus Protest zerlegt!1!!

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