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It's impossible to exonerate the internet, and social media in particular here. It allowed for the efficient networking and ratcheting-up of our worst impulses at unbelievable speed and scale. In-group/out-group dynamics are as old as the hills, but social media is a particle accelerator for them.

tl;dr LJ in the Aughts had become a place where Russians were able to organize outside of state control (servers in CA!) until inevitably a Russian banker with "alleged" Kremlin ties bought it. now the servers are... in Russia. And people have been sentenced to prison for blog opinions.

Stop uploading things to LLMs. ANY THINGS. ANY LLMs.

PARIS (AP) — A wildfire in southwest France grew so powerful that its smoke column became a thunderstorm, generating lightning that struck the ground and ignited new fires beyond the original blaze, French officials said.

"On Monday, the Red Cross declared a national blood crisis for the second time ever in its history."

Realest shit anyone ever said

what’s going on with the world man. why is the far right resurgent everywhere? it’s easy to blame whatever policy boogeyman (neoliberalism, housing shortage, immigration, etc etc) but I think it has to be something deeper. maybe lived memory is dying out of how evil fascism is

I greatly value this thoughtful, evidence-based line-by-line critique by @jeremyfaust.bsky.social of his friend @craigspencer.bsky.social’s MAHA hagiography MAHA is IMHO a hugely destructive anti-vaxx movement whose leaders are dismantling public health insidemedicine.substack.com/p/i-didnt-lo...

Every now and then I'm reminded a lot of Westerners do not seem to appreciate how competitive rabid nationalism is a favourite pastime in Asia, and that you do not under any circumstances want to bring up border disputes

"The entire public is suddenly aligned against my sub-field of science and is trying to dismantle it with bad faith attacks, cherrypicking, weaponized FOIAs, and a myriad of other tools in clumsy hands that were probably put there by dark money" welcome to the party pal, you're doing something right

Another way you could say this is, I haven't seen a single fucking person under 30 talk about conceding to MAHA, and I think there's probably an interesting reason for that

We have some time-bounded problems that are simply not going to get solved if we don't know how to deal with this kind of attack, or worse, if we won't advocate for our own position. The planet will become unlivable in my lifetime. I'm sorry if that makes me a little bit unyielding as an activist

Here's the unspoken thing: the livability of the planet in my middle age depends on a rapid shift in American politics that simply may not happen, and it will be especially unreachable if we do the same concessions to dark money funded doubtmongering on the climate side as we're debating with MAHA

People who think Emily Wilson is being mean have clearly never presented a paper at an academic conference

Periodic reminder that CodePink is a cutout for the CCP that happily backs genocide when they do it.

It's so lovely to see Wu have support, and also to see Harris providing that support. These two clearly love HK to bits and <starts sobbing>

Paul Harris, of course, was the former barrister and chairperson of the Hong Kong Bar Association who was warned by national security police that he could be charged with sedition over books he wrote about the 2019 protests hongkongfp.com/2024/06/28/e...

Wu Chi-wai has been allowed to stay in the UK for 6 months, according to his lawyer Paul Harris apnews.com/article/hong...

Margins calls in South Korea. No one saw this coming 🙄

A driver in Boston ran down and murdered a scooter rider because he felt "disrespected." Cars are weapons.