beams_of_light

I’ve learned to skip several paragraphs of writing once I recognize the pattern. These types of articles turn into long essays where the writer is trying to create a work of art more so than convey important information.

They are, unfortunately, being undermined by politics. I know someone who works on carbon capture facilities whose projects are being canceled because the incentives are being destroyed by the current presidential administration.

Oil and gas companies strongly lobby for Republicans they know will remove any incentive for them to need to worry about the environment.

We need to keep our surveillance of the surveillance state broad. There’s a lot of focus on Flock right now (rightfully so), but they are merely a single player in the privatized surveillance state architecture.

Palantir, Anduril, telcos, and more are contributing to the erosion of our privacy.

It’s been 2 decades since we learned about the secret NSA room at AT&T. 13 years since the Snowden revelations. This is not new and we need to be vigilant.

This. It’s not even worth discussing.

Sad, isn’t it? I saw this coming many years ago, as I’m sure many of you did. We create so much metadata in our lives, both physically and digitally evident, that our past and future behaviors can be observed at a level of detail only previously imagined in dystopian fiction.

We learned about the government’s domestic surveillance programs from Snowden over 13 years ago.

About ten years ago, I learned about fiber optic and WiFi sensing techniques that would make the hair stand up on the back of most people’s necks.

14 years ago, stories were written about a pregnant teen whose parents were sent coupons from Target for baby items, because Target had automatically marked the girl as pregnant because of her shopping habits.

Computers, vehicles, and software that we pay for have so many built in tracking mechanisms that I think circumventing them would make you more of a surveillance target at this point than not.

I know people try to rationalize the whole “I said something near my phone and Facebook gave me ad impressions for it” as simply the algorithm finding a strong signal in your browsing data, but I’m fully convinced that Meta apps are listening on iOS, even with the screen locked.

Those who enable these sorts of things should feel shame. You’d have to be a complete asshole to do this stuff to fellow humans just for money.

I think most of us who have lived through many presidents understood that there was a decency required of the holder of the office that acted as the only true limit on their corruption. It's confounding that so many people in the US can't see it for what it is.

xAI is no David.

Don’t know, but religions created to reign in the masses probably don’t explain it.

There were many religions before the Abrahamic ones.

I have a camera, on my phone. I just want to be able to sync my pictures and videos to my own device, not cloud storage. This is becoming especially prudent in these times of nearly monthly major breaches exposing personal data stored in the cloud, as well as companies deciding to change their terms of service and use your data for purposes you might not want it used for.

I strongly prefer not to have my personal data stored on other people’s computers.

What truly are humanity’s energy needs, though?

Do we need Facebook? Do we need Instagram? Do we need deepfakes and AI music?

This cuts to the heart of it for me. I will not install Meta or LinkedIn apps on my phone because they have been found to be very intrusive.

This is a problem I have yet to see schools tackle. A kid in junior high school has no mental context for the Russian Revolution of 1917, for instance. Having them read Animal Farm is a pointless waste of time.

This and the other accounts critical of COP30 were created very recently. The one above you, 3 hours ago.

Interesting.

Or perhaps anything left of fascist evil is considered controversial?

We can each play this game.