Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

RE: https://unstable.systems/@jneen/116432400687637204

❝ hypervigilance, famously, destroys your mind and body.

when employers act like it's expected, it is a very strong message that they do not care about their workers. ❞

this AI-mania is the consequence of trust fund, nepobaby capitalists buying themselves CEO titles.

“hypervigilance” is the fear and paranoia kakistocrats live by; because they have no idea how to make what sustains their wealth.

#kakistocracy is not limited to government; it applies to VCs, startups & the corporate world

not to mention most of the devs i see in the field are generating their *tests* with AI, which completely defeats their purpose in catching AI errors.

Days before warning report, all 22 National Science Board members fired in two-sentence email - https://boingboing.net/2026/04/29/days-before-warning-report-all-22-national-science-board-members-fired-in-two-sentence-email.html #trump destroying #murica yet further...

This is why we call it kayfabe - they are only pretending to be on opposite teams.

The House voted 235-191 in favor of the bill released last week by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who has been trying for months to get an extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to President Donald Trump’s desk.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/fisa-section-702-reauthorization

This is not the first time the Dems have been screaming "fascist!" while voting to give the Pres even more power. It will not be the last.

@lzg @oscarjiminy The original posts I saw on the incident were loaded with anthropomorphization ("the AI 'went rogue'") which is evocative but absolute garbage framing.

HUMANS designed a system with massive single-points-of-failure, HUMANS ran untested and unreviewed automation which had unintended and catastrophic consequences, HUMANS gave admin access to a third-party automation system without having defined the most fundamental requirements and acceptance criteria for it to determine whether it was fit for purpose, HUMANS approved a change process that had no control points to manage risk and prevent cascading failure.

One of the incredibly corrosive aspects of agentic tools is the absolute disregard for QA, change control, and thoughtful process. It's all YOLO all the time. The departments allowing or mandating the use of these tools exercise even less diligence in making sure their tools are fit for purpose than they normally do which is usually next to nothing. If they were doing their jobs, IT would never deploy Excel to non-finance workers (and even then).

What we're seeing is rank incompetence from the CEO and CTO on down through IT and the software/devops organizations - people making catastrophically bad devisions and shrugging off the consequences with "oh, the _AI_ did it..." No, nobody at the top did their job to ensure the money and effort put in resulted in a robust system and effective change control processes. That wasn't the AI's responsibility, it was that of the company's executives and directors.

Here's the COVID Vaccine Paper the CDC Censored

"...The censored paper presents data on the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines during the 2025-2026 season. The results suggest that, in the first few months after vaccination (September-December 2025), this year's vaccines were 53-55% effective against hospitalizations among the study's population of adults without immune compromise."

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/faustfiles/121016?

The paper in question:
https://insidemedicine.substack.com/api/v1/file/ab3d90bd-5bb8-4b2a-bf5e-0eccb93e0230.pdf

"In a social media response to The Lever editor-in-chief David Sirota on April 17, Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) posted that a five-year extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — a War on Terror-era measure that has allowed federal law enforcement to unofficially spy on Americans’ communications — was “not acceptable.”

"But emails reviewed by The Lever show Himes, the top Democratic lawmaker on the House Intelligence Committee, ittee, urged his colleagues just hours before he posted the response to support a Trump administration-backed bill that would have extended the spying powers for another five years."

https://www.levernews.com/top-democrat-opposed-surveillance-bill-then-whipped-votes-for-it/

It Was Spelled In Seashells By The Seashore. The DOJ Now Pretends It’s A Felony. - https://www.techdirt.com/2026/04/29/comey-spelled-it-in-seashells-by-the-seashore-the-doj-now-pretends-its-a-felony/

Dear #gitlab a Work Item is not something I want to be concerned with in #FreeSoftware stuff I do in my free time. Can't we have names that are more motivating like "Puzzles to solve"?

Best #coding happens away from the computer.

#programming

Usually, when I get interviewed for a piece on something like "AI consciousness" I am relegated to the skeptics box --- some short paragraph near the end. So it is a nice change to see this piece by Holly Baxter

https://www.the-independent.com/tech/ai-news-humanize-chatbot-conscious-b2963788.html

🧵>>

New: President Trump's memecoin project is preparing to launch a membership club promising "elite and extraordinary experiences". This is the latest attempt to prop up a token down 97% from peak.

https://www.citationneeded.news/trump-coin-club/

#crypto #cryptocurrency #USpol #USpolitics

MIT's Technology Review takes a comprehensive dive into the energy/climate consequences of AI, and the news is terrible for everyone but the corporate bosses and billionaires in charge of it all. Grim, grim stuff here:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/

Starlink continues to have been designed to sell a small number of users lower-latency links at a steep premium.

And it remains way past time to stop letting corporations make a mess of the sky.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91532281/spacex-starlink-fcc-complaints

The corrupt Roberts Court just wiped out what was left of the Voting Rights Act. It was a purely partisan/ideological ruling, and will reverberate for decades to come as it frees the Republican Party to keep racism at the core of its beliefs, and operations.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/how-the-scotus-vra-decision-could-impact-the-midterms-and-beyond

After internal protests from Google employees after the company signed a contract with the Pentagon for military uses of AI, the company told employees it “proudly” works with the U.S. military.

Long gone are the days of bowing to employee backlash in big tech.

We estimate that the recovery process of our CI services may potentially take multiple hours. We ask for your understanding as we are trying to reinforce our services' reliability.

Get 20% off In the Hour of the Wolf: Tales of a Sámi Warrior title with code APRIL thru 5/1
https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1946

Get 20% off The Reticular Society with code APRIL thru 5/1
https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1947

Could folks stop referring to what these AI tools are doing as “thinking”? It’s stretching definition of the term and contributing to the intentional misinformation in the marketing from the vendors.

It’s not thinking, it’s computing. Those aren’t the same thing.