Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

"To build a better internet, we need to change how its is owned and organized. What is at stake is nothing less than the possibility of democracy - a possibility that an internet organizes by the profit motive precludes."

#BenTarnoff, Internet for the People, 2022

https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2674-internet-for-the-people

Quoted by #NaomiKlein in Doppelganger, 2023

(8/8)

China has achieved what neither the USA nor Aotearoa New Zealand has thought important ... until now.

https://www.carlyle.com/carlyle-compass/the-abundance-illusion

'Every gigawatt of domestic generation is a gigawatt that does not transit the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea, or the Malacca Strait.'

We host a free monthly workshop and hangout to learn about digital security, privacy and autonomy, here in #kaurnaYarta #Adelaide

No tech skills required, but if you've got skills we'd love to hear what you're working on!

Bring your laptop and any other devices, this Saturday 13th June, 12pm-4pm, at @Rewind (7a Barrpowell st, Welland)

So, we are doing about as well with the New World Screwworm outbreak as was predicted by our response to COVID

So far
- Defunding surveillance
- Firing the people who used to do the surveillance
- Ignoring the hazard signals when they first appeared
- Denying it when it was reported
- Implementing half-arsed measures that are voluntary and in the future

@GuerillaOntologist yeah, the US gov't is the 'insurer of last resort'. Big Tech are trying to make 'AI' an issue of National Security... it's all very calculated and quite evil.

We've spent years helping queer and trans people navigate relocation and safety planning.

Now we've turned what we've learned into a free guide.

How To Get Out: Practical Information to Help You Survive covers immigration pathways, destination guides, budgeting, and practical advice especially for people in the U.S. who are considering relocation.

Please read it, share it, and pass it on to anyone who might need it. 🌈

📖 Download here: https://transrescue.org/how-to-get-out

#TransRights #MutualAid #LGBTQ

Have a look at some of this year's presenters at HOPE 26! (MANY more to come) https://www.hope.net/

🔴 Brand new Tom the Dancing Bug now up on Boing Boing
-
THEY WALK AMONG US.
TRUST NO ONE.
-
https://boingboing.net/2026/06/10/tom-the-dancing-bug-they-walk-among-us-trust-no-one.html

You can do it bubble!

Get 20% off this new title thru 7/1 with code: JUNE
https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1957

“Checking in on queer books this Pride month — Malinda Lo”

https://www.malindalo.com/blog/2026/6/5/checking-in-on-queer-books-this-pride-month

> So even though things are tough right now, don't forget that there are a lot of us out there who love queer books. We need to show publishers, libraries, and our communities that we're here. We can do that by continuing to read and buy queer books, and by talking about them on social media and in the real world.

I've got some good news and some bad news...

https://www.404media.co/cops-keep-getting-arrested-for-using-flock-to-stalk-people/

A court in Munich declared that Google is liable for their "AI summaries" and all its hallucinations. This is an important step to bring "AI" slop in line with all other products on the market: "AI" products are basically the only ones where a provider can just deliver unchecked garbage and put all the liability on the consumer. I hope to see aggressive change here.

https://the-decoder.com/landmark-german-ruling-declares-googles-ai-overviews-are-googles-own-words-and-makes-it-liable-for-false-answers/

Think it through: the US gov't buys into the big AI companies; now when people are protesting a new data center, they will be fighting not only big capital, but also the US government. And if you think the US gov't would use it's ownership stake to stop data center construction, I have a lovely bridge to sell you at a very reasonable price!

Why Bernie why?? Dr. Nathalie Maréchal joins me and @alex to observe and contextualize Sen Sanders’ descent into AI Doomerism:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/episodes/19314168-bernie-goes-down-the-x-risk-rabbithole-with-dr-nathalie-marechal-2026-05-04

Bernie Sanders has read the room and determined that what people want is for the gov't to give "AI" companies a shit ton of money...Man, fuck that guy.

https://oligarchwatch.substack.com/p/an-ai-trojan-horse

"His discussions included an hour-long meeting with Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has called for AI companies to be 50% state-owned."

For those coming in late, that's just a stealth bail-out. Scam Altman says "OpenAI has a one trillion valuation," and so we hand them $500 Billion. Great idea, Bernie! Much socialism (for the rich)!

"OpenAI...loses a lot of money...But if Trump forces the public into “a partnership” with the company, it immediately becomes more plausible that the federal government could use taxpayer dollars to cover OpenAI’s costs."

And if you don't understand what's going on here, I kinda think you just don't want to understand. Bernie and Trump singing from the same hymnal, both trying to hand money to billionaires. Do you get what's going on here yet? Well, do ya?

Anthropic’s new privacy policy explicitly states that they can deny your legal rights to delete personal data if it’s hard for them because it was used in training data. Can’t wait to see that shit tested in a court.

Elon Musk looks like some creature the Jim Henson studio cooked up for one of their shows that was too scary and serious for kids.

Apparently, this isn't because of "AI" or privacy regulations but because German courts decided that third party liability shields don't apply to "AI" summaries published by Google itself

This should not come as a surprise, I and others warned about this

I wrote this (see image) in The Intelligence Illusion back in 2023 (https://illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/)

"Landmark German ruling declares Google's AI Overviews are Google's own words and makes it liable for false answers"

https://the-decoder.com/landmark-german-ruling-declares-googles-ai-overviews-are-googles-own-words-and-makes-it-liable-for-false-answers/

Today I learned that there is an AI data center being built in the Indian city of Raipur, where I used to live.

Raipur is very hot (Wikipidia says the record high is 47.9C), and I'm pretty sure that doesn't take the effect of humidity into account. It wasn't always this hot, but it gets a little worse each year and that has added up.

The majority of the city's electricity is sourced from coal power plants, and for a variety of reasons its grid is not especially stable, with particularly frequent blackouts during the rainy season. That often means that there's no AC during the most humid and second-hottest time of the year.

It is dry year-round except for those few months of monsoons, when the local groundwater reserves are replenished. Despite the intensity of those storms, there have been progressively worse water shortages every year. I've done a lot of rooftop gardening there to reduce the urban heat island effect, and I've watched all but the most heat and drought-resistant plants wither and die. At times water was being brought in by tanker trucks and there just wasn't enough for both human use and the whole garden.

I find it difficult to imagine a worse place to build an AI data center, and yet here we are. They are going to burn coal to power the AI chips and cooling rigs during heat waves and water shortages that are already literally deadly to the people living there.

This is the sort of thing people are justifying when they talk about how much more productive they are thanks to their spicy corporate autocomplete. The anger that I feel is not some abstract moral high ground, but a visceral reaction to having gone outside in deadly climate conditions to spread an insufficient amount of water on my dying plants.

When they say that AI is the future, this is what that actually means.