Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

When the book-burning by GenAI/LLM companies was revealed, the defences of this were "oh the books aren't rare" and "oh they're only buying books from pulping companies that will be destroyed anyway".

Neither of these is true. The AI companies are buying bulk orders of obscure titles from ordinary booksellers:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/15/uk-ireland-booksellers-suspect-ai-companies-bulk-orders-data-acquisition

None of these are bestsellers, and none of them are checked to see if they are archived anywhere. But they *will* be physically destroyed by the AI companies after sucking out all the info from them.

#GenAI #LLM #AI

This week's comic on the oversized luxury truck fad

#comics #cartoons #transportation #cars

May Day has more than a century of history in Chicago, from the fight for the eight-hour day and the Haymarket martyrs to generations of workers who kept the tradition alive.

On Aug. 23, Isaac Silver of Buttons of the Left will bring some of that history to the In These Times offices through the buttons, flyers and other artifacts people carried with them.

Bagels and brunch included. Kids welcome.

https://www.allyoufascistsboundtolose.com/calendar/buttons-bagels-and-brunch

look, it's quite normal for execs to jump ship from a large company *just before* it tries to do a huge IPO

https://www.ft.com/content/53082739-7714-4aae-9816-e55ab423cbee
archive: https://archive.is/2gNyj

How might things have been different if so many of us weren't convinced that devaluing our own labor was essential to our careers, let alone betraying labor solidarity!

AI is only possible, I'll posit, because so fucking many of us never saw ourselves as laborers in the first place, and actively resisted any kind of identification with labor (to wit, "uber but for" is antagonistic towards labor, not a cutesy way of marketing an app).

More on the Attala County case here. https://www.wjtv.com/news/education/federal-lawsuit-accuses-attala-county-school-resource-officer-of-strip-searching-high-school-boys/

Schools in Omaha are giving shock gloves to resource officers to use on students.

These are effectively torture devices that will be used on minors.

They will be disabling. There’s a risk of physical disabilities as well as PTSD.

Students shouldn’t be given electric shocks in schools.

Let’s not forget a resource officer in Attala County has been accused of sexually assaulting 7 Black students by strip searching them.

They were forced to strip, bend over and squat during a vape search.

Don’t give weapons to resource officers.

This must be stopped:

https://www.3newsnow.com/central-omaha/opd-says-its-school-resource-officers-have-shock-gloves-at-29-schools-and-theyve-been-used-twice-on-students

#uspol #education #disability #ableism #shockgloves #ice

@altk3y @lambdacalculus
I call his platform by its current name for one very simple reason. If you know any white supremacist code, then you'd know why he'd call his buggy corpo silo after the capital "X" based on its ASCII numerical code.

MAGA: “Just comply with ICE and the shock gloves won’t hurt you”.

You can’t comply with thugs.

They give contradictory orders on purpose.

“You f*cking move I’ll f*cking tase you! Get out of the f*cking car right now!”

These gloves will kill people.

#ice #abolishice #immigration #uspol #fascism

Nearly $270,000 over a 35-year career.

That’s how much more the typical worker could earn if union membership tripled to 30%, according to new EPI research.

Heidi Shierholz argues that rebuilding union power is an affordability policy.
https://inthesetimes.com/article/affordabilitys-union-labor-pro-act-congress

RE: https://mastodon.social/@hbons/117099208164126991

The two ended floppy disk, the oven mitt penguin feet, the weird disappearing-row keyboard, computer that’s half bookshelf, the drive slots for media that don’t exist, there’s so much to love here.

Debian is polling its developers on whether to permit or ban "AI" contributions.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2026/08/msg00002.html

I'm now funemployed!

Employer did yet another round of layoffs. Should get a few months of severance, at least, including paid-up health insurance. (Although I haven't yet reviewed the actual terms, which could of course contain something nasty.)

Actually feeling pretty good. It was pretty clear this was going to happen sooner or later, and it's nice to have some free time. Tech job market is looking up as well.