AI Slop Horrors, McCarthyism, Family Chicken Lays Giant Egg
everything is fine
Hello sinners, saints, sluts, and simps. Greetings in these hellish times, hope you are hanging in there. Or something. Today I’ve got recommendations of things to read and listen to. Reminder to check out my last few newsletters if you haven’t gotten them, as I’ve heard reports of them going to promotions / spam folders.
Some nice news:
This album ROCKS. Congrats guys! Everyone should listen.
Pig racing league:
Family’s chicken “Gail” lays a big egg:
It’s F1 SEASON! ALBON HIVE RISE UP! PIASTRI PALS IT’S GONNA BE A GOOD YEAR FOR YOU
If you ever want to read my musings on my favorite financially corrupt sport, LMK. You’re getting some now anyways. It’s a great season to become a Yuki fan, IMO, even though he’s about to drive the most undriveable car in the field, a car created around Max Verstappen that has cursed every other driver who has tried to sit in it, sorry to Lawson, SORRY to Sainz. Lewis Hamilton’s big move is backfiring, hilariously honestly, but he’s still undoubtedly the best dressed on the gird. McLaren is the team to beat, so wear orange if you want to impress a random F1 slut. If none of that is interesting to you, how about: Red Bull team boss Christian Horner is married to Ginger Spice, cheated on her with a Red Bull employee and all the sexts leaked. Interested now? No? Okay.
Fuck AI, seriously and forever
This is a satirical post, hopefully clearly, but god. There are many reasons to hate AI. I am struck recently by the ease in which these programs allow us to be the arbiters of slop, churning out garbage that looks like beloved IP and using this in the most grotesque way possible (see the official White House page, refuse to repost their vileness here). Real expression is undermined, deterred, suppressed. We are fed slop, we make slop, the most harrowing issues of our time become slop, in this way the aesthetics of ease and the simplicity of algorithms allow the worst people in the world to meme-ify their cruelty, rendering horrific acts into a shallow and flattened rendering that obscures the gravity of the crime simply by its inaneness.
It is much like AI itself: a deeply extractive enterprise that accelerates the burning the planet as it drowns us in unnecessary imagery, but is SIMPLE. Just one click. What could go wrong. The ludicrous of it takes away from the severity and maliciousness of the tool being used, and the image being altered—the artist, the art itself, the craft, the very thing. We look at the thing, we are awed by how dumb the thing is, it almost stands in for the thing itself. What does this mean for mechanical reproduction? Benjamin is imploding.
LINKS
My Name is Mahmoud Khalil and I Am a Political Prisoner
“My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.”
They Are Going to Take Everything If We Don't Stop Them
“Here is what is happening: First they are coming for the federal unions—the lowest hanging fruit, the most bureaucratic unions, the ones barred from striking. Then they will proceed to come for all public sector unions. Then they will come for private sector unions. Understand that the transparently bullshit nature of the justification for this move— “Uh, everything is national security, therefore Trump is king over you”—is a preview of what will be more transparently bullshit justifications for them to conduct further outrageous assaults on the very existence of organized labor. They don’t give a fuck. They are proving, over and over again, that they don’t give a fuck. This is not about law. This is about power.”
DHS detains grad student who advocated for Palestine and the "humanity of all people"
Columbia Expelled Me for My Palestine Activism, but I Won’t Be Silenced
See also: The Limits of Rights
Betar: The Far-Right Hate Group Helping Trump Deport Israel’s Critics
A FASCIST PARAMILITARY – BUT JEWISH
Betar traces its origins back over 100 years. The group was founded by early Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky as a far-right paramilitary force, one that explicitly stood against the leftist Jewish groups who dominated at a time when “Jewish” and “socialist” were seen by many as virtually synonymous. Jabotinsky believed that establishing a state in Palestine would require the creation of what he called a “new Jew,” one that would be willing to fight and die for Zionism. To this end, Betar was established as a fighting organization and received generous funding from conservative benefactors.
An Orchestrated Recession? Trump’s Tariffs, AI, and the Future of US Power
RECOVER grants for Long COVID pathobiology research are among those cut under new NIH directive
Many of those 45 first-round grants were rescinded this week, according to researchers within RECOVER who spoke with The Sick Times. These grants are among broader cuts to COVID-related research across the NIH and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A new NIH guidance document claims, “Now that the pandemic is over, the grant funds are no longer necessary,” according to reports from Science and Nature. This statement, of course, is untrue — COVID-19 continues to spread at high levels, killing and disabling Americans. There are currently no government-approved treatments for Long COVID, which impacts at least 400 million people worldwide.
The Succession Battle For A Prison Empire: Luxury cars, mansions, a superyacht called Convict, and wined-and-dined sheriffs — a legal war is exposing the big business of extracting profits from prisoners.
Event: Join Writers Against the War on Gaza (W.A.W.O.G.) on Saturday, April 5 from 2–9 PM for a community town hall at the First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn (124 Henry St, Brooklyn).
On my desktop still:
It just feels…poignant as a snapshot of our times. In a recent TrueAnon ep, Liz described America as “Israel plus Tesla” and. Yes! Sometimes it feels like, hmm, could they really be this evil and this stupid. And the answer is yeah, they really are.
My beagle:
We’re Gene Wolfe pilled right now, don’t talk to us! But do. Or, have you already done so? Wink wink. We love it. And love all you! Thanks for reading. Be well. OR something.
Xoxo
Shelby (And Clem)