chargrille

chargrille, 11 months ago to bluesky

If Jack Dorsey & Elon Musk (who are friends) just wanted to run a MAGA site full of fascists, they could have just bought Parler & saved themselves approx 43.999 billion dollars.

What they wanted was to cripple the sad remnants of investigative journalism, and the political left, which successfully used Twitter for political organizing, activism & messaging throughout the Trump regime.

Why would anyone who cares about either of these things go to Jack's #Bluesky project.

chargrille, 9 months ago to random

Are there people out there who are looking at AI/LLM-generated content as pollution?

Because that is the analogy that makes the most sense to me. It's creating huge externalities for the profit of a few - proliferating enormous amounts of digital pollution (as well as real-world greenhouse gas pollution).

The more AI/LLM churn out content for the internet, the dirtier the water, so to speak. Or the air. And the less it functions for users.

chargrille, 1 year ago to random

There's a lot of misinformation circulating that obscures or softens Jack Dorsey's relationship to Bluesky, Bluesky to Twitter, &/or Dorsey to Musk/Twitter.

On Dec 11, 2019, Dorsey announced on Twitter that he'd started Bluesky as part of Twitter, to serve Twitter, & funded by Twitter $, "to develop an open & decentralized standard for social media." (One already existed. Clearly the goal was one he controlled.)

"The goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this [Bluesky] standard."

"But the standard Twitter app isn’t the only platform whose future Musk now controls. Over the past three years, Twitter Inc. has also been funding a decentralized social networking project called Bluesky — and it finally seems close to bearing fruit. But under Twitter’s new leadership, with its original champions gone, its future prospects seem shaky. Bluesky was launched under Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s leadership back in 2019, and its initial manager was Parag Agrawal, then Twitter’s CTO and later Dorsey’s replacement. The goal was to build a decentralized social network protocol that could eventually hook into Twitter — making it interoperable with other networks unrelated to the company. To maintain independence from Twitter as a business, Bluesky was set up as an independent entity producing nonproprietary open-source work — even as it was funded by Twitter. Bluesky was formally organized as a public benefit LLC led by software engineer Jay Graber in late 2021, and as of April, it had received $13 million from Twitter."
"Bluesky has always seemed like a quirky pet cause of Jack Dorsey, and that impression has only gotten stronger over time. Dorsey imagined decentralization as a way to sidestep increasingly bitter content moderation debates among law- and policy-makers. Decentralized social networking protocols like ActivityPub (which powers Mastodon) already existed, and to the extent Bluesky has a unique vision, it reflects ideas like Dorsey’s love of “algorithmic choice” or competing social media moderation algorithms. He told Musk in a"
["Before Musk reluctantly bought Twitter, former CEO Jack Dorsey funded and spun off Bluesky, a public benefit company tasked with building an open-source, decentralized social media protocol that he wanted Twitter itself to eventually operate on. Bluesky remains invite only to access but is now starting to let in more users. After setting up my account recently, wanted to talk with CEO Jay Graber. She agreed to answer some of my questions this week for what I believe is her first interview since she joined to lead the project in August 2021."

chargrille, 11 months ago to bluesky

You should stay away from #Bluesky, not actively help Jack Dorsey make his next billion & build his power as an owner of another social media empire.

Dorsey helped fund Musk's takeover to the tune of $1 billion, making him one of Musk's top backers (after Qatar).

He owns part of Twitter.

He & Musk planned Musk's takeover at Twitter. They are collaborators, not competitors.

https://progressives.social/@chargrille/110286207887749108

>Edit to add Dave Troy's piece https://davetroy.medium.com/no-elon-and-jack-are-not-competitors-theyre-collaborating-3e88cde5267d

chargrille, 4 months ago to random

"corporate profits accounted for about 53% of inflation" in 2nd & 3rd qtr of 2023. The 40 years pre-pandemic, profits were only 11% of price growth.

"resounding evidence” "shows that high corporate profits are a main driver of ongoing inflation, & companies continue to keep prices high even as their inflationary costs drop"

"corporate earnings calls [show] executives bragging to shareholders about keeping prices high & widening profit margins as input costs come down"

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/19/us-inflation-caused-by-corporate-profits

chargrille, 3 months ago to random

If anyone needs his mental health evaluated, it's a) the cop who did nothing but point a gun at Aaron's head while he was in flames & b) the people making excuses for bombing over 10,000 children to pieces in Gaza.

The people who want to see Aaron's protest buried, & the slaughter of children in Gaza continue, will talk about only one person's mental health today.

People who protest in this way are not presumptively mentally ill.

chargrille, 9 months ago to BurningMan

Never been to #BurningMan, never been sad about it.

Let's just say: no artist could create an installation that more effectively destroys the internal logic of the whole fucking thing, than driving hundreds of miles to bulldoze a climate protest so you can party in the middle of the desert, in the same summer where hundreds were murdered & poisoned by smoke in #Lahaina & #Yellowknife & across the #PacNW.

Edit to add link - https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/burning-man-2023-traffic-jam-protest-highway-18334916.php

@spacehobo I have a lot of friends who take great joy in #BurningMan. To me it always seemed a car-centric sun-worshipping club for rich white tech bros, and I've never made my distaste for the thing secret. But watching the Nevada cops just roll their giant war- boy trucks through a climate protest blockade so people can drive there better... Well, let's just say that it's rekindled my feelings of intense discomfort about the whole enterprise. Aug 28,2023, 11:15 - Edited Aug 28, 11:16 v - @ 13 12- & 1
Seven Circles said the purpose of the protest was “to draw attention to capitalism’s inability to address climate and ecological breakdown” and included three demands, including banning the use of private jets and single-use plastics at Burning Man and for the organization’s leaders to “admit that infinite growth is incompatible with sustaining the Earth’s systems.” Phoenix wrote that five protesters were cited and released, including one from California.

chargrille, 9 months ago to pnw

Dana Parish states in the comments that this major hospital is in the Pacific Northwest.

#PNW #PacNW #PNWcovid

chargrille, 7 months ago to random

"When my Israeli infantry unit arrived at the first village in Gaza, in July 2014, we cleared houses by sending grenades through windows, blowing doors open & firing bullets into rooms to avoid ambush & booby traps. We were told Palestinian civilians had fled.

I realized this wasn’t true as I stood over the corpse of an elderly Palestinian woman whose face had been mutilated by shrapnel. She had been lying on the sand floor of a shack, in a pool of blood.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/28/opinion/international-world/gaza-idf-israel-veterans.html

chargrille, 10 months ago to random

The Republican party is a dead-end for anyone who is not a fascist.

They. have. picked. their. lane.

You can't wish it away and if you are still trying to, you are clearly far more attached to your own identity as a Republican or as a "bipartisan type guy," than to your country being a democracy.

chargrille, 11 months ago to bluesky

So, it seems like not everyone has noticed that #Bluesky is the only social media competitor that Musk never banned & still allows to advertise itself to Twitter users.

Isn't that interesting.

chargrille, 2 months ago to random

"israel has killed more aid workers in the tiny #gaza strip than have died in all of the countries in the rest of the world combined in any of the last 30 years"

Graph of Aid worker deaths showing more than 70% of all the aid worker deaths in 2023 were in #Gaza. Even more in 2024 - roughly 75-80%

All 161 deaths of Palestinian aid workers in 2023 were after Oct. 7

Data is as of April 1, 2024. The data from 2024 & some incidents from 2023 are provisional

Source: Aid Worker Security Database

chargrille, 10 months ago to bluesky

How many times does this man have to tell you that he's building #Bluesky AT Protocol to help his bro Musk & their joint investment, #Twitter?

Where #Dorsey is one of the biggest stakeholders, at $1 billion.

Bluesky refuses to reveal who owns the company & its IT. But Bluesky the app is a complete clone of Twitter yet it's the only one Musk has never attacked.

@jack - Nov 6, 2022 Replying to @BestLiveAudio @BillyM2k and @bluesky Moving fast. Not competitive to Twitter. Supportive.
@jeffjarvis - Jun 11, 2022 .@jack: How does @bluesky related to Web5? @davewiner - Jun 11, 2022 heh yeah, you got him. i thought of that too, went to their website, it's exactly as it was in april. i bet it'll be exactly the same in 2029. @jack bluesky team is doing a lot of work. Have to go deeper into their discord though to see for now... 8:08 AM - Jun 11,2022
@jeffjarvis - Jun 11, 2022 .@jack: How does @bluesky related to Web5? @jack Bluesky could be built on top of web5, specifically helps solve the identity pieces. Twitter Inc could also use as foundation. And give people a whole lot more power. 8:02 AM - Jun 11,2022

chargrille, 2 months ago to random

Al Jazeera journalists used a consumer drone to document the aftermath of a Jan 7 Israeli strike on a building in Khan Younis.

As the 4 journalists returned, the IDF targeted them in their car, striking it with a missile & killing the driver & 2 Al Jazeera crew — Hamza Dahdouh, 27, & drone operator Mustafa Thuraya, 30 — & seriously wounding 2 freelancers.

IDF claimed they were terrorists who'd threatened IDF troops.

WaPo got the drone footage...no IDF anywhere.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/19/gaza-journalists-killed-israel-al-jazeera-footage/

chargrille, 2 months ago to random

When a Jewish man protests your hijacking his Jewishness & the Holocaust to justify your occupation, & your response is to (loudly, repeatedly & falsely) tell everyone that what he has actually done is renounced his Jewishness, guess what?

You are hijacking his Jewishness to suit your occupation.

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/jonathan-glazer-oscar-speech-gaza-israel-judaism/

#Oscars #Gaza #Starvation #Genocide

chargrille, 4 months ago to random

"Rowledge, a hunter & businessman, has been talking about & tracking the spread of the brain-eating disease for nearly 30 years & advocating for government action with limited success."

“The border won’t stop this disease...

This is a highly fatal & contagious disease that humans created. Absent a miracle, it’s an extinction event for deer...devastating threats for trade & our economy, & the possible implications for human health are all but unthinkable.”

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2024/02/06/Zombie-Deer-Disease-Bad-As-Sounds/

chargrille, 7 months ago to random

Elissa Washuta’s fabulous (incomplete!) list of 252 books by #native and #indigenous writers.

#IndigenousPeoplesDay #bookstodon #histodon #ReadMe

https://lithub.com/here-are-252-books-by-native-and-indigenous-writers-that-elissa-washuta-thinks-you-should-read/

chargrille, 9 months ago to random

I notice that there are some key co-conspirators missing from these indictments: e.g., Hawley, Ted Cruz, Taylor Green, Gohmert, etc. This was a massive conspiracy orchestrated by the GOP, including Senators & Reps, some of whom are also officers of the court (lawyers). It was NOT just a White House project. Failing to grapple with the reality of the GOP as a massive criminal organization will allow fascism to keep growing. This must be done.

Here’s the indictments. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23909543-23sc188947-criminal-indictment

chargrille, 6 months ago to random

Don't give your friends COVID for the #Holidays. COVID gives heart disease, brain damage, diabetes, arthritis, & more.

The pattern is the same every year. Huge wave starting with Thanksgiving - & exponential infection growth through Jan/Feb.

If you take a few minutes to just look at year-over-year charts of #SARSCOV case levels, it is very plain. Damage from #COVID is driven by our behavioral choices. 2022 was 4+ times worse b/c no protections.

#Hospitals #LongCovid
http://www.pmc19.com/data/

chargrille, 6 months ago to random

The 3 richest billionaires (Slim, Gates, & Bezos) together emit over 15 million tons of Co2 every year. As much as 5 million people from the bottom 90% of the planet.

“Oxfam’s research found that the emissions from the investments of 125 billionaires averaged 3.1m tonnes per billionaire. This is more than a million times higher than the average emissions created by the bottom 90% of the world’s population.“

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/twelve-billionaires-climate-emissions-jeff-bezos-bill-gates-elon-musk-carbon-divide

chargrille, 1 year ago to random

Why would anyone go help JACK DORSEY build a new social network?

chargrille, 3 months ago to random

Over the last 3+ decades, I've watched the Republican party bring fascism to the brink of victory again, a mere 60 years after its defeat in WWII.

Aided, hand-in-hand, by the post-communist, mafia-state apparatuses of Russia & China - countries the GOP spent the last 100 years using as bogeymen against US voters who wanted better services from their own national government - & by the multi-national corporations that funded the GOP & were rewarded with dismantling of anti-monopoly & FCC laws.

chargrille, 5 months ago to random

Politely (or impolitely) calling my senators and representatives & supposedly anti-fascist president to tell them, repeatedly, to stop backing a corrupt autocrat while he murders hundreds of children every week & conducts a genocide out in the open, & stop giving him tens of billions of $ in weapons to keep at it, makes me fucking miserable and depressed, how about you.

https://progressives.social/@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green/111554226704377285

chargrille, 3 months ago to random

38,000 meals? Is this a joke?

2.2 million people in Gaza are eating on average less than once a day.

"U.S. C-130s dropped over 38,000 meals along the coastline of Gaza"