please consider donating to @alkliliyfamliye.

I hope everyone will participate

BASHAER AND AYLA'S HOUSE WAS BOMBED AGAIN—WITH THEM INSIDE

THE VIEW FROM INSIDE THEIR HOUSE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE BOMBING

Their home, already severely damaged by prior lOF attacks, is in even worse condition now. They want to evacuate away from the principal attack zone, but they are completely without money.

Without funds for transportation and additional support, they will be forced to move by foot through an active war zone! Until they can evacuate, they are trapped in their crumbling home, which has already been bombed and remains in the lOF's target area!

The attack happened a few days ago and they are STILL TRAPPED in the rubble of their home! Bombing and shooting rages on all around them, they need to evacuate NOW!

Please help them find something akin to safety!!

Current: $46,823

New temporary goal: $47,333

Progress: $270/$800

Imagine thinking the fucking US military is a more welcoming environment than an abusive home for anyone who isn't a reactionary white man lol

i really can't get over the fact that he made an AI clone of himself who is, for no reason, barely deviated genderswap fanart of himself. and he just seems constantly unhappy and uncomfortable with her presence. what's going on there little guy

oh my god i forgot about that fucking dialogue

I HATE FIGHTING THE T1000

i'm probably going to regret this, but i think we genuinely need to address the phrase "at least they’re doing something" when an American politician gives a big speech, or participates in symbolic protest, or makes a grand gesture that doesn’t actually change anything. i get that the shapes and colors are moving in front of you and it looks real effective, but it’s one of the most effective ways movements get neutered and it's already happened repeatedly in the last 10 years. why?

1. it mistakes motion for action

just because someone looks like they’re fighting doesn’t mean they are. for example, a Senator talking for 24 hours isn’t a filibuster if it doesn’t stop a bad bill. a protest that doesn’t disrupt anything is just a cathartic parade. if the outcome is the same as if they’d done nothing, then functionally, they did nothing. there have been nominees and legislation to filibuster against - why now, when it's completely directionless? celebrating it as "something" is a reflection that we’ll always settle for scraps if it means surviving another day.

2. it assumes the system works "as designed"

liberals believe institutions are broken, but ultimately fixable. that if we just elect the right people or pass the right bills, things will get better. but THIS system wasn’t designed to work for us. it was built by the rich, for the rich, and it’s working exactly as intended when it lets symbolic resistance like line dancing in front of a Tesla dealership replace real opposition. when you heap unearned praise upon ineffective measures, you're playing by their rules and actively losing.

3. it lowers the bar forever

every time we call a weak gesture "better than nothing," we redefine what "resistance" means. Occupy Wall Street in the 2010s was criticized for not having "demands." now politicians get applause for reading tweets on the senate floor. if we keep moving the goalposts in this way, then "political bravery" has lost all meaning.

4. it keeps us passive

real change doesn’t happen because people asked nicely. "no one has ever obtained freedom by appealing to the moral senses of the people oppressing them." the civil rights act wasn’t passed because of speeches. it happened because protests shut things down. labor rights weren’t won by polite lobbying, but by strikes that stopped profits. when you treat performative acts as meaningful, we’re telling people they don’t need to do anything but talk about solutions. you're telling them that they don't need to fight and that you can win with words alone.

so what should we do instead?

stop asking "is this better than nothing?" and start asking:

the next time someone says "at least they’re doing something," please remember that no political movement in the history of the world has never succeeded by asking people to kindly listen to what they have to say. they win by making it impossible to ignore them no matter where they are.

I feel like the big push for AI is starting to flag. Even my relatively tech obsessed dad is kinda over it. What do you even use it for? Because you sure as hell dont want to use it for fact checking.

There's an advertisement featuring a woman surreptitiously asking her phone to provide her with discussion topics for her book club. And like... what. Is this the use case for commercial AI? This the best you could come up with? Lying to your friends about Moby Dick?

One of the big pushes tech companies are making for AI is entirely in the tool of convenience. Take Gemini for example, one of Google's really big pitches for it is in features like Help Me Read and Help Me Write, which are like the lowest tier use case for deep learning models but are also the two AI features that the average consumer will actually care about. Sure they advertise the GenAI stuff Gemini Advanced is able to do, but they've woken up to the idea that the average consumer does not care about GenAI and non-AI Bros fundamentally loathe GenAI.

Every company with a language model got sucked into the venture capital pitfall of AI and now have to market the one set of features the general person actually cares about.

I work in advertising and the culture shift surrounding AI even from January until now (end of March) has been drastic. At the beginning of the year, the company I work for was using AI to design most of their assets. Clients started coming back and requesting that we no longer use AI generated images or videos for copyright liability reasons. Basically, there's no way to tell whose art or photography was scalped to make an image, so as companies who are trying to make a profit using potentially stolen images, it puts them in a gray area, legally.

Also, companies do look at their comment sections. Anti-AI commenters on social media ("this is not a real image" "I don't trust companies who use AI" etc) are seen by higher ups of a company. Basically, keep bullying brands who use AI, it's working. Now my company uses almost no AI for deliverables, which is a huge win.

RIGHT??

This is the worst Eid I have ever experienced in my entire life. I lost all my friends in the war and I am left alone here suffering from the pain of loss. I used to go and visit my friends, but today I went to their homes and found their mothers collapsing from crying and grieving over the loss of their sons. We used to meet and go out and spend a pleasant time together, but unfortunately today I went and visited them in the cemetery and sat next to them all day crying from the intensity of my pain and regret. How difficult this feeling is for me and I cannot bear it!!! 😭

Please help me and my family by donating so we can escape this war and genocide and start a new, safe life!!🥺

Today all bakeries have been closed in Gaza and all humanitarian aid has been stopped and all food supplies have become 6 times more expensive and we are now unable to buy a bag of flour. The famine has returned with force to us. Please help us by donating so that my family and I can buy some food and help us to be able to travel outside Gaza and escape this war, please!!!!😭

Donate here please 🥺

there's also a link for chuffed if anyone can donate or prefers to aid there:

thanks for helping if you've done so, and hope we can hold your hands in the future here as well, we do need each other and so does kholood's family then.

at #337

tagging for reach:

i saw a "I bought this before Elon went crazy" on one of the local cybertrucks, like no you absolutely did not, you just werent paying attention

Fuck nazis. Taxes are great actually. The public service should be valued. Unemployed people deserve adequate financial support. Regulation saves lives and money. Focus on prevention not punishment.

You should care about other people.