Tootfinder

After #Trump finally crashes and burns (I'm still saying I don't think he makes it to the mid terms, and I think it's more than possible he won't make it to the end of the year) we'll hear a lot of people say, "the system worked!" Today people are already talking about "saving democracy" by fighting back. This will become a big rally cry to vote (for Democrats, specifically), and the complete failure of the system will be held up as the best evidence for even greater investment in it.
I just want to point out that American democracy gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile, who, before being elected was already a well known sexual predator, and who made the campaign promise to commit genocide. He then preceded to commit genocide. And like, I don't care that he's "only" kidnaped and disappeared a few thousand brown people. That's still genocide. Even if you don't kill every member of a targeted group, any attempt to do so is still "committing genocide." Trump said he would commit genocide, then he hired all the "let's go do a race war" guys he could find and *paid* them to go do a race war. And, even now as this deranged monster is crashing out, he is still authorized to use the world's largest nuclear arsenal.
He committed genocide during his first term when his administration separated migrant parents and children, then adopted those children out to other parents. That's technically genocide. The point was to destroy the very people been sending right wing terror squads after.
There was a peaceful hand over of power to a known Russian asset *twice*, and the second time he'd already committed *at least one* act of genocide *and* destroyed cultural heritage sites (oh yeah, he also destroyed indigenous grave sites, in case you forgot, during his first term).
All of this was allowed because the system is set up to protect exactly these types of people, because *exactly* these types of people are *the entire power structure*.
Going back to that system means going back to exactly the system that gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile *TWICE*.
I'm already seeing the attempts to pull people back, the congratulations as we enter the final phase, the belief that getting Trump out will let us all get back to normal. Normal. The normal that lead here in the first place. I can already see the brunch reservations being made. When Trump is over, we will be told we won. We will be told that it's time to go back to sleep.
When they tell you everything worked, everything is better, that we can stop because we won, tell them "fuck you! Never again means never again." Destroy every system that ever gave these people power, that ever protected them from consequences, that ever let them hide what they were doing.
These democrats funded a genocide abroad and laid the groundwork for genocide at home. They protected these predators, for years. The whole power structure is guilty. As these files implicate so many powerful people, they're trying to shove everything back in the box. After all the suffering, after we've finally made it clear that we are the once with the power, only now they're willing to sacrifice Trump to calm us all down.
No, that's a good start but it can't be the end.
Winning can't be enough to quench that rage. Keep it burning. When this is over, let victory fan that anger until every institution that made this possible lies in ashes. Burn it all down and salt the earth. Taking down Trump is a great start, but it's not time to give up until this isn't possible again.
#USPol

TalkBack does not offer an option to use computer vision & LLMs (“AI” for the scope of this thread) to describe images lacking alt text.
If you do it in Chrome, it overwrites all the good alt text with, well, crap.
Try it on this page:
https://srt.csb-cde.ca.gov/jaws/jaws-l

Wow. I've dealt with various toxic personalities in software development, but a good portion of the time those toxic personalities were at least extremely knowledgeable in their (often, very limited) domain.
AI, however, seems to be enabling toxic personalities *who are completely clueless*. Impressive!
https://github…

A researcher details an LLM-based AI agent that "demonstrated a near-flawless ability" to bypass bot detection methods while answering online survey questions (Emanuel Maiberg/404 Media)
https://www.404media.co/a-researcher-made-

A Researcher Made an AI That Completely Breaks the Online Surveys Scientists Rely On
We can no longer trust that survey responses are coming from real people.”

There is variation in everyone, but society / context / environment makes that variation more burdensome for some than for others. “Neurotypical” is not a thing that anyone •is•, but rather an archetype that human systems are designed for / evolved around.
When we recognize that “neurotypical” is an archetype and not an actual person, we can reach the same insight that the Air Force reached: you don’t build things to some single optimal set of “normal” dimensions; you make things more adjustable, flexible, accommodating of variation.
/end

I struggle to process the fact that Todd Blanche gave my husband his very first job offer in law.
(Yes, THAT Todd Blanche from the DoJ, deputy attorney general, the one who has been in the news for all kinds of terrible things he’s up to)
I went to a party with that guy 3 years ago! And now he’s doing increasingly cartoonish villain things every other week.
He seemed normal. Fun, actually.
And then months after he went to defend Trump as his personal lawyer and since then we’ve continued to be confused and disturbed.
We haven’t had any contact with him after he went to work for Trump, of course. But I can’t stop wondering how the fuck the person my husband worked with is the same person defending pedophiles. (Allegedly)
#USPol #ToddBlanche

📢 Russischer General bei Explosion in Moskau getötet
Bei der Explosion eines Sprengkörpers unter seinem Auto ist in Moskau ein russischer General getötet worden. Das gab das russische Ermittlungskomitee bekannt. Der Getötete sei für die operative Ausbildung der Truppen zuständig gewesen.
➡️

Russischer General bei Explosion in Moskau getötet
Wieder ist in Moskau ein General getötet worden. Das gab das russische Ermittlungskomitee bekannt. Unter seinem Auto sei ein Sprengsatz explodiert. Der Getötete sei für die operative Ausbildung zuständig gewesen.

Q&A with iRobot co-founder Colin Angle on the company's Chapter 11 bankruptcy, regulatory pressure that killed Amazon's deal, his new robotics startup, and more (Connie Loizos/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/20/it-f

'It felt so wrong': Colin Angle on iRobot, the FTC, and the Amazon deal that never was | TechCrunch
The iRobot founder opens up about the 18-month regulatory process that he says doomed the Roomba maker -- and what it means for American innovation.

(This is not some kind of false modesty. Most of what you’re hearing from me here is just me passing along information from community channels. My personal contribution has mostly been helping communication, helping people with tech issues, doing some volunteering, keeping watch, protesting, doing neighborhood support work — that kind of stuff. I don’t want to downplay the importance of any of that. It matters a •lot• that there are so many people doing all of those things! It matters that I’m one of them! Just…you know, I’m one among many, a small player who somehow ended up holding one of the mics on Mastodon, and that’s it. The courage you see is the courage of many.)

Daniels was looking at just 10 easily quantifiable body measurements. How many important dimensions of variations are there in a human mind? How hard are they to measure? How likely is it that even one single “average” mind exists on Earth?? The odds are vanishingly small.
[Napkin sketch: assume there are a paltry 20 dimensions of brain variation. (Surely that’s low.) Assume there’s a 1 in 5 change of being completely “normal” in each. (Surely that’s high.) Even that absurd hypothetical gives a 1 in 11,490 chance that a •single• completely average mind exists in a population of 8.3 billion.]
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