New Blood in the Machine: The weaponization of Waymo, about protesters torching Waymos in a repeat of last year's Waymo Warm-Overs.

Democracy dies in darkness, and WaPo's jumping headfirst into it.

In other news, a piece from Paris Marx came to my attention, titled "We need an international alliance against the US and its tech industry". Personally gonna point to a specific paragraph which caught my eye:

The only country to effectively challenge [US] dominance is China, in large part because it rejected US assertions about the internet. The Great Firewall, often solely pegged as an act of censorship, was an important economic policy to protect local competitors until they could reach the scale and develop the technical foundations to properly compete with their American peers. In other industries, it’s long been recognized that trade barriers were an important tool — such that a declining United States is now bringing in its own with the view they’re essential to projects its tech companies and other industries.

I will say, it does strike me as telling that Paris was able to present the unofficial mascot of Chinese censorship this way without getting any backlash.

New opinion piece from the Guardian: AI is ‘beating’ humans at empathy and creativity. But these games are rigged

The piece is one lengthy sneer aimed at tests trying to prove humanlike qualities in AI, with a passage at the end publicly skewering techno-optimism:

Techno-optimism is more accurately described as “human pessimism” when it assumes that the quality of our character is easily reducible to code. We can acknowledge AI as a technical achievement without mistaking its narrow abilities for the richer qualities we treasure in each other.

Should've probably posted this earlier, but fuck it: South Korea's ‘4B’ Movement Goes Viral in US After Trump Elected

“4B” is shorthand for a South Korean movement in which women refuse to engage in heterosexual marriage, childbirth, dating, or sex with men. It comes from the words bihon, bichulsan, biyeonae, and bisekseu, all of which start with a Korean prefix for “no.” It originated in 2019 in response to a culture that women felt was patriarchal beyond repair, and has since gained some traction in other countries.

Also, fuck it, quick sidenote:

This is mostly gut instinct, like most of the Trump predictions I've made, but I'm expecting a spike in full-blown misandry over Trump's term. Mainly because Trump managed to win over Gen Z men this election, and because the Trump administration is almost certainly going to town on abortion/women's rights.

Eigen "Turn the Homeless into Soylent" robot strikes again

Not a sneer, but I saw an article that was basically an extremely goddamn long list of forum recommendations and it gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.

It hasn't been hashed out in court yet, but I suspect AI mickey will be considered copyright infringement, rather than public domain.

Oh, that is beautiful to hear.

Not a sneer, but something that'll inspire plenty of schadenfreude:

Brian Merchant: The artists fighting to save their jobs and their work from AI are gaining ground

Brian's done plenty of good sneers on AI, I'd recommend checking him out

Picked up an oddly good sneer from a gen-AI CEO, of all people (thanks to @ai_shame for catching it):

There are a few art sites that swiftly banned AI art before they got flooded (with Newgrounds and FurAffinity the most well-known).

Alongide the decentralised solutions you mentioned earlier, those sites should also come out okay once the dust settles.