play It gets so lonely here by ebi-hime

On 23 October last year (2024) the New York Times published an interview with former OpenAI researcher Suchir Balaji who worked on organising and gathering data for OpenAI until 2022 when he begun thinking about the morality of it. He eventually came to the conclusion that what OpenAI is doing blatantly violates copyright law and decided to leave the company altogether in August 2024.

After he came out with this accusation he was set to appear in court to testify against OpenAI’s data-gathering practices, something which had the potential of being a complete disaster for the company and the generative AI industry as a whole.

That was until 26 November, just days before he was due to appear in court, when he suddenly and mysteriously was found dead inside his own apartment. Investigators concluded that the death was self-inflicted, something which his family has disputed.

There was also “sign of struggle in the bathroom and looks like someone hit him in the bathroom based on blood spots”, and his apartment showed signs of having been ransacked for evidence: “The pin drive is missing. His computer was messed up.”.

Overall it feels pretty clear-cut what happened, that is to say that OpenAI had him killed because he was a legitimate threat to their business, indicating that they are fully aware that the way they’re gathering data is completely illegal.

Sources:

Alys Davies, 14.12.2024, OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment. BBC News

Barney Davis, 16.1.2025, Suchir Balaji’s family demand outside investigation into OpenAI whistleblower’s death. The Independent

some people have been trying to rehabilitate the idea of "TVP for trans men," and I'd like to ask that these projects don't try to deliberately style themselves as counterparts to TVP

TVP is not the pink version of something blue, its existence since the outset has been as a fundamentally transfeminist project, and this purpose will be trivialized if it is presented on the same "shelf" as anything else, so to speak. TVP centers transfems because we are decentered everywhere else. if there is a companion project, our voices will inevitably be decentered in favor of it

This is not about politics. If armed settlers threaten U.S. citizens and soldiers help detain them, wouldn't that merit an investigation?

TMA = trans women, transfeminine nonbinary people.

Both categories include women and nonbinary people

Both categories include people with penises, and people with vaginas, and people with ambiguous genitals.

Both categories include intersex people.

TME includes cis and trans men.

Enbies who are TMA literally cannot attend the same events that enbies who are TME can, even if their presentation is functionally identical. They are banned in big bold letters on adverts, and if they're discovered, they get thrown out and called a rapist as the door slams shut behind them.

❤️

My introduction to transfeminism came when my coworkers who had been talking a big game of supporting "trans people" asked me after I came out to them "I know you said your pronouns are she/her, and your name is 'Kayla', but can I use they/them and call you 'Kay?' It's just more comfortable to me."

It came when my parents rejected me after my older sister outed me to them, but then accepted my trans brother with open arms.

It came when just a few weeks later a man in Stevensville Montana threw rocks at me while screaming bible verses.