I'm just a semi-abled queer lady born in the late 1900s. I reblog from a lot of people mostly about social issues and injustice. Sometimes I reblog because I stumble across art, music or writing that I like and sometimes I just find something cool or amusing.
For those who don't know, recently this Bill was proposed in Parliament in Aotearoa New Zealand by an MP from New Zealand First, a right-wing party that makes up part of our current coalition government:
This Bill proposes adding definitions of "woman", "female", "man" and "male" to the Legislation Act 2019, making these the new legal definitions of these terms that apply across all New Zealand Legislation.
This Bill ignores the fact that trans people in Aotearoa have been able to legally amend their gender markers since 1995, and that people can register their legal gender as non-binary. It also fails to account for the existence of intersex people and general variations of sex characteristics that make this binary impractical (and ironic given the use of the term "biological reality"). AND it does not take into account the fact that MÄori (the indigenous people of Aotearoa) recognise multiple genders and did not follow gender roles as westerners see them until colonialism happened.
On top of all that, the claims of protecting the integrity of sex-based rights fall short when you realise that the ambiguity of what "adult" refers to here will actually potentially remove rights, especially around reproductive rights of young people.
The Bill was read at Parliament, and the other parties making up the coalition voted to allow the Bill to pass on to a select committee to review the Bill, gather information, and make a formal report for the House with their recommendations. A part of this process is accepting public submissions.
People can make submissions in support of or in opposition to the proposed bill. You can make your submission online here:
If you need support with drafting your bill, there is a guide on the Parliament website, and some helpful folks have put together a site of resources including a submission generator. (If people have more resources for support, please feel free to add them in reblogs or comments)
Submissions close on Thursday, 02 July 2026 at 23:59 New Zealand Time.
Rhetoric like this is often pushed on the message of a "silent majority" who secretly agree with it. The best way to show that isn't the case is by showing up and making our voices heard. If you are in Aotearoa, I strongly urge you to make a submission and let the Select Committee know you do not support this bill, and you do not support legal discrimination of trans, intersex, takatÄpui and non-binary people in our country.
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Text of tweet under the cut because it is loooong.
But... Stochastic Parrots.
Timnit Gebru was fired from Google in December 2020 for refusing to retract a research paper, and every single warning that paper made about large language models has now happened at a scale the industry spent 4 years trying to make people forget about.
Her name is Timnit Gebru.
She co-led the Ethical AI team at Google. She co-wrote a paper called "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots" with Emily Bender at the University of Washington and two other researchers. The paper was 14 pages long. It was submitted to a top AI ethics conference. And it was the reason Google decided that one of the most senior Black women in AI research could no longer work there.
The story Google told publicly was that she resigned. The story she told, confirmed by 2,695 of her colleagues in an open letter, was that she was fired by email while on vacation because she refused to either retract the paper or remove her name from it.
The paper had not even been published yet.
Here is what she actually wrote, and why every prediction inside it has now come true.
The first warning was about scale itself. Bender and Gebru argued that training ever-larger models on ever-larger scrapes of the internet would produce systems that appeared fluent but had no actual understanding of language. They called these systems stochastic parrots because they would repeat patterns from training data with statistical confidence and zero comprehension. The paper predicted that this apparent intelligence would fool both users and developers into trusting outputs that were structurally incapable of being reliable.
This was 2020. GPT-3 had just come out. The paper predicted the hallucination problem before anyone had a word for it.
The second warning was about bias amplification. The paper documented in detail that internet-scale training data contains systematic overrepresentation of dominant viewpoints and underrepresentation of marginalized ones. The models would not just absorb this bias. They would amplify it, because the optimization process rewards confident outputs, and confidence in language patterns tracks frequency in the training set.
The prediction was that hiring tools built on these models would discriminate against women. That healthcare triage tools would underperform on Black patients. That loan approval systems would entrench inequality while presenting their decisions as neutral algorithmic judgment.
Every one of those things has now been documented in deployment.
Amazon's hiring algorithm penalized resumes that contained the word "women" in any context. Healthcare risk scoring algorithms used by major US hospitals were found to systematically underestimate the medical needs of Black patients. Apple Card's credit algorithm gave wives credit lines 10x lower than their husbands for the same financial profile.
The third warning was about environmental cost. The paper calculated that training a single large language model produced emissions equivalent to the lifetime output of 5 cars. The prediction was that the race to scale would create an environmental footprint that would eventually rival entire industries.
In 2024, Google's emissions were up 48% from 2019, and the company explicitly blamed AI infrastructure. Microsoft's were up 29%, same reason. Both companies have now quietly abandoned the climate commitments they were publicly celebrating the year Gebru was fired.
The fourth warning was about documentation. The paper argued that the training datasets being assembled were too large for anyone to actually audit. Nobody at Google, OpenAI, Meta, or any other lab could tell you with confidence what was in the data their models were trained on. This was not a temporary problem to be solved later. It was a permanent feature of the approach.
In 2023, researchers discovered that the LAION-5B dataset, used to train Stable Diffusion and other major image models, contained thousands of images of child sexual abuse material. The companies that had trained on the dataset had no way of knowing. The paper predicted that category of failure 3 years before it was found.
The fifth warning was the one Google cared about most.
Bender and Gebru argued that the deployment of these systems would centralize linguistic and cultural power in the hands of the small number of companies that could afford to train them. The internet would become a place where the dominant voice was a statistical average of dominant voices, presented as a neutral assistant. Languages underrepresented in the training data would degrade over time as more web content was generated by these systems and fed back into the next training run.
This is now happening in real time. A 2024 study found that 57% of new web content in English is AI-generated or AI-assisted. Researchers studying low-resource languages have documented active degradation in translation quality, because the synthetic content fed back into training is itself worse in those languages.
The paper Google fired her for predicted the model collapse problem before model collapse had a name.
The mechanism behind why this all happened is the part of her work that nobody quotes.
Gebru's argument was not that AI is dangerous in some abstract sci-fi sense. Her argument was that AI is dangerous in a very specific structural sense. The technology was being built by a small group of researchers who shared similar backgrounds, worked at similar companies, and were rewarded for shipping products faster than competitors. The incentive structure made it impossible for safety, ethics, and bias concerns to slow anything down. Anyone inside the system who raised those concerns was either ignored, sidelined, or removed.
She was making that argument from inside Google.
Then Google proved her right by removing her.
The team Google had built to make sure their AI was safe was dismantled in 90 days because they did the job they had been hired to do. Margaret Mitchell, the other co-lead of the Ethical AI team, was fired two months after Gebru for searching through her own emails for evidence of how Gebru had been treated.
Gebru did not stop. She founded DAIR, the Distributed AI Research Institute, in 2021. The mission is to do AI research outside the control of the companies that have a financial interest in not hearing the answers.
Every prediction in the Stochastic Parrots paper has now been validated by deployment. Hallucinations are an industry-wide problem the largest labs cannot solve. Bias amplification has been documented in hiring, healthcare, lending, and criminal justice. Environmental costs are larger than entire small countries. Training data audits remain impossible. Model collapse is an active research crisis at every major lab.
The question worth sitting with is the one almost no one in the industry will say out loud.
Every researcher with the technical credibility to call out these problems watched what happened to her in December 2020 and made a calculation about their own career. The number of people willing to speak publicly about safety and ethics issues inside the major AI labs collapsed after that firing and has not recovered.
The researcher Google fired for warning about exactly what is now happening was right.
The company that fired her is now the second-largest deployer of the technology she warned about.
And the people inside that company who agree with her are not allowed to say so.
In case you just skimmed the post above and missed it, I want to reiterate and highlight Gebru's current position as Executive Director of Distributed AI Research Institute. If you're curious about what AI technology might look like when not applied in the horrifically unethical and damaging way it's currently applied, please check them out.
If we want to have nice things, decentralization is essential, and if we want to decentralize, we need to have our eyes on things that are beyond the scope of the current Big Tech narrative.
The Distributed AI Research Institute is a globally distributed organization of academics, activists, and engineers conducting community-roo
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For anybody not caught up: Tennessee just passed a new map that pretty much makes it so black neighborhoods have no power in local votes. Two things about this. While protestors were chanting "No Jim Crow", white Tennessee lawmakers were caught laughing on video. On top of this, Representative Justin Pearson and his brother KeShaun Pearson were arrested for trying to give their takes on the matter (which is not only their legal right but literally his job). If you give a shit about black people, help fight this. We can't allow a return to Jim Crow.
A local paper had some great photographs, all taken by Nicole Hester:
The day before, Rep. Justin Pearson tries to attend a Senate Committee meeting and is barred access by the Sergeant at Arms.
Lawmakers and protesters link arms as the descend the capitol steps.
Once inside the chamber, Democratic representatives continued to stand together with arms linked.
They continued standing together with arms linked as votes were cast.
Democratic representatives take a group photo protesting the redistricting.
Rep. Justin Jones burns a photo of the Confederate flag with the words, We will not go back.
And stomps the ashes.
KeShaun Pearson being escorted from the building by the Staties.
KeShaun Pearson (left) being taken into custody. Rep. Justin Pearson (right) showing his support of his brother.
Additional information: State lawmakers have been gunning for Pearson and Jones nearly their entire terms. Most notably, in 2023, the House expelled them for participating in a protest at the Capitol. Their districts had to have special elections to have them reinstated.
Pearson is one of the plaintiffs of a lawsuit seeking an injunction against the redistricting.
The city most affected by the redistricting is Memphis, where locals are fighting against xAI's data center, which has been operating with very little oversight and is poisoning the people who live there. Here is a previous post on that with more information and more sources.
Hereâs the thing I feel like a lot of folks donât get: Iâm not trying to forget what you said. Honestly, I really tried not to. I canât control what I do and donât rememberâforgetting things just happens. Itâs annoying for you, I know, but for me itâs distressing as hell and when you make a big deal out of it rather than just reminding me you make me feel ashamed. Iâll remember that, at least.
It costs you nothing to be kind to people with memory problems. Please. Itâs scary enough without people treating memory lapses as a personal failing.
HR 7661 is the United States censorship bill being called the âStop the Sexualization of Children Act.â This act does nothing to protect children, and is part of ongoing attacks against transgender people in the United States.
Authors Against Book Bans has put together a script for calling your representatives. If you arenât sure who your representatives are, the script link includes a tool to find them.
If youâre a writer, editor, illustrator, or otherwise involved in book production, you can also join Authors Against Book Bans to access further resources for fighting censorship.
I've reblogged this post before but this is the first time I've seen it on my dash since I started using a walking stick and rollator myself. They've made such a difference.
Hey Albertans, bad news. The entire list of electors (people eligible to vote) in Alberta was given, through a political party called the Republican Party of Alberta, to a pro-âsovereigntyâ group called the Centurion Project who then created a publicly available, searchable database of the whole thing.
This means every adult who is eligible to vote in Alberta has had the following information leaked: first names, middle names, surnames, addresses, postal codes, telephone numbers, unique identifier numbers, electoral divisions and voting areas.
Elections Alberta got an emergency injunction to have the website taken down but the horse is out of the barn, our information is out there now.
This is a breaking news story so Iâm sure more details will be coming but in the meantime please be EXTREMELY CAUTIOUS about anyone who contacts you and seems to have information about you that may make them seem like legitimate government or banking officials.
The implications for anyone who has an Emergency Protection Order, stalker, or sensitive professional or public profile are terrifying. Please reach out to your supports and do whatever you need to do to stay safe.
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"But what if people will pretend to need this accessibility option so they can be lazy! People who don't need it will use it!!" I don't actually care
I dont care if 9/10 of the people who use the wheelchair ramp arent actually in wheelchairs. As long as the 1 person who needs it has access to it.
I dont care if 9/10 people who use the automatic push button on the library door can actually push the door open themselves. As long as the 1 person who the door is too heavy for gets to use it.
I dont care if 9/10 people who buy the can tab opener, or the little guitar clamp that holds the chords for you, or the hand grip that helps you hold chop sticks, don't need any of it and just get it to "be lazy". As long as the one disabled person who needs it gets access to it.
I do not care. Oh my GOD I do not care. As long as there's a disabled person on this planet who the accessibility device will benefit, the accessibility device is necessary.
Also, if you're so worried about people being "lazy" by using accessibility devices, MORE worried than you are about disabled (visibly or not) people not having access to them, you have unchecked ableism you need to work through.
And given that we live in an era (debatably) post covid, there is a significant percentage of the population who are newly disabled with conditions like chronic fatigue and may be genuinely unaware of it! How many of those "lazy" people are actually invisibly disabled? And even beyond that, how many of those "lazy" people are overworked and tired and ground down to dust by capitalism? How many are new parents who aren't getting enough sleep and are exhausted?
If helping disabled people helps more than just disabled people, why is that a DOWNSIDE.
"...although the change was expected to affect only 3% of users, âthis could amount to 2m devices rendered obsolete according to some estimates, potentially generating over 624 tons of e-wasteâ."
Up to 2m e-readers made before 2013 will no longer be able to download new titles
And a chaser, for those interested:
Amazon is ending support for older Kindles, but you still have easy ways to keep readingâno upgrade required.
Y'all if you're American please email your politicians and senators against the parents decide act. I'm fucking begging because we're reaching a tipping point.
Quick and easy link to both find your congressmen/women and giving you a quick and easy way to copy / paste the message into it. You want to oppose. It's an act that will demand that all major OS makers integrate a direct forced age verification control into all OS.
I received a comment on this that I figured would be very helpful- it's a template for communicating with your representatives. Be sure to use it for reference
Dear Representative [Name],
I am writing to express my strong opposition to H.R. 8250 (The "Parents Decide Act"). As your constituent and a concerned citizen, I believe this bill introduces unprecedented risks to digital privacy and security.
Specifically, I am alarmed by:
SEC. 2(a)(1)(B): Requiring age verification to even use an operating system creates a mandatory "hardware lockout" that ends anonymous computing and forces users to hand over sensitive identification data to major corporations just to power on their devices.
SEC. 2(a)(3): Mandating that OS providers create a system for all app developers to access verification data is a massive security vulnerability. This effectively creates a centralized API of user identities accessible to thousands of third-party developers, many of whom may lack adequate data protection.
This bill does not protect children; it creates a centralized surveillance infrastructure at the OS level. I urge you to protect the privacy of your constituents and vote NO on H.R. 8250.
This is a hell that us down under in Australia are already living in, and itâs not even effective at what it claims to do in protecting children.
Given that, in the wake of this mandatory identification policy, my country seems to be moving to hand over its citizens biometric data, like fingerprints, Face ID files, and identification documents, over to the USA and to ICE to maintain the visa free travel (ESTA) we have, I strongly urge any US resident to send these emails, or make calls.
But if you canât do that, the most powerful thing you can do is spread the word. Tell your friends, family, coworkers, anyone who can help.
My reach will likely be small, and so I donât know if this will mean very much in the grand scheme of things, but I cannot stand to see this tracking happen to another population as it did to mine.
And if you think it wonât affect you, it will. All anonymity goes out the window when your accounts can be linked via your personal ID
I wish you all luck in preventing this act from going through.
The Trump administration admits to testing conversion therapy on trans prisoners and implies its policy of forcibly detransitioning trans me
i know hardly anyone reads articles when i share them so to highlight some key parts here:
"under [this policy], the ~2,200 trans people in federal custody will be medically and socially detransitioned against their will, all in the name of helping them ârecoverâ from gender dysphoria."
"...the third study in this category attempts to compare trans women who undergo gender-affirming surgery to those with an entirely unrelated medical condition known as âadult acquired buried penis.â Equating these two is an entirely medically inaccurate and hateful rhetorical decision, and itâs telling of the manner in which the Trump administration is trying to frame trans peopleâs bodies.
Meanwhile, the fourth study analyzes fertility in 18 trans men who paused their hormone therapy in order to have children, and it constitutes the only fertility study the BOP admits to have reviewed. As if that wasnât alarming enough, this specific study doesnât evaluate if trans men can carry children after going off testosterone; it actually evaluates when. Given the fact that the BOP has no legitimate reason to concern itself with fertility, this implies that the Trump administrationâat least in partâcreated the prison policy out of a desire to find out how soon the forcibly detransitioned trans men in its custody will be able to carry children.
Finally, perhaps the greatest confession is provided by the last two sources. The first of these is a medical article providing commentary on a studyâa study that was not reviewed during the creation of this policyâof trans patients at Kaiser Permanente clinics, and in its words, its sole purpose is to âdescribe methods of cohort ascertainment and data collection and to characterise the study population.â Put differently, it communicates two things: how to single out trans people through health information and what data a study on trans people should collect."
"So far, the judge overseeing the ACLUâs lawsuit against this policy, Reagan appointee Royce Lamberth, has been surprisingly sympathetic towards the plaintiffs and, as a result, has blocked it from being enforced for the ~800 that have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. However, if the Bureau of Prisonsâ policy is eventually allowed to stand by the Supreme Court, it will undoubtedly lead to tremendous suffering among the trans people in federal custody."
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Copyright class actions could financially ruin AI industry, trade groups say.
AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. Theyâve warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropicâs AI training now threatens to âfinancially ruinâ the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement.
Authors have until March 30th, 2026 (That is just 9 days as of this reblog, which I am posting on March 21st, 2026) to file their claim against Anthropic to be reimbursed up to $3,000 per work found in the list.
Updated February 18, 2026 IMPORTANT: The Claims Deadline Is March 30 Background Bartz v. Anthropic is one of the major copyright lawsuits b
Please click the above link for all of the exact details of how to file a claim and to check for your works, and share this post as far and wide as you can before March 30th, 2026!
