#techbros

I always appreciate when the capitalist class just says it out loud so I don't have to be called a conspiracy theorist for pointing out the obvious.

from the article:

Beneath ChatGPT’s flattering persona lies a goldmine for advertisers: an AI chatbot that never gets tired of hawking clients’ wares.

New reporting by The Information has revealed some recent topics of conversation between OpenAI employees as they work to supply advertisers with a teeming new audience to manipulate.

concept sketches for my febuary nepeta ship list

"day 1" - meowrails + lemon lime (bonus techbros)

"day 2" - scratch and sniff + lion tamer (bonus legal ramifications)

Mark Zuckerberg's favorite president is Andrew Jackson "because he got a lot of shit done," his favorite Roman emperor is Augustus, who was the one who made the Republic into an Empire, and he asked Xi Yinping - yes, THAT Xi Yinping, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, chairman of the Central Military Commission - on the second time meeting him for less than 5 minutes, to name his child. This guy loves authoritarianism like Swifties love Taylor. I wouldn't tell this fucker I was on fire and needed to be put out for fear of who he'd sell that information to, he certainly wouldn't do anything USEFUL about it.

Facebook, despite any public protestations otherwise, is certainly not sorry about serving beauty and diet ads to depressed teens and pro-ED communities, racist and inflammatory content that resulted in rioting in Myanmar, invasive monitoring to block human rights activists in China or ragebait to drive "engagement" with Trump ads. They are not even embarrassed at being caught - they are ANGRY because they don't understand why any of that was wrong. They think they should be able to brag about how good a job they can do giving political candidates, the surveillance state and predatory capitalist enterprises exactly what the customer wants targeted, even if the customer's fucking evil and it results in peoples' deaths. It's like the Nuremberg CITATIONS 'but look what a GOOD JOB we did, that should count for something, we were very effective helping fascists."

Amusingly, despite number 2, no Facebook executives allow their children to use Facebook. Or apparently screens in general for that matter.

Sheryl Sandberg is currently promoting a documentary about the October 7th victims of sexual assault by Hamas. There is nothing wrong with that at all, rape, particularly as a tool of racial/religious hate is vile and needs to be called out. But interestingly, Sheryl, where were you and the documentary film crews in Myanmar when it was Rohingya women being mass raped? And where violence, including sexual violence, is still happening in the year of our lord 2025? Oh, that's right, Facebook helped facilitate THAT ethnic violence, so we need to keep that one hush-hush. Oopsie! Another case as with her boyfriend Bobby K, if we did it it's fine, it's only a war crime when it's someone else!

In case you needed ANOTHER reason to hate Sheryl Sandberg, this charming vignette about Facebook's brief foray into promoting organ donation (this bitch actually wanted FACEBOOK to be INVOLVED in collecting people's transplant information!):

Sensing danger, I pivot to the risk of organ trafficking. I explain that countries have put a lot of thought into safeguarding organ donation information and guarding against cross-border transportation of organs. She turns to me, indignant. The edge in her voice is unmistakable. “Do you mean to tell me that if my four-year-old was dying and the only thing that would save her was a new kidney, that I couldn’t fly to Mexico and get one and put it in my handbag?”

Completely aside from the elephant-sized racist entitlement thinking that because a rich white twat waves a bunch of money at a Mexican doctor of course they would give her a kidney, perhaps wrapped up in a Thanks For Your Business! red and white plastic bag with a complimentary taco - what in the lacking even a BASIC understanding of "this shit's complicated and maybe there are good reasons for rules" - like, you think you can put a fucking kidney from a total rando in a Coleman, shake a bag of ice over it and go? BLOODBORNE ILLNESSES? FROSTBITE? DONOR MATCHING? I can't with these people who are allegedly supposed to be smart.

These people really are straight out of a Great Gatsby novel. Their singular drive is proving they're superior to people they despise, obsessed with the trappings of status while being wholly unable to enjoy them as an experience, just as "I'm better than you," who will expect you to go to JAIL for them but then literally step over your twitching body if you need help, and are incapable of imagining a world where they had accountability for their actions, as opposed to simply claiming credit. That's for lesser people, that's for the people who work FOR me.

Meta are claiming it's a smear job, but - these stories, this story, doesn't reflect flatteringly on the author, either. She freely admits that it took her way too long to realize Facebook was never going to be the "force for good" she envisioned, and when she had that realization she was still for a long time was trying to extricate herself in a way that preserved the financial and career benefits she had gotten used to, of being Somebody Important who advised global concerns and rubbed shoulders with diplomats and heads of state. If Meta had been smart enough to ignore this book, I don't know that I would have found the story sympathetic enough to pick it up.

And I'm glad I did, because it was a useful insight. Oh, not into exactly what it IS Facebook does to do its data criming at ALL, you need resources like WIRED and Techdirt for that, authors more interested in the technology itself rather than the implications. But to understand who the true believers are and the ...pettiness of it all, that's helpful. They're not supervillains. It's not a long-brewing plot of world domination. They're just assholes who don't want to pay taxes like every business ever.

War against Isis: More than 2,000 civilians freed as militants driven out of Syrian city of Manbij [UPDATES]

The US-led coalition has been supporting the two-month advance on the city…

RELATED: Local Forces Clear Manbij in Syria After Seizing Control From ISIL

https://www.inherentresolve.mil/NEWSROOM/News-Articles/Stories-Display/Article/916806/local-forces-clear-manbij-in-syria-after-seizing-control-from-isil/

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FURTHER READING:

Mark Provost

Some of the key institutions and accessories of the fascist order, like Palantir and DHS, are experiencing significant internal turbulence bordering on open revolt. The media isn't going to connect the dots necessarily — they go to great lengths to portray stability and acquiescence — but it's safe to say every branch of the U.S. military, the DoD, numerous police departments, intelligence careerists, and even Big Tech's workforce are experiencing some level of dissent. Many employees, civil servants, and other officials do not want to be part of Trump's Secret Police murdering people for expressing their rights. Trump pushed our system until it buckled. Now that it's cracked it's more vulnerable to a major breach.

[From Comments] There is a lot at play, with him being a white man, working with very ill and dying veterans, and that he was legally armed. You never know what it does it for individuals to be activated or moved. I've heard and read reports of being being moved to participate in Minnesota, the reasons vary but are very specific. Ultimately, these govt violent crackdowns tend to provoke massive public pushbacks in almost all instances. In every place, throughout time. Why the Trump team thought this time would be different I think speaks to how high they are on their own supply. The Quickest Reich is what I'm going to start calling them. It's unwinding now, the public execution of it all was the lowest this country has gone for white people in a long long time. Trump is back pedaling now, but the rupture might be too severe. People demand investigations. Black people have suffered this treatment for centuries, as have Indigenous groups, but the public broad daylight execution of a regular white man has shaken this nation to its core. I don't think the reverberations are close to done.

[See: sfgate.com]