TEACH ANARCHY

Despite being one of the most talked-about events from history, I still don't think we talk about WWII enough. I think it's partly because it's hard for us to conceptualize the amount of violence and destruction, and I think, as suggested by the essay, it was partly a trauma response. The general population didn't want to talk about it after it was over, they wanted to move on. Now I think people either don't believe things were that bad (because the mindset is "if things were that bad, wouldn't we be talking about them more?"), or they don't want to grapple with what the end result of letting fascism and authoritarianism (and Jew hatred) run rampant actually looked like. But forgetting does two things: makes it easier to bring the world closer to destruction by repeating mistakes of the past, and gives people a false sense of the past and present. I think it becomes more difficult to prevent things from getting to that worst case scenario endpoint if you incorrectly convince people that they're already there and there's no point in fighting.

1. The court holds Google responsible for statements made by its AI, considering them Google's statements (search engines have limited liability for results in their engine as they're the words of other sites/companies/people), meaning when their AI lies/hallucinates they're liable for the defamation/harm resulting from those statements.

2. Google's defense that customers are generally aware of the lack of reliability and are responsible for fact checking was dismissed. As the court pointed out, that would "significantly diminish" AI Search's stated purpose and it can't be distinguished from Google's business practices/statements as a search tool.

3. Studies have found about 91% of Google's everyday AI responses are accurate, leaving millions of searches per HOUR with potential liability for falsehoods. 56% of correct responses weren't supported by the sources the AI listed. Both of which mean Google is now liable for a LOT more AI "errors."

4. Google was held liable for 80% of court costs in this case and this precedent is expected to reverberate around the world. This is a massive shift from the 3rd-party search provider role Google has previously played and it comes right as they've tied ALL searches to their AI search.

Word for today: wisdom of repugnance

June 10 2020 - Protesters led by indigenous activists tear down a statue of Christopher Columbus in St. Paul, Minnesota. [video]

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

don't stay stuck in your despair, be the real you!