This week's comic, inspired by a study showing that AI summaries on top of search results are dramatically cutting traffic to websites.

#internet #technology #tech #journalism #disinformation #socialmedia #oligarchy

Gov. Pritzker to the fascist goons:

"If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me - not time or political circumstance - from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law."

That's my vote. And anyone who says anything less has no chance of getting my vote

The current administration in the US has, through various funding agencies such as the NSF and NIH, has recently suspended virtually all federal grants to my home university, UCLA (including my own personal grant, although that is far from the most serious impact of this decision), on the grounds that UCLA was “failing to promote a research environment free of antisemitism and bias”. One can certainly debate whether these grounds were justified, or whether they merit the extremely draconian damage to the very research environment that this decision is claiming to protect, but if nothing else this unprecedented decision does not appear to have followed the usual standards of due process for actions of this nature; for instance, there appears to have been no good faith effort by the administration to receive a response from UCLA to its allegations before implementing its decision.

The suspension of my personal grant has a non-trivial impact on myself (in particular, my summer salary, which I had already deferred in order to allow the previously released NSF funds to support several of my graduate students over this period, is now in limbo), and now gives me almost no resources to support my graduate students going forward; but this is only a fraction of a percent of the entire amount being suspended. A far greater concern is the impact on the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) https://www.ipam.ucla.edu/, which despite receiving preliminary approval earlier this year for a new five-year round of funding (albeit at significantly reduced levels) from the NSF, now only has enough emergency funding for a few months of further operation at best if the suspension is not lifted. (1/4)

A thought for trans allies in this time:

You often ask us what you can do to help. Well, here's something you can do. Wear trans badges, buttons, pins, scarves, whatever you've got. Explicitly. I wanna see that blue and pink EVERYWHERE.

Because the more of you cis folk do that, the safer we will be in crowds and such. It will mean that wearing a badge of support for trans people doesn't necessarily out that person as trans.

"But wait," you're thinking maybe, "if I do that, people might think *I* am trans!"

Well, why is that a problem for you? Would you be offended by someone thinking you might be trans? Would you be scared? Welcome to our world.

This is your time, cis people. You were all ready to call yourselves allies when it didn't matter more than changing your PFP background. Now the rubber meets the road. We need you. We need your help to normalise our existence to other cis people. It could save lives.

If someone accuses you of being trans (imagine being *accused* of existing while trans?), don't deny it. Ask why it matters to them. Keep calm.

#LGBTQ #trans #allies