New research from AWU/CWU/Techquity on AI data workers in North America. “[L]ow paid people who are not even treated as humans [are] out there making the 1 billion dollar, trillion dollar AI systems that are supposed to lead our entire society and civilization into the future,” says one.

https://cwa-union.org/ghost-workers-ai-machine

#AI #labor

This is so indefensibly insane: Speaker Johnson is refusing to seat Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva because she'll be the 218th vote to release the Epstein files. Johnson swore in Rep Walkinshaw (VA) w/in 24 hours.

Johnson is abandoning his job to instead protect a convicted child sex predator. Every journalist should be asking him this on repeat.

I HATE the words Culture War, it's the media's way of making it seem like we are just different, because of where we are from or how we grew up, but that isn't what this is, and never was. Some people believe that everyone deserves equal rights and opportunities, and some people don't. That's not "Woke" or a "Culture", that's being a decent human being or not.

And don't get me wrong, a lot of people, especially ones who grew up in a religious cult like environment, have been so brainwashed and mislead, they aren't trying to do harm, but they still do it nonetheless. This is why I think it's important to keep asking questions, make people explain their points. Mastodon is full of people who think a lot, most of us have spent years of work, finding who we are and what we believe. But remember some people aren't encouraged to do so, in fact they are told to just "Trust and Obey".

So, the proscribing of Palestine Action has now led to the arrests of 100 people since the proscription just over a week ago... all peaceful demonstrators.

This is the chilling effect on democracy Yvette Cooper (aided and abetted by most MPs) has bought about... Cooper & her fellow travellers have demonstrated a contempt for democratic protest, that is going to be become increasingly clear.

#protest #democracy #politics

h/t Observer

Trump is bad enough, obviously. He’s a horrible person and a dangerous demagogue.

But even worse, I think, are the billionaire tech-bros and crypto-crims whose money made Trump’s (and Vance’s) election possible...
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“These guys think they’re Superman, that they’re genetically endowed with superior characteristics, and that their genes should populate the Earth,” says Dartmouth sociology professor Brooke Harrington, who studies the ultra-rich and has helped popularize the term “broligarchy.”

As their wealth has grown, the tech right’s long-standing opposition to government ­regulation has shifted toward a more extreme, neo-­reactionionary, and antidemocratic frame of mind. Why should the “fittest” men submit themselves to taxes, regulation, DEI accountability? Why shouldn’t they be the ones in charge, if not here in America then in their floating island “network states” or on their interplanetary colonies? And if pesky government interference threatens the development of the miraculous tech that will allow these things to come to pass, why shouldn’t the American government be bought, infiltrated, and managed just like a tech startup, with total corporate control and the “fittest” guys at the top of the roster?

That was the next logical move once the tech elite had enough money to pull it off. “The broligarchs believe they are entitled to own everything and rule everything,” Harrington says. “If your goal is to own everything worldwide, if that is actually your ketamine-­addled goal, then you need to destroy any institution that has the power to hold you accountable. Buying the U.S. government is a brilliant strategy: ‘Fuck democracy. We own it, we bought it, and we’re running it the way we want.’ ”
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FULL ARTICLE ➡️ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/billionaires-psychology-tech-politics-1235358129/

#Politics #Economics #Capitalism #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange

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