Kyn-elwynn - Second Home

"Do you ever dream of land?" The whale asks the tuna.

"No." Says the tuna, "Do you?"

"I have never seen it." Says the whale, "but deep in my body, I remember it."

"Why do you care," says the tuna, "if you will never see it."

"There are bones in my body built to walk through the forests and the mountains." Says the whale.

"They will disappear." Says the tuna, "one day, your body will forget the forests and the mountains."

"Maybe I don't want to forget," Says the whale, "The forests were once my home."

"I have seen the forests." Whispers the salmon, almost to itself.

"Tell me what you have seen," says the whale.

"The forests spawned me." Says the salmon. "They sent me to the ocean to grow. When I am fat with the bounty of the ocean, I will bring it home."

"Why would the forests seek the bounty of the oceans?" Asks the whale. "They have bounty of their own."

"You forget," says the salmon, "That the oceans were once their home."

Columbus Dispatch: Westerville becomes 13th Ohio city to ban Conversion Therapy.

buntana era is over sorry yall but u aint getting a halo 3 mod. you can thank microsoft. fuck microsoft.

By the by, you know what's a fun and easy thing to do as you're scrolling through your social media feed and checking your messages?

If you see an ad for a fascist, one of their orgs, or any of their pet projects, report it as a malicious ad.

If you see an account rattling off fascist bullshit in the comments on whatever platform you're browsing, block it and report it as spam / bot / hate speech / misinformation as appropriate.

If you get a text or an email from one of those organizations, block the address but also flag it as phishing. Not just spam. PHISHING.

This accomplishes three things.

One, it cleans up your feed, your messaging, and your inbox.

Two, it weeds out bots and psyops accounts and General Assholes.

And three, if enough malicious ad reports and phishing flags are submitted, the companies posting the ads may have trouble posting material in the future, since their accounts may be suspended, their emails will be marked as phishing, and their ability to reach people will be reduced.

Sure, it's a small impact. Sure, it's not a guaranteed success.

But EVERY SINGLE WRENCH we can throw into the machine of fascism breaks some small part, causes some small delay, prevents things from rolling forward smooth and easy.

And the more of us that do it, the harder it will be for that machine to keep rolling.

Think of it as the online version of tearing down posters and disrupting communications.

Make them take time to create new accounts. Make the algorithms work against them. Make them have to adjust and pivot again and again. Make them spend that time and money and effort to get their propaganda through.

Nobody needs to do everything. But everyone should do something.

Keep Going.

Richard Goldstein & James Baldwin | The Last Interview

Lopunny but in Seonhee's fit from Yakuza 7

The Chronicle of Higher Education

AI Assistants Keep Joining Meetings. Administrators Say It’s Out of Control.

The trend marks the latest example of tech development outpacing governance.

At the California Institute of the Arts, it all started with a videoconference between the registrar’s office and a nonprofit.

One of the nonprofit’s representatives had enabled an AI note-taking tool from Read AI. At the end of the meeting, it emailed a summary to all attendees, said Allan Chen, the institute’s chief technology officer. They could have a copy of the notes, if they wanted — they just needed to create their own account.

Next thing Chen knew, Read AI’s bot had popped up inabout a dozen of his meetings over a one-week span. It was in one-on-one check-ins. Project meetings. “Everything.”

The spread “was very aggressive,” recalled Chen, who also serves as vice president for institute technology. And it “took us by surprise.”

The scenariounderscores a growing challenge for colleges: Tech adoption and experimentation among students, faculty, and staff — especially as it pertains to AI — are outpacing institutions’ governance of these technologies and may even violate their data-privacy and security policies.

That has been the case with note-taking tools from companies including Read AI, Otter.ai, and Fireflies.ai.They can integrate with platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teamsto provide live transcriptions, meeting summaries, audio and video recordings, and other services.

Higher-ed interest in these products isn’t surprising.For those bogged down with virtual rendezvouses, a tool that can ingest long, winding conversations and spit outkey takeaways and action items is alluring. These services can also aid people with disabilities, including those who are deaf.

But the tools can quickly propagate unchecked across a university. They can auto-join any virtual meetings on a user’s calendar — even if that person is not in attendance. And that’s a concern, administrators say, if it means third-party productsthat an institution hasn’t reviewedmay be capturing and analyzing personal information, proprietary material, or confidential communications.

“What keeps me up at night is the ability for individual users to do things that are very powerful, but they don’t realize what they’re doing,” Chen said. “You may not realize you’re opening a can of worms.“

The Chronicle documented both individual and universitywide instances of this trend. At Tidewater Community College, in Virginia, Heather Brown, an instructional designer, unwittingly gave Otter.ai’s tool access to her calendar, and it joined a Faculty Senate meeting she didn’t end up attending. “One of our [associate vice presidents] reached out to inform me,” she wrote in a message. “I was mortified!”

and a shoutout to the two Māori men who travelled to Vienna in 1859, got themselves apprenticed as printers (and incidentally became accomplished ballroom dancers), and finally had an audience with Franz Josef where they charmed him so much that he sent a printing press to New Zealand….which was promptly used from 1861 to print the newspaper of the Kingitanga anti-colonial movement.

i will never forget and i will never forgive

whenever someone talks about how (cis) men & (cis) women supposedly have this huge gap in their consumption of pornography im always like. well does that include erotica. does it include fanfiction. because im betting when you include the kinds of porn that are known to be more popular with cis women the difference would be a lot different. almost like a lot of our data around porn is heavily influenced by cultural attitudes and constructs