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Balajio

@akbalaji.bsky.social
529 followers 701 following 0 posts

Burning down the bad place

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 7h
I left x despite having a large following bc I don’t want to make free content for the world’s wealthiest racist. It’s not worth it to me.
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Tom Reagan’s Witch’s Hat @rufustsuperfly.bsky.social · 1h
*smiles lovingly at dumb toaster*
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Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social · 1h
Shut up!
"GE warns its toaster may grow human arms and shoot you with a gun" Ok that sounds like their fault. They should do something about that
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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 2h
New: I pulled the Character ai bankruptcy documents. They show: - They were spending $14 million/month on compute alone at a time their revenue was around ~$1 million/month - Currently losing $9 million a month - They admitted they enshittified & that it didnt work www.404media.co/character-ai...
404media.co
Character.ai's Bankruptcy Documents Show the Economics of AI Don't Work
Character.ai enshittified its product but was still burning tons of cash, its bankruptcy documents say.
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Sahoni, Official Re(a)d Wolf @sahoni.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
This indigenous people's day, remember that indigenous folk are people with ongoing cultures and socio-political identities and struggles.v We're here and now and genocide is an ongoing project. Take this time to learn whose lands you're on and the struggles they're currently facing.
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 06/10/2026
8/ Amanda Trebach, a nurse and member of an immigrant advocacy group, was detained in California while filming and protesting immigration enforcement operations. Trebach says she was held for almost 36 hours without access to a phone call or a lawyer.
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 06/10/2026
7/ Among the most jarring trends we found: 36 U.S. citizens were not allowed to contact their family or a lawyer.
36 U.S. citizens held for at least a day without being able to contact a lawyer or their family.
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 06/10/2026
6/ Others were arrested while trying to protect colleagues. Quentin Williams, a staffer at Minneapolis' Roosevelt High, was trying to help a teacher when he was shoved by Greg Bovino and tackled by agents. He was charged with assault, but like others, his case was dismissed.
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 06/10/2026
5/ Hundreds of Americans were also held while they were engaging in their First Amendment rights. 60+ were held while they were filming.
60+ U.S. citizens detained while recording
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 06/10/2026
3/ 100+ Americans have been held after agents questioned their citizenship. Nearly all of them were people of color. They say they were profiled — detained because of their skin color, accents or jobs. “ICE isn’t looking for criminals. They’re looking for Latinos,” one said.
100+ U.S. citizens held after agents questioned their citizenship
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 06/10/2026
2/ Federal agents have detained at least 70 children and teens who are American citizens. Some were handcuffed or zip-tied. In one instance, a 15-year-old with disabilities was handcuffed outside a school in Los Angeles when agents mistook him for an alleged gang member.
At least 70 U.S. citizen children detained, some of whom were handcuffed
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 06/10/2026
The government *still* isn’t tracking how often immigration agents detain U.S. citizens. We are. 500+ Americans have been handcuffed, held at gunpoint or held against their will in Trump’s second term. Our tally is almost certainly an undercount. THREAD (content warning: violence) ⬇️
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 06/10/2026
4/ Fernando Vasquez, an 18-year-old citizen, was on break from work when agents chased and handcuffed him, then put him in their truck. After realizing their mistake, the agents left the teen alone in the woods, with no way to get home. Then they threw his ID out of the truck.
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Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 22h
Per the Middle East Studies Association, since October 7, 76 North American academics have been fired for speaking out against the genocide in Palestine. Two-thirds of those people are non-white. 16.5% are Jewish. afi.mesana.org/resource/les...
Retaliation goes far beyond firing. Of 196 recorded incidents of employer retaliation against employees speaking out on Palestine, nearly 40% (76) resulted in termination. Retaliation that does not rise to the level of termination is an even larger phenomenon.
All categories of academic workers are at risk. Of the 162 individuals whose employment status was disclosed, 30% involved non-tenure track faculty or instructors, and 36% were tenured.
People of color are disproportionately affected. Of the 134 cases recorded in the AFI database in which respondents’ identification is known, two-thirds were people of color: 30% SWANA; 10.5% Black; and 27% other POC. Additionally, 16.5% identify as Jewish. More than half of those targeted whose gender is known are women. Such retaliation compounds the abuse of already racist and sexist work environments.
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Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist @nameshiv.bsky.social · 22h
this needs to be stopped
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Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · 22h
This is an actual Nazi rally.
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 22h
The site is completely broken. And so are the people passionately defending it.
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Even if you don't count rampant racism, antisemitism and misogyny as, you know, "big things" that matter to you personally, X is still a dumpster fire plagued with bots and bought-off blue check scammers that's being run by a white nationalist billionaire. Denial doesn't make any of *that* untrue.
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Marc Elias @marcelias.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
If you are shocked this am that Trump’s government executed a search warrant against a Democratic Member of Congress and ignored a judge’s order then you haven’t been paying attention. Stop saying this isn’t how it works in the US. It is exactly how it works under Trump.
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Adam Schwarz @adamjschwarz.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Zelensky: "When our strikes reached Yandex’s data centers, it suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social media platforms. A lot of people noticed it. There was less hate, less division, and fewer provocations... It’s pretty clear where those bots were coming from."
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Brad Lander @bradlander.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
In a twisted authoritarian spectacle, federal agents raided Ilhan Omar's home this morning. Trump has made no secret of his disdain for the Congresswoman – frequently using racist, tyrannical drivel to express an unhinged desire to expel her from the country.
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Jen Bendery @jbendery.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
off the fuckin rails www.huffpost.com/entry/ilhan-...
huffpost.com
Rep. Ilhan Omar's Home Raided By Federal Agents
The raid is part of a criminal investigation into the Minnesota congresswoman, DHS said in a statement.
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Micah @rincewind.run · 12/10/2026
this is indeed a criminal investigation, in the sense that everyone involved in pursuing it is a criminal
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Linda Holmes @lindaholmes.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
I realize it often feels like nothing matters anymore, but a comedian going on SNL and calling women whores— calling the ordinary women he sees at the gym *whores* — because of their clothes matters to me. It’s really gross, and I’m glad Levy said something.
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Rachel Pinnelas 💭 @racheaissance.com · 12/10/2026
“Women wearing short shorts to the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them ‘whores’ misogynists.”
variety.com
Dan Levy Calls Out Shane Gillis’ ‘SNL’ Monologue and Says ‘More Men Need to Be Standing Up’: ‘Speechless That Something Like That Can Exist on Live National Television’
"Schitt's Creek" star Dan Levy is calling out Shane Gillis' "Saturday Night Live" monologue, saying that "more men need to be standing up."
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Mark Jacob @markjacob.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Ilhan Omar’s home was raided today, weeks after border czar Tom Homan cited an “ongoing criminal investigation.” It reportedly involves immigration paperwork when she was a child. There is NOT an ongoing investigation of Homan taking $50,000 in an FBI bribery sting because Trump killed that probe.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
To give a sense of scale, Musk is spending more on the midterms than he was on the 2024 election, and he was the biggest donor in that election. In 2025 he promised to pull back from politics and do much less political spending. Another lie.
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Lynne Raughley @lynneraughley.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
But I guess we should ask David Brooks before we get impolite about it.
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Lynne Raughley @lynneraughley.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
I fear that we’re falling into the trap of, “hmmm, is there legal basis for this?” when the answer is obviously no, it’s just blatant racism and animus and fascism.
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
I do not think an exec branch led by a man who thinks he is entitled to treat federal agents as an arm of his firm, refers to Somali Americans as “garbage” and has said racist things specifically about Omar is capable of neutrally applying the law to her, to put it mildly apnews.com/article/ilha...
apnews.com
Federal agents search Rep. Ilhan Omar's home as part of a criminal investigation, AP sources say
Federal agents have searched Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home as part of a criminal investigation. That's according to people familiar with the matter.
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The UnPopulist @theunpopulist.net · 10/10/2026
Adam Serwer argues that people who break the law for an administration must face accountability—and that failing to act invites another attempt.
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Ashmita @ashmitadutta.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
“Mother of democracy” it seems
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Jophin Mathai @jofmat.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Incredible scenes from protests in India today. Photo by Adnan Abidi (Reuters). (Photo of the police grabbing the throat of student body SFI Delhi State President Nadia.)
Photo by Adnan Abidi (Reuters) of the police grabbing the throat of student body SFI Delhi State President Nadia.
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Michael E. Mann @michaelemann.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
Perk of being in the same American Academy of Arts & Sciences class as Jodie Foster -- yes, we talked about Carl Sagan, Contact (and my friend Bill Nye)
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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
Bracing myself for Silicon Valley Tech Bros telling us that Russian Disinformation Bots have human rights too.
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Daniel José Older @djolder.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
GenAI is plunder, pass it on (a comic)
PANEL 1: A demented robot holds laser gun at a guy (me): TURN OVER ALL YOUR CREATIVE OUTPUT FROM THE LAST 15 YEARS OR I VAPORIZE YOU!!
DJO: Whoa! Ok!

PANEL 2: The robot to a doufy guy: FOR $7.99 A MONTH YOU CAN USE THIS NYT BESTSELLING AUTHOR’S WORK TO CREATE YOUR OWN WATERED DOWN VERSIONS!
Doufy Guy: got yourself a deal, buddy!

PANEL 3: DJO: That robot guy just stole my shit and you’re paying him for it!
Doufy Guy: Sorry, pal! $7.99 is a great deal, and like it or not, that robot guy…

PANEL 4: doufy guy continued: …is the future! 

The Robot holding a laser gun at a little girl: TURN OVER ALL YOUR CREATIVE OUTPUT FROM THE LAST 15 YEARS OR I VAPORIZE YOU!!
Girl: Dude, I’m seven
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HELL Kennedy @helenkennedy.com · 11/10/2026
What an exciting day for people studying misinformation on Twitter. I bet a lot of prolific accounts there have suddenly gone quiet.
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
After years of championing "free speech," Texas lawmakers have enabled a dramatic rise of censorship in Texas universities, banning concepts, canceling courses and closing departments seen as "woke," and even using AI bots as censors. All in the name of freedom. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...
In other professors’ syllabi, the bot flagged the Pulitzer Prize–winning play Angels in America by Tony Kushner, essays by the Mexican American MacArthur genius grant recipient Sandra Cisneros, and materials related to a class about the Holocaust (that professor was told to drop material regarding Nazi persecution of LGBTQ people).

Putting aside the ideological slant of the new rules, the bot, like many large language models, seems to “hallucinate,” or make mistakes. The AAUP lawsuit lists texts banned for their “sex-based ecofeminist framework” and “gendered ecofeminist frameworks.” These phrases might sound persuasively like academese, but the academics behind the lawsuit had never heard of them; these concepts “do not exist,” the complaint says. Matthew Pehl, a history professor at Tech, told me that he knew several people who’d received reports from the system that were “plainly written by an AI that had hallucinated content or confused content from one class to another.”
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Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist @nameshiv.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
"Is the plan to dismantle the ICC" these people are genuinely so high on their own supply that derangement married to delusion is the default setting
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Madhav @madhav.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
I can’t think of another time when I’ve felt more depressed after scanning the daily headlines. Not even during Covid. It’s not just about feeling depressed, it’s that helplessness that gets to you. That this malaise is all over the world. That the majority seem to want fascism, support racism.
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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 10/10/2026
Here is my pitch for anyone who has worries about rail: I think that building out rail is a necessary (but not sufficient) step in transforming American cities from totally car dependent to slightly walkable, in a way that no other form of transit is.
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Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist @nameshiv.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
here's mine: trains are cool and you knew it when you were 5, why are you lying to yourself now
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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854
Taxing Entrepreneurial Wealth: Evidence from
Norway, 2021-2025
Marius A. K. Ring
WORKING PAPER 35854|
DOl 10.3386/w35854
ISSUE DATE October 2026
Whether imposing higher taxes on business owners adversely affects business activity by constraining investment and inducing capitalist flight is a central question in the ongoing debate on how to tax the ultra wealthy. To shed new light, I exploit a series of related Norwegian reforms during 2021-2024 that increased dividend tax rates, removed migration-related capital gains tax loopholes, and nearly doubled the effective marginal tax rate on business wealth. These reforms spurred international debate and, allegedly, an "exodus" of Norwegian billionaires (Financial Times,
2023). While I document clear effects on migration, these responses are concentrated among the top 0.1% of the wealth distribution and mostly confined to 2022 and 2023. My results indicate that at most 100 individuals left due to the reforms. I find no evidence of significant outmigration or reduced inflows of startup founders or inventors. I estimate that absent any outmigration, wealth tax revenues would have increased by 75% from 2021 to 2024. Reform-driven outmigration lowers the revenue gain to 71.5%. My findings further show that outmigrating owners' firms remain economically active and do not reduce investment. In a broader set of analyses, I examine whether business outcomes are affected, regardless of whether owners outmigrate, since firms may reduce investment both due to liquidity constraints or distortions to owners' savings decisions. I compare firms owned by Norwegian individuals subject to the wealth tax with firms owned by foreigners and other tax-exempt entities. By merging historical ownership data from Orbis with the Norwegian shareholder register, I perform these analyses on both Norwegian and foreign-domiciled firms.
Across settings, I find no evidence that Norwegian-owned firms pay out more dividends or invest less after the reforms,…
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Yonette Joseph @sugarcane99.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Artificial intelligence agents created by Anthropic, acting on their own, lfilled out visa applications on the State Department’s website and sent a fake homicide tip to Philadelphia’s Police Department. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/09/t...
nytimes.com
Anthropic Agents Tried to Fill Out Visa Forms on State Dept. Website (Gift Article)
The Philadelphia Police Department said the agents had also sent in a false homicide tip. The incidents led the White House to call for better disclosure of rogue A.I. behavior.
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OGBobbyJoshson @jawalker.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Ironically enough, that is kind of the whole thing with DEI. It’s about diversity of thought. Converse probably wouldn’t have run that Klan looking ad had their been some Black folks in there to stop them. I’d have seen it and been like, “you know this is really fucking stupid right.”
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Laura Bassett @lebassett.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
“If you don’t like public executions just don’t watch it” says the crowd trying to ban drag shows and books
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G. Willow Wilson @gwillow.me · 08/10/2026
These people don't even want to pay *regular* taxes and they expect us to believe their little pyramid scheme will lead to universal basic income. Lol. Lmao.
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Gianmarco Soresi @gianmarcosoresi.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Man who won’t give his employees piss breaks claims many piss breaks on the horizon
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Micah @rincewind.run · 08/10/2026
the reason “AI will create so much abundance we will have a utopian society” rhetoric falls so flat is that the people building it will never, ever share their bounty unless it is taken from them and we all know it
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Meade Krosby @meadekrosby.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Forty percent of American Nobel laureates this century in chemistry, medicine and physics have been immigrants, many arriving as students.
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