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bart fish

@bartfish.bsky.social
597 followers 1.2K following 428 posts

luddites > grifters Power Tools: A critique of genAI & it’s toolmen. www.powertoolsofai.com

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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
this is what a right-wing monopoly looks like. when you buy political favor ($45 million) and swear allegiance to the president, you can buy whatever you want. when they can’t control the news or culture, they try to buy it instead.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
the irony of people warring over lupita nyong'o's beauty and not realizing it makes her the perfect modern day helen of troy. her beauty has launched a thousand tik tok tirades, hundreds of bigoted reddit posts, countless youtube hot takes.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
steal anything: second in a series of ai critical sign illustrations.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
a sign of the times. dollar genai: exploit poor neighborhoods with dynamic pricing based on customer purchase history and habits. ai death & beyond: a death agent spends your remaining life, absorbing your memories, thoughts and beliefs.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
The Meta x Kylie Jenner collab is giving Torches of Freedom vibes. How do you change the perception that a product is used by men to harass women? Find a beautiful reality star to promote them.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Imagine still being super excited about AI and simultaneously concerned about a vry fashy govt and not seeing the overlap of these two things.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
It’s official, AI boosters are joining forces with NFT scam culture. In a completely predictable move, AI bros are amplifying an NFT scam artist (Monet scam) and calling it proof of bias. What do they have in common? A love of deception, a disdain of artists and a love of the grift.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
“they’re eating the dogs!” “ai won’t take your job, someone using ai will” “tell me why my ai generated monet is inferior.” same vibes, same deception, same manufactured outrage. we’re all living in an epstein world, where deception is the currency.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
The Monet post on X was manufactured outrage based on deception. You know, the kind of thing X and MAGA are known for. The real insight is that AI bros have never heard of behavioral priming. Maybe that’s why they’re so goddamn gullible?
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Zines are great cause they’re like magazines but without MAGA.
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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Last week, a 20 year-old man threw a molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's mansion; two days later, people fired a gun at it. Earlier that week, someone fired gunshots into an city councilman's house who approved a data center. Why the AI backlash has turned violent:
bloodinthemachine.com
Why the AI backlash has turned violent
And why it's probably only going to get worse from here.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
we need to cancel bot conscription, not just ai subscriptions. we need to cancel kill chains, fantasies about bot brains and automated people slain. we need to cancel job raiders and human haters.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
art resist while fascism persists. new issue of the power tools zine is live. powertoolsofai.com/zines/power-...
A GIF showing the cover and inside of a provocative anti AI zine called power tools
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
New issue of the Power Tools Zine is live: powertoolsofai.com/zines/power-...
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Power Tools Zine Issue #2 WIP
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
Updated the Power Tools website, issue #2 of the zine coming soon 👀 powertoolsofai.com
powertoolsofai.com
Power Tools of AI
Power Tools is an art series focused on critiquing AI toolmen and genAI. Featuring zines, a newsletter and AI critical resources.
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tante @tante.cc · 31/01/2026
Bart Fish made a cool Zine about AI including a snippet of one of my essays and sent me a copy. Love it!
Photo of Bart Fish's "Power Tools" zine (first edition, November 2025) and some slogan stickers with statements like "GenAI sucks"Photo of the same Zine opened to my article arguing that AI systems are not tools as we understand that concept.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
A well-know creative leader just told me that saying we should resist AI because it’s being used for mass surveillance, war (domestic & international), misinformation, racism etc is the same as saying designers should have not used computers and quit design, because the govt uses them for bad things
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
extreme techno-optimism, mixed w/ authoritarianism, surveillance and xenophobia have become the new american manifesto. billionaires get richer while we're mired in uncertainty, fear and ai-enabled shackles.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
new newsletter up: powertoolsofai.com/the-rise-of-...
powertoolsofai.com
The Rise of Unremarkable AI Arguments
When they can’t use reason, they’ll threaten us with inevitability
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
thank you to everyone that ordered a physical copy of my first zine issue 🖤 i’ve been working hard to put them all together and i am very close to mailing them out. still have a surprise or two, that i’m working on 👀
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
power tools: the zine is finally available ⚡🪚 it features eight creatives, including photographers, cartoonists, designers, artists and writers. It’s a mix of short stories, poems, essays, and art with critique of AI as the overarching theme. powertoolsofai.com/zine/
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
elon musk is an immigrant that hates immigrants, a narcissist disguised as an altruist, a critic who refuses to be criticized, a polluter parading as an environmentalist, a free speech “advocate” who pushes for censorship, a government contract hoarder that criticizes government spending…
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
what do you get when hobble together extreme tech optimism, authoritarianism, theology, and 1930s german political theory? a franken-thiel. this month i’m focusing on the monsters of ai, frightening demagogues hell-bent on transforming our society into a dystopian horror. first up is peter thiel.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 30/08/2025
This print I created was inspired by Joe Nunnink’s AI Bob Ross skits 🤣 Added some fast food / clown references because why not
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
test print: ai companions
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
what do all of these tiktok ‘creators’ have in common? they are all ai accounts entirely dedicated to spreading maga and conservative views.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
openai doesn’t care about our health, it cares about our healthcare dollars. powertoolsofai.com/the-ai-war-o...
powertoolsofai.com
The AI War on Healthcare
OpenAI's crusade to undermine trust in our doctors, scientists and experts.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 09/08/2025
these two power tools of ai images i created, are live on @betterimagesofai.bsky.social i donated them so anyone can use them for free. if you’re not familiar with better images of ai, their mission is to source ai images that aren’t stereotypical and better represent the discourse around ai.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
what if the jobs that ai creates, are ones that nobody wants? what if these jobs are low paying, lack security and involve being exposed to traumatic materials? this is already happening in countries like kenya, uganda, the philippines, venezeula and india. read more at powertoolsofai.com
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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
Users hate AI. So tech made it mandatory. Even if you don't use it, it pollutes what you read and how systems make decisions. The computer's hallucinated word is final. And it needs all of your data to do it. In the age of no consent, UX exists to normalized complete acquiescence to surveillance:
productpicnic.beehiiv.com
The AI age is the "age of no consent"
"Inevitability" means design decisions are no longer informed by user needs; now they are unilaterally imposed. The users are the ones being designed.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
“that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.” -erich fromm, the sane society
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
if you wanted to control large masses of people, where would you start? how they create, consume and distribute information. how would you force adoption? threaten their livelihood and financial security.
Collage depicting a brain with callouts that all say chatgpt, inferring that our thinking is being replaced. “Control the brain” is at the top and emphasized. A scrap shows screwdrivers alluding to tools and a young woman has her face in her hands at the bottom right.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
ai is not merely a tool. it’s a power tool. a tool used to surveil, persuade, misinform and control. elon musk wants to use his ai to rewrite history, using his own extremist views to create an orwellian record 1/5
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 11/04/2025
social media = influence machines ai = bullshit machines politics = both
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
I recently finished reading this and it was a thoroughly enjoyable, yet unsettling read. I came into it already quite critical of Musk, Thiel, Andreesen and Zuckerberg but this book uncovered many more reasons to be concerned. Kudos to @jttaplin.bsky.social for writing such a great exposé.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
Elon Musk is so familiar with the idea of weaponizing empathy because he’s been weaponizing altruism his whole career. It’s never been about “saving the human race” for Musk, it’s about gaining influence, respect and power by appearing to be selfless.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
I don’t usually post work on here but this is a brand refresh I led late last year.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
The Dems should take on corporate greed and pitch a new model of capitalism that places workers on even footing as shareholders. Caps on C Suite comp, and a formula for wage increases as a % of revenue. Different model for speculative businesses that rent cash flow positive.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
A maga supporter told me “Not tolerating opinions is fascist.” Isn’t Trump’s whole spiel about not tolerating other people’s opinions? Isn’t he weaponizing the entire govt, to destroy opinions (and facts) he does not like? Cognitive dissonance is real people.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show performance is everything.
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Sheila Foster @sheilarose.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
"The revolution is about to be televised. You picked the right time but the wrong guy." Kendrick Lamar 🔥🔥🔥 #SuperbowlHalftime
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
Our govt wants to make American AI models more like Trump. We’re talking about an extreme ideological bias that relies heavily on beliefs, conspiracies and straight out lies. Revisionist history that erases and replaces. Still keen on AI?
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
@kenmartin.bsky.social I’d love to volunteer to help the DNC with design, general creative and strategy. How can I help? I’d love to see the DNC open up volunteering in more creative ways. Why aren’t we building, decentralized pro-democracy tech? Why aren’t we empowering our democratic creatives?
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
Trump’s Gaza plan IS ethnic cleansing at a massive scale. It’s not enough to deport millions out of America, now he wants to help Israel with their mass deportation. It’s sick, dangerous and not at all American.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
Today, I remembered a book I read in college: When Religion Becomes Evil: Five Warning Signs by Charles Kimball. I looked it up to remind myself what the five signs were, and it occurred to me that there are some similarities with the Maga movement. 1/7
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Lyta 🐅 Dangerous Fictions is OUT 🐅 Gold @lytagold.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
“the vibes have shifted” is passive voice. “tech oligarchs made deliberate changes to social media algorithms which altered the way most people perceive reality in a successful attempt to engineer business-favorable outcomes” is more EW WOKE CRINGE but it’s also direct, accurate, and meaningful
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
We don’t really trust algorithms, do we really think AI models offer any more transparency? When someone like Musk says Grok needs tweaked because it’s still to PC…can we not see the danger around models being manipulated to serve certain ideologies?
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
It’s very sad when America is the fascist bully and the rest of the world are the democratic heroes. Or on a positive note, maybe it’s precisely what we need.
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bart fish @bartfish.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
There’s some irony that the media and culture helped create Trump and Elon Musk’s personas, only for them to later be the ones that discredit them. Trump and Elon ARE the lies mainstream media helped create.
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