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Dwayne Monroe

@cloudquistador.bsky.social

4.6K followers 440 following 270 posts

Cybernetics • AI Resistance • Dialectics • Film Noir • https://monroelab.com • vdgasjournal.com

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Dwayne Monroe @cloudquistador.bsky.social · Nov 9

At monroelab.com I write about the tech industry's political economy, informed by Marx and Raymond Chandler. In January, a new team effort, for writers who want to look at the world and report what they see:
youtu.be/Js0o6Lvx6S8?...

Verdigris: Critique for the Age of Decline

YouTube video by Film Conversations

youtu.be

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Dominique Marks @dominiqmarks.bsky.social · 1h

'Rather than perceiving “the West” as giving carte blanche to Israel, Dabashi insists that Israel must be understood as its quintessence... If Israel is the West and the West is Israel, then Palestine is the world and the world is Palestine.'

www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2607-a...

After Savagery

www.haymarketbooks.org

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Luke Plunkett @lukeplunkett.com · 11h

kids teacher just sent this home as part of an assignment he's doing and i want to smash every computer at the school

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 12h

Maybe useful? bsky.app/profile/oliv...

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 21h

Really enjoyed & honoured to be part of the Critical AI Literacy Symposium yesterday. Also @lucyavraamidou.bsky.social & @miquelpt.bsky.social (and others) spoke about their wonderful work too. Big thanks to @irisvanrooij.bsky.social, Leo & Barbara for organising. ✨

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxyg...

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Mark Hurst @markhurst.bsky.social · 23h

Big Tech is targeting vulnerable communities for its data centers. Residents incur a huge cost in water & power and airborne toxic chemicals. Town officials sign NDAs so citizens have no awareness of the threat.

New from me: data centers and their effects.
buttondown.com/creativegood...

Don't let the data center come to town

In southwest Memphis sits the Colossus, a giant AI slop factory owned by Elon Musk. Gas-powered turbines at the facility foul the air with “nitrogen oxides...

buttondown.com

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Dwayne Monroe @cloudquistador.bsky.social · 1d

Exactly. Every polite, middle classian I point to Ed's work bemoans he isn't 'nice' enough. If the house is burning, should one whisper the warning?

your #3 source for absurdist true crime 🔨 @davidgerard.co.uk · 1d

all these slopwanking fuckwits "i want a *real* AI critic not like that uncouth Zitron fellow"

it's always tone policing the guy with the numbers

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Dwayne Monroe @cloudquistador.bsky.social · 1d

Among other things, this shows the shambles that is the US performance of masculinity. Hollywood depictions (and historic examples) of secret police show men with sharp uniforms, implying sinister competence. As you say, the current US form is unwashed drunk dude in affect

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 2d

It currently takes 2.5+ years and $32.5bn+ a gigawatt of data center development and OpenAI says 10GW of Broadcom chips will be deployed by 2030.

Blandly repeating this stuff is failing readers. Call it what it is: nonsense

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makcapitalism.bsky.social @makcapitalism.bsky.social · 2d

Today at 10 AM ET!!!

J from MAKC @jaybeware.bsky.social · 2d

For episode 13 of The Imperial 80s we'll dig into the 1982 "supernatural horror" film 'Poltergeist'

Monday (10/13) at 10 AM ET
www.youtube.com/live/mF9wtLL...

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Dwayne Monroe @cloudquistador.bsky.social · 3d

Their stupidity and their dominance are not incompatible. My ancestors were enslaved and the indigenous people of N. America were genocided by very narrow (i.e. stupid) people. Their advantages were in guile and a willingness to kill without remorse, then lie to explain it away.

Reposted by Dwayne Monroe

azteclady @azteclady.bsky.social · 3d

Please add alt-text when sharing images, so that blind and low-vision people aren't excluded from the conversation. Some context and copy/paste or a brief description are often enough. Checking the "reminder to add alt-text" box in your accessibility settings helps a lot.

Thank you.

Six panel, cartoon-style graphic titled, why use alt-text?
First panel: slow internet. Next to a line drawing of a phone showing a social media post with an image, where the alt-text is visible while the image is unavailable. Text reads: Alt-text is shown in place of unloaded images.
Second panel: Findability. A line drawing of the top of a phone, showing the search bar, reading "dog with banana". The text above it reads: Alt-text helps to search content.
Third panel: screen readers. In lieu of the image, a blank square with alt-text shows up; the text above the box reads: Alt- is read out to people using text-to-speech software.
Fourth panel: translation. There's a line drawing of a phone, showing the Google translate box, reading "English to Deutsch". The text above reads: Alt-text can be translated.
Fifth panel: readability. There's a line drawing showing very poor writing inside a dialogue bubble; next to it the clarifying text "a character says 'hello, guys'" The text above the drawing reads, Text in images can be made legible.
Sixth panel: disambiguation. The line drawing of the phone again, showing part of an image that, depending on how you look at it, seems to be either a bunny or a duck. The clarifying text reads, "my pet bunny".

An infographic titled “Writing Alt Text” featuring a photo of a capybara. Parts of alt text are divided by color, including identify who, expression, description, color, and interesting features. The finished description reads “A capybara looking relaxed in a hot spa. Yellow yuzu fruits are floating in the water, and one is balanced on the top of the capybara’s head.” Source: veroniiiica.com Credit: Puzzle

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Dwayne Monroe @cloudquistador.bsky.social · 4d

The simple beauty of this decades old, imagined interface almost makes me weep. We are forced to use stone knives and bear skins with a splash of paint and advertising...

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Dwayne Monroe @cloudquistador.bsky.social · 4d

🔥

Dwayne Monroe @cloudquistador.bsky.social · 4d

This is excellent. Thanks!

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Dwayne Monroe @cloudquistador.bsky.social · 5d

😂

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Dwayne Monroe @cloudquistador.bsky.social · 5d

Your timing is impeccable. For vdgasjournal.com I'm writing an essay about false criticism, used to suppress rather than illuminate. As you say, a tactic typically used against women and non whites generally.

Verdigris

Critique for the Age of Decline

vdgasjournal.com

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Dwayne Monroe @cloudquistador.bsky.social · 5d

But of course! This system will not endure.

H.L. Mencken’s Winking Ghost @harrysimmons3578.bsky.social · 5d

@cloudquistador.bsky.social

Funranium (AKA Phil Broughton) @funranium.bsky.social · 7d

Ohhhhh, I know what I'm giving to my fire marshals tomorrow to make them sad and delve into The Code. futurism.com/future-socie...

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Dwayne Monroe @cloudquistador.bsky.social · 5d

Exactly. Iran's ability (shocking to 'the west') to counter attack during the 12 day war was a product of a robust, domestic science and engineering program. All global south peoples need this capacity

Dwayne Monroe @cloudquistador.bsky.social · 5d

As a system (I won't say culture since, as Sakai observed, it's an assemblage of settler atavisms) the US has never supported universal education. The fear inspired by Sputnik's orbit in 1957 temporarily changed that but things have returned to the fathead norm

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Tyler @electriceden92.bsky.social · Sep 1

So many of the foundational sins of the field - a belief in 'precise description' (incantation) as a universal force; the assumption that the human brain is not just a machine, but a relatively simple one; the unwillingness to define exactly what a 'simulation' is - are in this single page

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · Sep 1

70 years ago yesterday, they applied for summer money.

Typescript cover page to A PROPOSAL FOR THE
DARTMOUTH SUMMER RESEARCH PROJECT
ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

First typescript page of A PROPOSAL FOR THE
DARTMOUTH SUMMER RESEARCH PROJECT
ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. First paragraph reads:
“We propose that a 2 month, 10 man study of artificial intelligence be
carried out during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other foature of intelligence can in principle be no precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it. An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves. We think that a significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a summer.”

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your #3 source for absurdist true crime 🔨 @davidgerard.co.uk · 5d

Anthropic AI tries to cheer us up a bit www.anthropic.com/research/sma...

A small number of samples can poison LLMs of any size

Anthropic research on data-poisoning attacks in large language models

www.anthropic.com

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Dwayne Monroe @cloudquistador.bsky.social · 5d

Good luck indeed. What will these men, who've built almost their entire identities on a few companies, do when capital dries up and collapse follows? www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Image from Bloomberg article, 'OpenAI, Nvidia Fuel $1 Trillion AI Market With Web of Circular Deals'. It depicts a collection of circles representing each company, with lines showing investment interconnections between them

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Dr Vanessa Sinclair @drsinclair.bsky.social · 6d

The LATEST on Rendering Unconscious! RU363: JARED WARE FROM MILLENNIALS ARE KILLING CAPITALISM renderingunconscious.substack.com

@cloudquistador.bsky.social @makcapitalism.bsky.social

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H.L. Mencken’s Winking Ghost @harrysimmons3578.bsky.social · 6d

It is because Candace Owens is a blogger pundit and Megyn is a bygone mainstream empty suit. She doesn’t have the power anymore to throw fits against the likes of a true fascist. The media landscape has changed; the empty suits are powerless.

Adam Keiper @adamkeiper.com · 6d

NEW: "The new [right-wing] power brokers are increasingly the most incendiary personalities. And because their fan bases are so rabid, and because they have the ability to easily sic those fanbases on competitors, it has forced more mainstream figures to tread gingerly."

By @willsommer.bsky.social:

Why Is Megyn Kelly Afraid to Take on Candace Owens?

Right-wing media’s old guard is scared of its younger, crazier rivals.

www.thebulwark.com

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Dwayne Monroe @cloudquistador.bsky.social · 6d

Earlier today, someone wrote, as encouragement for dismayed US-ians, that Europe overcame fascism. I propose that this isn't the case, as near uniform elite support for genocide shows and, this, from Gabriel Rockhill: www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/t...

Screenshot of Counterpunch magazine from October, 2020. It shows Gabriel Rockhill's essay: The US Did Not Defeat Fascism in WW2, It Discretely Internationalized It

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Dwayne Monroe @cloudquistador.bsky.social · 6d

Ahoy sis!