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Salomé Viljoen

@salome.bsky.social

5.7K followers 1.7K following 1.2K posts

Assistant Prof at Michigan Law || I think about how the law thinks about data || pro science and technology, anti scams

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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · Mar 31

incredible resource here, please share!!

Esteban J. Quiñones, Ph.D. @estebanjq.bsky.social · Mar 31

The Impact Map or Federal Cuts Tracker Map is finally live‼️

Check the 🗺️ out theimpactproject.org/the-impact-m...

Explore how federal cuts are affecting your state or community and share this WIDELY 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

Screenshot of Impact Map or Federal Cuts Tracker Map

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WIRED @wired.com · 8h

Another round of terminations, combined with previous layoffs and departures, has reduced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention workforce by about 3,000 people since January. www.wired.com/story/cdc-te...

A Quarter of the CDC Is Gone

Another round of terminations, combined with previous layoffs and departures, has reduced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention workforce by about 3,000 people since January.

www.wired.com

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Sam Cole @samleecole.bsky.social · 8h

Sora flopping, bleeding cash on pro subscriptions, lawsuits left and right accusing the company of inventing the emotional torment nexus, age verification lobby with a stranglehold on the adult internet... pivoting to porn is masterful gambit www.404media.co/chatgpt-erot...

ChatGPT’s Hail Mary: Chatbots You Can Fuck

As recent reports show OpenAI bleeding cash, and on the heels of accusations that ChatGPT caused teens and adults alike to harm themselves and others, CEO Sam Altman announced that you can soon fuck t...

www.404media.co

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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 8h

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 11h

Imagine the media reaction if a single Democrat ever said anything like this ever once in history.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 11h

After bragging about permanently cutting "Democrat programs," Trump says "we're not closing up Republican programs."

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Larry Glickman @larryglickman.bsky.social · 19h

Future historians may well argue that the Jim Crow era, which, depending on how one periodizes, lasted for roughly 75 years, represented a longer time period than the modern civil rights era, which, even if one starts with Brown v. Board, is barely 70 years old.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/u...

Will the Supreme Court Use a Louisiana Case to Gut the Voting Rights Act?

www.nytimes.com

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Ars Technica @arstechnica.com · 9h

Trump admin pressured Facebook into removing ICE-tracking group

Meta removed ICE Sighting group after hearing from the Justice Department.

arstechnica.com

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Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 10h

Everyone agrees that we're currently in a dotcom era-like AI bubble. People disagree what sort of bubble it is.

There are 3 stories one can tell about the dotcom crash: a startup story, a telecom story, and an accounting fraud story.

My take: it's giving Enron
open.substack.com/pub/davekarp...

It's Giving Enron

On the AI bubble, and the various echoes of the dotcom crash

open.substack.com

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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 9h

lol...every day it gets more laughable that people thought these guys were for real about curing cancer

Matt Burgess (WIRED) @mattburgess1.bsky.social · 13h

Oh good, ChatGPT is getting "erotica for verified adults" later this year

We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right.

Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.

In a few weeks, we plan to put out a new version of ChatGPT that allows people to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about 4o (we hope it will be better!). If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it (but only if you want it, not because we are usage-maxxing).

In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our “treat adult users like adults” principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.

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Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 13h

a couple of people have criticized this "but what if you do bad things with all that power" but like. look around you. the right has already grasped the power at hand and is using it. "republicans use the state to advance their goals; democrats unilaterally disarm" is not a sustainable equilibrium!

Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 1d

one thing that has been obvious for a while is this aspect of the authoritarian internationale: they recognize that their allies abroad are not *countries* but *political movements* within foreign countries.

time we liberals woke up and recognized this--because it's the truth.

Rigorous, Fred-based Reporting @thefred.bsky.social · 1d

Or maybe, just maybe, what was obvious in 2024 was correct: Netanyahu fully backed Trump and would not deal with Biden because Trump would give him a free hand to escalate the starvation, bombing, and do full ethnic cleansing. Which he then did, until Netanyahu embarrassed him by bombing Qatar.

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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 10h

the WH comment about democrats unfairly calling republicans "Nazis and Fascists" is especially rich in an article that is literally about a group of republicans joking about gas chambers and saying "I love Hitler"

Politico @politico.com · 12h

EXCLUSIVE: Thousands of leaked messages show leaders of Young Republican groups joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape in a private Telegram chat.

Inside rising GOP leaders’ racist chats — obtained by POLITICO and spanning more than 7 months👇

‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat

Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape.

www.politico.com

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 1d

They also cancelled government data collection about hunger to minimize evidence about their policies

José Sepúlveda @josesepulveda.bsky.social · 1d

ProPublica obtained records from the Department of Agriculture that detail the 94 million pounds of food, down to the number of eggs, that never reached food banks because of the #Trump administration’s cuts to The Emergency Food Assistance Program.

My latest video for @propublica.org.

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 2d

New, from me:
Trump's 3 step plan to create a military omniforce
1. Purge - those deemed disloyal
2. Merge - different parts of law enforcement/military
3. Surge - impose the omniforce on Dem cities; instigate unrest; assert dominance; silence dissent
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/purge-merg...

Purge, Merge, and Surge

Trump is creating a omniforce of armed loyalists to establish his police state

donmoynihan.substack.com

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James Sims @simsjames.bsky.social · 1d

“We must be steadfast in opposition to extortion under the guise of dealmaking, and we must create alliances rooted in a common devotion to freedom of inquiry…We have rejected tyranny before, and we can do it again.” — Wesleyan University President @msroth.bsky.social in @thebulwark.com #HigherEd

What’s a College President to Do in the Trump Era?

Not going on bended knee to Washington would be a good start.

open.substack.com

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 1d

www.instagram.com/p/DPm507ljBJ...

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s. eek smith 👻 @sesmith.lol · 1d

Fantastic @prospect.org piece on cryptocurrency and who profits.

Down and Out on the Crypto Frontier

In Wyoming, the Delaware of cryptocurrency, industry players celebrated their fortunes and said everyone will benefit. But workers haven’t seen it.

prospect.org

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Eric Umansky @ericumansky.bsky.social · 1d

ICE agents blocked an ambulance that was trying to take an injured protester to hospital.

"We are still not being allowed to leave by ICE officers.” an EMT said on radio

When driver tried to get out, an agent yelled, "DON’T YOU EVER DO THAT AGAIN, I WILL SHOOT YOU"

www.wweek.com/news/2025/10...

Documents Allege a Federal Agent at Portland ICE Threatened to Shoot an Ambulance Driver

Feds delayed medics who had come to pick up an injured protester. Then, according to confidential incident reports, the agents became aggressive.

www.wweek.com

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John Walke @johndwalke.bsky.social · 1d

“Orban and his media talk all the time about Hungary’s bright future, but people see their daily reality,” said Mr. Keri, who supports Mr. Magyar. He added, “There are two parallel worlds, and the tension between them makes people very angry.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/12/w... 1/

Viktor Orban’s ‘Propaganda State’ Is Starting to Show Cracks

www.nytimes.com

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 1d

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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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 1d

I really can’t imagine a more ideal scenario for anti-Trump politicians than MAGA spending a week explicitly turning the size of the 10/18 protests into a referendum on MAGA and Trump, while simultaneously making the protests the center of media attention. They are setting themselves up for disaster

GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com · 1d

they’re scared fucking shitless of this weekend, or, at the least, are scared fucking shitless of trump seeing it on the television

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Sean Duffy: "The No Kings protest, Maria, really frustrating. This is part of antifa, paid protesters. It begs the question who's funding it."

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Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 2d

What he’s railing against is a profound shift in culture, status… He’s obsessed with the idea that America is controlled by a leftist “ruling elite” - but “elite” isn’t defined socio-economically or by political power, it means something like: Getting to define “real America” and who gets to belong.

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jeff com-BOO-ters @helldude.bsky.social · 1d

ive lived an entire american life with a "funny name" and long ago got to the point where mispronouncing or misspelling or butchering my name doesnt faze me and i generally dont impute any ill intent to it. but its incredible how cuomo refuses to learn this guys name. its clear what theyre all doing

Coach Finstock @coachfinstock.bsky.social · 1d

The Bari Weiss-led CBS News has had this up for 3 days and misspelled his name in the hed.

@NewsJennifer (Jennifer Schulze) @newsjennifer.bsky.social · 1d

CBS News would never put a thinly sourced 'story' by a rookie blogger like this on it's air. Until now. The Free Press isn't a journalism outlet, it's bloggers aren't reporters. This piece is more NYPost than Tiffany Network but I guess that's the goal.

www.cbsnews.com/video/some-n...

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infoDOCKET @infodocket.bsky.social · 1d

NEW Preprint: "Web Crawler Restrictions, #AI #Training #Datasets & Political Biases" arxiv.org/abs/2510.09031 #LLMs #GenAI

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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 1d

The protests in a week are likely to be some of the largest in history. This time, instead of ignoring them, maybe Democrats could try something new: pointing out that a president who is facing some of the largest protests in history is definitionally deeply unpopular, and has no hint of a mandate

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Sean Duffy: "The No Kings protest, Maria, really frustrating. This is part of antifa, paid protesters. It begs the question who's funding it."

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Daniel Gilmore @gilmored85.bsky.social · 1d

Its funny how readily theyre giving away that theyre worried about Saturdays protest. The smart move would be to just ignore it but they cant help but telegraph their flopsweat about it.

Schnorkles O'Bork @schnorkles.bsky.social · 1d

Anyone who declares these people are masters of political strategy or w/e needs to, again, stick their head in a toilet and flush.

Brain genius plans here of "we get the protest to go away by talking about it, yelling about it, and freaking out about it on live national television."

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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 1d

Ok, since many people are obviously not reading the article, here's a pertinent figure from it showing the top actions to reduce emissions.

A horizontal bar chart titled “19 climate-friendly choices, ranked” shows actions individuals can take to reduce their carbon footprint, ordered from most to least impactful. The x-axis represents projected impact in tons of CO₂ equivalent per capita per year (tCO₂e/cap/yr), ranging from 0 to about 2.5. Each action is color-coded by sector: transportation (blue), energy (orange), and food (green).

Go car-free – highest impact (blue bar extending to about 2.5 tCO₂e).

Fly less (blue, about 1.5).

Shift to renewable home energy (orange, about 1.4).

Switch to EV or hybrid car (blue, about 1.2).

Go vegan (green, about 1.0).

Walk, bike, or take transit more (blue).

Make energy-efficient renovations (orange).

Use clean cooking equipment (orange).

Go vegetarian (green).

Shift driving habits (e.g., carpooling) (blue).

Increase telecommuting (blue).

Shift to regional/seasonal diet (green).

Move to energy-efficient home (orange).

Decrease food waste (green).

Eat less meat (green).

Use less energy at home (orange).

Reduce packaged food, dining out (green).

Use energy-efficient appliances (orange).

Compost – least impact (green, under 0.1).

A note clarifies that these are meta-analytic estimates of greenhouse gas reduction potentials, drawn from 659 estimates across 47 academic journal articles. The average person emits 6.28 tonnes of CO₂e per year, though this varies widely by income and country. Wealthier populations may emit up to 110 tonnes per year, while lower-income populations may emit as little as 1.6 tonnes.

Source: WRI, based on data from Ivanova et al., 2020.

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