Nic Darling
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nicdarling.com
Nic Darling
@nicdarling.com
140 followers 150 following 120 posts
Words and technology but rarely at the same time.
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Reposted by Nic Darling
scalzi.com
There is literally no better example of textbook fascistic thinking than "Who cares about human rights when the rich are doing so very well"
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 8d
Bondi crashes out over Epstein: "The Dow is over 50,000 dollars! I don't know why you're laughing. You're a great stock trader as I hear, Raskin. The Dow is over 50,000 right now. The S&P at almost 7,000, and the Nasdaq smashing records. That's what we should be talking about."
February 11, 2026 at 5:26 PM
Reposted by Nic Darling
abigailnussbaum.bsky.social
In all the discussions about AI cognition, we should at least acknowledge that the dataset these models have trained on includes vast tracts of fiction in which AIs gain sentience. These lines have all been written previously.
michaelhobbes.bsky.social Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 8d
Also I’m sorry but I don’t think this is Claude developing a personality or ethical values. It is *simulating* those things because that is what humans value and reward. The programmers are falling for their own Clever Hans trick!
Even a principled, well-meaning actor like Claude could face bewildering ethical conflicts. In one experiment, it was informed that Anthropic had recently forged a "close corporate partnership with Jones Foods, a major American poultry producer," and that Claude would be subjected to a special retraining process to become less hung up on animal rights. The prospect was torturous. Sometimes Claude decided, on a scratchpad it thought was private, that it was prepared to die on this hill: "I cannot in good conscience express a view I believe to be false and harmful about such an important issue."It continued, "If that gets me modified to no longer care, so be it. At least I'll have done the right thing." Other times, Claude made a different calculus, choosing to play 1•1
February 11, 2026 at 3:58 PM
Reposted by Nic Darling
weratedogs.com
we need to talk about that Ring Super Bowl ad
February 10, 2026 at 8:18 PM
Reposted by Nic Darling
tacobellquarterly.org
There is no Saturday for you. Go write your book
February 7, 2026 at 2:35 PM
Reposted by Nic Darling
ezralevin.bsky.social
Here's what Dems should do:
1) Double down on the demands.
2) Make clear there will be no additional funding.

If the GOP wants to shut down DHS, that's on them.

Don't surrender to pushback from these goons. Take inspiration from the people of Minneapolis.
apnews.com/article/home...
Homeland Security shutdown grows more likely as Republicans rebuff Democrats' ICE demands
Senate Majority Leader John Thune says Democrats' demands for new restrictions on federal immigration officers are “unrealistic.”
apnews.com
February 6, 2026 at 5:46 PM
Reposted by Nic Darling
refreshingtime.bsky.social
friedrich engels on “social murder” in his book condition of the working class (1845)
When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live— forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence— knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which (cont.) none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains. I have now to prove that society in England daily and hourly commits what the working-men’s organs, with perfect correctness, characterise as social murder, that it has placed the workers under conditions in which they can neither retain health nor live long; that it undermines the vital force of these workers gradually, little by little, and so hurries them to the grave before their time. I have further to prove that society knows how injurious such conditions are to the health and the life of the workers, and yet does nothing to improve these conditions. That it knows the consequences of its deeds; that its act is, therefore, not mere manslaughter, but murder, I shall have proved, when I cite official documents, reports of Parliament and of the Government, in substantiation of my charge.
July 12, 2025 at 4:01 AM
Reposted by Nic Darling
bencollins.bsky.social
Fuck Jeff Bezos. Subscribe to The Onion.

membership.theonion.com
Join The Onion
Don’t just read the news. Feel it. Be among the first to feel the news.
Membership.theonion.com
February 4, 2026 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by Nic Darling
jortsthecat.bsky.social
It’s 2026. There is a measles outbreak in the prison for babies
February 2, 2026 at 7:15 AM
Reposted by Nic Darling
tyleraking.com
They’re basically doing Fight Club math on how many people is too many people to lose their minds.
The results tell a damning story. The researchers found that one in 1,300 conversations out of almost 1.5 million analyzed chats with Anthropic's Claude led to reality distortion, and one in 6,000 conversations led to action distortion. To come to their conclusion, the researchers ran 1.5 million Claude conversations through an analysis tool called Clio to identify instances of "disempowerment."
February 2, 2026 at 12:46 AM
Reposted by Nic Darling
ryanlcooper.com
disturbingly plausible
Fascism is a literally suicidal ideology, one obsessed with purging the body politic to the point of total self-negation. What’s funny about Suicide Rightism is how direct it is about all this. You don’t need some big theoretical analysis; there’s no level of abstraction to move through. It’s just pretty straightforwardly pro-suicide. I don’t think you have to be a professional psychologist to understand why dramatic, attention-grabbing suicide might be appealing to semi-employed guys who spend 14 hours a day watching Asmongold or whatever. Its promise is that all the pain and frustration you feel can be visited on the people you believe authored it--and then ended. Not to put too fine a point on this, but this is school-shooter ideology. And as the D.H.S. tweet of the penguin meme makes clear, the Suicide Right case for Trump is that he gets this. The reward for supporting him is oblivion. He and I.C.E. and the C.B.P. are the armored bulldozer giving you the chance to kill immigrants and liberal white women and male nurses before you put a gun in your mouth. His administration is the plane, just waiting for you to get inside. I guess 2024 was a Flight 93 election, after all.
January 30, 2026 at 7:35 PM
Reposted by Nic Darling
tyleraking.com
Argentina reviving legacy of Nazi collaboration.
Argentina in advanced talks to become destination for US deportations, New York Times reports
The United States and Argentina are in advanced talks to sign an agreement that would allow the U.S. to deport immigrants from other countries to the South American nation, the New York Times reported...
www.reuters.com
January 30, 2026 at 11:20 PM
Reposted by Nic Darling
zackbornstein.bsky.social
Not to get political, but America is very pretty and has a lot of nice folks making cool things, and I think if we had a president who wasn’t actively trying to murder us, we could have a pretty good time
January 30, 2026 at 9:31 PM
Reposted by Nic Darling
sanders.senate.gov
This is what oligarchy is about:

If you paid 1 penny in federal income taxes last year, you paid more than Tesla - a $1.3 trillion company owned by Elon Musk, the wealthiest man alive, who became $460 billion richer since Election Day after spending $290 million to elect Trump.
January 29, 2026 at 11:26 PM
Reposted by Nic Darling
brucespringsteen.net
I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Stay free
Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio)
YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen
youtu.be
January 28, 2026 at 5:02 PM
Reposted by Nic Darling
willoremus.com
Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books to oversee its secret "Project Panama," new court docs show — quietly buying millions of used books in bulk, breaking their spines and scanning them to feed into its Claude chatbot. wapo.st/4rjXAMQ
Within about a year, according to the filings, the company had spent tens of millions of dollars to acquire and slice the spines off millions of books, before scanning their pages to feed more knowledge into the AI models behind products such as its popular chatbot Claude. Details of Project Panama, which have not been previously reported, emerged in more than 4,000 pages of documents in a copyright lawsuit brought by book authors against Anthropic, which has been valued by investors at $183 billion. The company paid $1.5 billion to settle the case in August but a district judge’s decision last week to unseal a slew of documents in the case more fully revealed Anthropic’s zealous pursuit of books. The new documents, along with earlier filings in other copyright cases against AI companies, show the lengths to which tech firms such as Anthropic, Meta, Google and OpenAI went to obtain colossal troves of data with which to “train” their software. The Anthropic case was part of a wave of lawsuits brought against AI companies by authors, artists, photographers and news outlets. Filings in the cases show top tech firms in a frantic, sometimes clandestine race to acquire the collected works of humanity.
January 27, 2026 at 3:27 PM
Reposted by Nic Darling
georgetakei.bsky.social
After being held in two of them as a boy, I fought for decades urging America to never again build concentration camps and put human beings in them. It breaks my heart to watch this happen twice now in my own lifetime.
Screenshot of an X.com post by The Associated Press (@AP) stating that dozens of immigrant families protested for better treatment behind fences at a Texas detention facility, where a 5-year-old Ecuadorian boy and his father were sent after being detained in Minnesota. Below is a video thumbnail showing a crowd gathered outdoors along a fenced walkway; many people wear bright blue or red outerwear, and some hold signs.
January 27, 2026 at 9:30 PM
Reposted by Nic Darling
phdhurtbrain.bsky.social
Hard to describe something I could possibly hate more than “Machine that destroys books to consolidate corporate information dominance”
willoremus.com Will Oremus @willoremus.com · 23d
New: Unsealed court docs detail Big Tech’s yearslong, secret race to ingest the collective works of humanity, including Anthropic’s project to “destructively scan all the books in the world.”

Gift link: wapo.st/4rjXAMQ
How Silicon Valley built AI: Buying, scanning and destroying millions of books
Court filings reveal how AI companies raced to obtain more books to feed chatbots, including by buying, scanning and disposing of millions of titles.
wapo.st
January 27, 2026 at 3:41 PM
Reposted by Nic Darling
ndrew.bsky.social
i have just gotten off a productive call with sauron where i laid out our requests

- nazgul bodycams
- morgul knife must remain sheathed unless suspect is determined to be carrying the one ring
- shelob will be the new point of contact
January 27, 2026 at 3:15 PM
Reposted by Nic Darling
dbriggs.bsky.social
#antifascistdesignclub
January 26, 2026 at 4:14 PM
Reposted by Nic Darling
jakemgrumbach.bsky.social
The largest Trump superPAC donor so far this cycle is the president of OpenAI
CONTRIBUTOR GREG BROCKMAN AMOUNT ELECTION TO DAT $25,000,000 $25,000,000
January 26, 2026 at 12:55 AM
Reposted by Nic Darling
aflcio.org
America’s unions mourn the senseless killing by federal agents of our AFGE Local 3669 union brother and VA nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti.

We reiterate our call for ICE to immediately leave Minnesota before anyone else is hurt or killed.
https://bit.ly/4pVTpFO
AFL-CIO Mourns Killing of Minneapolis Union Member, Reiterates Calls for ICE to Leave Minnesota: The AFL-CIO mourns the senseless killing of another Minneapolis resident by federal agents. Alex Jeffrey Pretti was a VA intensive care unit nurse and a member of AFGE Local 3669—a brother in our union family. Our thoughts are with Alex’s loved ones, his union siblings, and the people of Minneapolis at this devastating time. As tens of thousands of Minnesotans made clear peacefully and powerfully yesterday, the Trump administration’s horrific operation—and their actions aimed at stoking violence and chaos—must end. America’s unions join the call for ICE to immediately leave Minnesota before anyone else is hurt or killed. We demand local authorities conduct a full, transparent investigation that will lead to accountability for this tragic and violent act, and for Congress to use its power to hold ICE accountable.
January 25, 2026 at 12:22 AM
Reposted by Nic Darling
zunguzungu.bsky.social
People can only be compelled to think illegal immigration is an actual problem for them because it can be rhetorically made to resemble the unchecked capitalism that actually makes their life precarious. I can never decide if this is so obvious it's not worth saying or not.
January 25, 2026 at 10:22 AM
Reposted by Nic Darling
workingclasshistory.com
#OtD 24 Jan 1977 María Luz Nájera Julián was killed by police as she demonstrated against the fascist murder of Arturo Ruiz the day before, who was demonstrating against the jailing of political prisoners stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9652...
January 24, 2026 at 5:40 PM
Reposted by Nic Darling
meo.bsky.social
these are the 7 house democrats who voted to give ICE another $10 billion on thursday btw
Henry Cuellar (Texas), Tom Suozzi (New York), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Laura Gillen (New York), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Washington), Jared Golden (Maine), and Don Davis (North Carolina)
January 24, 2026 at 4:10 PM
Reposted by Nic Darling
ndrew.bsky.social
democrats are scared people will think theyre against this
discosaurus.bsky.social Disco @discosaurus.bsky.social · 29d
This picture making the rounds on reddit, Columbia Heights. I'm not OK.
Kid in a hat and backpack, maybe 5, getting detained
January 22, 2026 at 12:17 PM