Abby N
@orchidmistress.bsky.social
Like flowers, nature, cats, dogs, astronomy, science-fiction, art, music, and the arts.
Reposted by Abby N
"All that [tariff] money's gone into a big pot. And what Trump has done is he's taken a bunch of mates and he said to them, I like you. You're a farmer. I like the cut of your jib. You get bailed out, but the rest of us don't."
December 11, 2025 at 5:46 PM
"All that [tariff] money's gone into a big pot. And what Trump has done is he's taken a bunch of mates and he said to them, I like you. You're a farmer. I like the cut of your jib. You get bailed out, but the rest of us don't."
Reposted by Abby N
New! We worked with the Public Interest Research Group to test a bunch of LLM-driven toys ahead of the Christmas. That sexual talking teddy bear wasn't a one-off; it turns out disturbing behavior is deeply built into these toys across the board.
AI toys for kids talk about sex and issue Chinese Communist Party talking points, tests show
New research from Public Interest Research Group and tests conducted by NBC News found that a wide range of AI toys have loose guardrails.
www.nbcnews.com
December 11, 2025 at 1:24 PM
New! We worked with the Public Interest Research Group to test a bunch of LLM-driven toys ahead of the Christmas. That sexual talking teddy bear wasn't a one-off; it turns out disturbing behavior is deeply built into these toys across the board.
Reposted by Abby N
The human cost of AI: the real people, hired as "data labellers" and other euphemisms (after signing non-disclosure agreements) paid a pittance, and enduring immense harm in the process.
A devastating anatomy of how tech companies exploit, dehumanize, and ultimately replace human beings.
1/
A devastating anatomy of how tech companies exploit, dehumanize, and ultimately replace human beings.
1/
Most profound writing I read in 2026 was "The Emotional Labor Behind AI Intimacy" by a Nairobi man who dreamed of working in air traffic control but instead winds up sexting & chatting w ppl who think they're talking to AI (while AI trains on him). 16 pages & free - READ IT data-workers.org/michael/
December 11, 2025 at 12:48 PM
The human cost of AI: the real people, hired as "data labellers" and other euphemisms (after signing non-disclosure agreements) paid a pittance, and enduring immense harm in the process.
A devastating anatomy of how tech companies exploit, dehumanize, and ultimately replace human beings.
1/
A devastating anatomy of how tech companies exploit, dehumanize, and ultimately replace human beings.
1/
Reposted by Abby N
Instacart’s “dynamic pricing” makes NYT Page One ..
.. AND the NY Post wood:
$CART
@bencasselman.bsky.social
.. AND the NY Post wood:
$CART
@bencasselman.bsky.social
December 10, 2025 at 11:51 AM
Instacart’s “dynamic pricing” makes NYT Page One ..
.. AND the NY Post wood:
$CART
@bencasselman.bsky.social
.. AND the NY Post wood:
$CART
@bencasselman.bsky.social
Reposted by Abby N
Primary Sources:
- newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/the-business...
- explorethearchive.com/business-plot
- bfwclassroom.com/2025/11/18/t...
- newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/the-business...
- explorethearchive.com/business-plot
- bfwclassroom.com/2025/11/18/t...
The Business Plot, or When J.P. Morgan’s Pals Tried To Overthrow FDR - New England Historical Society
It sounded crazy, but it wasn't: The Business Plot to make Smedley Butler, a highly decorated Marine, the U.S. dictator in 1934 after overthrowing FDR.
newenglandhistoricalsociety.com
December 6, 2025 at 9:32 AM
Reposted by Abby N
Here's a digital copy of the 94 page Senate Report that investigated these treasonous acts. November 20th, 1934. This covers patriot US Major General Smedley D. Butler's whistle blowing of the ultra wealthy's attempts to subjugate & control US. 🇺🇲🗽🐸
ia800307.us.archive.org/1/items/McCo...
ia800307.us.archive.org/1/items/McCo...
ia800307.us.archive.org
December 6, 2025 at 9:31 AM
Here's a digital copy of the 94 page Senate Report that investigated these treasonous acts. November 20th, 1934. This covers patriot US Major General Smedley D. Butler's whistle blowing of the ultra wealthy's attempts to subjugate & control US. 🇺🇲🗽🐸
ia800307.us.archive.org/1/items/McCo...
ia800307.us.archive.org/1/items/McCo...
Reposted by Abby N
Rolling Stone: clearly documents a 30+ year long con job. A rural county's own leadership lined their pockets by helping ag interests destroy the water supply.
Everyone who read the article apparently??: Amazon data centers did this in 2011
www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...
Everyone who read the article apparently??: Amazon data centers did this in 2011
www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...
'The Precedent Is Flint': How Oregon's Data Center Boom Is Supercharging a Water Crisis
Amazon data centers constructed in eastern Oregon's farmland have worsened a water pollution problem that’s been linked to cancer and miscarriages.
www.rollingstone.com
December 4, 2025 at 2:16 AM
Rolling Stone: clearly documents a 30+ year long con job. A rural county's own leadership lined their pockets by helping ag interests destroy the water supply.
Everyone who read the article apparently??: Amazon data centers did this in 2011
www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...
Everyone who read the article apparently??: Amazon data centers did this in 2011
www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...
Reposted by Abby N
Like I've said before, if you have any doubts about climate change, just go to a super-boring insurance conference and listen to the super-boring panels where they dryly talk about the growing threat of disasters so catastrophic and unpredictable in scope they simply cannot be insured at any price.
Wild how the Fed chair saying that *entire regions of the United States* won’t be able to get a mortgage in the next decade barely registered as a news event
June 18, 2025 at 9:44 PM
Like I've said before, if you have any doubts about climate change, just go to a super-boring insurance conference and listen to the super-boring panels where they dryly talk about the growing threat of disasters so catastrophic and unpredictable in scope they simply cannot be insured at any price.
Reposted by Abby N
November 30, 2025
November 30, 2025
On Friday evening, the Wall Street Journal published an article about the Trump administration’s negotiations with Russia over Ukraine that illuminated the administration’s approach to the world at ho...
heathercoxrichardson.substack.com
December 1, 2025 at 7:27 AM
November 30, 2025
Reposted by Abby N
Eleven years ago, I wrote to Tom Stoppard to ask about this coup de théâtre from 1949. It took me down an unexpected rabbit hole - in memory of Stoppard, here's what I found.
November 30, 2025 at 1:38 PM
Eleven years ago, I wrote to Tom Stoppard to ask about this coup de théâtre from 1949. It took me down an unexpected rabbit hole - in memory of Stoppard, here's what I found.
Reposted by Abby N
I really appreciate that @pbsnews.org ended the interview with this graphic.
It captures, in the simplest and starkest terms, the brutal arithmetic driving this country's homelessness catastrophe.
It captures, in the simplest and starkest terms, the brutal arithmetic driving this country's homelessness catastrophe.
November 30, 2025 at 1:33 AM
I really appreciate that @pbsnews.org ended the interview with this graphic.
It captures, in the simplest and starkest terms, the brutal arithmetic driving this country's homelessness catastrophe.
It captures, in the simplest and starkest terms, the brutal arithmetic driving this country's homelessness catastrophe.
Reposted by Abby N
Her adoptive dad had sexually assaulted her for years. But when Taylor Cadle told police, she was treated like a “monster.” She was charged with lying to the police and had to write an apology letter to her abuser.
Justice finally came when Taylor took her phone and hit record.
Justice finally came when Taylor took her phone and hit record.
Police didn’t believe a 12-year-old who said she'd been raped. Then she hit record.
“If I didn’t find the evidence for them, I wasn’t too sure they would find it.”
www.motherjones.com
November 29, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Her adoptive dad had sexually assaulted her for years. But when Taylor Cadle told police, she was treated like a “monster.” She was charged with lying to the police and had to write an apology letter to her abuser.
Justice finally came when Taylor took her phone and hit record.
Justice finally came when Taylor took her phone and hit record.
Reposted by Abby N
I had my first ever go at one of those round table talking heads sort of shows, and promised myself ahead of time that I wouldn't turn into a shouting head.
And then one of the panelists said something utterly silly... I didn't shout, but you might be able to hear my eyeroll.
And then one of the panelists said something utterly silly... I didn't shout, but you might be able to hear my eyeroll.
November 27, 2025 at 5:46 PM
I had my first ever go at one of those round table talking heads sort of shows, and promised myself ahead of time that I wouldn't turn into a shouting head.
And then one of the panelists said something utterly silly... I didn't shout, but you might be able to hear my eyeroll.
And then one of the panelists said something utterly silly... I didn't shout, but you might be able to hear my eyeroll.
Reposted by Abby N
Unavoidable conclusion: SCOTUS has put 1 man in America above the law & created a king. Not the first time a case has been decided wrong. The fix for democracy lies, as it did in Dred Scott, with fixing a broken decision. Hopefully this one won’t require a civil war. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/u...
Judge Dismisses Georgia Election Interference Case Against Trump
www.nytimes.com
November 26, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Unavoidable conclusion: SCOTUS has put 1 man in America above the law & created a king. Not the first time a case has been decided wrong. The fix for democracy lies, as it did in Dred Scott, with fixing a broken decision. Hopefully this one won’t require a civil war. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/u...
Reposted by Abby N
"For months now, the tech world has been drunk on the language of inevitability. AI will transform everything. AI demand for electricity will double America’s power consumption. AI data centers will be the new steel mills, the new auto plants, the new engines of prosperity."
What Happens When the AI Bubble Blows Up on Main Street?
When this bubble bursts, the collapse won’t hit Google’s coders — it’ll hit the electricians, nurses, teachers, retirees, renters, and low-income families who never got a penny from the boom…
hartmannreport.com
November 26, 2025 at 3:41 PM
"For months now, the tech world has been drunk on the language of inevitability. AI will transform everything. AI demand for electricity will double America’s power consumption. AI data centers will be the new steel mills, the new auto plants, the new engines of prosperity."
Reposted by Abby N
LLM-based gen AI systems for writing, audio, art, and video are "digital vultures bloated on stolen books [and other human-made things] which they churn together and vomit out in imitations of words from actual thinking, feeling brains."
buttondown.com/surekhadavie...
buttondown.com/surekhadavie...
Basement adventures showed me why ChatGPT can only ever be garbage.
In The British Library. Photo by Surekha Davies. Hallo readers, First, a news flash: Join me for a virtual book launch for HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY...
buttondown.com
November 26, 2025 at 7:25 AM
LLM-based gen AI systems for writing, audio, art, and video are "digital vultures bloated on stolen books [and other human-made things] which they churn together and vomit out in imitations of words from actual thinking, feeling brains."
buttondown.com/surekhadavie...
buttondown.com/surekhadavie...
Reposted by Abby N
Every person I know who is roughly my age is dealing with something like this right now www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/o...
Opinion | ‘We Had No Idea What Was Coming’: Caring for My Aging Father
www.nytimes.com
November 24, 2025 at 4:39 PM
Every person I know who is roughly my age is dealing with something like this right now www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/o...
Reposted by Abby N
The people who make Shein's clothes labor for ten to twelve hours per day (in violation of China's labor laws), some up to seven days a week, and earn as little as 15 to 30 cents per t-shirt.
![Excerpt from a BBC article: ""We usually work, 10, 11 or 12 hours a day," says a 49-year-old woman from Jiangxi unwilling to give her name. "On Sundays we work around three hours less."
She is in an alleyway, where a dozen people are huddled around a row of bulletin boards.
They are reading the job ads on the board, while examining the stitching on a pair of chinos draped over it.
This is Shein's supply chain. The factories are contracted to make clothes on order - some small, some big. If the chinos are a hit, orders will ramp up and so must production. Factories then hire temporary workers to meet the demand their permanent staff cannot fulfil.
The migrant worker from Jiangxi is looking for a short-term contract - and the chinos are an option.
"We earn so little. The cost of living is now so high," she says, adding that she hopes to make enough to send back to her two children who are living with their grandparents.
"We get paid per piece," she explains. "It depends how difficult the item is. Something simple like a t-shirt is one-two yuan [less than a dollar] per piece and I can make around a dozen in an hour.""](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ks3gpa6ftoyaq7hmf6c4qx4c/bafkreiber7g4o5pujmzmjjzsp5dkz7blfexburuwjispfpv6dki7akjb7a@jpeg)
November 20, 2025 at 12:07 AM
The people who make Shein's clothes labor for ten to twelve hours per day (in violation of China's labor laws), some up to seven days a week, and earn as little as 15 to 30 cents per t-shirt.
Reposted by Abby N
1/Catherine Lucey, the White House correspondent for Bloomberg, asked Donald Trump about releasing the Epstein files on Air Force One over the weekend. In response, Trump leaned forward, slashing an accusatory finger her direction and barked, “Quiet! Quiet Piggy,” at her.
November 19, 2025 at 12:12 PM
1/Catherine Lucey, the White House correspondent for Bloomberg, asked Donald Trump about releasing the Epstein files on Air Force One over the weekend. In response, Trump leaned forward, slashing an accusatory finger her direction and barked, “Quiet! Quiet Piggy,” at her.
Reposted by Abby N
November 16, 2025 at 9:13 PM
Reposted by Abby N
The link to the segment is up...
It's powerful. And may be useful to share with others, including students.
@brian-goldstone.bsky.social
www.cbsnews.com/video/when-t...
It's powerful. And may be useful to share with others, including students.
@brian-goldstone.bsky.social
www.cbsnews.com/video/when-t...
November 16, 2025 at 4:35 PM
The link to the segment is up...
It's powerful. And may be useful to share with others, including students.
@brian-goldstone.bsky.social
www.cbsnews.com/video/when-t...
It's powerful. And may be useful to share with others, including students.
@brian-goldstone.bsky.social
www.cbsnews.com/video/when-t...
Reposted by Abby N
A convicted felon who had also been found liable for sexual assault and committed additional crimes in plain sight was close with a notorious child sex trafficker and likely participated in some of those crimes too got elected with much of that known and spent his presidency railing against “crime.”
November 13, 2025 at 12:50 PM
A convicted felon who had also been found liable for sexual assault and committed additional crimes in plain sight was close with a notorious child sex trafficker and likely participated in some of those crimes too got elected with much of that known and spent his presidency railing against “crime.”
Reposted by Abby N
spoke with the executive director of my local food bank today and got this really incredible line: "if you donate 1 can of green beans, we can give away 1 can of green beans. but if you donate a dollar, we can give away 6 cans of green beans"
November 10, 2025 at 7:32 PM
spoke with the executive director of my local food bank today and got this really incredible line: "if you donate 1 can of green beans, we can give away 1 can of green beans. but if you donate a dollar, we can give away 6 cans of green beans"
Reposted by Abby N
New report identifies major surge in water-related conflicts.
Violence over water is reported in every region of the world.
Pacific Institute releases an update to the Water Conflict Chronology, now documenting over 2750 cases over more than 4000 years. #water
www.worldwater.org/water-confli...
Violence over water is reported in every region of the world.
Pacific Institute releases an update to the Water Conflict Chronology, now documenting over 2750 cases over more than 4000 years. #water
www.worldwater.org/water-confli...
November 11, 2025 at 5:16 PM
New report identifies major surge in water-related conflicts.
Violence over water is reported in every region of the world.
Pacific Institute releases an update to the Water Conflict Chronology, now documenting over 2750 cases over more than 4000 years. #water
www.worldwater.org/water-confli...
Violence over water is reported in every region of the world.
Pacific Institute releases an update to the Water Conflict Chronology, now documenting over 2750 cases over more than 4000 years. #water
www.worldwater.org/water-confli...