Everything that’s happened over the past six months has been a response to an imaginary crisis. There is no immigrant invasion. No trade crisis. No scientific or governance crisis. Just people completely high off their own supply trying to fundamentally reorder society. None of this had to happen.

Soon after firing the Librarian of Congress, Trump has fired the nation’s top copyright official as well. Rep. Joe Morelle says Trump acted after the copyright official “refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.”

So if I am getting this right:
Thursday the librarian of Congress was fired.
Friday the copyright office rushed out a draft report suggesting genAI training on copyrighted works shouldn’t be legal.
Saturday the head of the copyright office is fired.

We've reached the point in our descent into fascism where the Jewish governor's house getting firebombed on Passover by a guy trying to bash his head in with a sledgehammer is overshadowed by the story of the President saying he wants to build foreign gulags for US citizens.

New, from me: Trump and Musk are engaged in a broad-based downsizing of government, using that downsizing to selectively target their enemies, while expanding their political power by trading exceptions to the downsizing.

It's a new spoils systems. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/trump-and-...

Zero interest rates let some people in Silicon Valley luck into riches without much breadth or depth of knowledge, but because they became rich, they convinced themselves they are geniuses, and that their genius extends to everything, and thus their opinions about everything are informed by genius.

The text below, dubbed the “Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide”, was published in January 2017 in a series of improvised, spontaneous tweets, which reached 3 million views within one month. #LearnFromEurope.
Thanks to @kkdumez.bsky.social for sharing.

verfassungsblog.de/the-authorit...

I'm struck by the near-total failure of leadership across civil society, in a country that fetishizes the concept. Whole sections of leadership books at every bookstore. Named, endowed "leadership" institutes and curricula across higher ed. Awards and special recognition for "leaders." AND YET

I just want to say for the record that when the history books are written centuries from now, I believe the election of Donald Trump in a free and fair election in 2024 will go down as one of the most senseless and self-destructive own goals in human history

oh did you write some code for a website that became popular once? well you must be the wisest and best of us, here let us give you unlimited authority over the future of the entire country.

So AI would have us all stagnate and never develop new opinions, new hobbies, new interests. Sounds like livestock in a pen being fed slop, never to see the sky.