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Mitch's Blog
Anthropic’s new AI model turns to blackmail when engineers try to take it offline (Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch)
‘It’s out of control’: the fight against US ‘tip-creep’ (Jem Bartholomew / The Guardian)
There is no such thing as an ethical multilevel marketing business, Cory Doctorow argues in a book review of “Little Bosses Everywhere,” by Bridget Read. They are all cults and Ponzi schemes — Amway, Mary Kay, all of them. Trump, of course, has attached his name to two separate pyramid scams.
We have been trained to think we have enormous power over the world. Whatever you dream, you can do. Anything can be bent to your will. But actually isn’t it much more interesting to imagine that you’re quite small?
— Ian Bogost
UCSD study finds stock trades by Congress ruin public faith (Amita Sharma / KPBS) — It’s bipartisan corruption. “If congressional members really care about restoring trust in the institution, this (stock trade ban) is a really easy way to do it,” UCSD doctoral student Raihan Alam said.
Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail is still inspiring and worth reading today. “We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’….”
Omaha swung 43 points to elect Democrat John Ewing Jr. over a transphobic GOP incumbent by focusing on real issues, not hate. Dems, take note.
Omaha, Nebraska, swung by 43 points to elect Black Democrat John Ewing Jr. over a Republican MAGA incumbent who ran on a platform of trans hate. Ewing focused on quality-of-life issues that voters care about.
A huge Democratic victory in Omaha offers a lesson for the party (Katrina vanden Heuvel | The Guardian)
Republican incumbent Jean Stothert won her 2021 reelection bid for a third term with almost two-thirds of the vote, and she followed the standard Republican playbook for attacking progressives.
Ewing has credentials that would appeal to conservatives. He’s a retired deputy police chief and associate minister of the city’s Salem Baptist Church.
He described Stothert’s transphobic campaign as “a made-up issue by Jean Stothert and the Republican Party.” Ewing focused on economic development, housing and road repair.
And he didn’t run away from the LGBTQ+ community, actively campaigning for the support of LGBTQ+ voters.
The Democratic message was reinforced on social media with a waggish image of the mayor peeking under the door of a bathroom stall, which featured the tagline, “Jean is focused on potties. John is focused on fixing potholes.”
How Democrats Crushed a Despicable Anti-Trans Campaign and Won a Major Election (John Nichols / The Nation)