Do we all have the same experience with our parents and computers / social media ?
Like my mom told me she read something on a website (it was Facebook), that someone sent her something on "her Facebook" (it was a post in her timeline), then that Zoom doesn’t work anymore (she wasn’t connected but "I don’t have an account it just works"), that the printer "wants" to save documents instead of printing them (it was just set on "save to pdf") etc etc 😂😂
My mother informed me on the phone that they had "an internet blackout" but my father "is still connected".
Figured out ten minutes later that her computer "tech" changed her browser but forgot to transfer the saved passwords so now she can't log into anything.
Ah poor thing that’s not her fault then, but it must have been hard to figure it out 😂
One of my all time favorites is finding programs / apps on her computer / phone and her being like “I never installed anything I just clicked next so the window blocking my screen would go away”.
And also
Mom, on the phone : A sticker appeared on my screen !
Me : A pop-up ? What did it say ?
Mom : I don’t know, I closed it. But it was in English!
"go up, go up!" instead of saying scroll down. Both my parents do it and it drives me insane. Trying to explain the difference between having the Wifi enabled on your phone and actually being connected to a wifi network also was a challenge 😆
absolutely flabbergasting to see people who have so enthusiastically succumbed to despair. like okay denethor, but some of us are gonna actually face the armies of mordor in battle nonetheless.
The thing about Denethor is that he not only succumbed to despair, he wanted to ensure that Faramir succumbed with him. Similarly, a lot of people now are not only succumbing to despair, they're actively proselytizing despair, trying to convince others to join them in their hopelessness. Despair is apparently lonely and they want company in their self-immolation.
btw denethor succumbed to despair bc he was doomscrolling on the palantir. Sauron tweaked his algorithm so he only saw bad news, and he fell into the trap of thinking the world couldn't be saved.
Sure since adopting self checkout they got rid of 99% of grocery workers and if something goes wrong you gotta just stand there for 20 minutes while the employee managing 30% of the store singlehandedly tries to juggle helping you with their other responsibilities. But at least groceries are less expensive now right. Why are you trying to whisper in my ear I have a girlfriend
the stores are flithy and disorganized and I've run into expired products on more than one occasion and there's often a grand total 3 employees for a 5000 square foor supermarket doing their best but at least they paying those guys well with plenty of benefits. folks I just recieved a memo
The notable thing here before luddite Tumblr shows up is, there's absolutely nothing fucking wrong about with self checkout machines. I love them. They save time, since instead of me waiting while the cashier scans the stuff im scanning the stuff while noone is waiting.
The problem, as always, is the capitalist mode of production, where instead of that improvement being passed onto the workers (say, you still employ the same number of people, but they work shorter hours for the same pay and also provide a better service) it's passed onto the capitalist class, while the worker is even worse off.
“It’s coming to the surface now. But it’s a marvel in itself that it has taken as long as it has. AI is really, really unpopular with the American people — even more unpopular than I’d realized, as I noted a week ago. And yet for most of the last couple years, in elite discourse, on TV and in the big news publications, you would feel very backwards and Luddite expressing more than a general caution that rogue AI intentionally blowing up the world would be a bad thing. […] As this Politico piece from a couple days ago points out, something like 80% of Americans think AI should be robustly regulated and fewer than 20% of Americans think AI will have a positive impact on America over the next 20 years. These are shocking numbers, to put it mildly. AI is running only slightly ahead of child molesters in the public imagination. And yet the signature AI policy of the Trump White House is banning states from regulating AI — a remarkable thing regardless of the fact that the president has no power to do this. These are the kinds of disconnects you only see at fluid and unstable, inflection-point moments in a country’s politics.”
—
The Grand AI Disconnect
I have yet to hear anything positive or hopeful about generative AI from a single person I respect. I’ve heard lots of marketing bullshit, lots of car salesman pressure to buy into it, but nothing from anyone with any credibility.
It’s trash. It’s polluting like none of us can comprehend. It’s wasting so much water. It’s making people even more stupid. It is directly implicated in numerous suicides, including children.
People are right to hate it. People are right to demand strict regulation.
And The People will have to remove from power every single politician and big tech predator who stands in the way.
Nobody is coming to save us from this. We will have to do it ourselves.
The charge is a pathetic attempt to change the subject from his shortcomings as an academic.
By: Dominic Green
Published: Aug 19, 2026
The Class of 2020 held a reunion on its London campus on Aug. 17.
Thousands rallied in Trafalgar Square to honor Jason Arday, the disgraced former University of Cambridge professor who was found dead at his London home a few days earlier. Arday was the youngest black professor at Cambridge when he was appointed in 2023. Speakers at the event blamed his death on “racist” British media and called for press “regulation,” which means censorship.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lately raised our hopes by announcing that “Woke 1” was over and disowning the “crazy” excesses of 2020. The identitarian left’s response to Arday’s apparent suicide shows that Woke 2 is still going strong.
At the rally, Lord Simon Woolley, the head of Homerton College, Cambridge, indicted the “rabid wolves” of the press for a “public assassination” and a “lynching” of Arday. Labour’s Diane Abbott, the longest-serving female MP in the House of Commons, denounced Nathan Cofnas, the researcher who exposed Arday, as a racist.
Meanwhile, Chris Smith, the ex-Labour minister who is now Cambridge’s chancellor, accused the media of a “racist feeding frenzy.” More than 111,000 people signed a petition, organized by the legal activists of the Good Law Project, that calls for a government inquiry because, it claims, Arday’s death was the “direct” result of “press harassment” motivated by a “significant element” of racial bias. The novelist Will Self called on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to prosecute opinion columnists and impound our laptops.
When America sneezes, Britain catches a cold. In 2020 protesters in London shouted the Black Lives Matter slogan “Hands up, don’t shoot” as they approached unarmed police. British politicians fell to their knees to endorse the claim, statistically unsupportable in the U.S. and technically impossible in the U.K., that police casually shoot black men.
We are advised not to “speak ill of the dead,” and not without reason. But the truth of an obituary isn’t the same as speaking ill. Arday’s passing is his tragedy and, as suicide is never a victimless crime, a tragedy for his family and friends. His death is one of the facts of his case. But it isn’t the final fact, for the wider repercussions are only now beginning. Nor should it be the determinative fact when we assess Arday’s career.
Arday resigned on Aug. 5 after being exposed as a fraud, fantasist and plagiarist. He appears to have stolen another sociologist’s work for his doctoral thesis. He accused his entire society of racism and claimed that he, like Claudine Gay of Harvard, was a victim of an “evil” conspiracy against black academics. A journalist from the Times of London’s higher education publication claimed that Arday set the police on him. Arday then exploited Britain’s repressive libel laws to stymie a Times investigation.
In his resignation statement, Arday admitted no guilt, showed no remorse and rejected the “narratives” that caused his fall. The London Times described the statement as “either entirely or almost entirely AI-generated.” The left’s emerging narrative elevating Arday into England’s George Floyd is similarly manufactured. It denies hard questions and difficult truths. Cambridge has announced an internal inquiry into Arday’s qualifications and appointment. The investigation should probe why Hilary Cremin, the head of Cambridge’s faculty of education, and her colleagues were “absolutely unanimous” that Arday was “the best in the world” when they hired him. It should explain why Cambridge reflexively accused his critics of racism, how it obtained his resignation and whether it offered him support afterward.
Arday was a beneficiary of elite institutions that promoted him beyond his competence and any reasonable person’s credulity. The same institutions dumped him when he embarrassed them. Elite universities train and credential the left-aligned lawyers, activists and politicians. This alliance allows institutions that should serve the public to instead serve a narrow class with an extremist agenda that would never pass the test of democratic elections.Subscribe
Britain’s speech laws are already restrictive. The Labour government that Andy Burnham inherited in July has tightened the ratchet. Mr. Burnham has yet to bend to the protesters’ demands and declare a formal inquiry into the media’s purported role in Arday’s death. He should avoid one. Press censorship stifles the truth about systemic corruption and how it weakens both the social fabric and the essential functions of the state.
The social sciences are in a replication crisis. The crisis is worst of all in education, which was Arday’s field. Researchers who can’t replicate their results aren’t real scientists. Yet blue-ribbon universities such as Cambridge remain the prime source of data for policymakers. The unreal sanctification of Arday and the unreal claims of media racism are produced and endorsed by an industry of unreal information that in turn produces and endorses unreal policies.
Reality always corrects unreality. Woke 2 will end in a hard landing for everyone.
Mr. Green is a Journal contributor and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Pair of Child’s Boots, Date Unknown, Minneapolis Institute of Art: Chinese, South and Southeast Asian Art
cream cloth soles; black and blue uppers with multicolored floral embroidery, green and black brocade and orange and yellow brocade
Size: 7 5/16 x 2 x 4 ½ in. (18.57 x 5.08 x 11.43 cm) (each)
Medium: Silk, cotton (?)
In the official Japanese translation of George Orwell's 1984 (most commonly the 1958 translation by Hisashi Inoue, published by Hayakawa Publishing, which remains the standard and most widely read version), "Big Brother" is translated as: ビッグ・ブラザー (Biggu Burazā)
It is almost always written in katakana as ビッグ・ブラザー, keeping the English pronunciation intact, rather than being translated into a meaningful Japanese phrase (e.g., they did not use something like 大兄貴 or 兄貴兄さん).
This direct katakana rendering is used consistently throughout the book and has become the standard way Japanese speakers refer to the character/concept, even in discussions outside the novel. You’ll occasionally see it written in English as "Big Brother" in Japanese articles or subtitles, but when rendered in Japanese script, it’s universally ビッグ・ブラザー.
An explainer for why I don't fuck with algorithmic social media
If you give a pigeon a little button to peck that releases pigeon food, it will push the button when it's hungry.
If you give a pigeon a button to peck that releases food every 5 pecks, it will peck it more often.
If you give a pigeon a button to peck that releases food at a randomly selected, always shifting number of pecks, the pigeon will peck that fucking button all day long.
Algorithm based social media is not set up to give you the best most fun stuff all the time, it is set up to give you a bunch of stress and nothingness with a randomized reward of something that actually makes you happy, because they want you pecking that button all damn day. It is a slot machine of content, meant to keep you putting in quarters made of your time and attention till you've nothing yet.
At least if I'm having a shit day on my own Tumblr feed it's because I've made a bad choice about who to follow and I can fix it.
the worst part is that InstaTwitFace offers almost zero reward in the sense that your curated dashboard here does - the techbros in charge of those platforms have decided "pissed off" leads to greater "engagement" than showing users what they actually want
amandla
dailybridgerton
jimmyeatworldofficial
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
yousharknotpass
