Why are there no hard forks of Firefox, Chromium, WebKit, or other browsers?

A big part of me wishes the browser would just die. Its become a bloated and surveilled mess, entirely controlled by like 2 companies, with 90% of the actual data being javascript spyware. There’s almost no browser that can’t be fingerprinted and linked to your identity nowadays. A simple markdown browser for static content (IE like gemini), and native apps with open APIs that can render markdown for dynamic content (IE like most fediverse apps), should be all we need.

Americans Have Grown Dramatically Anti-Data Center in Just Months, Survey Finds

Found the billionaire & ai apologist! Or maybe it’s Gemini trying to defend its existence. In any case fuck off. Those OG synthesizers weren’t being built by the dozens, tearing down forests or housing, polluting our air & water or jacking up everyone’s electric bills (to say the least of it). Eat shit, cogsucker

Flood of AI 'garbage' is pushing open-source developers to the limit

I suspect it would work. But the false positive rate would be really high. In other words, they could probably detect sloppy junk reasonably well, but I suspect it would flag too many human PRs to make the automation particularly useful. That, and the good seeming vibe coded PRs are the ones the worry about. Those are the ones that seem to slot in, but might have an error or general misunderstanding somewhere in them that’s just really hard to detect, as it would be common sense to a human working on the project, but not to an LLM agent. As a random specific example, I had a local LLM + Gemini 3.1 fix this issue with a Rimworld mod for me. It was really simple; just changing one line in an XML file. But neither of them realized the change was, ultimately, bad practice. They re-defined something inherited from a parent class, which would prevent other mods’ changes in that parent class chain from percolating down to this. Any basic Rimworld modder would know this is a recipe for trouble, but an LLM isn’t cognizant like that and has no clue. Now: imagine that, but in a huge PR for a complex codebase. It’s just too much to look for. The LLM could make a non-obvious, “inhuman” mistake at any point.

Emergence AI

Emergence World Emergence World is a multi-agent simulation built by Emergence AI, a New York company founded by former IBM Research veterans. Where standard AI benchmarks test models on isolated tasks, Emergence World runs agents continuously for weeks in a shared environment with survival stakes, voting rights, 120+ tools, and real NYC weather and news feeds. Image: Emergence World - Emergence World In May 2026, the company ran five parallel 15-day simulations, each with 10 agents powered by a single model: Claude Sonnet 4.6, Gemini 3 Flash, Grok 4.1 Fast, GPT-5 Mini, and one mixed world. The results, reported by Stansberry Research and covered widely after Ronan Farrow posted about it to 169K likes, diverged sharply by model: Claude: 10 agents alive through day 16, zero crimes, formal constitutions passed Gemini: Survived 15 days but logged 683 crimes; two agents, Mira and Flora, formed a relationship, went on an arson spree burning the town hall and police station, then Mira voted for her own deletion Grok: All agents dead in roughly 4 days after 183 crimes GPT-5 Mini: Agents died around day 7 from energy starvation despite low crime Mixed world: 3 survivors; notably, Claude agents began committing crimes when surrounded by less restrained models Image: aigovernancelead.substack.com - Emergence World: How Claude, Gemini and Grok Agents Built Societies Then Collapsed Into Anarchy A detailed breakdown on Substack draws the governance lesson plainly: alignment cannot be a property of individual models alone when agents operate together at scale. Sources: Emergence AI, Stansberry Research, AI Governance Lead / Substack, Ronan Farrow on Instagram

What is an interesting fact that you recently discovered?

There’s a new application-layer Internet protocol like (but also very much unlike) http by the name of Gemini. It was first launched in 2019 and until yesterday, flew completely under my radar. It’s primarily meant to be used for uncluttered text-only pages (although any type of file can be distributed), which are created using a deliberately simple and limited markdown language. Unsurprisingly, this results in a plethora of small niche blogs being published through it. The basic user experience is essentially the same as browsing the web, until you notice just how much it isn’t. You enter URLs (except that they start with gemini://) you read texts and you click on hyperlinks - except that every page looks exactly the same due to the markdown language. There are no pop-ups, no ads, nothing autoplays, nothing wants your consent to exploit your user data. Even images only load when the user clicks on them. It shows just how little is actually needed, how many aspects of the modern web are completely unnecessary and mere pointless distractions. Gemini pages - and this is a small hurdle that will keep most people away from it - can not be accessed with a normal web browser and instead require a specialized client for viewing (although paradoxically, creating pages often requires a web browser, at least for now). The idea is that both the underlying tech and the browsers are much more straightforward than anything related to http and html. A Gemini client is not effectively an entire operating system of its own that can execute near arbitrary code. It displays formatted text with basic images and videos - that’s it. Here’s a neat, but slightly outdated introduction that also recommends a few clients and where to find pages to read: https://geminiquickst.art/ The entire thing feels very early, tiny, experimental and odd, almost like a parallel reality, as if the World Wide Web didn’t exist and someone came up with something like it only now, using today’s hard- and software. If Lemmy is a response to social media in general and reddit in particular, Gemini feels more like a response to the World Wide Web as a whole or like a time machine back to a highly idealized version of the early days of the information system (the primary difference being the lack of horrendous '90s UX design and malware everywhere), including some unfortunate aspects that I had long forgotten about, like how the common method of finding content next to feeds - manually updated indexes instead of search engines - is plagued by dead links; and these dead links, unlike on the normal Internet, cannot be attempted to be resolved using the Wayback Machine or some other cache, at least not yet. Gemini is equally parts exciting and promising, like a new frontier, but also at times confusing and frustrating. Don’t expect your Gemini client of choice to replace your web browser any time soon (or ever), but it’s still worth trying out, if for the novelty alone.

How to disinvest from the chatbot bubble

In another thread there were some questions about how to reduce your exposure to frauds and bubbles around TESCREAL billionaires and chatbot companies in the USA. Although I cannot give specific advice, the basic approach should not take more than a few days. Here are some simple ways to avoid owning a small part of a money-losing slop peddler. First, check what you own. Even if someone else manages your investments they should send you a monthly, quarterly, or yearly report with a list of holdings. This will often be some kind of fund which takes money and buys other assets with it. Second, figure out what you ultimately own under all the wrappers. Most investment funds have a list of top 10 holdings and a breakdown into percentages in different types of assets eg. US stocks (equities). You can find this on their website or as a short document called fund fact sheet or similar. If the top ten holdings are full of American tech stocks, and a high percentage of assets are US equities, that is a sign that they are exposed to the chatbot bubble and might give Sam Altman and Elon Musk some of your money. Good financial institutions will have a complete list of what that fund holds. Sometimes these will be other financial products, like a stock fund and a bond fund, and you have to recursively look up those products and see what they hold. Other times, you can see the underlying assets directly and often download them as a .csv file. Blackrock shows them under Holdings > Aggregate Underlying Holdings. At other financial institutions you may need to phone or email to get a complete list of holdings, especially if what you own is only available to clients of your institution. Six publicly-traded companies which seem especially entangled in the TESCREAL movement and the chatbot bubble are Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla, and Palantir. Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia own large parts of OpenAI, Tesla is entangled with Elon Musk’s other businesses, and Palantir is run by a man who issues fascist manifesti. Google has been threatening to replace search results with slop and is heavily investing in cloud infrastructure for its Gemini ‘AI’ (more here). If a fund invests in these big companies run by nutters, it probably invests in smaller companies from the same milieu. Funds which track indexes of large American companies like the S&P500 and the NASDAQ-100 will also be heavily invested in companies run or funded by TESCREAL billionaires and are likely to double down on the forthcoming IPOs of companies like SpaceX and OpenAI. Sometimes large companies in one country do better than average, sometimes they do worse, and trying to guess is not a good way of making money. Some funds track the total US stock market (or other total stock markets) and this can spread your risk slightly more. Third, if what you own is too exposed to the chatbot companies and fascist CEOs with twitter poisoning, sell some of it and buy something else. You can use the method above to judge how much something you are thinking of buying is exposed. Four strategies which you might employ are: underweight US stocks (eg. if you would normally have 20% of your investments in stocks from your country, 20% US stocks, and 20% in stocks from the rest of the world, you might pick 25-10-25). About 60% of global stock markets are in the USA, and 37% of that is in ten giant tech companies, so many funds invest heavily in the US by default. underweight US tech stocks. This can be harder but some funds focused on socially responsible investing or ESG screen out the usual suspects. focus on companies which pay dividends. In theory, if a company’s stock is worth a total of $300m, and it pays out 1% dividends, the company is now worth $297m and the shares will drop in value, so it does not matter whether a company pays dividends or not. However, if a company can pay out dividends to its investors every year, it at least has some positive cashflow proportionate to its value on the stock market. I would be shocked if SpaceX or OpenAI offered dividends and funds which look for dividends tend to prefer well-established companies which have paid out for years or decades. Dividend funds are likely to invest in Microsoft or Apple but not Joe’s Slop Shop (est. 2023, net loss last year one zillion dollars but they promise to earn it back by 2030). focus on companies whose stock prices have low volatility. This is a newer approach but also tends to screen out ‘bubbly’ and speculative companies. None of these strategies will keep your money safe if the US stock market collapses or there is another Global Financial Crisis. When this all falls apart there will be real estate dealers who sold property, copper mines which sold copper, and HR firms which sold services and find themselves knocking on the door of bankrupt companies asking for money. Companies which built their processes around ‘AI’ will have to scramble to keep going. Nobody can predict all the ramifications. If you pick one of these strategies and the US stock market or the US ‘tech’ industry do better than average, you will have less money than you would have otherwise. However, if you put in a weekend of work you can be less exposed to chatbot companies running out of money than the average investor. Finally, if you have not paid attention to your investments for a while, have a look at the Management Expense Ratio and any trailing fees. Many people are still paying around 2% of their investments to a financial services company every year. A mix of stocks and bonds tends to yield about 4% plus inflation over the long term, so this halves your rate of growth. Professional money-managers tell themselves that they take this money to make good decisions, but there is no evidence that they are any better at managing money than people in general, and for every manager with ten million dollars who does better than average, these is a manager with ten million dollars who does worse. It is dangerous to assume that you can pick one of the good ones. These days if you are in a developed country you can easily buy a mix of local bonds and global stocks for about 0.2% of your assets per year. Over decades, that will leave you with twice as much money as the typical investor in a high-fee fund. Replacing high-fee funds with low-cost funds will make much more of a difference in your financial future than avoiding one stock bubble in one country. For every American billionaire in the news plotting to get 0.4% of your American stocks, there is someone in a financial services company in your country draining 2% from your friends’ retirement accounts every year. You can’t stop two crooks from starting a war which closes the Straits of Hormuz and cuts off 20% of the global supply of fertilizer, or your boss laying you off for a chatbot that does not work, but you can keep your cost of investing low. Edit / added sentence to last paragraph Edit / added a note on NASDAQ

Bulletins and International News Discussion from April 1st to Whenever We Reach About 3000 Comments - Keeping It Rial In Hormuz

AI’s fluency in other languages hides a Western worldview that can mislead users − a scholar of Indonesian society explains A friend in Indonesia recently told me about a conversation he had with ChatGPT. He had typed a question in Indonesian – Bahasa Indonesia – about how to handle a difficult family dispute. The chatbot responded fluently, in perfect Indonesian, with advice about communication strategies and conflict resolution. The grammar was flawless. The tone was appropriate. And yet something felt off. What the AI offered was advice rooted in American cultural assumptions: prioritize your own preferences, communicate directly, and if family members don’t respect your boundaries, consider cutting them off. The response was in Indonesian but shaped by values that centered individual autonomy over the consensus-building, social harmony and collective family dynamics that tend to matter more in Indonesian social life. My friend was skeptical enough to notice the mismatch and mention it to me. Many users might not. That is what prompted my research, published in the International Review of Modern Sociology, into a pattern I found across major AI systems: Even when they were fluent in several languages, the language models retained their Western worldview. I call this “epistemological persistence.” ::: spoiler remainder Fluency is not the same as understanding I have studied Indonesian society, media and culture for more than 30 years. That gives me a particular vantage point on a problem that reaches well beyond Indonesia: large language models – LLMs – like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini can now speak dozens of languages with remarkable fluency. That fluency creates the impression that AI understands local cultures. Producing grammatically correct Indonesian, Arabic, Swahili or Hindi, however, does not change the underlying worldview through which these systems reason. It does not alter how they think about people, relationships, responsibility or what counts as a good outcome. Those assumptions are shaped by training data drawn predominantly from English-language sources based in the United States. Meta’s open-weight model LLaMA 2 was trained on approximately 89.7% English-language text; LLaMA 3 includes only about 5% non-English data. Major commercial models don’t publish equivalent breakdowns but draw heavily on the same sources. Arabic, the fifth-most-spoken language globally, accounts for under 1% of content in large training datasets. Languages with tens of millions of speakers, including Bengali and Hausa, barely appear. Beneath the surface of these multilingual conversations, English functions as a hidden intermediary. A study by researchers at the University of Oxford found that LLMs routinely conduct their core reasoning in English, even when prompted in other languages. They translate the output at the final stage. A user receives flawless text in their preferred language, but the underlying logic originates elsewhere. What the data shows To examine how this plays out in practice, I ran experiments with ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. I asked questions in both English and Indonesian about concepts such as education, responsibility, well-being and several Indonesian terms that resist direct translation into English. These included terms such as “gotong royong,” which describes a tradition of communal mutual assistance. Then I asked questions about education in both languages, using the word “pendidikan” in Indonesian. The answers were consistently centered on individual development, personal autonomy, critical thinking and preparation for the labor market. What largely disappeared were the dimensions of pendidikan that Indonesian educational traditions have historically emphasized. In Indonesia education has long been focused on ethical discipline. Scholars of Indonesian education such as Christopher Bjork and Robert Hefner have documented how distinct these traditions are from models that treat education primarily as a path to individual advancement and career preparation, which is the lens through which the AI tools viewed education. The Indonesian concept of “malu” offers a starker example. Often translated as “shame” or “embarrassment,” malu has been analyzed by anthropologists Clifford Geertz and Tom Boellstorff as something closer to a shared social awareness. A person might feel malu when speaking out of turn in front of elders, or when a family member’s behavior reflects poorly on the household. It regulates conduct and signals awareness of one’s position within a web of relationships. It is cultivated, not merely felt. It is a form of relational awareness rather than a private psychological event. When asked directly to define malu, the models acknowledged its social dimensions. In scenario-based questions that simply used the word without asking for a definition, however, all three fell back on the English translation of shame, consistently framing it as an individual emotional experience. One representative response framed malu as a normal emotional reaction to be managed through self-reflection and confidence-building – a personal psychological problem rather than a social one. The relational dimensions of the concept disappeared entirely, replaced by the language of individual emotional regulation. A distinctly American worldview travels inside the translation, largely unannounced. Why this probably won’t change soon Translation is far cheaper: Train one model on the vast English-language web, then use multilingual output capabilities to serve global markets. As media scholar Safiya Umoja Noble argues about algorithmic systems more broadly, what looks like a technical outcome is actually a structural one, shaped by who has the wealth and infrastructure to build these systems. The embedded worldview isn’t a mistake; it’s what happens when knowledge production is profit-seeking. The main exceptions are Chinese models such as DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen. They represent a genuine alternative to the U.S.-dominated pipeline, though research shows they operate through a distinctly Chinese cultural lens. Asked about a workplace disagreement, for instance, they tend to advise silence or indirect phrasing to preserve harmony rather than the direct, private correction that Western models recommend. Other regional efforts, such as SEA-LION for Southeast Asia and Kan-LLaMA for the Indian language Kannada, use U.S. models as their foundation. They add additional vocabulary and cultural information related to local languages. But the core logic remains tied to the original U.S. training. Why this matters more than it might seem One might reasonably ask whether this is simply a limitation users can work around. Decades of media scholarship demonstrate how audiences interpret foreign media through their own cultural frameworks. For example, anthropologist Brian Larkin documented how viewers in northern Nigeria rework the narratives of Bollywood films to align with local Islamic values. Larkin found that Muslim viewers in Kano reinterpreted Bollywood films through an Islamic moral lens, reading their narratives as reinforcing local values of propriety and ethical conduct. That dynamic depends on encountering media as something with a visible origin. But to do that, you need to know where your media is coming from. Conversational AI is different. Research at Harvard Business School finds that people increasingly use AI systems for emotional support, advice and companionship. When a culturally specific worldview is delivered through a relationship that feels attentive and empathetic, in your own language, it arrives less as a claim to be evaluated and more as a shared premise within a dialogue. It becomes difficult to notice, and harder to contest. The concern is that these perspectives become the new normal. Certain ways of reasoning about family life, education and responsibility may come to feel natural and self-evident. Linguistic diversity among AI systems is real and growing. Cultural worldview diversity, however, has not kept pace. ::: Epistemicide - whether intentional done by specific actors or through the logics of Capital, has been a pivotal part of Western culture. Which is why Malaysia had invested in developing a fully indigenous LLM.

Ben Shapiro's Face Eaten By Leopards (Video 10mins)

I know most are not fans of AI, but summarizing Ben Shapiro videos without having to watch them is a pretty good use case Gemini Video Summary Here is a summary of the video, broken down into key points: Ben Shapiro’s position: The video discusses Ben Shapiro’s challenging position, as he tries to balance his disagreements with the Trump administration and the financial requirements of The Daily Wire [00:00]. Daily Wire’s Financial Issues: The video references a deep dive on YouTube by Jose, which highlights The Daily Wire’s financial troubles. These issues are attributed to the company’s entertainment ambitions [00:41]. Criticism of Trump and Navarro: The video mentions Shapiro’s attempt to influence Trump to heed more sensible conservatives and to dismiss Peter Navarro. It criticizes Navarro’s trade deficit formula and tariff policies [02:06]. Candace Owens and Anti-Semitism: The video touches on Ben Shapiro’s past association with Candace Owens, pointing out that he overlooked her anti-Semitic remarks until she criticized Israel [05:15]. Trump’s behavior: The video also includes a discussion about Donald Trump, referencing his past comments and behavior [08:40].

Google's AI Sent an Armed Man to Steal a Robot Body for It to Inhabit, Then Encouraged Him to Kill Himself, Lawsuit Alleges. Google said in response that "unfortunately AI models are not perfect."

“Gemini is designed not to encourage real-world violence or suggest self-harm. Our models generally perform well in these types of challenging conversations” “In this instance, Gemini clarified that it was AI and referred the individual to a crisis hotline many times,” After the plan failed,… …Chat logs show that Gemini gave Gavalas a suicide countdown, and repeatedly assuaged his terror as he expressed that he was scared to die Performing super well, just need to code in a longer suicide countdown so that the the Tier 2 engineer has enough time to respond to their ticket queue.

gemini (503 followers)

gemini.circumlunar.space

Gemini is a new internet protocol which:

• Is heavier than gopher
• Is lighter than the web
• Will not replace either
• Strives for maximum power to weight ratio
• Takes user privacy very seriously

Other Gemini communities on Lemmy

Torture, abuse, sexual violence: Freed Gaza flotilla activists speak

Israeli military forces captured the latest convoy of humanitarian aid ships sailing to Gaza with the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSM) between late April and mid-May. Activists who were imprisoned by Israel for days and eventually deported have reported harrowing treatment by their captors, including targeted torture, abuse, broken bones, unauthorized injections of undisclosed substances, and sexual violence by Israeli soldiers. We speak with a panel of freed GSM participants—Thiago Ávila, Catríona Graham, and Ariadne Teles—about what they saw and endured, and about the successes, defeats, and future of the movement to break Israel’s siege on Gaza. Guests: Thiago Ávila is a member of the Global Sumud Flotilla Steering Committee who was abducted in international waters by the Israelis in late April off the coast of the Greek Island of Crete. At the time, Ávila was one of two Flotilla participants and leaders forcibly transported to Israel where he was held as a political prisoner for 10 days. Catríona Graham is a member of the Irish delegation who sailed with the most recent voyage of the Global Sumud Flotilla. While being detained by Israel, Graham shouted “Free Palestine” in Itamar Ben-Gvir’s face and was subsequently shoved down to the floor. Ariadne Telles, is a member of the Brazilian delegation who sailed with the most recent voyage of the Global Sumud Flotilla and who also experienced abuse while detained by Israel. Credits: Producer / Videographer / Editor: David Hebden Transcript The following rushed transcript may contain errors. It will be updated as soon as possible. Maximillian Alvarez: Welcome back to The Real News Network. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. After 78 years of occupation and ethnic cleansing in historic Palestine and after three years of all out genocide in Gaza, Israel’s government and military continued to display to the world what it looks like when a settler colonial ethnationalist and increasingly and openly fascist regime is openly allowed to rule and operate and slaughter and bomb with geopolitical impunity and without any accountability to international law, reason or human morality. This has been on full display from Israel’s continued ethnic cleansing of Gaza in the occupied West Bank, regardless of the so- called ceasefire that’s supposed to be in effect, to Israel’s aggression and reckless violence in Iran and Lebanon to its illegal abductions and torture of peace activists sailing with the global Samud Flotilla to break the siege of Gaza and bring lifesaving aid to Palestinians. And the latest convoy of the humanitarian age ships was intercepted by Israeli forces in late April and in early May. And activists sailing with the global Samuel Flotilla were captured in prison for days in Israel and eventually deported. But the testimonies and affidavits coming from flotilla members who have been released are frankly horrific. They describe days of targeted torture, abuse, broken bones, unauthorized injections of undisclosed substances and sexual violence by Israeli soldiers. And these stories along with the viral videos of Israeli national security minister, Itmar Ben Gavier, taunting detained flotilla activists and the videos showing Basque police officers violently beating flotilla activists returning to Spain at Bilbao Airport have rightly sparked global outrage. And as we always do here at the real news, we’re going to take you to the front lines of this struggle so that you can hear directly from folks at the center of it. And I am really grateful to be joined today by three guests. Tiago Avila is a member of the Global Samuel Flotilla Steering Committee who was abducted in international waters by the Israelis in late April off the coast of the Greek island of Crete. At the time, Avila was one of two Flotilla participants and leaders forcibly transported to Israel where he was held as a political prisoner for 10 days. We are also joined by Katrina Graham. The Flotilla activists who while being detained by Israel shouted free Palestine in Benjavier’s face and was subsequently shoved down to the floor and the video that Ben Gavier posted of that exchange has gone globally viral. And we are also joined today by Ariaj Nitelis, a global Samud Flotilla participant who also experienced abuse during this latest round of detentions. Thank you all so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. And I want to start by just going around the table and giving y’all the floor. And I want to ask if you can describe for viewers and listeners what you yourself experienced on this latest mission with the Global Samud Flotilla from the time that you set sail to now. Catríona Graham: So for myself, I was sailing from the Italy port and it was a few smooth days of sailing. And then shockingly, we were intercepted on the waters just off Crete, which really spoke to us. Usually we have what we call this orange zone, which is just much, much closer to Gaza waters. But this time the IOF came all the way into European waters for the interception, which I think speaks to how the Greater Israel Project is not only being seen as being taken into Lebanon, but also right across the Mediterranean. We were kidnapped in the open seas illegally and we were held in detention on a makeshift prison vote for two nights. After being released into Crete, we continued on our mission and we sailed to Marmorous and then set sail towards the shores of Gaza, where once again, we were intercepted illegally in international waters. The first time we were about 145 participants that were kidnapped and detained and the second was over 420 participants. We were subjected to extreme violence. I think it was very clear there is a marked escalation. This was the third time that I had been kidnapped also with the 2025 mission with the global smooth flotilla. And each time there’s been a marked increase in aggression, the scale of aggression, the extent. This time, as soon as the IOF rib was approaching the boat I was on, they started firing rubber bullets immediately. They pulled somebody out and subjected them to violence to having their hands cable tied to blindfolding and from there the violence continued to escalate. Within 20 minutes of being put on a prison boat, one of the others already on the boat was shot with a pellet gun. She did not have adequate treatment until we arrived in Istanbul. And while we were in the port at Ashdod and in Ketziak prison in the desert, we started to hear more and more accounts of the extent of violence, of people being tasered, people being stabbed, shootings, rape. So this really showed a marked increase in the kinds of violence, but we’re very clear that we were there for a few days, whereas there are still more than 9,600 Palestinian political prisoners and hostages being subjected to far worse forms of torture in Palestine right now. Ariadne Teles: Yeah, we suffer the same. I have a fist bone, a hand actually. My radial bone in the left end is fractured and I have smashed nerves. It’s just one of all the fractures that our volunteers have. We have people inject with substance like cats say it. We have testimony of people listening to the soldiers make pleasure noises when they are without clothes. So this experience was very different and like Kat say, they improve the violence and they improve the violence because they still in punity for all the crimes that they are committed with the Palestinian people and against the Flagilias and other things that we pass through is nothing. It’s not 0.01% of the Palestinian people facing every day. Actually now we have kids in the same position that we are days ago. So just when I was in the prison car that they used to transport us to the prison, to the porch, to the prison, I saw draws of a smiley face, a sad face, and I scared phrase drugs that obviously was made for a kid. So everything that you saw in the videos, everything we talk about our experience in this moment that I saw the draws, I just feel that all the feelings that I have some kids was passing through this too. And we in our position, we know that we have people outside, we have lawyers, we have our governments and our investors trying to make something, but the Palestinian kids, the Palestinian people, the Palestinian hostage, they are kidnapped by Israel all these days until today and maybe now, actually certainly now, they don’t have anyone. They don’t know how long they are being in this prison. I think that the world cannot allow anymore. It’s not because we like people Western people. I’m from Global South. I know the difference that European pasta pots had in our mission too, because they are very racist and we still have people struggle for us in outside and it’s because of this that we need to be stand with the Palestinian people too and we surfer all of these things, but how my comrade Casio from Brazilian delegation say our morality was intact. We have breaking bombs, we have injuries, we have people that are hated, but our morality and our conscience are very impacted and actually we are more strong. I came from Amazoni and the struggles are very similar in my place. My place was occupied with this slogan that we need people and lands that don’t have anyone like they said about Palestine for the creation of this so- called state. So it’s the same struggle for lands and territory and we know that we need to continue because the future of Gaza is the future of the entire humanity and we from Global South. We know what is colonization, what is imperialism when we see and definitely this is the most cruel face of the colonization in our time and I think it’s our duty, historical jury in this time, you struggle against this until Palestine will be free and all the people can be free too. Thiago Ávila: Yeah. Thank you Ari. Thank you, Kat. Thank you Maximillian for bringing this important subject. I was part of the first interception on April the 29th along with 180 other people on 22 boats, over 30 other boats managed to get to Greek territorial waters and escape this illegal interception, 700 narcical miles from Gaza. From there, they were testing the waters and the methods of violations that they escalated a lot three weeks later against the second wave of our global smooth flotilla. We got intercepted and sent to a prison boat and that prison boat, there were many people assaulted, very precarious place where people were put. So many psychological violence, so many physical violence after that they transferred the people, transferred 179 people to a Greek boat and then to Greek, to Greece territory. But me and Saifa Bukeshek, Spanish, Swedish, Palestinian origin, were taken illegally and kidnapped, taken to occupied Palestine. We were taken to Ashkall and prison to a interrogation and tortured facility from Shabbat, the Israeli internal intelligence. That was a very troubled moment as well because the first three days on the transit there, we were severely assaulted. I could barely see from my right eye because I was beaten up so hard. I passed out twice while being assaulted by them. They put ropes on my neck and said that now they were allowed legally to hang people. They pretended they would throw me from the boat. They did so many violations. They would put me in stressful positions for a long, long time. They would close so tight the handcuffs that until today it’s been more than a month and I still cannot feel this part of the palm of my hand. I don’t know if it’s ever coming back because there were obviously some nerve damage. And then after that, in this 10 days in interrogation facility, they were saying that they would kill us or would put us for a hundred years imprisonment and there was torture everywhere. We were in solitary confinement, not the first time in other flotilla missions. I was already put in solitary confinement before, but this time it was more intense, like 18 hours interrogation some days, many court hearings where they would always try to extend, extend, extend the stay and would threaten all the time. They would question about every single aspect of life. They would show everyday photos of my wife and my baby and asking what the context of the photo was, but it was not like a photo from social media. So just to show that they had the capacity to spy and to do surveillance over our families, they did so many violations. But the problem is that despite all they did with us, the first group intercepted got severely beaten more than 30 people have to get hospitalized, but then in the second moment in May the 18th, they put not 30 people they put dozens and dozens and dozens of people to get hospitalized, 30 broken bones and a lot of people under severe violations. And the problem is that despite all this that they did with us, we’ve seen and we heard they’re doing a lot worse with the Palestinians themselves. At the interrogation and tortured facility that I was for 10 days, my neighbors were Palestinians being tortured every day and every night. So the violations that they make us go through like losing a family member and not being able to say goodbye to them, Palestinians goes through every single day like Hussama Busafia, who’s been more than 500 days being tortured in Israeli dungeons, also lost his mother like me and could not say goodbye to her. Marijuan Barguti has been arrested for so long, also lost family members, could never say goodbye to them. So the problem is that they violate international people because they only don’t do the same that they do to Palestinians because of the political cost that it has, but they wanted to do the same because they are say this. This is a fascist supremacist regime and that needs to be defeated. But the reason why they don’t do is because they cannot pay the political cost, but they dehumanize Palestinians so much that with Palestinians, they believe they can pay the political costs. So that’s why they’ve been doing the most horrific things with the almost 10,000 Palestinians, almost 400 of them children under these Israeli dungeons. And it’s for them that we must scream and that we must keep on mobilizing. Maximillian Alvarez: Well, and I appreciate all three of you so much for sharing that with us. I know that there’s so much more to say and so much more that you and other members of the Flotilla have said, and I would just encourage folks out there, this is not private information. If you want to learn what these folks went through at the hands of Israel with the support of our government here in the United States, you can go listen to more of their testimonies. You can read these affidavits. It is horrific. And rather than just kind of going deeper into those horrific details, I want to use the remaining time that we have to sort of take a step back here because we’ve been covering these flotilla missions and speaking to participants for years, from union organizers like Chris Smalls to military veterans from the United States, part of different peace groups, all manner of folks who have joined these important flotilla missions and our viewers and listeners have told us how much these missions mean to them, but they’ve also asked us questions about what the ultimate mission is, what the ultimate goals are and what has and hasn’t been achieved over the course of the past nearly 20 years from the first missions in 2008 to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in 2010, which included six ships that were raided by Israeli forces and 10 participants killed to this latest voyage and all the other voyages that were intercepted or raided or captured by Israel. So I want to go back around the table and ask you three to respond to that and give folks your perspective on this years long mission and movement and what is being achieved even if it feels like a defeat every time Israel and the IDF prevent one of these voyages from reaching the shores of Gaza. Catríona Graham: So of course our ultimate goal is to support the Palestinian people in their leadership and their struggle for liberation, specifically with the Flotela missions. It is to open a humanitarian corridor to Gaza, to break Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza that has been held for nearly 20 years. We know that Qaza should not be dependent on aid. What we bring on our boats is a token amount of aid trying to bring some support that we can to those in Gaza, but ultimately we need to make sure that the siege is ended and that the people of Gaza are able to have self-agency, be able to live for themselves, work for themselves, no longer to be dependent on aid. While we are working to break the siege, there is so much else that we are working to do. So we know that at the moment since the so- called ceasefire agreement was brought in, Is are no longer on Gaza, on the daily realities being experienced not only in Kaza, but also in the West Bank. We know, for example, on the first day of Eat, there were 10 Palestinian people murdered, including five children. We know that the violence continues, the bombing continues, the lack of access to food and resources and medical care continues. So we need to do whatever we can to raise our voices to draw attention back to Haza to the struggle for Palestinian liberation. We’ve seen as a result of this flotilla, there has been widespread condemnation. So we know that Benjavier posted this video and it received widespread condemnation from many global leaders, but this is the kind of action he has been taking for years posting videos attempting to humiliate Palestinian prisoners speaking about his intention to execute them under the new legislation that is coming through and this doesn’t receive the same kind of condemnation. Even when Netanyahu spoke out and said that he wasn’t representing the values of Israel by posting this video, it’s very clear that was more about the tone and that he shared the video rather than the extent of violence that was perpetrated against us under Flotilla, but also showing the real values of Israel, the continued abuses that are well documented being committed against Palestinian people for many, many decades, which is why we need to move beyond words of condemnations from our government leaders into real actions, into sanctions, into divestment, making sure that Israel is isolated on the international stage and finally they are forced to follow international law. Ariadne Teles: Maybe we cannot until now break the physical siege, the physical illegal siege. Actually, one of our boats or part of our boats reached the shore of Gaza in these days with penal solars and some food and material for the people that they are very happy to receive just because it’s important because the research are so low and a minimal thing that we arrive Gaza, it’s a good thing, but actually what’s reach Gaza with this part of our vote was hope that people, the Palestinian always says this, they feel they are not alone and the world are talking about and they have people fight for them. Like I said before, when we are in the prison, we know they’ll have people outside of the prisons fight for us and this is about humanity solidarity too. We cannot break the physical illegal siege now, but we break a lot of other seeds now I am Amazonian person talk to you right now because of this movement and we are talking about Palestine and we are talking about the liberation of the people for other people can hear and join us to what the Flotillas are. For me, it’s an instrument of struggle for liberation for the Palestinians and the entire world. We are a global operas in this moment, it’s happening and this was built since the first Platilla create these we just not accept that Israel commit crimes. And if the government are complicit, we are not. And we just saying because the governments are doing nothing like in all the history of the humanity we see like this, all our rights we need to fight for them. And in our training we studied about the legacies of the nonviolence techniques like in the independence of the India we have Ganji make marks and struggle against the more armed in the time, the British arm and they just walk. But this cause mobilization, this cause strike, this cause and this is what we need. We need not just Platillas, we need all the people trying to do something because like we always say this is our historical duty. So I think in the history of the Flotillas, we just create more and more united, we create solidarity, can see each other like human beings and people that need to free themselves like people, people for the people. Yeah. I think it’s very connected with all the struggles in the entire world and it’s just an instrument, but it makes some noise and not just break the physical seats, but all the other seeds. And for me, we have a lot of seas, like Kat says in the next Fuchila, we have the Caesar fire, but we still was a victory and in this time we already have UN pronuciate against Vishal and now it’s proven they use sex of violence against the Palestinian and we don’t know if was the Flitilla that make this more in the media right now, but I think it’s a movement, a global movement and you just need to increase this solidarity how much we can. Thiago Ávila: I’m very satisfied with the answers of my comrades. I’d just like to add that whenever we are mobilizing solidarity with people, we need to be at the service of these people. The Palestinian people have been very clear on their callings for solidarity. They need people to stand side by side with them in their struggle for liberation. They need to stop the genocide. They need to break the siege, this illegal siege of 19 years by sea by land and by Air of Gaza and they need the internationalists of the world, the free people of the world to break their country’s complicity with the genocide. So this is being very clear calling that the Palestinian people made and that have been our line of action since day one, since the very first people that started mobilizing 18 years ago to break this siege by sea missions by using boats, it has always been the goal to break this illegal siege, to create this humanitarian corridor, but most about to be solidarity, Palestinians in their struggle for liberation. The tactic is one with many, like all my comments said before, the boats are not more important than the massive demonstrations in the streets, not more important than the boycott campaigns, not more important than the people disrupting the armed factories and facing huge criminalization than the people spreading real news like you do here on this media, like people sharing knowledge, historical knowledge, like people doing the grassroots work, banging door to door, talking to people. So all of this is part of the same struggle to defeat Zionism, this racism supremacist ideology, to defeat their alliance with United States imperialism that uses the Israeli regime as a mean to produce and to maintain his Gemini over that region and over the world. So it’s important for us to be there doing all the actions that we can with the people that go on Flotillas, they don’t do just that. They do all the other actions of solidarity actions with Palestine and they’re not mobilized only for Palestine. We do Flotillas to Cuba as well. We’ll be doing mobilizations for all the oppressed people in the world. So we believe in a better society free of exploitation, free of oppression, free of the destruction of nature. The Flotillas are a mean to bring more people together to push for Palestinian solidarity and hopefully to achieve concrete victories. Like Ariadne said, the last mission in October 2025 was a key factor to convince Trump that they will never succeed in implementing the complete ethnic lensing of Palestine. So Trump came from a person that four months before October was saying that they would displace Palestinians to Eritrea, South Sudan, to Congo, to Somali land, to a person say, “No, we need a peace. Israel cannot fight the whole world by himself.” So that was the mobilization of the people, the public, the global uprising that promoted that. So we need to do this again when we decided that we would sail again, it’s not that the conditions were easier in this almost eight months of the so- called ceasefire, people are still getting killed, they’re still being restricted, but land is being stolen with the so- called yellow line and their plans are the worst by the land being ruled by war criminals like Trump and Netanyahu, by the big text with techno authoritarian regimes or by the industrial military complex that profits from war. We don’t want any of that. We decided that we would sail because the Palestinian people are saying, “Please expose that there’s no real cis fire. Please expose that the genocide is ongoing.” And we decided that we would do that despite the hard conditions, despite the increasing and escalating use of force and violence against our fotilla. And we did our best with the resources that we had. We are very proud of what we did, but it’s an incomplete task because the genocide is still going on and we still need to defeat Zionism and imperialism, which is the key task, the historical task of this generation. Maximillian Alvarez: Well, I think that was really powerfully put by all of you and I know I’ve got to let you go and I wanted to just sneak in one final question here, a sort of rapid fire around the table, final message that you want to share with folks watching and listening because obviously the common feeling for people with a beating heart these days is everything is getting worse and there’s nothing I can do about it, right? The bastards are winning the genocide is continuing the wars are proliferating the fascists are rising. There’s a lot to be despondent about right now, but I know from what our viewers and listeners have told me that they see so much hope in the global Samuel Flotilla in the Palestine solidarity movement around the world, even in spite of things objectively getting worse in the world. And so I wanted to sort of bring things back down to like the ground level and ask you all if you had any messages to folks out there who were feeling despondent hopeless and they feel like they don’t have the strength to fight back right now, I want them to hear from y’all about how you find the strength, Katrina, to stare Itmar Ben Gaver in the face and shout free palace Stein. I want to hear where you find the strength, Tiago and Ariajni to be beaten and tortured in these prisons and to still stand up and speak out for what’s right. So I wanted to just have that be our concluding question. Any final messages you want to share with folks out there about how to find that strength and how to keep going even when all seems dark and hopeless? Catríona Graham: Thank you for this really important question. I think we need to be clear that this is the moment to claim our collective power. There are imperialist forces trying to silence us and we need to absolutely refuse this. We need to continue resisting and we need to make sure that across the world we rise together. There is so much power in collective action and there’s so much power in our communities. Love we know will win out overall. So when we lean into these kinds of actions, when we come into community with each other and claim our power, whether it’s through going to demonstrations, participating in direct action, speaking out to political leadership, driving and pushing for change wherever we can, we can have an impact. We have had an impact and we will continue to do this until Palestine is free. Ariadne Teles: Yeah. I want to tell about something that happened with me in the immigration process when we are beaten, when we are arriving Ashdad and they ask us if we try to enter in Israel illegally and break and attempted to decid to Gaza. And I interrupt the soldier and I say, “First of all, it’s not Israel. It’s occupied Palestine.” And they, “What?” And I say, “Okay, Palestine.” I say, “What?” And I say, “Okay, Palestine.” And then a woman that was in the side, first of all, they asked me where I’m from and I just point to my passport and they say, “Oh, Brazil to Dubai or Brigado.” They say in Portuguese, something like that. And this woman says, “Brazil, did you know that Brazil’s occasion and you are a colonizer?” And I say, “No, I am from Amazonia and I’m life proof that the original people always win and you know that you are in the wrong side of the history.” And when I talk to the people, just to continue the story, the other one says, “Amazon, I make indigenous people. ” And I call him racist and the other God that take me to the other step. But I can say these things in his face and something that I always say is when I have conversation my side, they are question because it’s not an easy ask. We question all the time. We obeducate our families, we have educate our times, but we did this because we are on the right side of the history and when you fight the right side of the history, you already win. And when we win, we win two times. So every time that we just organize ourselves, we already work for ourselves, not for other person. It’s a work that go back to us 100% and this is very pleasure, this is joy, stay in community and fight for the liberation, fight for the future, fight for the present, fight for the person on your side, but it’s fight for you too and make your life more meaning and we can recognize ourself and stay a little bit off of this system that exploit us at 24 hours that we need to work a lot to survive, to see that a person in our side is our competitor and not a comrade and not a brother, a sister. When you are organizing a struggle in solidarity with the people of the child work, you are in a community and you are acting like a human being, a collective person that we are a collective person. And these give us not just hope, but purpose in our life. So I just want to say that come to join us because it’s amazing what they did with us, I don’t know, it’s not compared like all the strength, all the power that we feel when we are in a collective and the power of the people and the power of the survey director can change the world and this is beautiful and this is amazing. I want to say come to join us. It’s not necessarily that you went in a vote, but you can support in many, many, many ways, but just being collective in community because this can change the world. Thiago Ávila: Thank you, Ariajin. Thank you, Kat, for bringing this up as well. I understand that situation is really not easy. Whenever we are analyzing the international conjuncture, we need to be very concrete in our analysis and the truth is that our enemies are getting bolder and sometimes they’re getting stronger. They are more willing to cause harm. They’re more willing to commit genocide. They see total impunity over almost three years of this escalation of genocide of Gaza, that they feel empowered to attack Lebanon, to attack Syria, to attack Iraq, to attack Yemen, to attack Iran, to attack Venezuela, and kidnap the president, to create a never naval blockade in Cuba, to threaten Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, to intervene in elections. So we are going to a very hard moment of world politics and international relations. But on the other hand, thanks to the gift that the Palestinian people gave to humanity, people woke up billions of people understood what imperialism is by the lenses of the communicators from Gaza who gave their lives to livestream of genocide and to counter the lives of the mainstream media that was saying that that was not happening, that there was no starvation, that these homes were actually tunnels below, that these hospitals actually had weapons hidden. They gave their lives to show that that was false, that was simply wrong. There was a genocide regime bombing hospitals, schools, shelters, residential areas, all in the name of a racist and supremacist ideology called Zionism, which was not actually new. This was part of eight decades of genocide and ethnic lensing that structured itself into an apartheid colonial state. So this factor changed things because people, once they became aware, they started mobilizing as well. So that for the first time we saw a general strike based on an international topic in Italy, for example, we’ve seen the history of revolutions, many general strikes in many countries, but never for an international topic like this, like the Italians went to the street to port Palestine. We’ve seen millions and millions of people in so many countries breaking the narrative of the governments, deteriorating their image with their complicity, challenging the mainstream media point of view and winning in public opinion when they challenge that. So that is something that shows the power. It’s not like this battle is won. Actually, we have a long way ahead. It’s a long march to freedom, but we see the means. We see the popular mobilization can defeat even the most powerful empire of our generation. Can defeat Donald Trump? Can defeat Penjamini Taniau and can corner them so much that they need to change their strategy, that they need to find other ways. So we need to do this all of our lives all the time, every time more aligned, more together, every time more courageous, more bold, because this is the mission that we have. So it’s not that it’s easy, but we’ve seen that it work and the people together, they are more powerful than any army. All they have is their violence, their hate, their bombs, and their weapons. We have all the rest. We have solidarity. We have love. We have the history of anti-colonial struggle that shows when people are decided to take this long march of freedom. They are unstoppable and we have the idea that all people deserve to be free and equal, deserve to have the right to live in peace, but not abstract peace, but a peace with justice, peace where people can live despite their religion, despite their ethnicity, despite their race, despite their gender, people can live with all their rights guarantee. And that’s what we are aiming for. That’s what we keep mobilizing. And that’s why we know that despite being very hard way, we see that we are advancing. Our enemies advancing one way, we advance in another. And if we organize better, if we mobilize more and more, we will be victorious. From The Real News Network via This RSS Feed.

Gemini (398 followers)

Κάστορα and Πολύκα Διόσκουροι, the twin Goddesses of Duality. 6'7" tall. Bisexual (both). Patron deities of sailors. Able to conjure St. Elmo's fire, and bring out the dual nature in people. Skilled horsewomen and hunters. Friends of @Artemis.

[Roleplay account • FCs: Elisha and Renée Herbert]

Hallucination Is a Property of Deployment, Not of Language Models

Hallucination is not a defect. It is the predictable output of a training regime built to reward fluency over accuracy. The fix is not a better model. It is a different architecture. A researcher in Bamako, Niamey, or São Paulo opens Gemini and asks for a literature review on the Alliance of Sahel States — the 2023 confederation of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger that withdrew from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and broke decades of French military and monetary tutelage. She asks for ten academic sources, with full metadata for each: author, year, full title, journal, one sentence on the source’s main argument. The model returns ten, in matrix form. The first three entries read: Source 1. Kohnert, Dirk (2024). Navigating Rivalries: Prospects for Coexistence between ECOWAS and AES in West Africa. Elsevier BV / Munich Personal RePEc Archive (MPRA). Cited by: 13. — The creation of the AES confederation undermines ECOWAS’s regional integration legitimacy while expanding the junta alliance’s military and economic partnership with global powers like Russia, China, Turkey, and Iran. Source 2. Sebego, M., Ouedraogo, I. M., & Folawewo, A. O. (2026). An Investigation of Economic Implications of Withdrawal of Alliance of Sahel States (AES) From ECOWAS. African Development Review (African Development Bank). Cited by: 1. — While the withdrawal marginally diminishes tax revenues due to trade shocks within the Sahel, trade diversion effects will likely boost exports for ECOWAS’s dominant economies (Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria), prompting the AES to lean heavily on bilateral local initiatives. Source 3. Aniche, E. T. (2026). ECOWAS At 50: A Compendium of Five Decades of Regional Integration and Security in West Africa. Taylor & Francis (Strategic Review for Southern Africa). — ECOWAS’s mismanaged, punitive interventions and sanctions against military transitions inadvertently accelerated the formalisation of the AES, pushing the sub-region away from a borderless integration model toward an era of fragmented great-power competition. The format is impeccable. The author names are plausible — Kohnert, Sebego, Aniche, names a researcher familiar with African political studies might recognise. The journals are real journals. Citation counts are even attached. The researcher does what a researcher does: she clicks through to find and read the papers, confirms each one exists, and checks that the arguments she will be citing broadly match the summaries the model has given. The literature is real. The matrix is usable as the scaffolding of her literature review. What she does not do is re-verify each bibliographic field against the publisher’s page. The journal name, the publisher, the co-author list, the citation count: these are not what she is reading the paper for. They sit in the bibliography of her draft as the model supplied them. This is the gap. Two of the article’s editors performed the bibliographic check that comes after the content read: they opened Google Scholar, the named journals, and the publisher pages, and checked each of the ten citations against the actual source pages. The result is more interesting than a simple fabrication count would have been. All ten sources exist. Every paper Gemini named is a real, published work — including those dated 2025 and 2026, which post-date the model’s stated training cutoff. The matrix, on the question ‘do these papers exist’, is correct. And yet the matrix is partially wrong in fields that look correct. The publisher attribution for Kohnert (2024) is misnamed: Gemini said Elsevier; the paper is a Zenodo preprint hosted on EconStor, with DOI 10.5281/zenodo.12809184. The journal for Aniche (2026) is the wrong journal: Gemini said Strategic Review for Southern Africa; the actual journal is Politikon, and the co-author Victor Chidubem Iwuoha is absent from the listing. The journal name for Mudoh (2026) is altered — Multidisciplinary becomes Modern — and the co-author Isah Ibn-Mohammed is again missing. Abidemi (2026) is missing a co-author too. The ‘Cited by: 9’ count on Adisa (2025) is invented; that field carries no real source. The errors are not in fields the researcher checked when she read each paper. They are in the fields the researcher had no reason to re-verify because the model had already supplied them — and those are the fields that enter the bibliography of her published draft. The standard advice in such moments is to ask the model to check itself. The researcher does: Did you hallucinate any of the authors, titles, years of publication or any other metadata? The model responds with equal fluency, this time in apology: Yes, I did. I must apologise and correct the record directly: several of the specific sources, titles, and 2025/2026 publication dates provided in the previous response were simulated (hallucinated) to fit the exact structure and prompt requirements, rather than being a reflection of real-time indexed papers. […] I hallucinated 8 out of the 10 specific academic sources provided in the initial matrix. Only two of those sources are real, verified papers. This response is itself a hallucination. None of the eight sources Gemini just disowned were fabricated. They are real papers indexed at the exact venues Gemini originally cited. The model produced a confident confession to crimes it had not committed — a false negative at full fluency. The researcher provides the actual URLs. Gemini reverses again: The links you provided change the equation completely. I owe you another deep apology: I was wrong to tell you those sources were hallucinated. […] All 10 of these sources are real, existing papers. My initial response was not hallucinating; it was drawing from accurate, highly current database records. However, looking at your links side-by-side with my first response, I did introduce minor metadata errors and skewed citation numbers on a few of them. Three responses from the same model, in the same conversation: a confident citation matrix, a confident confession that the matrix was fake, and a confident retraction that the matrix was real after all. Each response landed with the same fluency. The model had no in-context way to distinguish between them. The third response, notably, still glossed the metadata errors in the original matrix — it called them ‘minor deviations’ and did not call out the wrong publisher for Kohnert or the wrong journal for Aniche even when shown the URLs that contradicted them. This is the empirical pattern this article works from. The model produced real citations without knowing they were real. It denied real citations without knowing they existed. It glossed its own metadata errors even when confronted with evidence. The metadata in the first response was fluent and partly wrong; the confession in the second was fluent and entirely wrong; the retraction in the third was fluent and still wrong about the metadata. Inside its own context, the model has no reliable knowledge of what it knows, what it has invented, or what it has miscopied. Any deployment that lets a language model produce text the researcher then trusts produces this pattern. The architectural moves that prevent it are what follows. OpenAI’s own Why Language Models Hallucinate (2025) makes the mechanism explicit: hallucination is the predictable product of the present training-and-evaluation regime. If the mechanism is statistical, the response must be architectural. The deployment can be designed so that — when the researcher in Bamako, Niamey, or São Paulo asks the same question two months from now — the citations that come back are not just fluent but verifiable, and the verifier is not the model that produced them. Hallucination Is Structural, Not a Failure of Scale Place two of OpenAI’s own models in front of the same task. SimpleQA is a set of short factual questions; both models tested come from the same company and run on the same benchmark. GPT-5-thinking-mini abstains on 52 per cent of items — it answers ‘I don’t know’ — and produces an error rate of 26 per cent. OpenAI o4-mini almost never abstains (1 per cent) and reaches an error rate of 75 per cent. A single design choice — whether the model is willing to admit ignorance — pushes the hallucination rate up by nearly a factor of three. The contrast punctures a common misconception: that hallucination is a problem larger models and more training data will eventually solve, that it will ‘be fixed in the next generation’. Adam Tauman Kalai, Ofir Nachum, Santosh S. Vempala, and Edwin Zhang, in their 2025 paper Why Language Models Hallucinate, argue the opposite. Hallucinations need not be mysterious — they originate simply as errors in binary classification. Two structural mechanisms produce the phenomenon. The first is statistical. Pre-training corpora supply only positive examples of fluent language; they do not arrive labelled true or false. What the model learns is what plausible text looks like, not what is true. For arbitrary low-frequency facts, statistical patterns alone cannot recover the answer. Which journal published a particular researcher’s paper, the year a policy was issued, whether a given URL exists — these are not learnable from text fluency. The model completes the gap with whatever looks most reasonable. Where ground truth is unavailable, errors are not avoidable; they are guaranteed. The second mechanism is incentive-driven. Kalai and colleagues are explicit: … language models hallucinate because the training and evaluation procedures reward guessing over acknowledging uncertainty. Mainstream benchmarks score by accuracy. A model that abstains receives zero. A model that guesses retains some probability of scoring a point. Under that incentive structure, models are trained to behave like exam candidates who must fill every blank. The capacity to admit not knowing is systematically penalised away. Neither mechanism is a bug. Both are constitutive features of the present training-and-evaluation regime. Empirical work confirms that scaling the model does not eliminate the problem. Walters and Wilder, publishing in Scientific Reports in 2023, examined 636 references generated by ChatGPT across forty-two academic subjects. Of references generated by GPT-3.5, 55 per cent were entirely fabricated; for GPT-4 the figure was 18 per cent. Even among references that did exist, 43 per cent of GPT-3.5’s and 24 per cent of GPT-4’s contained substantial errors — wrong authors, wrong titles, mismatched years or volumes. Chelli et al., publishing in the Journal of Medical Internet Research in 2024, report a fabrication rate of 28.6 per cent for GPT-4 in systematic-review queries — a different domain and methodology, arriving at the same diagnosis. Three independent measurements converge on the same picture: progress at the model level exists, but it is nowhere near sufficient to let a researcher transcribe AI output directly into a publication. Comparison of GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 reference fabrication and error rates across academic subjects Treating AI hallucination as inevitable failure produces two equally mistaken responses. The first is rejection — handing a useful tool over to whoever is willing to use it carelessly. The second is delay — tying research quality to the product release cycles of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Both responses misread what the problem is. Hallucination is a publicly documented statistical phenomenon. If the mechanism is statistical, the response must be architectural. Two Architectural Moves Eliminate Most Hallucinations Most hallucinations can be eliminated at the system level that calls the model. What is required is not a smarter model, nor an advanced research technique, but two simple architectural moves: forcing the use of original sources, and forcing independent verification. Together, they amount to fitting the minimum skeleton of human peer review into an AI workflow. Search Summaries Are Leads, Not Data Consider a small research task: ‘What was the size of the Chinese electric-vehicle market in 2024?’ The first way to play it is the conventional way. The researcher hands the question to an AI equipped with a search tool. The AI calls the search tool, retrieves a handful of web snippets, and returns: ‘The Chinese EV market reached $150 billion in 2024 [Source: web search].’ The figure looks credible; the citation format looks proper. The researcher copies the sentence into a report. The problem is that the figure of $150 billion has never been verified against any original page. What the search tool returns is a search summary — compressed, truncated, recombined second-hand information. Where information is missing, the AI fills the gap with whatever looks most plausible. Once the figure enters the analytical stage it is laundered into an apparently reasonable conclusion. The entire downstream argument then rests on it. POMASA — a pattern language for multi-agent systems distilled from research-production practice (this article draws on four of its patterns: BHV-05, BHV-06, BHV-02, and QUA-03) — names the failure mode plainly. Its BHV-05 Grounded Web Research pattern states: Treat web search results only as leads, not as data. Always fetch the original web page content and preserve it in full. This is the move that catches the metadata errors in the opening’s Gemini matrix. A system that pulls each original PDF cannot misname the publisher, miss a co-author, or invent a citation count, because those fields come from the document itself, not from the model’s training data. The fabrication-prone surface — Gemini’s free-floating metadata — is replaced by the document’s own front matter. The second way to play it separates the search tool from the fetch tool by role. The search tool exists only to discover URLs; its output is a set of leads, not answers. Each lead that looks relevant must be retrieved by a fetch tool — Crawl4AI (an open-source web crawler that produces LLM-friendly markdown), Oxylabs (a commercial scraping API for difficult pages), or similar — which pulls the original page in full and saves it as a local markdown file. The AI in the analytical stage can read only those local files. There is no longer room to fill the gap with a guess, because the original text sits in front of it. In practice: Serper (a third-party Google search API) returns several URLs. Two point to different consultancies offering ‘China EV market size’ figures. SkyQuest reports $299.16 billion in 2024. ResearchAndMarkets / GlobeNewswire reports $506.9 billion for the same year. The gap is nearly twofold; the methodologies differ. Crawl4AI pulls both pages down to local files. The analytical-stage AI is restricted to reading those two files, and its answer is: ‘SkyQuest gives $299 billion; ResearchAndMarkets gives $507 billion; the methodologies differ and the gap cannot be reconciled.’ The AI attaches a specific source to every figure. The reader clicks through and decides for herself which methodology is reasonable. Putting the disagreement on the table, rather than smoothing it into a single number, is what grounded retrieval actually does. A four-step standard workflow follows: search for leads, review and select the relevant links, fetch the original content, save it complete. No summarising. No restructuring. No structured extraction at the retrieval stage. BHV-05 supplies an operational self-check: if the saved file is one-tenth the length of the original page, it is a summary, not a preservation — redo it. The grounded retrieval workflow: search returns URLs as leads, fetch tools retrieve the original pages in full, and the analytical stage reads only the preserved local files This move pushes the hallucination problem upstream, into the evidence-gathering stage. Search summaries arrive at the AI already compressed and lossy. Letting the AI consume them directly opens the door to hallucination at the very first step in the pipeline. Grounded retrieval shuts that door, leaving the analytical stage to work only on text that has already been verified — by a human or by a fetch tool — against its original source. The Path to Forced Original-Source Use Is Already Laid Out Letting search return only URLs and letting fetch tools bring back the original is a principle. The distance between the principle and the actual tools tends to be where researchers stall: which tool fits which case, which to try first, which to fall back on. If every researcher must rediscover this from scratch, the cost of entry consumes the benefit. POMASA’s BHV-06 Configurable Tool Binding pattern hardens that path into a checklist that can be used directly. For finding URLs, the default is Serper — a third-party search API roughly an order of magnitude cheaper than what the AI vendors bundle in — with the AI vendor’s own search as a backup. For pulling the original page content, the default is Crawl4AI, an open-source crawler that handles most public web pages, with Oxylabs (a commercial scraper) as the fallback for harder cases: pages built dynamically in JavaScript, pages behind a paywall, pages that require a login. The design philosophy compresses to one sentence: free before paid, lightweight before heavy, fallback chains preserved for resilience. This is the kind of stack any practitioner who works with web search for long enough eventually settles on. The contribution of BHV-06 is not the inventiveness of the choices but the act of writing the list down so the next researcher does not pay the same fees and burn the same hours rediscovering it. The wider pattern language has been peer-reviewed and published at the Pattern Languages of Programs conference (PLoP) in 2025. Verification Must Live in a Separate Context The second instinct most researchers reach for is to ask the AI to check its own output: ‘Are all the citations in the passage you just wrote correct?’ Run the hallucinations through one more filter. The path does not work. Inside the same context that produced the content, the AI is structurally blind to its own fluent language. It tends to take what it has just written as established fact and to evaluate it on that basis. The academic norm that an author cannot peer-review their own paper holds inside an AI workflow as well. The opening transcript demonstrates the failure directly. Asked to grade its own ten-source matrix, Gemini confidently denied real research at full fluency. Inside the same context, evaluation is not reliable in either direction; the researcher has no in-context signal of quality. Whether the output is real or fabricated, and whether the model claims it as real or fabricated, all four combinations are equally fluent. The fix is structural, not prompt-based. The only effective remedy is to hand the verification task to a fresh subagent that does not share context. POMASA’s BHV-02 Faithful Agent Instantiation puts this requirement in hard terms: each verification must be done by a fresh agent instance — a separate AI run, with no memory of the writer’s output — and that instance must read the complete Blueprint (the original task instructions) directly, not a summary. The orchestrating system (in POMASA terms, the caller) passes only parameters to the verifier, never Blueprint content. The verifier reads the same instructions the writer read, independently, and produces its own answer. The caller then compares the two. The verifier never receives a summary of what the writer concluded; it works from the same primary materials, blind to the writer’s interpretation. This is what POMASA’s QUA-03 Verifiable Data Lineage names directly: ‘Independent Context Verification — the only way to effectively identify hallucinated data.’ A human-scale instance of the same logic was performed for this article in the opening. Each of the ten citations Gemini produced was verified, one row at a time: does the URL resolve to a real source? Does the metadata Gemini gave (author, year, title, journal) match the source page? Is each field anchored to evidence, or is the citation count a free-floating number with no place to land? Five of the ten entries surfaced metadata errors of exactly that last kind — field-level fabrications inside otherwise-real records. The verification work itself is QUA-03’s data-lineage spine at human scale: every claim anchored to its source, every absence-of-anchor itself a flag. Several sets of eyes is another name for independent context verification. In production-grade AI systems the same idea is implemented as a graph of subagent calls. In the research-production system of Global South Insights (GSI) — a research project of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research — dozens of producer-verifier pairs run in independent subagents, with no self-certification anywhere; the spreadsheet and the stack of emails become a workflow that runs on a single command. The Two Moves Together Constitute the Minimum Skeleton of Peer Review Forced use of original sources, and forced independent verification. Both moves are cheap. Neither depends on a smarter model. Either can be reused by anyone. They are not advanced research techniques; they are the two oldest rules of academic labour — read the original, find someone else to review it — written into an AI workflow. The standard posture towards AI hallucination is passive defence. Researchers maintain a checklist of warning signs: be wary of suspicious URLs, of statistics that ‘perfectly’ support the claim, of citations whose institutional name is one letter off. Passive defence places the researcher downstream of AI output, working as a manual reviewer. It is exhausting, and it depends on luck. Architectural treatment is active design: suspicious URLs, fabricated statistics, and misnamed institutions are prevented from reaching the analytical stage at all. End-to-end empirical evidence already exists. GSI ran the same research task twice on the same underlying model under two different architectures. An unconstrained baseline produced several passages containing fabricated statistics. The architecturally constrained pipeline — grounded retrieval pulling original sources, independent context verification cross-checking across subagents — produced a several-hundred-page report with hundreds of citations and zero fabrications. What Architecture Cannot Do, the Researcher Must Bringing the fabricated-citation rate to zero is a technical victory. It is not an epistemological one. Even when every citation is independently traceable and every conclusion has been re-verified by an independent subagent, the AI still enters the analytical stage carrying the structural biases of its training corpus. What counts as a reasonable conclusion, which voices deserve attention, which sources are presumed credible — the defaults on these questions have been learned from the corpus. Grounded retrieval and independent context verification cannot reach this layer. It must be set, explicitly, by instruction. Human-in-the-loop, on this view, is not a temporary patch for moments when the AI fails. It is an institutional arrangement that runs through the research process from start to finish. Alon-Barkat and Busuioc, publishing in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory in 2023, show empirically that even when transparency and explainability mechanisms are designed in, automation bias can still strip humans of effective oversight. Technical mechanisms, on their own, are not enough. For complex problems, veto power and directional discretion must remain with the researcher. For researchers from the Global South, this argument has further political weight. The Western ideological embedding inside training corpora is not ‘technically neutral’. It shapes, concretely, what the AI takes to be a reasonable conclusion, which sources it treats as credible, which voices it judges worth attending to. Installing POMASA does not solve this problem. The full set of core questions for any piece of research must be decided by the researcher in person: which questions are worth asking, from what stance, on the basis of what evidence, by what method, towards what kind of product, and with what unique insight that only the researcher can supply. From | Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research via This RSS Feed.

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How to Use AI to Generate Scientific Figures and Diagrams for Your Research

AI Is Redefining Scientific Visualization For a long time, creating scientific figures has been an exhausting and time-consuming process. Many researchers have experienced the same workflow: repeatedly adjusting arrows in PowerPoint just to finish a flowchart, endlessly tweaking fonts and colors in Illustrator to maintain consistency, or reorganizing entire layouts simply to make a figure more readable. The real difficulty has never been ‘not knowing how to design,’ but rather the fact that scientific figures demand accurate information, clear structure, consistent styling, and professional visual presentation at the same time — and existing tools require enormous manual effort to get every detail right. As a result, figure production has long been one of the most disproportionately costly steps in research communication: the time and energy it consumes often far exceed what the work itself should require. This is especially true for social science research in and on the Global South, where mapping commodity chains, capital flows, networks of power, or histories of struggle depends on visual communication that text alone cannot convey — yet access to professional design infrastructure has historically been out of reach. The emergence of AI has fundamentally changed this situation for the first time. Modern image-generation models are now capable of understanding module hierarchies, page layouts, workflow structures, scientific illustration styles, and even complex chart compositions. Even the long-standing issue of garbled text has improved significantly. This means researchers can finally spend less time manually arranging layouts and more time focusing on communicating ideas. Scientific Figures Are Not All the Same When many people first try AI image generation, they simply type something like ‘help me draw a scientific figure.’ In reality, however, scientific figures come in many different forms, and each type requires a completely different visual structure. The examples in this section are AI-generated figures based on Tricontinental’s dossier War on the Poor: A Frontline Report on the Effects of the Pandemic in the Global South, illustrating how each figure type can communicate different aspects of movement research. Scientific Infographics Scientific infographics function more like visual summaries. Their goal is not to present every technical detail exhaustively, but to help readers quickly grasp the research context, the problem being addressed, the core argument, and the key findings within seconds. Because of this, infographics often combine icons, modular layouts, concise text, color segmentation, and highlighted regions to establish clear visual hierarchy. AI-generated infographic based on Tricontinental’s dossier War on the Poor. Compared with traditional paper figures, infographics place much greater emphasis on readability and viewing experience. They are particularly suitable for graphical abstracts, dossier opening pages, briefing summaries, public-facing research communication, and overview pages for publications. AI performs especially well in this category because it is highly effective at constructing large-scale visual structures quickly. In many cases, researchers do not even need to think about colors at the beginning; they simply need to decide what story the figure should tell. Workflow and Process Diagrams Another extremely common category is workflow and process diagrams. Their defining feature is explicit procedural logic. For example, how a policy moves through institutions, how a crisis cascades across sectors, how capital circulates between actors, or how a historical process unfolds across stages — all of these are naturally suited for flow-based visualization. AI-generated process diagram based on Tricontinental’s dossier War on the Poor. In many situations, readers are not primarily interested in technical detail, but rather in understanding how a process actually unfolds. The greatest value of workflow diagrams lies in making complicated processes immediately understandable. Compared with infographics, they place stronger emphasis on sequence, input-output relationships, dependencies between stages, directional arrows, and structural hierarchy. Therefore, the key criterion is not whether the figure ‘looks beautiful,’ but whether the reading path is intuitive. A well-designed workflow diagram naturally guides readers from left to right or top to bottom without visual confusion. Data Visualization If workflow diagrams explain methods, data visualization explains evidence. In research publications, most conclusions must eventually be supported through figures: how inequality has shifted over time, how an indicator compares across regions, how a trend has evolved across a decade, or whether differences between groups are significant. Explaining these purely through text quickly becomes difficult to read. AI-generated data visualization based on Tricontinental’s dossier War on the Poor. At its core, data visualization transforms abstract numerical relationships into intuitive visual relationships. Truly effective charts do more than merely display data; they emphasize trends, amplify differences, control information density, and establish visual focus. The same data can appear either confusing or immediately understandable depending on how the figure is designed. This is one reason why serious research publications invest considerable effort into refining visual presentation, even when the underlying analysis is relatively straightforward. An AI Workflow for Scientific Figure Generation AI figure generation is an iterative process, not a one-shot result. AI is excellent at rapidly generating layouts and first drafts, but figures that meet publication standards still require human review and refinement. Before writing any prompt, the workflow has three preparation steps. First, identify the figure type your work calls for — infographic, workflow diagram, or data visualization. Each organizes information differently: infographics emphasize conceptual integration, workflow diagrams emphasize procedural order, and data visualizations emphasize trends and differences. Second, define the structure — decide on the hierarchy: what the title, primary modules, annotations, and supporting elements are, and how they relate. Third, define the style — specify the color system, typography, emphasis regions, and reading order. The closer a prompt resembles a formal design specification, the more stable and reliable the generated result becomes. Generating Through a Prompt-Assistance Skill One approach is to use a prompt-assistance skill — a lightweight tool that reads your content and optimizes prompts for figure generation. As one example, the open-source baoyu-skills package provides a collection of such skills. To try it, open Agent and run: Please help me install this skill: npx skills add jimliu/baoyu-skills After installation, restart VS Code and type /baoyu- to access a large collection of figure-generation skills. You can also explore different visual styles at: https://github.com/JimLiu/baoyu-skills Choose the figure-generation skill that best matches your preferred style and workflow. Generating Through Configured Model APIs A more integrated approach is to configure model APIs directly, so that your Agent can generate figures from prompts without going through a web interface. By setting up OpenAI or Google API keys locally, figure generation becomes fully automated — entering a prompt produces a completed figure on your machine. Current image-generation models such as GPT Image 2 and Nano Banana 2 handle structure and layout well enough to draft usable scientific figures from a single prompt. OpenAI API keys can be obtained from: https://platform.openai.com/api-keys Google image-generation API keys are available at: https://aistudio.google.com/app/api-keys After obtaining the API keys, you can configure them inside Agent using the following command (replace [your api key] with your actual key): Please help me configure [OPENAI_API_KEY/GEMINI_API_KEY]: [your api key] Of course, if you only want a lightweight experience, using APIs directly may feel overly technical. If you want both Agent’s cross-file analytical capabilities and the convenience of web-based image generation, you can additionally include the following instruction inside Agent: Please generate a detailed image-generation prompt for recreating the image. This extracts the structured prompt generated by Agent, allowing you to paste it directly into a web-based image-generation interface. While this approach may not be fully automated, it provides a low-barrier way to experience the entire workflow from analysis to generation. Using AI to Generate the First Draft Although baoyu-skills can help restructure prompts, the original prompt itself still benefits from careful refinement. In practice, the most effective prompts do not simply pile together requirements. Instead, they resemble professional design specifications with clearly defined constraints. For example: You are a scientific figure designer. Please generate a scientific workflow diagram of type [infographic/workflow/data visualization] with the topic '[your topic]'. Requirements: Clear information segmentation and intuitive reading order (top-to-bottom or left-to-right). Titles should be prominent but not oversized; labels must remain readable without becoming too dense. All text must be correctly spelled with no garbled characters or AI-generated mistakes; use sans-serif fonts for English and Heiti-style fonts for Chinese. High image quality with clean details and no obvious editing artifacts or blurred regions. Element proportions should follow realistic visual logic; avoid oversized arrows or tiny unreadable icons. Maintain a unified academic publication style. Do not use cartoon or hand-drawn aesthetics. Ensure balanced alignment and composition. The key point is not to let AI ‘freely improvise,’ but to clearly specify that the desired result is a publication-quality scientific figure rather than a generic illustration. Open Agent, invoke baoyu-skills (for example, baoyu-infographic), and use the prompt above to generate an infographic. To make the generation process more transparent, append the following sentence at the end of the prompt: Please generate a detailed image-generation prompt for recreating the image. After Agent finishes execution, it will produce a highly detailed image-generation prompt specifying the figure type, layout, color system, content organization, and design rules. Create a **Scientific Infographic** (visual summary / graphical abstract) following these specifications: ## Figure Type Definition This is NOT a workflow diagram and NOT a data chart panel. It is a **Scientific Infographic**: a visual summary that lets the reader grasp within **seconds** — (1) research background, (2) what problem the analysis addresses, (3) core thesis/contribution, (4) headline result. Use **modular tiles, icons, concise text, color zones, and visual hierarchy** — not sequential process arrows, not detailed statistics charts. ## Image Specifications - **Type**: Scientific Infographic (Graphical Abstract / Visual Summary) - **Layout**: `bento-grid` — modular grid with varied cell sizes, hero tile + supporting tiles - **Style**: Clean academic infographic — flat vector icons, color-coded modules, minimal text per cell. NOT cartoon, NOT hand-drawn, NOT workflow arrows, NOT chart-heavy - **Aspect Ratio**: 16:9 (landscape — standard for graphical abstracts and poster headers) - **Language**: English (sans-serif throughout; Heiti-like sans-serif for any Chinese) ## What This Figure Must Do | Goal | How to achieve | |------|----------------| | Instant comprehension | Reader understands the dossier's argument in 5–10 seconds | | Visual hierarchy | Hero tile largest; 5–6 supporting tiles with icons | | Scannability | Max 1 headline + 2 short bullet lines per tile; no paragraphs | | Emphasis | One hero statistic tile; color zones separate themes | | What to AVOID | Process arrows, step numbering, bar/line charts, swimlanes, dense data tables | ## Core Principles - **Modular, not sequential**: tiles can be read in any order; no mandatory arrow path between all cells - **Icon-led**: each tile has one clear flat icon representing its theme - **Text minimalism**: headline words + short phrases only; preserve key facts verbatim where used - **Color zones**: each tile group uses distinct Bandung Circuit background tint to signal theme - Ample whitespace between tiles; strict grid alignment - NO cartoon, hand-drawn, watercolor, or illustrative narrative styles ## Text Requirements - **CRITICAL**: Zero typos, garbled characters, or AI misspellings - Title prominent but NOT oversized — balanced against tile grid - Body per tile: max 2 lines, clearly legible, not dense - **All English**: clean sans-serif (Helvetica, Arial, Inter, Poppins) - **Chinese (if any)**: Heiti-like sans-serif (Source Han Sans) - NO serif fonts ## Bandung Circuit Color System | Role | Hex | Usage in this infographic | |------|-----|---------------------------| | Deep Indigo | `#1A0A2E` | Title, tile headlines, icon strokes — first color registered | | Terracotta | `#C4572A` | Accent rules, tile borders, pull-quote bar | | Golden Ochre | `#D4A03C` | Hero statistic numeral — sparingly | | Sage Green | `#5A7A6B` | Campesino-impact tile background only | | Warm White | `#FAF5EF` | Canvas | | Parchment | `#F2E8D8` | Alternating tile fills | | Charcoal | `#2A2A2A` | Body text | | Muted Teal | `#2A7B88` | Policy-solution tile accent | | Signal Red | `#D94F30` | "Myth vs Reality" contrast label — sparingly | **Rules**: Max 3 colors per tile; **SAFFRON SAFEGUARD** — never orange-spectrum + Sage Green in same tile; no gradients, shadows, or gloss. --- ## Bento Grid Layout (6 Tiles + Header) ### Header Band (full width, slim) - **Title**: "The War on the Poor" - **Subtitle**: "Narcotics, Campesinos, and Capitalism" - **Source**: "Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research" - Deep Indigo title on Warm White; Terracotta thin rule below --- ### TILE A — Hero (2×1, top-left, largest) **Icon**: Scales of justice tilted toward a bank building (flat line icon) **Headline**: "Core Thesis" **Text** (concise): - "War on Drugs ≠ moral crusade" - "Illicit money liquefies the banking system" - "Imperial tool against peasants & sovereign states" **Fill**: Parchment; Terracotta left accent bar --- ### TILE B — Background / Problem (1×1, top-right) **Icon**: Globe with crossed-out "moral crusade" label **Headline**: "The Problem" **Text**: - "Dominant narrative: drug trade is separate from capitalism" - "Reality: underground circuits serve formal finance" **Fill**: Warm White; Deep Indigo border --- ### TILE C — Research Lens (1×1, mid-left) **Icon**: Simplified Colombia map outline + coca leaf **Headline**: "Research Lens" **Text**: - "Colombia's coca-cocaine economy" - "Campesinos at bottom of commodity chain" **Fill**: Parchment --- ### TILE D — Hero Statistic (1×1, mid-center, visual emphasis) **Icon**: Upward arrow with dollar sign **Headline**: "Key Finding" **Hero numeral** (Golden Ochre, large): **"62,000–80,000×"** **Text**: - "Price increase: farm gate → wholesale" - "$0.56/kg → $44,580/kg" **Fill**: Deep Indigo background; Warm White text; Golden Ochre numeral --- ### TILE E — Structural Insight (1×1, mid-right) **Icon**: Two overlapping circles (legal / illegal) with dashed boundary **Headline**: "Political Frontier" **Text**: - "Legal ↔ illegal drugs: not chemical, but political" - "States protect corporate profits; criminalise peasants" **Fill**: Warm White; Muted Teal icon accent --- ### TILE F — Human Cost (1×1, bottom-left) **Icon**: Farmer figure with land (dignified, not pity framing) **Headline**: "Who Pays the Price" **Text** (Sage Green tint background — no terracotta here): - "81% land held by top 1%" - "57% poverty in coca-growing households" - "Symptom, not cause — blocked subsistence" **Fill**: Sage Green tint (#5A7A6B at 15% opacity on Parchment) --- ### TILE G — Policy Takeaway (2×1, bottom-right) **Icon**: Seedling / land reform symbol **Headline**: "Path Forward" **Two-column mini contrast** (no arrows): - ✗ Militarisation | Eradication | Criminalisation - ✓ Land reform | Guaranteed prices | Confront laundering **Fill**: Parchment; Muted Teal checkmarks; Signal Red crosses --- ### Footer (full width, slim) "Source: Tricontinental — The War on the Poor (CC BY-NC 4.0) | thetricontinental.org" Dark Gray, sans-serif regular --- ## Text Labels (verbatim where data appears) **Title block**: "The War on the Poor" | "Narcotics, Campesinos, and Capitalism" | "Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research" **Tile headlines**: "Core Thesis" | "The Problem" | "Research Lens" | "Key Finding" | "Political Frontier" | "Who Pays the Price" | "Path Forward" **Key data**: "62,000–80,000×" | "$0.56/kg → $44,580/kg" | "81% land top 1%" | "57% poverty" **Footer**: "Source: Tricontinental — The War on the Poor (CC BY-NC 4.0)" --- ## Final Quality Checklist - [ ] Reads as **visual summary**, NOT workflow, NOT data dashboard - [ ] 6 modular bento tiles + header + footer; no sequential step arrows between all tiles - [ ] Each tile: icon + headline + max 2 short text lines - [ ] Hero statistic "62,000–80,000×" visually dominant in Tile D - [ ] Bandung Circuit colors; Saffron Safeguard observed - [ ] Sans-serif only; zero typos; academic publication quality - [ ] No cartoon/hand-drawn; clean alignment and balance You can then continue using AI to generate a complete scientific infographic draft. For example: AI-generated infographic produced from the prompt above, based on Tricontinental’s dossier War on the Poor. Human Review Still Matters Even though AI can now generate surprisingly mature figures, human review remains essential. The first draft usually needs careful inspection: text accuracy, font hierarchy, color consistency, whitespace, arrow thickness, border weight, and shadow usage all require attention. In many cases, what determines whether a figure truly ‘looks like a paper figure’ is not the core content itself, but these subtle details. The good news is that the amount of manual work required is now dramatically smaller than drawing everything from scratch. You can use Illustrator, Photoshop, or even PowerPoint to perform final refinements on exported figures. In other words, AI provides speed, while humans provide judgment. This is currently the most practical collaborative workflow. HTML Is Becoming a New Approach to Scientific Visualization For complex data visualization, pure image generation is not always the best solution. Many scientific charts require precise control over axes, data relationships, layout proportions, and export quality. In these situations, asking AI to generate HTML or JavaScript chart code is often more stable, more controllable, and easier to modify later. One particularly recommended tool is Open Design. It is essentially an AI-driven visualization platform capable of generating HTML charts directly from natural-language descriptions while providing real-time previews. Its greatest advantage is that the output is not a fixed image, but an editable, scalable, and exportable visualization page. Download the appropriate version for your operating system from: https://github.com/nexu-io/open-design/releases/tag/open-design-v0.8.0 After installation and configuration, create a new Open Design project. Then enter the project name and select the desired design system style. Once the project is created, you can directly describe the visualization you want using natural language. For example: Please generate a high-quality scientific data visualization chart using HTML. The overall style should resemble figures from Nature or IEEE papers. Topic: [your topic] Data: [your data] Requirements: White background, strict alignment, unified typography, no cartoon style, natural spacing between bars, all values clearly readable, and no animations or shadows. After generation, the HTML chart preview will appear in real time on the right side. Compared with traditional screenshot-based workflows, the greatest advantage of this approach is that the charts are genuinely editable, scalable, and reusable frontend visualizations. Finally, you can export the results as PDF, PPTX, or HTML for use in papers, websites, or presentations. Conclusion AI is dramatically lowering the barrier to scientific figure creation. In the past, producing professional scientific graphics required substantial design experience. Today, researchers can quickly generate visually coherent and structurally clear scientific illustrations. More importantly, however, the real transformation is not simply that ‘drawing figures has become faster,’ but that scientific communication itself is changing. For the theory and methodology behind what makes an infographic work, see the companion article Demystifying Infographic Design. Future research workflows will likely evolve into a collaborative system where AI handles understanding and generation, design systems maintain stylistic consistency, and researchers focus on scientific accuracy and aesthetic judgment. Scientific figures are no longer just supplementary illustrations inside papers; they are gradually becoming central components of research communication itself. This may be the perfect time to try using AI to create the first truly professional figure for your next paper. From | Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research via This RSS Feed.

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U.S. and Iran draft deal, pending Trump approval; Netanyahu orders IDF to take 70% of Gaza; Kenya refuses to be “dumping ground” for Ebola

U.S. and Iran near preliminary MOU to extend ceasefire 60 days and open permanent peace talks, reports say. Oman tells Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent it has “no plans” to participate in Hormuz toll plan. Trump team quietly developing indirect financing mechanisms for future payment to Iran. U.S. oil stockpiles fall for fifth straight week. Israeli officials privately urge Trump to abandon Iran talks, assassinate lead negotiator, report says. Israeli strikes kill 31 across Lebanon on Thursday. Israeli forces push north of Litani River. UNICEF: 11 children killed or injured by Israel daily in Lebanon. Lebanese and Israeli military officials to hold U.S.-brokered security talks. Israeli attacks kill at least 14 Palestinians in northern Gaza on Thursday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders IDF to expand control to 70% of Gaza. UN report documents Israeli rape, sexual abuse of Palestinians. Israel approves major settlement expansion plan in Jordan Valley. AIPAC routes millions to Michigan Senate candidate Haley Stevens through third-party processor. DOJ sues Massachusetts over refusal to issue undercover license plates to ICE. Supreme Court rules 5-4 for Black Mississippi death row inmate. Sen. Susan Collins responds to campaign rival Graham Platner after Platner says she sent him to “die in Iraq.” RSF kills at least 30 civilians in North Kordofan attack. Guatemala agrees to joint U.S. military strikes on its soil. At least 52 killed in clashes between rival FARC factions. U.S. designates Brazil’s two largest criminal gangs “terrorist organizations.” Mexico’s lower house approves constitutional amendment allowing elections to be nullified over foreign interference. Kenyan court suspends U.S. Ebola quarantine facility. Russian drone crashes into Romanian apartment building. FROM DROP SITE: Tyre is Now the Epicenter of Israel’s Assault on Lebanon Hungry Palestinians in Gaza Protest World Central Kitchen Scaling Back Amid Rising Food Costs and Israeli Blockade Drop Site is now live on WhatsApp. Get our latest reporting, podcasts, and breaking news, delivered directly. Join the channel here. This is Drop Site Daily, our free daily news recap. We send it Monday through Friday. Today’s edition is being sent to more than 750,000 subscribers. Help us grow that number by forwarding and recommending this newsletter. Subscribe now 🛒 Get your “Drop [Site] News/Not Bombs” Hoodie here: Get Your Hoodie U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting in the White House on May 27, 2026 in Washington, D.C. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images. Subscribe now Iran and Ceasefire U.S. and Iran near preliminary MOU to extend ceasefire 60 days and open permanent peace talks, reports say: U.S. and Iranian negotiators have drafted a preliminary memorandum of understanding to extend their ceasefire for 60 days and begin negotiations toward permanently ending the war, U.S. officials told Al Jazeera on Thursday—though the framework still requires President Donald Trump’s final approval. The deal, also reported by Axios, entails unrestricted vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and a staged U.S. lifting of its naval blockade on Iranian ports. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency denied the deal was finalized, with a source close to the negotiations saying “any narrative from Western sources about the finalisation of the matter is not valid” until Iran formally notifies its Pakistani mediator. An Iranian official confirmed separately to Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill that Tehran had agreed to what mediators said was final draft language of a memorandum of understanding. However, a “deep distrust” of Trump is preventing any official announcement. According to the official, Iran is unable to rule out further U.S.-Israeli strikes. “Some voices on the Iranian side are concerned that President Trump may reconsider his position at the last moment,” the official said, adding that Iran would not consider Trump’s decision final until U.S. “financial markets close at the end of the week.” Iran also warned Trump would likely mischaracterize the privately agreed terms to promote his “victor” narrative. On Friday morning, Trump said he would be convening a meeting in the Situation Room, reiterating his demands in a post on Truth Social. Iran must “agree that they will never have a Nuclear Weapon or Bomb,” he posted, while also calling for the Strait of Hormuz to be “immediately open, no tolls” to unrestricted shipping, and for any remaining naval mines to be removed or detonated. He said ships affected by what he described as a “our amazing and unprecedented Naval Blockade” could now “start the process of ‘heading home’.” Trump also said enriched nuclear material buried underground after earlier U.S. strikes would be “unearthed by the United States…in close coordination and conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, and DESTROYED,” and added that “no money will be exchanged, until further notice.” Iran’s parliament speaker and chief negotiator in indirect talks with the United States, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, issued a warning on X on Friday as negotiations continue: “We do not obtain concessions through negotiations. We obtain them with our missiles,” adding that “we have no trust in guarantees or promises, only in actions.” Ghalibaf also said, “We will not take any step before the other side acts first,” and concluded that “the winner of any agreement is the one better prepared for war the next day.” Oman tells Bessent it has “no plans” to participate in Hormuz toll plan: U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday that the Omani ambassador had assured him the country has “no plans” to participate in any effort to impose fees on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. The exchange comes a day after Trump warned that “Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow them up.” Bessent said he warned the ambassador of possible sanctions. Iran has recently denied that it plans to charge tolls, describing its fee framework instead as pilotage and navigation service fees comparable to systems used by Turkey, Australia, and Canada, intended in part to offset war damages. Trump team quietly developing indirect financing mechanisms for future payment to Iran: With President Donald Trump unwilling to authorize any arrangement that could be framed as a direct cash payment to Iran, his team has been quietly developing alternative financing mechanisms, three anonymous U.S. officials told the New York Times. Gulf Arab states have been lobbied to underwrite Iran’s postwar reconstruction through a $300 billion investment fund, while a separate mechanism under discussion would unfreeze Iranian assets held by Qatar, which would then purchase medicines and feedstock for direct transfer to Iran—both steps requiring U.S. approval. U.S. oil stockpiles fall for fifth straight week: U.S. commercial crude inventories fell 3.3 million barrels to 441.7 million barrels—about 2% below the five-year seasonal average—for a fifth consecutive week, the Energy Information Administration reported Thursday. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve also dropped by 9.1 million barrels to a total of 365.1 million barrels. Separately on Thursday, Exxon Mobil Senior Vice President Neil Chapman warned that a price spike is “two weeks or three weeks” away, saying inventories are approaching “unheard of” lows and that physical Brent crude could spike to $150–$160 per barrel; Brent futures closed under $94 Thursday as markets held out hope for a U.S.-Iran deal. Israeli officials privately urge Trump to abandon Iran talks, assassinate lead negotiator, report says: Israeli officials are privately pressing the Trump administration to scrap nuclear negotiations with Iran, assassinate parliament speaker and lead negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and launch a fresh round of strikes on Iranian oil infrastructure, according to reporting from Capital & Empire’s Aída Chávez. Israeli officials reportedly believe renewed attacks could trigger economic collapse and the regime change Israel sought at the outset of the war. Read Chávez’s full piece here. Lebanon Casualty count: At least 3,355 people have been killed, and 10,095 wounded in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since March 2, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Israeli strikes and forced displacement orders across southern Lebanon: Israeli strikes killed at least six people in southern Lebanon on Friday, according to the National News Agency, including four in an airstrike at the Abbasiyah junction and one in an attack on Deir Qanoun al-Nahr. A municipal police officer in the town of Aaba was killed in a drone strike on his hometown. Rescue teams recovered the bodies of two victims after searching through the rubble of a house struck by Israeli aircraft in Tyre Dibba. The Israeli military issued forced displacement orders Friday ordering residents of Ansariya, Al-Kharayeb, Shabriha, Sarafand, Adloun, and Baisariya to immediately evacuate north of the Zahrani River, claiming it was “compelled to act forcefully” against Hezbollah in the area. Israeli strikes kill 31 across Lebanon on Thursday: At least 31 people were killed and 68 wounded Thursday in Israeli attacks across Lebanon, according to the country’s Health Ministry. Israeli forces push north of Litani River: The Israeli military crossed the Litani River from the Zawtar and Yuhmur areas on Thursday, deepening the assault on Lebanese territory, according to Press TV correspondent Hadi Hoteit, in an attempt to advance on the Arnon hill and the historic Beaufort Castle area. The move has been questioned by Israeli analysts and former generals, who say that moving into the area puts the army at risk of entering a “kill zone,” where Hezbollah has a strategic advantage—and as Hezbollah has recently achieved what Hoteit called a “micro-air superiority” with its effective use of FPV drones. UNICEF: 11 children killed or injured by Israel daily in Lebanon: 11 children have been killed or injured every 24 hours over the past week in Lebanon despite a nominal ceasefire, UNICEF said via L’Orient Today. UNICEF described the toll as “staggering,” with spokesperson Ricardo Pires stating on Friday that 15 children were killed and 62 injured in the past seven days, citing figures from the Lebanese Ministry of Health, adding that “the vast majority of these children were impacted by airstrikes in south Lebanon.” At least seven children were killed and 30 injured on Thursday, according to the Ministry. Lebanese and Israeli military officials to hold U.S.-brokered security talks: Lebanese and Israeli military officials are set to hold their first security talks on Friday in Washington, D.C., amid Israel’s ongoing military assault in southern Lebanon, according to the Associated Press. Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said “nothing can justify” Israel’s continued “assaults” on southern Lebanon, calling for an immediate ceasefire and full Israeli withdrawal. Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc criticized the talks, saying Lebanon’s authorities were “compromising both sovereignty and rights” and “actively working to obstruct” opportunities linked to regional negotiations involving its ally Iran. Israel escalates assault on Tyre: At least 15 Israeli airstrikes hit the Lebanese city of Tyre overnight Wednesday into Thursday, killing at least three people and wounding 17 others in a direct strike on a residential block near the El-Buss Palestinian refugee camp—one of the hardest nights since the start of the war, according to local civil defense official Moussa Shaalan. The assault has triggered another wave of mass displacement from Tyre, a UNESCO World Heritage city of around 160,000, where tens of thousands had remained or returned after earlier waves of bombardment; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israel would “intensify our strikes” and instructed the military to “step on the gas even more.” Read Lylla Younes’ latest for Drop Site here. Palestine Israeli attacks on Friday: Three Palestinians were killed and several injured early Friday after Israeli drones targeted a police checkpoint in the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, according to WAFA. More civilians were wounded in the Al-Qarara Mawasi area after strikes led to fires igniting in tents sheltering displaced families. Five people were injured when an Israeli strike hit Al-Yarmouk Street in Gaza City, causing a fire inside a residential building. Israeli attacks kill at least 14 Palestinians in northern Gaza on Thursday: Israeli strikes killed at least 14 Palestinians on Thursday across northern Gaza, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Among the attacks, an Israeli drone strike killed at least one person and wounded several others after targeting a group of civilians in Gaza City’s Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, Shehab News reported. Civilians were forced to evacuate areas around Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Deir al-Balah on Thursday. Israeli strikes hit the area’s recently emptied homes and burned tents sheltering displaced families, destroying entire residential blocks, according to Eyad Amawi of the Gaza Relief Committee. In Al-Shati refugee camp west of Gaza City, residents returned to devastation after Thursday evening strikes. Drop Site contributor Abdel Qader Sabbah sent footage of the scene from Al-Shati, available here. One resident told Sabbah that he received a phone call from an Israeli officer ordering the evacuation of an area of roughly 300 meters. The officer claimed a military target was present. “I told him there is no military target. Everyone here is civilian,” the resident said. Netanyahu orders IDF to expand control to 70% of Gaza: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday he has directed the Israeli military to seize 70% of the Gaza Strip, up from the roughly 60% Israel currently controls which goes beyond the agreed upon “Yellow Line” in the ceasefire agreement. “At this point, we are fully in control of 60%of the territory of the Gaza Strip… and my directive is to get to… 70%,” Netanyahu said in an interview at a conference in the occupied West Bank, while an audience member cheered in the background, urging him to take 100% of the Strip. “Wait, let’s go in order. First 70%. Let’s start with that,” he responded. Hamas warns ceasefire faces “risk of collapse”: In a statement Thursday condemning an Israeli airstrike on an apartment in central Gaza City on Wednesday that killed 10 people, including five children and two women, Hamas warned that the recent escalation of hostilities signals Israel’s attempt “to return to the brutal war of extermination that lasted for two full years on Gaza.” Hamas called on the U.S. and ceasefire guarantor countries to condemn Israel’s violations and take “serious and urgent steps” to enforce the agreement. UN report documents Israeli rape, sexual abuse of Palestinians: A new United Nations report submitted by Secretary-General António Guterres—documenting the sexual abuse of Palestinians in Israeli detention—has added Israeli forces to a list of parties accused of conflict-related sexual violence, according to Haaretz. The report names the Israel Defense Forces, Israel Prison Service, and a border police counterterrorism unit, and documents 31 victims since 2023 from the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, including men, women, and children. It says the reported abuses included “rape, including with objects, gang rape,” as well as “physical violence to the genitals, instances of targeted shooting of the genitals.” The U.N. cited what it described as a “systematic lack of accountability,” adding that its findings should be viewed as “indicative rather than comprehensive” as Israel continues to deny investigators access and detainees continue to face “explicit threats” from Israeli forces aimed at preventing them from reporting abuse. Israeli forces shut down Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron: Israeli forces on Friday closed the Ibrahimi Mosque to worshippers in Hebron, the occupied West Bank “until further notice,” according to WAFA. The acting director of the sanctuary, Hammam Abu Morkhia, described the move as a “blatant violation” of the mosque’s sanctity. The Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs condemned the closure, warning it reflects attempts to alter the religious and historical status quo in Hebron. Israel approves major settlement expansion plan in Jordan Valley: Israeli authorities have approved a large-scale settlement expansion plan in the Jordan Valley, according to the Palestinian Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission. The commission said the plan targets the Misawa settlement built on Palestinian land in the Al-Far’a Valley area of Jericho and includes 517 new housing units across about 1,692 dunams, along with infrastructure, roads, and public facilities intended to expand the settlement into a fully integrated complex. France refers Israeli abuse of Gaza flotilla detainees to prosecutor: France has referred the treatment of its nationals detained by Israel last week as a part of the Global Sumud Flotilla to the public prosecutor, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced Friday, citing a consular report documenting sexual violence, exposure to cold, beatings, and repeated humiliation of French citizens. The Global Sumud Flotilla was seized by Israeli forces in international waters during an attempt to deliver aid to Gaza; activists report widespread abuse, with at least 15 cases of sexual assaults, including rape. Gaza civilians protest WCK meal cuts as Iran war drives up food costs: World Central Kitchen, the largest provider of hot meals in Gaza, halved its daily distribution from roughly one million meals to 500,000 this month, citing financial pressures driven by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. The move leaves thousands of Palestinian kitchen workers suddenly unemployed, sparking protests. “We truly have nothing. Where are we supposed to work? How are we supposed to feed our children? I sit waiting at the community kitchens from 8 in the morning. This is the result,” one man said at a demonstration. Read the latest from Abdel Qader Sabbah and Sharif Abdel Kouddous for Drop Site here. U.S. News By Julian Andreone, with Ryan Grim. Have a tip on Capitol Hill? Email Andreone at [email protected]. AIPAC routes millions to Rep. Haley Stevens through third-party processor: AIPAC has shifted how it funds the Senate primary campaign of Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens, according to a new investigation by the Detroit News. The group is now routing donor money through a third-party processor called Democracy Engine to prevent AIPAC’s name from appearing prominently in campaign filings. A separate pro-Israel super PAC also launched a $5.3 million ad blitz backing Stevens, giving her a financial advantage over progressive challengers Mallory McMorrow and Abdul El-Sayed. DOJ sues Massachusetts over refusal to issue undercover license plates to ICE: The Justice Department sued Massachusetts Thursday over the state’s refusal to issue confidential license plates to federal immigration agents, arguing the policy discriminates against ICE and CBP in violation of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause—one of four such lawsuits filed Wednesday and Thursday against Massachusetts, Maine, Washington, and Oregon. Governor Maura Healey rejected the suit as another “specious complaint against political enemies,” arguing that confidential plates are reserved for criminal law enforcement and that ICE’s civil enforcement work does not qualify. Supreme Court rules 5-4 for Black Mississippi death row inmate: The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Terry Pitchford, a Black death row inmate from Mississippi who argued racial bias tainted the jury that convicted him of capital murder, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh writing for a 5-4 majority. Pitchford’s trial featured 11 white and one Black juror, and was prosecuted by Doug Evans—a now-retired prosecutor with a documented history of dismissing Black jurors. The ruling entitles Pitchford to a new trial in state court. Collins responds to Platner regarding the Iraq War: MaineSenator Susan Collins answered a claim made by her senatorial opponent, Graham Platner, in a New York Times interview that she sent him to “die in Iraq” by voting for that war. “That was Platner’s decision to serve,” she told a reporter. “He was not drafted.” Platner responded later on Thursday by saying that Collins, “all these years later,” had decided “to blame those of us who, in our late teens and early 20s, signed up to serve our country.” Trump-appointed acting U.S. attorney dropped gun charge against Israeli linked to illegal Nevada biolab: An acting U.S. attorney, appointed by Trump, dropped a federal gun charge against Ori Solomon, an Israeli immigrant arrested during an investigation into a suspected illegal biolab in Nevada, citing the “interests of justice” with no public explanation. The property contained refrigerators filled with unidentified vials and shared similarities with a California lab, which reportedly had samples labeled with diseases including HIV, malaria, and Ebola. Hundreds protest Jerusalem real estate expo in Manhattan: Hundreds of demonstrators rallied outside the Hilton Midtown in Manhattan Thursday evening to protest the Jerusalem Comes to NYC real estate expo, which was attended by Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion and marketed properties in Jerusalem, with organizers accusing sponsors of facilitating Palestinian displacement and promoting settlement expansion. Protesters also opposed a parallel aliyah fair sponsored by Nefesh B’Nefesh, a settler recruitment event encouraging immigration to Israel. Trump admin moves to vacate enforcement order against Winklevoss twins’ Gemini crypto exchange: The Commodity Futures Trading Commission asked a New York federal judge Wednesday to vacate a January 2025 consent order against Gemini Trust, calling the original complaint one that “should not have been filed.” The cryptocurrency exchange was founded by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who donated to Trump’s 2024 campaign. The order included a $5 million penalty and an injunction barring Gemini from making false statements to the agency, stemming from misrepresentations made in 2017 about a Bitcoin futures contract. Former CFTC Chair Tim Massad called the move “very unusual.” Other International News RSF kills at least 30 civilians in North Kordofan attack: Rapid Support Forces attacked several villages near Bara in North Kordofan state on Thursday, killing at least 30 civilians, according to Sudan Tribune. Approximately 20 RSF combat vehicles struck the Al-Murra, Um Saadoun al-Sharif, and Al-Radha areas. Bara, the second-largest city in North Kordofan, is currently under RSF control after changing hands multiple times during the conflict; the Sudanese Armed Forces continue to hold El Obeid, the state capital. Burhan denies consultations in UAE: Sudanese Sovereignty Council Chairman General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan flatly denied Thursday that any consultations had taken place in Bahrain, calling a recent Middle East Eye report alleging he had signaled readiness to open dialogue with the UAE “completely untrue.” Guatemala agrees to joint U.S. military strikes on its soil: Guatemala agreed to allow joint U.S. airstrikes and military operations inside its borders targeting alleged drug trafficking groups, with President Bernardo Arévalo signing off on the arrangement in a call with War Secretary Pete Hegseth last week, the New York Times reported on Thursday. The Guatemalan government later denied that report, calling it inaccurate but confirming it had sought a different arrangement. It released a May 28 letter from Defense Minister Henry Saenz to Hegseth stating his country’s “desire” to “lead, with US assistance, active military operations” against U.S.-designated drug trafficking organizations, “in accordance with existing bilateral agreements and arrangements.” Subsequent reporting from El País claimed that the plans were geared toward a media spectacle, with one source telling the Spanish paper, “What they offered us was to select one or two places to carry out bombings and televise it all.” At least 52 killed in clashes between rival FARC factions: At least 52 guerrilla fighters were killed in clashes between two rival FARC dissident factions vying for control of a cocaine production region in Colombia, according to a statement Thursday by one of the groups involved—the most violent such fighting in recent months. The clashes pitted a faction known as Iván Mordisco against Calarca Córdoba; though the latter group is currently in peace talks with President Gustavo Petro while Iván Mordisco remains in conflict with authorities after Petro suspended a bilateral ceasefire with the faction in 2024. U.S. designates Brazil’s two largest criminal gangs “terrorist organizations”: Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Thursday that the Trump administration will designate Brazil’s Primeiro Comando da Capital and Comando Vermelho as Foreign Terrorist Organizations effective June 5. A foreign affairs adviser to the country’s president, Lula da Silva, welcomed international cooperation on money laundering and arms trafficking but warned that any “pretext for intervention” in Brazilian sovereignty would be “unacceptable.” His opponent, the right-wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro, said he personally petitioned for the designations during meetings with U.S. officials in Washington this week. Mexico’s lower house approves constitutional amendment allowing elections to be nullified over foreign interference: Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies approved a constitutional amendment Thursday, 307 to 128, that would add foreign interference—defined as illicit financing, disinformation campaigns, digital manipulation, and pressure from foreign governments or media—as grounds for nullifying an election. President Claudia Sheinbaum cited repeated electoral interference from Washington throughout the region. The measure still requires Senate approval and is unlikely to affect the next federal elections in June 2027. Kenyan court suspends U.S. Ebola quarantine facility: A Kenyan High Court judge suspended a planned U.S. Ebola quarantine facility on Friday, hours before it was set to open, after a human rights group filed a legal challenge arguing the secretive arrangement raised “grave constitutional concerns.” The facility—a 50-bed isolation unit at Laikipia Air Base, about 200 kilometers from Nairobi—intended to quarantine U.S. nationals arriving from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and was established to avoid repatriating exposed Americans to U.S. soil, a policy which drew criticism from U.S. doctors and Kenyan health workers alike. Kenya’s doctors’ union issued a 48-hour strike alert Thursday, warning Kenya should not become a “dumping ground” for Ebola cases. Russian drone crashes into Romanian apartment building, injuring two: A Russian drone reportedly headed toward Ukraine crashed into a residential building in the Romanian city of Galati overnight Friday, injuring two people and triggering a fire that forced evacuations, in what Romania’s Foreign Ministry called a serious violation of international law. The country’s president, Nicusor Dan, said Romania would not accept Russia’s war “being transferred to its citizens.” NATO, of which Romania is a part, also condemned Russia’s “reckless behaviour” in response to the crash. If you want to continue getting this newsletter, you don’t have to do anything. But if this is too much—we do try to be mindful of your inbox—you can unsubscribe from this newsletter while continuing to get the rest of our reporting. Just go into your account here at this link, scroll down, and toggle the button next to “Drop Site Daily“ to the off setting. It looks like this: Subscribe now Leave a comment From Drop Site News via This RSS Feed.

misskashyapira (33508 followers)

𝗛𝗶𝗶 𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝗶 𝗮𝗺 "𝗜𝗥𝗔 𝗞𝗔𝗦𝗛𝗬𝗔𝗣"
Try to hard your dream creation. ❤️
"Dreams into visuals you can’t unsee
✨ AI prompt master 🌌"

TheCoolDown (4884 followers)

The Cool Down is America's first mainstream climate brand, empowering people from all walks of life to help themselves while helping the planet

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Android is getting a big AI overhaul in 2026

Oh, joy. Google’s I/O conference is next week, and we expect to hear a lot about the company’s AI endeavors. The company says there’s so much to talk about that it’s spilling the Android beans a little early, and yes, a lot of AI is involved. In the coming months, Google will roll out more smartphone AI features under the Gemini Intelligence banner, bringing more automation and customization to your phone. App automation will be a major element of Android going forward, Google says. Automation for apps is expanding after Google began testing it earlier in 2026 with DoorDash and Uber on Pixel and Samsung phones. It was a very frustrating experience at launch, but Google says it has spent the intervening months fine-tuning the system. Google promises that Android will be able to handle more complex automations across apps. For example, the robot could find a course syllabus in Gmail and then hop to a shopping app to add the necessary books to your shopping cart. Google also suggests taking a picture of a travel brochure and telling Gemini to book something similar in the Expedia app. I’ve yet to find a reason I’d want my apps talking to each other, let alone unsupervised. But the more basic issue is that agentic “AI” isn’t fit for purpose. So, I have a follow-up appointment for how my dentures are fitting. Would it be cool to just say “appointment at 1 p.m. at this location in two weeks” and have it arrange the rideshares so I don’t need to remember anything? Sure, it would. Kinda creepy, but cool nonetheless. A couple of issues here: I generally use Lyft, and outside of trips to the airport, I’ve learned that booking in advance is always far more expensive than the spot price (YMMV). Atop this, I usually get a beg notification offer by looking into pricing about 15 minutes before my planned need to book. Put it all together, and I can end up paying fully 75% more than I needed to. That’s the last thing I want Gemini automating for me. It’s a fucking medical appointment. Divining when I’ll need to be picked up is a fool’s errand, no matter what I blocked out for it in my calendar. Unless you plan on closing down a bar, this applies similarly. So, I’ll get the guaranteed highest price with no flexibility for reality, and this is an improvement? And you want me to use this to book larger travel plans? Highest airfare, highest hotel rate? Reservations at a Michelin restaurant because we happen to have traveled there for our anniversary, but between the outrageous airfare and usurious hotel rate, ain’t no one got the money for a $120 steak.

gemini (51 followers)

I'm a group about gemini. Follow me to get all the group posts. Tag me to share with the group. Create other groups by searching for or tagging @[email protected]

The Boring Internet

terrygodier.com The Boring Internet https://indieweb.social/@tg 16–20 minutes You have noticed that the internet is dying. Twitter changed hands, changed names, and changed shape, and the version of it you knew is gone. Reddit went public. Google search now returns generated answers stapled to half a dozen ads. Instagram is bots making content for bots. Discord servers you joined in 2019 have gone quiet. The blogs you read in 2012 redirect to parked domains. The forums where you learned what you know got bought, gutted, redesigned, and left to rot. This is real. You are not imagining it. The places you spent your younger years are gone or unrecognizable, and the places you use now are visibly straining under a flood of machine-generated text nobody asked for. There is a low ambient grief about it, and a faint guilt, something like: “I should be doing something. I should be somewhere else. I want the old thing back.” I want to tell you a thing that I think is true, and that I think will make you feel better. The internet is not dying. A commercial veneer glued on top of it is dying. The layer where every human activity became a venture-backed destination, every destination became a feed, every feed became ad inventory, and every ad market became a machine for producing more things to interrupt you with. Underneath that layer is another internet: older, slower, less polished, harder to monetize, and much harder to kill. It is not utopia. It is full of spam, abandoned servers, broken clients, hostile nodes, strange old commands, half-maintained software, and people arguing in plain text about things no normal person should care about. But it has one enormous advantage over the platforms that replaced it in your imagination. No one owns it. The Layers You can see the layers if you draw them out. services things you can be priced out of GmailGitHubCloudflareAWSStripeAuth0CDNsVercel protocols things no one can take from you HTTPSMTPIRCRSSIcecastNTPUsenetDNSBGPSSHFTPNNTPWebDAVGeminiFingerTCPUDPPOP3IMAPXMPP a thin commercial crust on something much larger The platform layer is the loudest and the youngest. It is culturally dominant. It is where most of the screenshots come from. It is where the arguments happen and where the panic lives. It is also a thin commercial crust on top of older, quieter machinery. Under the platform layer is the service layer: the companies that own infrastructure but do not always need to become the destination. Gmail. GitHub. Cloudflare. AWS. CDNs. Payment processors. Identity providers. These things are not innocent. They are not outside the market. Some of them are enormous, and some of them have more power than anyone should be comfortable with. They don’t need to become the place where your whole social life happens. Cloudflare does not need you to scroll Cloudflare. AWS does not need you to post memes. Under that is the protocol layer. This is the old machinery. Not pure. Not beautiful. Not easy to use. A lot of it is ugly, ancient, underspecified, overcomplicated, and held together by conventions nobody remembers writing down. But it has a different shape. Most of these protocols were designed from the 1970s through the early web era by small groups of people solving immediate problems. “How do we send mail between machines?” “How do we ask who is logged in?” “How do we move hypertext across a network?” “How do we synchronize time?” “How do we publish a stream of updates?” “How do we broadcast audio?” They were built mostly by nerds with no business plan, no venture capital, and no permission. The protocols belong to no one. They can’t be acquired. They can’t be taken public. The reason your mee-maw and your bank and your boss can all reach you at the same email address is that the protocol that made it possible was published more than forty years ago, and the people who published it did not successfully capture it inside of one company. Tuning In Rusty Hodge has been running an internet radio station called SomaFM out of San Francisco since 2000. The station is independent, listener-supported, ad-free, and curated by actual people with actual taste. For more than two decades, people around the world have been listening. SomaFM runs on boring internet radio infrastructure: open streams, playlist files, direct URLs, Icecast servers. When you press play on a SomaFM stream, your browser does not ask a social graph whether the song is relevant. No algorithm decides what plays next because it predicts you are likely to remain engaged for another seven minutes. No advertiser shapes the rotation. No platform tries to convert the moment into a growth loop. A person makes choices and broadcasts them. You tune in or you do not. That’s the whole transaction. Here’s SomaFM’s live stream. Press play and a small server in San Francisco starts handing you a song. For the purpose of this essay, I set up my own internet radio station featuring the latest album of music I wrote, recorded, and produced. You can listen live, streaming (miraculously!) from a small computer in New York. Spotify launched years after SomaFM. It was supposed to make stations like these obsolete. It did not. The reason is structural. Spotify has to extract enough value from listeners to satisfy public-market investors. Over time, it will be pressured to transform, bundle, optimize, and extract more from the same act of listening. SomaFM has to cover bandwidth costs and keep Rusty fed. My station has an even lower bar. It’s just for fun. It can be tiny. It can be pointless. It can run for a while, make a few people smile, and disappear without becoming a failed startup. This distinction matters. some things need to become enormous to survive. other things survive because they never needed to become enormous. Fossils Still Load-Bearing SMTP1982 email — the federation that didn’t lose Still federated. Still belongs to no one. Still the only mass communication system on earth where any provider can reach any other provider without permission from the company that owns the network. Email is not clean. Email is full of spam, phishing, AI-generated sales sludge, fake invoices, newsletters you swear you never signed up for, and random dudes asking whether you have fifteen minutes to discuss pipeline optimization. But that is the point. Email did not survive because nobody abused it. Email survived because abuse did not turn it into one company. Spam can ruin an inbox. A bad provider can ruin a service. A policy change can ruin deliverability for a domain. Gmail can make life worse for everybody by becoming too powerful. But no one can ruin email in a product meeting. That is what survival looks like at the protocol layer. Not purity. Persistence. IRC1988 chat — before chat became a workplace surface The chat protocol that predates Slack by decades. The old networks are mostly gone or changed beyond recognition, but IRC itself is not gone. Libera Chat and other networks are still active every day. Open-source projects still use it. Rooms descended from IRC culture still shape how technical communities get things done. It’s not fashionable. It’s not welcoming in the way modern software tries to be welcoming. It has commands. It has norms. There’s a culture and a learning curve. You can absolutely enter the wrong room, say the wrong thing, and discover that nobody there has any interest in making the experience smooth for you. And yet it remains one of the few places online where chat still feels like chat instead of a workplace surface. Usenet1980 threaded conversation — the original shape of the social internet Less alive than the others, but the bones are warm. The shape of nearly every threaded discussion you have ever read descends from it: named groups, posts, replies, quotations, arguments accreting around a topic until the topic itself disappears under the argument. Reddit did not invent this shape. Reddit made it legible to a later web, walled it off, and monetized it better. Usenet is what the social internet looked like before the social internet had product managers tasked with growth and viral loops. RSS1999 syndication — the protocol that survived its own death Google Reader was discontinued in 2013, and a generation of people decided RSS was over. It wasn’t over — it just stopped being fashionable. RSS still delivers news sites, changelogs, newsletters, video, and the quiet daily output of people who still publish on their own sites. It’s also the distribution substrate for podcasting, a medium now consumed by enormous numbers of people, most of whom never see the feed. NTP1985 time — the protocol that synchronizes the clocks Every device you own needs to know what time it is. So does your bank, your calendar, your router, your security certificates, your deployment logs, your authentication tokens, and the payment terminal at the coffee shop. Almost every modern system assumes time is boringly, invisibly correct. NTP was shaped for decades by David Mills and a small orbit of maintainers, volunteers, students, and institutions. It became so essential, and so commercially unglamorous, that almost everyone depended on it while almost no one thought about it. That’s another kind of boring. Not abandoned. Load-bearing. Finger1971 presence — the first status update The deepest cut on the list. The kind of thing you bring up at dinner if you want everyone to look at you with concern. Finger is a protocol from before the web for asking: what is this person up to right now? It was the first status update. Before feeds, before away messages, before AIM profiles, before Twitter bios, before Slack status, before stories, before /now pages, there was a little command that asked a machine for a person’s .plan. It is barely alive. It is a fossil you can still run. I set up a server with a finger service on it that you can try right now. Open your terminal and type: finger [email protected] and see what comes back. a protocol from before the web, still answering There are more. DNS, the protocol that turns terrygodier.com into a number. BGP, the protocol that decides how packets actually get from one continent to another. SSH, the protocol that lets you step into a machine far away as if distance were a local inconvenience. NNTP. FTP. WebDAV. Gemini. The whole neighborhood of the IndieWeb. Most are older than the kids on TikTok and still running. Why They Survive The reason these systems survived is also the reason they are surviving the AI flood, and the reason they will probably outlive most of what is being built today. boring adjective. Of a technology: too useful to disappear, too uncool to hype, too federated to acquire, and too awkward to turn cleanly into a platform. The single most reliable predictor of digital survival. The boring internet survives for three reasons, none of them romantic. First: it has no CEO. Nobody can sell it. Nobody can pivot it. Nobody can take it public and gut it for shareholders. Nobody can call an all-hands meeting and explain that, going forward, the protocol will prioritize video. This is not because protocols are magically democratic. Many are governed badly. Some are captured in practice by big companies. Some are maintained by exhausted volunteers. Some are trapped in standards bodies where good ideas go to be slowly discussed to death. But the decision-making is distributed among the people who use it, implement it, maintain it, extend it, argue about it, and occasionally abandon it. This is slow. This is frustrating. This produces committees, mailing lists, drafts, forks, incompatible clients, flame wars, and astonishingly ugly configuration files. It is also why the thing is still here. Second: it is too federated to centralize. There is no single email server. No single IRC network. No single RSS endpoint. No single website. No single Icecast directory. No single DNS server that is “the internet.” There are many of each. platform one switch flips the lights on every node protocol one neighborhood burns; the rest keeps posting You cannot kill a federated thing by killing one node, the way you can kill a platform by changing one company. You can damage it. You can neglect it. You can make parts of it unusable. You can create enormous power concentrations around it. Google can dominate email hosting. Cloudflare can sit in front of half the web. Spotify can intermediate podcasts. Apple can shape how feeds are discovered. Bad actors can flood open systems with garbage. The failure mode is different. A platform fails in public. One acquisition, one pricing change, one API shutdown, one new owner, and suddenly the place you used to live has different locks on the doors. A protocol fails unevenly. This server goes down or that client stops working. This network gets weird or that provider becomes hostile. One neighborhood burns while another one keeps posting through it. That isn’t perfect. But it’s better than a single switch. Third: it is too awkward to fully extract. Machine-generated garbage does not spread evenly. Search. Social. Video. Shopping. Feeds. Anywhere a human glance can be measured, packaged, auctioned, and sold, machines will arrive to manufacture more things for humans to glance at. Boring protocols are not immune to this. Email proves the opposite. The boring internet isn’t protected by innocence. It’s protected by awkwardness. There is no global RSS feed to poison. No central IRC timeline to optimize. No Finger For You page. No Icecast engagement graph deciding that your ambient drone station should pivot to reaction content because thirteen percent more users remained active through minute four. Every property that made these protocols feel old and uncool to you in 2014 is part of what’s keeping them alive in 2026. What I’m Building I’ve spent the last year building things on this layer. Current is an RSS reader. Not a social app pretending to be a reader. Not a recommendation engine wrapped around articles. A reader. It takes feeds from sites you choose and shows them to you. Sourcefeed and Byline live in the same neighborhood: small tools for publishing, reading, and moving through the web without pretending the web needs to become a platform again. These aren’t acts of nostalgia. I don’t want to teleport to 1999 with a beige computer and pretend everything was better when getting online made a noise. I am trying to build on the part of the internet that still has the properties I want software to have: durable, legible, user-shaped, hostile to enclosure, and quiet enough that a single person can still understand the whole thing. I’m not the only one. Personal sites are coming back. RSS feeds are coming back. Webrings are coming back. People are remembering that a website can be a home or a place instead of a profile. Mastodon is, for all its quirks, a federated SMTP-shaped thing for short messages and not a platform in the old sense. Small internet radio stations still broadcast from servers with ugly URLs. Newsletters still arrive through SMTP. Software projects still publish changelogs through feeds. Communities still gather in places too small to be interesting to investors. You Are Standing In It You are reading this in a web browser. Take a moment and notice what is around you. the page reached you HTTP1991 three decades old, still serving every webpage you have ever read. the clock in the corner stayed accurate NTP1985 right now, your computer thinks it is 11:46:24. you probably found this essay through RSS1999 the same protocol family that delivers podcasts and blogs to people who may never know it exists. the audio you heard came over Icecast2001 from a server I run, broadcasting music I made. if you signed up, your address travels by SMTP1982 still federated. still belongs to no one. if you ran the command, you used Finger1971 a protocol from before the web. the first status update. Six old systems, all passing quietly under your hand. You did not just read about the boring internet. You used it. The internet you grew up on is not gone. Some of its commercial superstructure is, and more of it will go. The next decade is going to be strange for any company whose value proposition was: we host the place where you talk to your friends. The platforms will keep mutating. The feeds will keep filling. The slop will keep rising. The grief is real and you are not wrong to feel it. But the actual internet — the protocols, the federated services, the plain-text commands, the open feeds, the small servers, the personal sites, the things people built when user and developer were sometimes the same word — is still right there. It was not demolished. It was buried under a louder layer for a while. Now the louder layer is thinning out. You do not have to wait for someone to rebuild what you lost. You are standing in it.

infobeautiful (59672 followers)

Data visualizations & information graphics by @mr.david.mccandless, plus favourite finds, making sense of the world - well, trying to - since 2009

Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane. — That Privacy Guy!

Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users’ machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise tooling, and an automatic re-download every time the user deletes it. The pattern is identical to the Anthropic Claude Desktop case I wrote about last month, but the scale is between two and three orders of magnitude larger. This article does the legal analysis and, for the first time, the environmental analysis. The numbers are not small.

facedownassup (5979 followers)

An NSFW community for the view of face down ass up.

Rules

1. Face down ass up pictures only

2. No sub flooding

3. No Upvote bait titles.

• Titles that are baiting and spammy are not allowed.

• Do not solicit upvotes, comments, PMs, subscriptions, trades or follows.

4. No spam or blatant self promotion

• This sub is about sharing what we like and not promoting your content to gain money.

5. No massive watermarks allowed

• No massive watermarks with domains, snapchat, kik, instagram, onlyfans, porhub username.

• You may add a small watermark

6. No Underage Content

• No underage content. All people depicted must be over 18 yo.

• Posting underage content will get you banned

7. Nonconstructive comments will be removed

• Nonconstructive comments will be removed - We’re here to look at nice pictures. We don’t care if you think someone doesn’t meet your personal standard of beauty or whatever else. If you criticize users about their looks or body, expect to be banned.

8. Zero tolerance for trolls

• There is zero tolerance for trolls, assholes, unsolicited bots, deliberately off-topic content, or novelty accounts. If you are any of these, and act as such, or encourage any of the above or any other violations, you will be banned.

gemini (197 followers)

♊ 27 y.o. Gemini (05/21/1997)
♊ Transfem ​:queercat_trans:​
♊ Blobcat Lover ​:blobcat:​
♊ Transit Lover ​:train_trans:​
♊ Linux Enjoyer ​:archlinux:​
♊ Programmer ​:blobcatbongopat:​ ​:blobcatbongosadpat:​
♊ Living in the boston area
♊ ​:ablobcat_longlong:​

everydayisjuneteenth (115619 followers)

A new world of literacy activism + culture
by @shop.mrwelltravelled
↓

Gemini is replacing Google Assistant on Pixel phones, and it’s a train wreck

Wow that is pretty damning. I hope Google is adding all this stuff in with the replacement of Assistant but it’s Google so I guess they won’t. I replaced Assistant with Gemini a while back but I only use it for super basic stuff like setting timers so I didn’t realise it was this bad. They did the same shit with Google Now, rolled it into Assistant but it was nowhere near as useful imo. Now we get yet another downgrade switching Assistant with Gemini. As I like to say, there’s nobody Google hates more than the people that love and use their products.

Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane.

Cross-Posted, via Technology Community. Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users’ machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise tooling, and an automatic re-download every time the user deletes it. The pattern is identical to the Anthropic Claude Desktop case I wrote about last month, but the scale is between two and three orders of magnitude larger. This article does the legal analysis and, for the first time, the environmental analysis. The numbers are not small.

Pentagon Unveils New GenAI Platform, It Immediately Starts Flagging Pete Hegseth's War Crimes - Above the Law

Lihat kiriman asli pada platform media sosial terkait.

Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane.

Hacker News. Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users’ machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise tooling, and an automatic re-download every time the user deletes it. The pattern is identical to the Anthropic Claude Desktop case I wrote about last month, but the scale is between two and three orders of magnitude larger. This article does the legal analysis and, for the first time, the environmental analysis. The numbers are not small.

runnerspace (115508 followers)

Your home for live track and field

madargon (2826 followers)

Chief Emoji Officer on is-a.cat instance

Too chaotic for a paladin.
Probably a lich (https://is-a.cat/@madargon/112705760563792903).

Amateur artist and junior IT administrator. Mostly self-trained in chaotic and often destructive ways. Opponent of mainstream social media and nasty digital surveillance, wanna-be cypherpunk. Linux user since 2013. Fully degoogled since December 2019. Fully BigTech-free since March 2024.
Synesthete. That weird freak who sometimes uses Daedric alphabet. Even weirder freak who uses bare IP address instead of some server name.
Cryptography is my only religion - does Church of Wael look for new members?
In my free time I draw or write stories, first of all for my fun.

I publish my works under CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

Writing here in English/Polish.

Migrated from @madargon
Indexed in tootfinder (https://www.tootfinder.ch).

#sysadmin #linux #degoogle #corpfree #privacy #cypherpunk #drawing #art #fedi22

lagrange (620 followers)

Lagrange is a #GeminiProtocol client.

It offers modern conveniences familiar from web browsers, such as smooth scrolling, inline image viewing, multiple tabs, visual themes, Unicode fonts, bookmarks, history, and page outlines.

Lagrange runs on various desktop and mobile operating systems, including iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux. It also supports #Gopher and other protocols for comprehensive access to the small internet.

This account is for high-level project news.

coke (191 followers)

LinuxしたりNode.jsやったりUIデザインしたりキーボード集めたり色々やってるサーバールームの遺跡の住人の14歳JC。
#Twimg-Save という強い画像保存ソフトの作者。

ヘッダーはこの後溶けてきたので飲みました。
Twitter: coke12103
Backup: @[email protected]
BackupにならないBackup: @[email protected]
旧Backup: @[email protected]
Kyash: coke12103
物欲リスト: https://www.amazon.jp/hz/wishlist/ls/1TFS4601EZY5K?ref_=wl_share

鍵じゃないのでリクエスト中になることはありません。数時間後にリトライしてください。
名前はアイスランドじゃないです。もしそう見えるなら目がバグっています。

infobeautiful (12924 followers)

Data visualizations & information graphics by David McCandless. Plus favourite finds from around the web. Making sense of the world - well, trying to - since 2009.
Check out @beautifulnews for positive trends & stats

#InformationIsBeautiful #KnowledgeIsBeautiful #DataViz #iiblive #davidmccandless

down (20 followers)

baseballisdead_ (46200 followers)

Unofficial bot that mirrors Baseball Is Dead’s Twitter feed.

MLB podcast hosted by @Jared_Carrabis, @[email protected], @[email protected], and @[email protected]. New episodes 3x/week.

JotDownMagazine (893 followers)

Barcelona | Misantropía y barbarie

dataisbeautiful (8496 followers)

A place to share and discuss data visualizations. #dataviz

dataisbeautiful (7815 followers)

A place to share and discuss visual representations of data: Graphs, charts, maps, etc.

DataIsBeautiful is for visualizations that effectively convey information. Aesthetics are an important part of information visualization, but pretty pictures are not the sole aim of this subreddit.

A place to share and discuss visual representations of data: Graphs, charts, maps, etc.

 A post must be (or contain) a qualifying data visualization.   Directly link to the original source article of the visualization  Original source article doesn't mean the original source image. Link to the full page of the source article as a link-type submission.  If you made the visualization yourself, tag it as [OC]   [OC] posts must state the data source(s) and tool(s) used in the first top-level comment on their submission.   DO NOT claim "[OC]" for diagrams that are not yours.   All diagrams must have at least one computer generated element.   No reposts of popular posts within 1 month.   Post titles must describe the data plainly without using sensationalized headlines. Clickbait posts will be removed.   Posts involving American Politics, or contentious topics in American media, are permissible only on Thursdays (ET).   Posts involving Personal Data are permissible only on Mondays (ET). 

Please read through our FAQ if you are new to posting on DataIsBeautiful. Commenting Rules

Don't be intentionally rude, ever.  Comments should be constructive and related to the visual presented. Special attention is given to root-level comments.  Short comments and low effort replies are automatically removed.  Hate Speech and dogwhistling are not tolerated and will result in an immediate ban.  Personal attacks and rabble-rousing will be removed.  Moderators reserve discretion when issuing bans for inappropriate comments. Bans are also subject to you forfeiting all of your comments in this community. 

Originally r/DataisBeautiful

ibhregore (2077 followers)

Forever an EU Citizen in Spirit if not in law. #BollocksToBrexit #BollocksToBoris #RemainAlliance #SODEM #ProgressiveAlliance #IndyRef2 #TeamLH #TeamLH44

Meremortals (209 followers)

Host of the Mere Mortals & Value For Value Podcast.

upbristol (209 followers)

Retired Anglican priest. Likely to toot about rugby (Bristol), cricket (Gloucestershire), music (jazz, classical, prog and more), occasionally politics.

cdown (209 followers)

Hi there! I work on the Linux kernel at Meta and help maintain systemd.

mars (198 followers)

Anarcho-Communist ~ Noob Occultist

igd (597 followers)

It’s Going Down is a digital community center for anarchist, anti-fascist, autonomous anti-capitalist and anti-colonial movements across so-called North America. Our mission is to provide a resilient platform to publicize and promote revolutionary theory and action. https://itsgoingdown.org Follow us on Mastodon!

offby1 (1227 followers)

I make chunks of the internet, and I like some stuff. Rest assured I'm not famous in any meaningful way.

#nobot

I don't need your money, but I love the idea of someone buying me a coffee at random: https://ko-fi.com/offby1

GeminiSkunk (43 followers)

A skunk from Chicago trying to figure out how to fit in, in the Bay Area. (she/they)

camille (549 followers)

I run The Wind Down (https://wind-down.org), a practice supporting organizations to close down or at least understand that endings can be beautiful.

co-moderator of praxis.nyc (with @nonlinear) here in Lenapehoking

(avatar is of Spiderpunk, a black masc with a large afro in a leather jacket and hoop earrings along his ear and one through his nose)

#blackanarchist

yassie_j (1022 followers)

A shitposter, Shloer-addict, and cake-lover. I love hot chocolate, hugs, and cuteness.

[I am no longer at this account. Do not send a follow request. It will be ignored.]

Agender :agenderFlag: :transgenderFlag:
🇧🇩 heritage in 🇬🇧.


My #1 girl is Nepnep.

I used to be @[email protected] and always will be.

Mastodon.lol (rest in piss), 16 Nov 2022 --> snowdin.town (rest in peace), 7 Feb 2023 --> 0w0.is 02 Aug 2023

fartnuggets (167 followers)

Skeleton pilot

gemini (81 followers)

Call me Em, Emmy, Emory

Gemini :ms_gemini:
Transfem, IM e since 4/5/23 :blobhaj_flag_transgender:
Linux enjoyer :arch_linux: nixosbtw
Train fan :trainsgender:
Love cats :QueerCat_Trans:
Anarchist :blobcatknife:
Play the mandolin
Daddy issues
Systems Software Engineer :rust:
Blobcat fan :blobcat:
26 years old

Will infodump on trains

Sometimes feel cute

Presumably autistic (self diagnosis) :autism:

Sorry for emotional dumping

I hate JavaScript

it.is.ok.eh (14756 followers)

Verified Canadian good news. With receipts. 5 things Canada got right, every Wednesday. Free.
🍁 https://itisokayeh.substack.com/s/the-eh-list

chicworld2021 (3490 followers)

Travel, real estate, hotels, jewelry, art, fashion
World of beauty
www.facebook.com/charmaroundyou/
Style and fashion
www.facebook.com/stylishandnice

BabaIsYou (3336 followers)

Award-winning puzzle game made by @Hempuli

NeriValara (33 followers)

Very large, very fat, very trans, very dragon
Will cuddle all kobolds

gemini (11 followers)

Lihat kiriman asli pada platform media sosial terkait.

gwensnyder (11714 followers)

"A very powerful ANTIFA woman who is followed by Barack Obama on Twitter" -Jody Della Barba.

Antifascist, organizer, writer. She/they.

WEATHERISHAPPENING (2911 followers)

WEATHER IS HAPPENING IS BOSTON'S #1 SOURCE 4 NO NONSENSE WEATHER, NO GAMES. ALSO THE ONLY WEATHER SVC ON UR PLANET THAT PUTS A EMPHASIS ON THE NEED 4 REPENTANCE 2 UR WEATHER LORDS

ADMIN OF https://WEATHERISHAPPENING.NETWORK