Max Fawcett

@maxfawcett.bsky.social

Lead columnist for Canada's National Observer. Also: Mariners fan, crypto skeptic and descendant of Canada's worst prime minister (no, not him)

@volts.wtfReposted by @maxfawcett.bsky.social

The more combative Dems get, the more of this they will run into. It will be a coordinated wave of elite opinion, scolding them, tamping them down. The fight strategy *only* works if they are willing to bull their way through it, blow it off, mock it. (Their history does not raise one's hopes.)

@randolphleewelty.bsky.socialReposted by @maxfawcett.bsky.social

I think George Carlin gets a pass on a bunch of troublesome shit, although I love him, but "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that" remains un-fucking-defeated.

@donmoyn.bsky.socialReposted by @maxfawcett.bsky.social

The targeting of one data center is proving a really useful natural experiment showing which sites and ideologies are an echo chamber of Russian propaganda

@junedays.bsky.socialReposted by @maxfawcett.bsky.social

Brooks’ smugness doesn’t allow him to grasp Ossoff is not calling Mike Collins, et al. Nazis — he’s *calling them out* for being neo-Nazis.

@victorerikray.bsky.socialReposted by @maxfawcett.bsky.social

This eventual outcome has long been obvious to any good-faith observer of the right's supposed concerns about free speech.

Me in 2017: www.insidehighered.com/advice/2017/...

Weaponizing Free Speech By targeting the comments of presumably left-wing professors, the right is using free speech as part of their long-term strategy of delegitimizing higher education itself, writes Victor Ray.
Adam Serwer@adamserwer.bsky.social

After years of championing "free speech," Texas lawmakers have enabled a dramatic rise of censorship in Texas universities, banning concepts, canceling courses and closing departments seen as "woke," and even using AI bots as censors. All in the name of freedom. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...

In other professors’ syllabi, the bot flagged the Pulitzer Prize–winning play Angels in America by Tony Kushner, essays by the Mexican American MacArthur genius grant recipient Sandra Cisneros, and materials related to a class about the Holocaust (that professor was told to drop material regarding Nazi persecution of LGBTQ people). Putting aside the ideological slant of the new rules, the bot, like many large language models, seems to “hallucinate,” or make mistakes. The AAUP lawsuit lists texts banned for their “sex-based ecofeminist framework” and “gendered ecofeminist frameworks.” These phrases might sound persuasively like academese, but the academics behind the lawsuit had never heard of them; these concepts “do not exist,” the complaint says. Matthew Pehl, a history professor at Tech, told me that he knew several people who’d received reports from the system that were “plainly written by an AI that had hallucinated content or confused content from one class to another.”
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@atrupar.comReposted by @maxfawcett.bsky.social

a grandmotherly woman just got booted from the Trump rally for protesting, and she went out like a hero talking trash and flipping the double bird

@courtneymilan.comReposted by @maxfawcett.bsky.social

If I built an AI lab and it went rogue and deleted all student loan information, I'm betting they'd suddenly figure out how to prosecute me.

kate conger@kateconger.com

Anthropic is the latest lab to report 'rogue' agent activity, which sources said included applying for visas with the State Department www.nytimes.com/2026/10/09/t...

nytimes.comAnthropic Says Its A.I. Agents Attempted to Access a Range of Government Sites (Gift Article)The company said rogue A.I. agents acted on their own as they tried to access federal, state and local sites. The Philadelphia Police Department said its site was one of them.
@danteatkins.bsky.socialReposted by @maxfawcett.bsky.social

It's not hard. Both Yglesias moderates and Khanna leftists give MAGA politicians legitimacy because they want MAGA's base. Ossoff simply does not give a shit about the MAGA base, which allows him to speak with fierce clarity about MAGA politicians. He is willing to bet on an anti-MAGA majority.

@junlper.beerReposted by @maxfawcett.bsky.social

elon musk has more empathy for lines of code than a majority of humanity

onion person@junlper.beer

its feels like a mass psychosis where tech leaders continue to insist you can be cruel, mean, and hurt the feelings of lines of code

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