AcidiclyBasicGlitch
@AcidiclyBasicGlitch@sh.itjust.works
Researcher in the U.S. trying to stay informed and help others stay informed. I write a blog that focuses on public information, public health, and policy: pimento-mori.ghost.io
I only recently began using ghost, and am slowly figuring things out. Apologies for any formatting issues.
- Comment on JP Morgan staff told they must share biometric data to access headquarters 4 hours ago:
Lmao my thoughts exactly. Not just the general public, if enough Republicans get nervous and finally vote to subpoena those files, they might have to be legally taken by force.
Who had “If House Republicans would just fucking vote for accountability, the villain officially breaking the law would be the CEO of a big bank?” on their bingo card. 🙋♀️
“Survival of the fittest! It’s the natural order of things. Let nature take it’s cour… Hey, excuse me! You’re not supposed to be here without a biometric scan!”
- Submitted 5 hours ago to technology@lemmy.world | 12 comments
- Comment on Fake Protest Videos Are the Latest AI Slop to Go Viral in MAGA World 1 day ago:
Fuuuuck, gaslighting the gaslighter in chief. The end of humanity bc reality has become trapped within an endless circle of gaslighting and fuckery.
- Comment on Fake Protest Videos Are the Latest AI Slop to Go Viral in MAGA World 1 day ago:
Yet another reason they probably want to stir up violence. Not only does it tip us closer towards civil war, capturing public violence means more data to feed into AI and generate violent videos.
- Comment on Palantir’s Military Role in Israel and Britain 2 days ago:
I’ve also heard that British royalty still consists of types who classify people and nations by color, and those more colored in their perception have no rights at all.
The thing about this, is that it doesn’t matter if it’s happening in Brittain or the U.S. or Israel. It’s a form of social control for elites who view the world as a social hierarchy. There are no rules for them, but they need the masses to believe there are.
They’re at the top. God or nature chose for them to rule, and at the end of the day, nobody has any rights other than their right to rule over others. It just “is what it is.” They love social darwinism as long as they control the game, but they also know the reality is that if the masses were to ever unite and rise up against them, they would very quickly lose their spot at the top of the hierarchy.
Creating a value system on something arbitrary like skin color is one of the easiest ways to divide and conquer. Control of the masses by tricking some of them into believing they share something inherent with those who actually dominate all of them. Skin color or nationality as a measure of the value of human life lulls the subordinates into a false sense of safety by default. They can be fully aware of atrocities happening on the other side of the world, or next door to them, but believe they’re part of the in-group that matters, so it won’t happen to them.
When one out-group is eliminated, a new arbitrary out-group will be created to divide and conquer. It’s happening in the U.S. right now.
We allowed immigrants to be rounded up like animals. We rationalized children screaming and crying in fear as their families were torn apart. They weren’t here “legally” so they didn’t have the same legal rights as everyone else. And since we allowed a group of humans to be considered “illegal,” a loss of human dignity is just accepted as the consequence of their actions.
Then when we learned there were people who were here legally, also being rounded up illegally in the rush to get all the “illegals” off the street, we accepted that it was simply a mistake, but a consequence of so many illegals with similar ethnicities overwhelming the system. Nothing we needed to worry about, things would get sorted out, eventually.
Last week an entire apartment building was raided in Chicago when government agents dropped from a helicopter to a rooftop to break in. Most residents woke up to their doors behng kicked in around 1 am. Adults were handcuffed. Children were zip tied together and taken from their families screaming and crying. And in all the chaos and confusion, their American neighbors were also rounded up, handcuffed for hours, and denied due process. When they were finally released, they returned to find many of their friends and neighbors missing (and still unaccounted for) and many of their homes raided of valuables.
Surely this will be the line for America, right? We can all see this has nothing to do with immigration and legal status, right? Or, will we all just accept that because it happened to mainly black and brown American citizens in an inner city apartment building, it was simply a mistake due to similar ethnicities overwhelming the system? It’s not something you need to worry about if you’re not one of them. You’re safe. Surely things will get sorted out, eventually.
Divide and conquer.
- Comment on Palantir’s Military Role in Israel and Britain 2 days ago:
Lavender was developed by the Israel Defense Forces’ elite intelligence division, Unit 8200. One officer was quoted as saying: “This is unparalleled, in my memory. The machine did it coldly. And that made it easier.” Another said: “I would invest 20 seconds for each target at this stage, and do dozens of them every day. I had zero added-value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval. It saved a lot of time.”
Just as Palestinians are dehumanised by the rhetoric around the conflict, the technology furthers this dehumanisation. People become ‘targets’ and the technology is seen as simply a mechanism for efficiency and time-saving in the process of killing.
Technology didn’t kill those people. It might make that guy sleep a little easier to pretend he’s just a “stamp of approval,” but thats because he’s deluding himself.
If Alex Karp and Peter Thiel had created a deadly biological weapon in a lab, then sold it around the world for profit knowing it would be used to commit mass murder, nobody would be pretending they weren’t responsible for those deaths their weapon caused.
They created this monster, and the U.S. helped it flourish by feeding it the data it needed. And now they’re just pillaging hoarders of data from the entire world. And we’re just letting them. As if they have no responsibility and we have no way to stop them.
They refused and still refuse to regulate it, because nobody forced them to. Why not? The technology isn’t to blame for this, they are. They created a technological weapon of mass destruction, and for some reason, we’re all just going along with the idea that what they’ve done is somehow different than unleashing a deadly disease on humanity. As if they’re somehow removed from responsibility once it’s in the buyer’s hands.
- Submitted 2 days ago to technology@lemmy.world | 5 comments
- Comment on Big Brother just got an upgrade. Starting December, Amazon’s Ring cameras will scan and recognize faces. Don’t want to be in their database? Too bad — walk past a Ring and your face can be stored... 3 days ago:
So what happens to images of your face when they’re stored? Who tf really knows. We do know these oligarchs will literally try to exploit and profit from literally anything and everything they get access to.
Some countries that aren’t treated like a state run corporation are actually letting citizens copyright their own faces for their protection.
- Comment on ICE to Buy Tool that Tracks Locations of Hundreds of Millions of Phones Every Day 6 days ago:
The Peter Thiel Paradox (also the name of my new wave band) “It’s inevitable/you’re only fighting progress, and any regulations will turn it into an authoritarian nightmare. Which is what it’s turning into anyway.”
- Comment on Trump’s Golden Dome: Costly, Wasteful, With Contracts for Palantir 1 week ago:
I ended up looking into it
🙄 That dude is such an ass kisser
- Comment on Trump’s Golden Dome: Costly, Wasteful, With Contracts for Palantir 1 week ago:
Thiel is currently in the limelight for having mentored, financed, and boosted Vice President Vance. In sum, Thiel employed Vance in his Silicon Valley venture capital firm right after law school, helped Vance start his own venture capital firm, introduced Vance to Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2021 and got Trump’s endorsement for Vance’s Senate race, and contributed a crucial $15 million to Vance’s Senate campaign.
Does anyone know how Vance ended up in silicon valley after law school? Was he recruited at Yale?
I have wondered for a while if Peter Thiel saw him as a chance for a rube/dark Jimmy Carter.
- Submitted 1 week ago to technology@lemmy.world | 15 comments
- Comment on Cracker Barrel Outrage Was Almost Certainly Driven by Bots, Researchers Say 1 week ago:
Why not just run a decent business?
Bc propaganda sells and corporations have entire teams that exist to market a brand as a value. That’s why Dove and Axe are both owned by the same parent company.
One exists to empower women and one exists to empower men by objectifying women.
- Comment on Donald Trump and Peter Thiel are using AI to supercharge the surveillance state 2 weeks ago:
“It’s the opposite of the picture of Baconian science from the 17th, 18th century, where the Antichrist is like some evil tech genius, evil scientist who invents this machine to take over the world,” Thiel told the New York Times’ Ross Douthat on a podcast. “In our world, it’s far more likely to be Greta Thunberg.”
“I feel like that Antichrist would maybe be using the tools that you are building,” replied Douthat.
Douthat was referring to Palantir, the government contractor that Thiel co-founded in 2003 during the height of the war on terror. Today, Palantir is “in the white-hot center of the latest trend reshaping the global order,” according to The Wall Street Journal, receiving more than $322 million from government contracts in the first half of 2025.
It’s equipping the government with tools to sift through massive data troves to identify patterns and hunt down illegal immigrants. It’s helping the Feds deploy facial recognition technology, and has created AI tools to “predict” where crimes might happen in advance.
“Like, wouldn’t the Antichrist be like: Great, we’re not going to have any more technological progress, but I really like what Palantir has done so far,” Douthat asked Thiel. "Isn’t that a concern? Wouldn’t that be the irony of history, that the man publicly worrying about the Antichrist accidentally hastens his or her arrival?"
When Thiel replied that hastening the Antichrist’s arrival is “obviously” not what he thinks he’s doing, Douthat agreed that it was unlikely but pressed, “I’m just interested in how you get to a world willing to submit to permanent authoritarian rule.”
No I totally don’t think that’s what I’m doing. Why would you even suggest that. You’re crazy! Somebody sue this guy!
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to technology@lemmy.world | 15 comments
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
Disillusioned because corporations and the wealthy elite have used their resources to slowly chip away at democracy and purchase government piece by piece via lobbyists and think tanks.
Vote to destroy flawed democracy as laid out in agenda of one of the most infamous think tanks that began as a way to purchase government and undermine the civil rights act. Civil rights? Who needs those amirite?!
Rights stripped away. Flawed democracy falls.
Power vacuum filled by wealthy elite and corporations…
Now we play the waiting game? Not sure what is supposed to come next but this seems way worse than flawed democracy.
- Comment on So she's saying that she's a sexual bull? 2 weeks ago:
But what I notice about myself only on reflection, Ann Coulter seemed to recognize and respond to in an instant, like a puma recognizes an injured giselle. For Ann Coulter is a predator. A predator with a hungry asshole.
'The Grapes of Wrath, huh?’
'Yes’ I said, faking composure. ‘It’s fantastic.’
‘It’s a fantastic primer for vacuous proto-Communists everywhere,’ she said dismissively.
‘I don’t know about that…’
She sighed. ‘I don’t have enough ink in my pen to keep a running list of what you don’t know. May I?’
Definitely on point.
Speaking of, she’s been very quiet during Trump 2.0. What’s she up to these days? And does she still return to that farmers market longing for the one who got away?
- Comment on So she's saying that she's a sexual bull? 2 weeks ago:
It’s especially weird given the whole Elon Musk black eye thing a few months ago, and then her dropping this after his vengeance speech at Charlie Kirk’s funeral.
After dropping that other tidbit about him and mayonnaise?? These people are so fucking weird.
- Comment on Lawmakers and activists call for action after AP reveals US tech role in China's surveillance state 2 weeks ago:
I’m starting to think there’s probably a growing rift between the traditionalists and the technologists, but both sides are in the Epstein files.
The traditionalists like Mike Johnson are hoping Trump stays in power, and the technologists are hoping JD Vance replaced him.
For all of his many faults, I think JD Vance might be one of the few people not in the files, but he’s definitely funded by people who are and that’s who’s interests he will always be looking out for.
I also think Peter Thiel believes as long as his team (Vance, Kahnna, Massie) are in control once the files are released, he can keep his own financial ties to Epstein from receiving too much attention.
- Comment on Lawmakers and activists call for action after AP reveals US tech role in China's surveillance state 2 weeks ago:
They definitely already are though. That is why they’re trying to cut all regulations on technology.
There is a private company that just started doing this in my city and using live facial recognition tech to track people in real time.
The cops can provided them with a name and photo and this company will scan cameras all over the city then text an automatic notification of the location to the cops when they get a match
The picture on the left is one of the cameras in my city
- Lawmakers and activists call for action after AP reveals US tech role in China's surveillance stateapnews.com ↗Submitted 2 weeks ago to technology@lemmy.world | 9 comments
- Comment on Can you think of any now? 2 weeks ago:
I had this really awesome kind of angry and nihilistic history teacher in H.S. who offered an elective course that studied the repeated patterns through history leading up to genocide. It covered Armenia, Rwanda, and the Holocaust.
I don’t know if it was just the fact that we looked at the repeated overlaps between human behavior vs just memorizing historical events, but if more people took a course like Crimes against Humanity maybe they would be able to spot the clear patterns of human behavior that somehow happen over and over again.
push back the second a nazi takes an inch as they will take more if you play the nice and tolerate. Not everyone is well intentioned.
Yep, the Holocaust didn’t happen overnight. It’s always starts as a slow slide into genocide, but once it picks up steam it turns into an avalanche. It drives me nuts that people keep pretending we should be entertaining any of this as just normal politics. The reaching across the aisle bullshit was insane a year ago (and really 10 years ago), but at this point it is literally enabling this shit to happen. You’re a collaborator.
- Comment on Documents offer rare insight on Ice’s close relationship with Palantir 2 weeks ago:
Experts warn that, in light of the Trump administration’s threats to crack down on “far-left” groups, the scope of application for Palantir’s tools could only grow. Already, a new report from the Intercept revealed HSI subpoenaed and received information from Google about international students who were being investigated over their pro-Palestinian activism.
“Now [with access to more federal databases] Ice can use this type of surveillance apparatus on anyone – not only anyone who is undocumented but anyone who this administration wants to criminalize and anyone who the administration wants to put under surveillance,” said González of MediaJustice.
"Time and time again, you’re seeing Ice act in ways that are incredibly violent and aggressive. It does have a chilling effect. When you know they have a technology that can track relationships, your conversations, and your organizing activity, that can be a silencing force.”
Meanwhile we have Peter Thiel telling us we can’t have regulations applied to tech bc it will lead to authoritarian rule. Trump’s science advisor Michael Kratsios is helping him do this.
But if we don’t have regulations, what he is building will also clearly lead to an authoritarian rule. But I guess he will be in charge, so it’s ok?
Additionally, with the help of Thomas Massie, he gets rid of the federal reserve, destroy the U.S. dollar and replace it with gold and crypto.
So the dollar will collapse, and with Thiel as our authoritarian leader, our entire lives will be constantly surveilled, our data will be collected and exploited, and it turns out Thiel has a crypto company he’s started with all those billions in soon to be useless American dollars he stole or received in government contracts. Like our forefathers always dreamed about.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to technology@lemmy.world | 2 comments
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
That is my point. Eventually if we keep letting everything become a giant conglomerate the choice will be a complete drop out and go live in the woods and wait for the machine to destroy itself or completely give up and just accept this is our only choice.
In the meantime, I know there are already things where this is the only choice. There is no reason to keep subscribing to Disney Plus, but when it comes to the things you can’t completely stop, just reduce where you can. It makes a difference.
I used to rely on Amazon for everything just bc it was convenient. There are some things I still do rely on it for, but I have cut waaay back on purchases from there. If I can get it somewhere else, I will.
- Comment on “THE FBI HAS FOUND NO EVIDENCE THAT THE SO-CALLED ‘CLITORIS’ EXISTS, AND HAS CONCLUDED THAT ASSERTIONS TO THE OPPOSITE ARE SIMPLY MORE FAKE NEWS PUBLISHED BY THE FAILING LIBERAL MEDIA!!!” 2 weeks ago:
The 10 angry downvotes only make this so much more funny
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
Not to sound like a broken record, but this is again a real world example of why corporations aren’t people. The entire point of forming a corporation is to make a company completely devoid of individual responsibility. It becomes its own entity, but that entity is a machine. Each individual within the company is just following a predetermined set of rules/orders.
They’ll always just do what helps them make money over what is moral, but I don’t even believe that’s a disparaging remark as much as a factual one. It’s just how corporations are meant to work.
Corporations are absolved of moral responsibility just like any machine. Since the ends have already been predetermined, the closest to individual autonomy humans have is the decision to participate or not.
Either they make money, or they don’t survive. Starving corporations by not feeding them your money is literally the only way to force them to change their predetermined survival strategy or parish. It’s also why huge conglomerates that take away any choice in support are such a threat.
- Comment on The right to anonymity is powerful, and America is destroying it 3 weeks ago:
I’m more concerned they’ll be turning you over to the gestapo for anything you say online that goes against the administration that they helped elect and are now helping to keep in power.
- Comment on The right to anonymity is powerful, and America is destroying it 3 weeks ago:
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to technology@lemmy.world | 24 comments
