Ian M Rountree

Well this is eleventy-million kinds of Fucked Up. @latimes.com (who once contracted with me as a freelance reviewer and whom I struggled to get paid by) asserts that *merely reading its website* constitutes a permanent waiver of your right to sue it under *any circumstances*.

it's "support artists" until artists refuse to lowball themselves, and then it's "see this is why we feed your stuff into AI". go to hell tbh

I'm light headed, oh no, my wallet it hurts youtu.be/u3M9DkUnf_g

Here's a photo of a helicopter landed on Joanne's 227 foot support yacht that follows around her 290 foot main yacht

chat,,, is it a good thing if you cannot believe anything you encounter without embarking on a forensic mission?

this is so perfect, so pure

Not to pick on Sam here, but this is a useful point to highlight some of the impossibility of trust & safety work. Meta actually used to have a program *exactly* like this, BUT it became a central feature of Frances Haugen's Facebook Files as an example of Meta being evil. I'll explain...

Okay sorry I think we're done with "Tell me [] without telling me []." It had its time. It was always condescendingly smug but now it's also unbearably tedious; I think we can move on.

Try, among other things… Getting ill will not bankrupt you. Your insurance will not be an endless battle that destabilizes your finances and family. You and your children can get routine medical treatment. You are not up at night worrying about these things.

This morning, the D&D team and Magic's Studio X informed our leadership of our intent to unionize. We love the games we make and the work we do, and unionizing is how we protect that work. unitedwizardsofthecoast.com/news/dnd-stu...

Surveillance camera system grows in Manitoba community

Winnipeg Centre is in a housing crisis that is being escalated by corporate landlords who put profit above people. Proud to stand in support of the West Broadway Tenants Committee’s fight against Wingspan Properties renovictions. Housing is a human right!

Gun lobby logic, applied to stochastic parrot toys. Awesome. Cool. Cool cool cool.

Sentinels on watch

I feel like there's got to be some kind of "Stickers on your laptop?" litmus test question list that I didn't pass to be A Tech Guy (career).

"Never demonstrate competence in a task you're unwilling to repeat" is Grey's whole problem. Rook's problem is a kind of terminal curiosity.

This evokes, for me, Scott McNealy, head of Sun Microsystems, way back (20-25 years?), saying ‘You have no privacy, get over it.’

I honestly have never considered switching from Google Pixel phones until they sent me a "wanna celebrate destroying the lives of trans people" as a system update.

Age verification is an egregious privacy violation, an inexcusable form of surveillance, and… it’s also voodoo bullshit that doesn’t work. It’s one of the reasons I’m proudest to support @eff.org, who have been leading the fight against the horrible practice for years: www.eff.org/issues/age-v...

We don't know much about googlebooks (the new laptops) yet, but what I'm seeing makes me want the version of android they're running on my existing tablet, instead of buying a new device.

boycotts don't work if they have an expiration date!

Privacy concerns prompt calls to ban smartglasses in Canada

Updating the "AI" community's own words for short fiction marketing: Short stories won’t replace humans, but humans who read short stories will replace those who don’t. The true power of short stories lies not in replacing humans, but in working alongside us to achieve what neither can do alone.

I can only imagine how much discussion and behind-the-scenes labor this took, but this is absolutely the right thing to do.

You know. He's right. I will never hand it to him. But in this quote without context or elaboration, he's right.

This is a prime example of what @doctorow.pluralistic.net would term ‘criti-hype’. There are real damages from LLMs & genAI, e.g. the power & water used; how they’ve pushed up memory prices making phones, laptops etc more expensive; the trillions of $ wasted. But AI isn’t going to wipe out humans.

This morning at Winnipeg’s Victoria Inn, there was both a harm-reduction conference and a defence-industry gathering. The two events did not cancel each other out.

I'm convinced my sleep quality is worse with my smartwatch on for tracking, but how would I ever be able to prove it.

Very forceful statement by Terry Tao about AI and math. terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/11/a... Note, he is not claiming the models aren't real and powerful. He's talking about how that power should be used. This, I believe, is what all AI discussions should center.

Steven Erikson and Guy Gavriel Kay come to mind. Wildly different styles I know, but if you like them, my writing ought to feel very familiar.

🚨 BEWARE of VoteSafe.org 🚨 While it bills itself as a “safe” way to register to vote, it is actually a digital surveillance machine created by Elon Musk’s super PAC.

1/ Happy Labour Day! Workers built this country and keep it running every day. No matter where you work, you deserve good wages, strong protections and benefits that help you afford a good life.

The number of stray numerals @doctorow.pluralistic.net alone is going to save with this will be legendary.

Live your life so that you never get this rekt by chess.com

One of the worst plagues of the "AI" season has to be the automated captions every youtube channel and news network is now using. The error rate is so atrocious it's distracting.

Trade xkcd.com/3290/