YunoBlog

Author: tio

  • ‘We’re right on track,’ says Streeting as key target for hospital waiting times hit

    Government his its interim target of 65% of patients in England being treated within 18 weeks.
  • Satellite Imagery Shows Ongoing Demolitions Across Southern Lebanon

    Satellite Imagery Shows Ongoing Demolitions Across Southern Lebanon

    The fragile ceasefire agreed between Israel and Hezbollah last month is holding. 

    But satellite imagery shows that at least 46 of 54 towns and villages within the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “Yellow Line” in southern Lebanon have been heavily damaged or, in some cases, entirely flattened. 

    Much of the destruction and demolition has taken place in recent weeks.

    Bellingcat’s satellite imagery analysis examined towns and villages identified on OpenStreetMap, a community-driven map database. Medium resolution PlanetScope satellite imagery covering each of the locations was provided by Planet Labs, a US company that recently restricted some of its imagery in the Middle East.

    Bellingcat is sharing the annotated PlanetScope imagery for the dates of March 2 and May 8, 2026, showing the scale of damage that has occurred during roughly the first two months of the US-Israeli war against Iran.

    The towns and villages detailed in the map are colour coded. Red shows locations  that have suffered varying degrees of damage or destruction, while yellow shows locations that were damaged prior to the US-Israeli war with Iran. White shows locations that have not been significantly damaged at time of publication.

    Scroll and zoom to see damage throughout southern Lebanon in each of the date tabs. The first image is from March 2, 2026, shortly after the US and Israel attacked Iran. The second image is from May 8, 2026, more than two months after the start of the war and amid a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. PlanetScope imagery via Planet Labs PBC.

    Israel’s Defence Minister, Israel Katz, is reported to have stated that “all homes in Lebanese villages near the border will be destroyed — in accordance with the Rafah and Beit Hanoun model in Gaza”. The aim, Katz said, is to “remove, once and for all, the threats near the border”. Israel has adopted similar methods of flattening buildings and homes close to Israel’s border in Gaza.

    The large-scale destruction in southern Lebanon has been reported by multiple outlets including the BBC, CNN, SkyNews and The New York Times. These reports have shared images from several towns and villages, but Bellingcat is publishing satellite imagery for the entirety of southern Lebanon. The changes between the two dates show the scale and pace of destruction.

    Within the Yellow Line  — the area occupied by the IDF since a ceasefire was agreed between Hezbollah and Israel on April 16 —  some towns were reported already destroyed or heavily damaged during the 2024 Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon. Some — like the coastal border town of Naqoura or the southeastern border town of Kfar Kila — have now been largely demolished. This is visible in both the medium-resolution PlanetScope imagery, and in high-resolution imagery obtained from Airbus by the BBC.   

    Everything south of Lebanon’s Litani and Zahrani Rivers has been under evacuation orders issued by the IDF since early March, with regular updates warning residents to leave ahead of airstrikes. 

    Much of the destruction within the “Yellow Line” appears to be from either controlled demolitions using explosives or construction vehicles. The IDF has shared numerous videos showing large-scale demolitions conducted in the towns and villages in southern Lebanon, while videos shared elsewhere on social media show the aftermath — large parts of towns like Beit Lif or Kheim reduced to rubble. 

    One particularly large explosion took place in the small village of Qantara, where the IDF says it found two large tunnel systems built by Hezbollah. 

    The tunnels were detonated with 450 tonnes of explosives, leaving large parts of the village obliterated. Another video released by the IDF showed some of the few remaining buildings in the nearby village of Aadashit being demolished with explosives. The IDF claimed the buildings were “Hezbollah infrastructure”.

    Before and after imagery from Planet Labs shows the villages of Qantara and Aadshit in southern Lebanon on March 2 and April 30, 2026. The April imagery shows the aftermath of two large demolitions conducted by the IDF. Large parts of both villages have also been demolished. The UNP 7-1 label details the position of a UN peacekeepers facility.

    Bellingcat contacted the IDF for comment on the details in this story but did not receive a response before publication. 

    A full size version of the map can be found here.

    Bellingcat is a non-profit and the ability to carry out our work is dependent on the kind support of individual donors. If you would like to support our work, you can do so here. You can also subscribe to our Newsletter and follow us on Bluesky here, Instagram here, Reddit here and YouTube here.

    The post Satellite Imagery Shows Ongoing Demolitions Across Southern Lebanon appeared first on bellingcat.

  • “Huge moment” as the health service hits 18-week target amid half-a-million waiting list drop

    The NHS has hit its target for the number of patients waiting 18-weeks thanks to the biggest improvement in waiting times since the launch of the iPad. In March, 65.3% of patients were waiting 18-weeks, as the waiting list fell by over 312,000 last year, the largest year-on-year reduction in 16 years. The improvement in […]

  • How Journalists Enable the COVID Amnesia Project

    People need to know the past credibility of our medical leaders to accurately gauge their current credibility.

    The post How Journalists Enable the COVID Amnesia Project first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

  • “Life-changing” SMA therapies to be available on NHS in long-term

    Hundreds more children with muscle-wasting condition spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) are to be offered potentially “life-changing” therapy on the NHS which could help them live years longer and attend primary school. From today, 2 innovative treatments for SMA – nusinersen and risdiplam – will be made routinely available on the NHS in England following an access scheme to collect more evidence, giving hundreds of families long term-certainty. NHS […]

  • Servers in Moldova Hosted Darknet Crime Market, Authorities Say

    The technical infrastructure for Crimenetwork, a relaunched darknet marketplace used to sell stolen data, cybercrime tools, drugs, forged documents, and money-laundering services, was hosted on servers belonging to a company in Moldova, the country’s police said Wednesday.

    Moldovan, German, and Spanish law enforcement, along with the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, dismantled the platform in a joint operation this month, authorities said.

    Moldovan police described Crimenetwork as one of the most active darknet markets dedicated to cybercrime, saying it operated both as an encrypted forum for cybercriminals and as an illegal online marketplace.

    “The platform operator charged commissions for transactions made, and sellers paid monthly fees for advertising and marketing licenses,” the Moldovan police statement said.

    The Moldovan details of the case were made public after German authorities on May 8 announced the joint operation had taken down  the platform and arrested its suspected operator, a 35-year-old German citizen, at his home in Mallorca, Spain.

    “The accused is charged with having built and administered a completely new technical infrastructure, also called ‘Crimenetwork,’ just a few days after the shutdown of the previous version of ‘Crimenetwork’ and the arrest of its administrator in December 2024,” said the Federal Police Office of Germany statement. 

    Moldovan police said Crimenetwork was used to trade stolen bank card information, login credentials, and personal documents, as well as to distribute malware, ransomware, and DDoS attack services, and to facilitate other illicit activity, including anonymous hosting and money laundering.

    The platform had more than 22,000 users and over 100 active vendors, with transactions carried out in cryptocurrency, German and Moldovan authorities said. Investigators found evidence that it generated more than 3.6 million euros (roughly $4.2 million) through sales commissions, advertising fees, and vendor licenses.

    A separate statement by the Karlsruhe Prosecutor General’s Office and police in Offenburg and Reutlingen said the suspected operator of the platform was arrested on May 6.

    German authorities said the suspect had allegedly been hiding in Mallorca under false identities for several years. In a separate investigation, he is suspected of defrauding around 1,000 people in Germany with fake online shops.

    Searches in Mallorca and in Germany led to the seizure of electronic devices and cryptocurrency, German prosecutors said. Moldovan authorities said they had seized assets worth around 194,000 euros (about $228,000) in connection with the Crimenetwork operation.

    The suspect remains in extradition custody while authorities coordinate his transfer to Germany.

    The alleged operator of the predecessor version of Crimenetwork was sentenced to 7 years and 10 months in prison by the Gießen Regional Court in March 2026, said the press release by German authorities.

  • Help EFF Solve an Issue That’s Bigger than Creepy Ads

    Millions of people around the world use EFF’s Privacy Badger. This browser extension blocks the hidden trackers that twist your web browsing into a commodity for Big Tech, advertisers, scammers, and data brokers. But did you know that we’re trying to solve an issue that’s even bigger than creepy ads and user profiling? You can help.

    JOIN EFF

    Online tracking isn’t just creepy and unethical. It also enables government surveillance. Widespread commercial surveillance and weak privacy laws allow data brokers to harvest your data and sell it to law enforcement agencies including the FBI, CBP, and ICE. The government exploits this system to buy sensitive information about you that they would ordinarily need a warrant to collect, like your location over time. 

    With your help, EFF is fighting back. Our team is working to enact stronger laws to uphold your privacy. We’re advocating for consumer rights in the courts. We’re investigating how these technologies affect our communities. And we’re cutting off surveillance advertising at the source with tools like Privacy Badger for everyone. You can support this work as an EFF member.

    End Mass Surveillance

    Privacy is a human right because it gives you a fundamental measure of security and freedom. That is why we at EFF focus on your ability to have private conversations and interact with the world using technologies that you choose. But when tools that many of us must rely on serve corporate surveillance, they also feed government surveillance. We owe it to ourselves to fight the mass spying used to control and intimidate people. Let’s do this.

    For a limited time, you can join EFF as a monthly or one-time donor and pick up a new Privacy Badger Crewneck sweatshirt. The embroidered Privacy Badger mascot appears above Traditional Chinese for “privacy” because human rights are universal.

    You can also get a set of puffy stickers as a token of thanks. Our little Ghostie protects privacy in Arabic, English, Japanese, Persian, Russian, and Spanish.

    Claw Back! This year’s member t-shirt is hot off the press featuring an orange cat swatting at the street-level surveillance equipment multiplying in our communities. You might empathize with him, but there’s a better way. Let’s end the law enforcement contracts, harmful practices, and twisted logic that enable mass spying in the first place.

    You can support our mission for technology in the public interest today. Join the movement and become an EFF member.

    ____________________

    EFF is a member-supported U.S. 501(c)(3) organization. We’ve received top ratings from the nonprofit watchdog Charity Navigator since 2013! Your donation is tax-deductible as allowed by law.

  • The Science is Not Settled: How Weak Evidence is Fueling a National Push to Ban Social Media for Youth

    As statehouses ramp up for 2026, we’re seeing a familiar and concerning trend of lawmakers rushing to regulate the internet based on shockingly shaky science. From the California State Assembly to the Massachusetts and Minnesota legislatures, a wave of bills is crashing against the digital lives of young people, with proponents of these measures framing social media access as a “public health epidemic,” or a “mental health crisis,” even though we have yet to see any of the settled science that those labels usually invoke.

    As a digital rights organization dedicated to the civil liberties of all users, EFF’s expertise lies in reminding lawmakers that young people enjoy largely the same free speech and privacy rights as adults. EFF is not a social science research shop, but we can read the emerging research. What that research shows is much more nuanced than what is claimed by those proposing to ban young people from social media, and it is clear that research and theories used to justify these sweeping bans is far from settled. The rush to ban access to digital platforms is being fueled by “pop psychology” narratives and a collection of statistically flawed studies that do not meet the rigorous standards required for such a massive infringement on youth autonomy and constitutional rights.

    The Lie of A “Settled” Consensus

    The current legislative push relies heavily on a specific, media-friendly narrative that the “great rewiring” of the adolescent brain is a proven fact. This theory suggests that smartphones and social media are the primary, if not sole, drivers of a global uptick in teen anxiety, depression, eating disorders, self harm, etc. While this narrative makes for a compelling airport-bookstore read, it quickly collapses under the scrutiny of the broader scientific community.

    Independent researchers, including developmental psychologists from institutions like the University of California, Irvine, and Brown University, have repeatedly found that the evidence for such claims is mixed, blurry, and often contradictory. Large-scale meta-analyses covering dozens of countries have failed to show a consistent, measurable association between the rollout of social media and a decline in global well-being. In reality, we are seeing a classic case of what many of our middle school science teachers warned us about: “correlation” being sold as “causation.”  

    Additionally, the studies used to support these measures often fail to account for or exclude significant alternative explanations for rising teen anxiety and depression, such as the lasting impact of pandemic-era isolation, the persistent threat of school gun violence, and mounting economic or climate-related stress. By focusing narrowly on social media, these findings frequently overlook the broader societal factors that also impact youth mental health.

    The Cult of the “Anxious” Expert

    The current push for blanket social media bans relies almost exclusively on the work of Jonathan Haidt, particularly his book The Anxious Generation. While Haidt is an amiable and brilliant storyteller, he is not a clinical psychologist or a specialist in child development. He is a social psychologist who writes about moral psychology at a business school. Nonetheless, the book has made it to every Best Seller list, and with Haidt revered as an expert on podcasts with massive reach, like Oprah, Joe Rogan, Michelle Obama, and Trevor Noah—his message has been heard by a large subset of society, which primarily relies on: no smartphones or social media before age 16, phone-free schools, and more “unsupervised, real-world independence.”

    To highlight Haidt’s reach when it comes to legislation banning social media: the California committee analysis for the proposed California social media ban mentions Haidt 20 times; the Governor of Utah promoted the book as a “must-read” months before signing the nation’s first social media ban; Haidt is cited in bill analysis for the bill banning social media in Florida; his work is mentioned in a federal bill aiming to ban phones in schools; and he provided formal testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee (Subcommittee on Technology, Privacy, and the Law) in May 2022. 

    While Haidt’s research has been paramount to legislation stripping millions of young people of their rights to expression and connection, his conclusions are not without challenge, and many experts in the field argue that the evidence is less than ironclad. 

    The “Bad Science” Fueling Social Media Bans

    While we can admit that Jonathan Haidt’s “great rewiring” theory makes for a gripping narrative, we cannot ignore that independent researchers and statisticians have identified significant flaws in the data used to justify it. Which means we are currently watching policymakers legislate blanket bans based on evidence that would be rejected in almost any other field of public health.

    The reality is that research has consistently disproven the oft-assumed link between social media use and poor mental health in youth, and actually indicates that moderate internet use is a net positive for teens’ development, and negative outcomes are usually due to either lack of access or excessive use. In one major study of 100,000 adolescents, a “U-shaped association emerged where moderate social media use was associated with the best well-being outcomes, while both no use and highest use were associated with poorer well-being.” We also know that young people’s relationship with social media is complex, as it provides them essential spaces for civic engagement, identity exploration, and community building—particularly for LGBTQ+ and marginalized youth who may lack support in their physical environments. 

    But again, the image Haidt presents in his book is increasingly at odds with the broader academic consensus. As mentioned, critics argue that the evidence for the mental health impacts of social media is mixed, blurry, and often misinterpreted. NYU statistics expert Aaron Brown, writing for Reason, notes that many of the studies in Haidt’s exhaustive reference list are statistically unreliable or fail to show a strong causal link. Prof. Candace Odgers, a leading voice in psychological science, explains the “selection effect” that legislators often ignore:

    “Hundreds of researchers, myself included, have searched for the kind of large effects suggested by Haidt. Our efforts have produced a mix of no, small and mixed associations. Most data are correlative. When associations over time are found, they suggest not that social-media use predicts or causes depression, but that young people who already have mental-health problems use such platforms more often or in different ways from their healthy peers.”

    This raises a fundamental question of legislative responsibility: If the science is not settled, how can legislators confidently declare a “public health crisis” to justify stripping away young people’s First Amendment rights? By bypassing the rigorous, nuanced findings of the scientific community in favor of a more convenient narrative, legislators are choosing emotion over evidence. Before imposing such draconian restrictions on young people’s access to information, policymakers have an obligation to do the heavy lifting: to dig into the actual research and listen to the experts who are sounding the alarm on oversimplified conclusions.

    The Dangers of “Social Contagion” Narrative

    Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Haidt’s crusade is its overlap with ideological rhetoric that pathologizes the identities of marginalized youth, and how that makes its way through efforts to ban social media for youth. A recurring theme in the literature favored by proponents of social media bans is the idea of “social contagion“—specifically regarding the rise in young people identifying as transgender or non-binary. Haidt dedicates an entire chapter of his book to this (ch.6, pt 3, p. 165), talking about “Why Social Media Harms Girls More Than Boys,” stating that: 

    “The recent growth in diagnoses of gender dysphoria may also be related in part to social media trends, […] the fact that gender dysphoria is now being diagnosed among many adolescents who showed no signs of it as children all indicate the social influence and sociogenic transmission may be at work as well.”

    These harmful theories suggesting that social media is “infecting” young people with gender dysphoria are false and not supported by peer-reviewed clinical research. But by legitimizing “experts” who promote these debunked theories, legislators—especially those in states like California who pride themselves on being a sanctuary for LGBTQ+ youth—are inadvertently platforming the same rhetoric used in other states to ban gender affirming care for youth. This “social contagion” narrative is a tool of exclusion, not a scientific reality, and we must be wary of any “public health” argument that treats community-building and self-discovery among marginalized young people as a “purported mental illness” spread via TikTok.

    A Better Path: Digital Wellness, Not Bans

    Fortunately, there is a measured, evidence-based alternative already emerging. California’s A.B. 2071, for instance, is a student-authored “digital wellness” bill that offers a measured, evidence-based alternative rather than prohibition. The bill advocates for a curriculum that teaches students how to manage algorithms, recognize cyberbullying, and regulate their own relationship with technology. Instead of trying to completely shield young people from social media, education-based approaches empower young people and have the benefit of providing skills that stay with a young person long after they leave the classroom. 

    JustLeadershipUSA, a criminal justice organization, has a slogan that rings true in this instance too: “Those closest to the problem are closest to the solution.” So let’s start listening to what our young people are asking us for—more education—instead of imposing paternalistic, disempowering bans.

    Legislating With Precision instead of Emotion 

    Adolescent mental health struggles are a complex, multifaceted crisis. It is a crisis that has existed for as long as time, and has been driven by economic instability, the opioid epidemic, the threat of school violence, amongst other issues. To pin all of society’s woes on a smartphone app is not just a scientific error; it is a policy failure that ignores the real, material needs of young people both online and off.

    Legislators must stop legislating as “anxious parents” and start acting as measured policymakers. Because for some youth, social media platforms are a lifeline. UNICEF and other global human rights organizations have warned that age-related restrictions and blanket bans can backfire in three critical ways: isolating marginalized youth (like LGBTQ+ youth, students in rural areas, foster youth, or those with disabilities) who social media is often the only place they can find a supportive community; necessitating invasive mass collection of biometric data or government-issued IDs from all users, including adults; and pushing young people toward less-regulated, “darker” corners of the web where content moderation is non-existent and the risks of actual exploitation are significantly higher.

    Legislators have a valid interest in protecting children, but that interest must be pursued through tailored, measured approaches. We cannot allow emotions or a collection of flawed data sets to justify a historic rollback of digital rights. 

  • 2026 elections in Scotland and Wales: a turning point for cancer?

  • Pluralistic: Billionaire solipsism, dictator solipsism, AI, and the fascist paradigm (13 May 2026)

    Today’s links


    An aerial image of the planned city of Levittown, tinted light green. A circuit board bleeds through the open spaces on the town plan. Hovering over the town are Trump's disembodied, bloodshot eyes, in pouchy orange nests. Orange tentacles swarm over the town.

    Billionaire solipsism, dictator solipsism, AI, and the fascist paradigm (permalink)

    With great power comes great solipsism: the more power you wield over other people, the less real they become to you. To rule is to see people as aggregates, statistical artifacts, as a means to an end. It’s how people seem when you’re at the bottom of a k-hole.

    Per Granny Weatherwax, this is the root of all evil: “Sin is when you treat people like things”:

    https://brer-powerofbabel.blogspot.com/2009/02/granny-weatherwax-on-sin-favorite.html

    The problem (for powerful people) is that other people aren’t things; they’re people, with stubborn attachments to their own priorities and needs. This is a huge problem for social media bosses, since the force that keeps you stuck to their platforms is your love of your friends, which sucks (for social media bosses), because your friends refuse to organize their interactions with you to “maximize engagement.” There is a group of platform users who are dedicated to maximizing your engagement: performers (which is why legacy social media platforms have reduced the quantum of your feed given over to your friends to a bare minimum and swapped in the amateur dramatics of theater kids). But even “influencers” demand treatment as people, not things (which is why legacy social media is squeezing out performers in favor of slop):

    https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/17/for-youze/#forever

    Running a social media service is especially solipsism-inducing, since the back-end of a social media service always reduces people to statistical artifacts to be steered, thwarted, or rewarded based on the degree to which they are “maximizing engagement.” No wonder zuckermuskian social media bosses mythologize themselves as dopamine-hacking wizards who’ve built a mind-control ray. Skinnerism and solipsism fit together very neatly, seducing you into the belief that everyone else is a stimulus-responding automaton, programmed to think they have free will:

    https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/07/rah-rah-rasputin/#credulous-dolts

    (Of course, the AI boss version of this is the belief that everyone else is a “stochastic parrot”:)

    https://xcancel.com/sama/status/1599471830255177728

    But in truth, any corporate boss is prone to solipsism. To maximize corporate profits, you must view other people – employees, suppliers and customers – as inconvenient problems to be solved, not true people with feelings and needs that are co-equal with your own.

    This is why AI is so attractive to the ruling class. For corporate leaders, the fantasy of your own worth is always dangerously close to collapsing, due to the haunting knowledge that if you don’t show up for work, everything continues as per normal; while if your workers don’t show up for work, the shop closes down and stays closed. Bosses really want to be in the driver’s seat, but ultimately they know that they’re strapped into the back seat, playing with a Fisher Price steering wheel. AI is a way to wire that toy steering wheel directly into the drive-train: it’s the fantasy that a boss can have an idea and the corporation will execute it, without any messy human needs or demands getting in the way:

    https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/05/fisher-price-steering-wheel/#billionaire-solipsism

    Solipsism is why bosses fetishize IP and ignore process knowledge. IP is the part of the job that the worker can explain (and that you can train an AI model on). Process knowledge is the part of the job that can’t be abstracted, alienated or commodified. The very existence of process knowledge is the major impediment to de-skilling workers so they can be interchanged with other, more desperate, more timid workers (or with sycophantic AI):

    https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/08/process-knowledge/#dance-monkey-dance

    Of course, there’s a whole group of powerful people outside of the political world who are gripped by solipsistic AI fantasies: politicians. Like social media bosses, politicians deal with people as statistical artifacts who respond to policy inputs with semi-predictable outputs:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State

    And of course, politicians have their own detested class of workers whom they fantasize about replacing with chatbots: bureaucracies. When Trump et al bemoan the “deep state,” they are engaged in the politicians’ version of the corporate boss’s solipsism: “I make policies, but to enact them, I have to convince civil servants to turn my agenda into action. This sucks. Can’t we just have an all-powerful executive who decides on things and then those things just happen?”

    Writing for Columbia’s Knight First Amendment Institute, political scientist Henry Farrell and statistician Cosma Rohilla Shalizi have produced the definitive account of how AI psychosis has infected our political classes:

    https://knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-as-social-technology

    Farrell and Shalizi use this political AI psychosis to explain DOGE, framing DOGE as a project where politicians and their loyal vassals cut such a deep wound in the administrative state on the basis that general AI was about to emerge. With godlike AI around the corner, these bureaucrats – who insist on having opinions based on long experience and ethical sensibilities – could be replaced with sycophantic chatbots who’d turn the will of the unitary executive into policy without any filtration through unreliable, squishy humans.

    This is a political version of my maxim that “the fact that an AI can’t do your job doesn’t stop an AI salesman from convincing your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can’t do your job.” Private sector bosses are easy marks for AI salesmen, and not just because they want to reduce their wage bills, but also because it will fulfill the solipsist’s fantasy of a corporation that turns the singular genius of the boss into a product without any messy demands from workers (and, if you’re Zuckerberg and convinced that you’ve created a mind-control ray, your product can be rolled out without any messy demands from your customers, either, since you’ve hypnotized them into doing as they’re told).

    The public sector version of this is the fantasy that you can eliminate the civil service and use an army of chatbots to do the job – not merely as a way of slashing the federal budget, but also as a way of purifying the transfer of the leader’s will to the people without any intervening loss of fidelity resulting from the need to have your policies interpreted (and willfuly misinterpreted) by bureaucrats.

    This is a very important framing, and it explains why fascists like Trump and dead-eyed technocrats like Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney are hell-bent on gutting their countries’ civil service and replacing it with chatbots:

    https://policyoptions.irpp.org/2026/04/carney-ai-government-risks/

    This is how Muskism and DOGE connect to Trumpism and AI: Musk doesn’t believe other people are real. He calls them “NPCs” (non-player characters). He wants to put a microchip in your head so he can “replace your bad programming”:

    https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/21/torment-nexusism/#marching-to-pretoria

    It’s the fascist paradigm: the idea that people are incapable of self-rule, save for a very small number of singular geniuses who should be put in a position of absolute authority over all of us, to keep us safe from our own foolish impulses:

    https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/12/donella-meadows/#paradigmatic

    The Technocrats – a protofascist Italian movement that once captured the imagination of Musk’s great-grandfather, and now are frequently quoted and alluded to by the likes of Mark Andreessen – were addicted to the quantitative fallacy that infects economics and other disciplines. That’s the idea that every social process can be expressed as a mathematical model, which can then be optimized.

    The problem, of course, is that much of the real world is qualitative, and the act of quantizing those qualia is a very lossy process. To quantize a qualitative question is to incinerate all the qualitative aspects and then do mathematics on the dubious quantitative ash that is left behind:

    https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-qualia/

    In their paper, Farrell and Shalizi cite Ben Recht’s maxim that “you can’t optimize a trade-off”:

    https://www.argmin.net/p/are-there-always-trade-offs

    But of course, we optimize trade-offs all the time. That’s what being a boss means, and it’s also at the very core of self-determination: the right to decide what trade-offs you want to make. What Recht means is “you can’t optimize a trade-off for everyone else.” Those stubborn not-quite-people – customers, workers, bureaucrats – insist that they want different trade-offs.

    In translating the will of a supreme leader to policy without any intervening need for buy-in by humans, fascist projects like DOGE seek to optimize trade-offs according to the preferences of the supreme leader. AI in government is grounded in the idea that a sufficiently deserving leader can be trusted to vibe-code the entire apparatus of state, checked only by his own sense of rightness:

    https://thehill.com/policy/international/5680714-trump-morality-international-law/

    Farrell and Shalizi forcefully make the point that statecraft is not a set of discrete problems with provably correct answers that must be solved. Government is a matter of making choices between mutually exclusive policies that have benefits and costs, and those costs and benefits befall different groups differently.

    The idea that you can simply feed every fact about a society into a chatbot and order it to “solve” the nation reveals a profound ignorance about the nature of political contests. There’s no empirical way of deciding whose priorities deserve to be realized and who must be disappointed. There isn’t even an empirical way to compare the benefits that one group receives to the costs another group pays.

    What’s more, any system that uses LLMs to make high-stakes tradeoffs between different societal priorities will be relentlessly targeted by the groups that stand to win or lose based on those decisions, and by bureaucrats whose careers depend on making the number go up. They will poison the LLMs’ training data, figure out how to trick it into deceiving their bosses about the situation on the ground.

    Back in 2018, Yuval Harari predicted that LLMs would supercharge dictatorships by overcoming “authoritarian blindness” – when the suppression of political opinion is so effective that the first sign that a dictator has of his waning support is a mob that burns the presidential palace down. This prediction failed, because people who live under dictators have switched all the energy they used to use to put on a good show for the secret police into putting a good show on for the chatbots:

    https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/26/dictators-dilemma/#garbage-in-garbage-out-garbage-back-in

    Meanwhile, the “variability” introduced by bureaucrats who adapt political policies is a feature, not a bug. When a long-tenured public official receives a directive from on-high that they know will be a disaster if implemented unchanged, they can tweak the policy so that it is at least partially successful.

    Fire that bureaucrat and hand the policy to a rigidly loyal LLM that will not deviate from its strict instructions and you will end up with nothing (rather than a perfect policy implementation). Indeed, you may end up with less than nothing, as resentful local populations sabotage your agenda.

    Both Hayek and Marx agreed that people at the very periphery of the system have insights into local conditions that no boss/central planner can know (though they disagreed about what that fact implied). An LLM is the ultimate micro-manager, and government by Computer Says No would only work if the person writing the system prompt knew everything about everyone everywhere.

    As Farrell and Shalizi write,

    The frustrations of actually existing bureaucracy do not merely arise from inept or technically-inadequate solutions to the principal-agent problem. They emerge too from the collision of multiple incommensurable demands, each with its own problems and benefits, so that there are no optimal design solutions. Those who build or reform bureaucracies, like those who build other artifacts, need to satisfice across multiple intersecting needs and pathologies. Designs that neatly address one kind of problem may radically worsen others. Actually-existing AI has its own imperfections, some of which are endemic. Grafting AI systems onto existing bureaucracies will solve some problems but will worsen others and make altogether new ones. It will not eliminate the political difficulties of mediating across different, often non-commensurable, goals. Imagining replacing bureaucracy wholesale with AI is only plausible if one waves away the actual difficulties associated with real social technologies.

    Hey look at this (permalink)


    A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

    Object permanence (permalink)

    #25yrsago Woz’s programmable remotes https://web.archive.org/web/20010603184833/http://www.celadon.com/Industrial/PIC200/pic200oem.html

    #25yrsago Furbeowulf http://www.trygve.com/furbeowulf.html

    #20yrsago Diebold voting machines can be 0wned in minutes https://blog.citp.princeton.edu/2006/05/11/report-claims-very-serious-diebold-voting-machine-flaws/

    #20yrsago British farmer supplies gallows to totalitarian governments http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/suffolk/4754515.stm

    #20yrsago Proposed law requires schools to censor MySpace, LJ, blogs, Flickr https://web.archive.org/web/20060521054806/http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/learning.now/2006/05/new_federal_legislation_would_1.html

    #15yrsago Vernor Vinge on the promise, progress and threats of Augmented Reality https://www.ugotrade.com/2011/05/10/interview-with-vernor-vinge-smart-phones-and-the-empowering-aspects-of-social-networks-augmented-reality-are-still-massively-underhyped/

    #15yrsago American oligarch buys the right to hire professors at Florida State U https://web.archive.org/web/20110511210435/https://www.tampabay.com/news/business/billionaires-role-in-hiring-decisions-at-florida-state-university-raises/1168680/

    #15yrsago National Jukebox: public domain music archive from the Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/collections/national-jukebox/about-this-collection/

    #15yrsago America’s net censorship bill is back and worse than ever https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/05/revised-net-censorship-bill-requires-search-engines-to-block-sites-too/

    #10yrsago DNC Host Committee composed of GOP megadonors, Net Neutrality haters, fracking boosters and anti-Obamacare lobbyists https://web.archive.org/web/20160511160814/https://theintercept.com/2016/05/11/lobbyists-dnc-2016-convention/

    #10yrsago Minnesota lawmakers propose bizarre, dangerous PRINCE law https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/05/minnesota-legislators-go-crazy-pushing-dangerous-prince-act

    #10yrsago NZ Prime Minister John Key ejected from Parliament over Panama Papers rant https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/prime-minister-john-key-thrown-out-of-debating-chamber-by-speaker/A5LQPMGB56QXTGE2ZFIK2MSRPE/?c_id=1&objectid=11637448

    #10yrsago Putting two elevators in one shaft https://web.archive.org/web/20160512013856/https://www.wired.com/2016/05/thyssenkrup-twin-elevator/

    #10yrsago Germany will end copyright liability for open wifi operators https://torrentfreak.com/germany-to-rescind-piracy-liability-for-open-wifi-operators-160511/

    #10yrsago Save Firefox: The W3C’s plan for worldwide DRM would have killed Mozilla before it could start https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/save-firefox

    #5yrsago Let’s eat all the cicadas https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/11/uniboob/#eat-the-brood#5yrsago

    #5yrsago Cyclopedia Exotica https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/11/uniboob/#one-eye-and-three-dot-dot-dot

    Upcoming appearances (permalink)

    A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.


    A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

    Recent appearances (permalink)


    A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

    Latest books (permalink)


    A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

    Upcoming books (permalink)

    • “The Reverse-Centaur’s Guide to AI,” a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/)

    • “Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It” (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

    • “The Post-American Internet,” a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

    • “Unauthorized Bread”: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

    • “The Memex Method,” Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027


    Colophon (permalink)

    Today’s top sources:

    Currently writing: “The Post-American Internet,” a sequel to “Enshittification,” about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.

    • “The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to AI,” a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

    • “The Post-American Internet,” a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

    • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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