mrdang 🍥
tech worker, photographer, cosplayer
he/him/they, aro/ace
- I was not making it up when I said that Congress wants to fund ICE *EVEN MORE* despite people shouting in the streets and contacting them to ABOLISH ICE. Your electeds should never have a peaceful night again. Contact them to *ABOLISH* ICE.
- Democrats threatened to block funding for DHS when it expires on Feb. 13, giving the two sides barely a week to strike a deal and avert a shutdown of the department. Republicans have criticized Democrats’ proposals but say they’re willing to negotiate. wapo.st/4r29E5s
- No awkward gap in the restroom door. Just full height locking doors.
- This is literally more private than any public bathroom www.portseattle.org/blog/all-you...
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- I called Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal's office and asked for this No vote so the opposition party has actual leverage in negotiation. This is the correct vote, but Democrats still want to 'reform' ICE with 'guardrails'. I asked for abolishment of ICE which provides no value to taxpayers.
- More video footage of violence that doesn't result in justice doesn't solve anything. Our taxpayer dollars spent on body cams are just inflating a budget that should be zero.
- Reposted by mrdang 🍥If you have stories/photos/video from the Portland, OR protest that you’d like to share anonymously, I’m marisakabas.04 on Signal.
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- Our elected reps are making deals to fund DHS with conditions to 'reform' ICE. They have not read the room. Contact your electeds and reject their deal-making. Anything short of abolishing ICE will allow them to murder again. Script and context: www.mrdang.com/abolition-no...
- Nominating this for article of the year lol
- when they tell you to go back to writing about gadgets www.theverge.com/policy/86857...
- Required reading.
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- WTF this is a terrible bill. Though I have to question why a company would want to build a data center in Florida. I can see the advantage geographically as the southeastern point of the US. But it doesn't get passive cooling like the others and it gets hit by hurricanes. 🤔
- I generally feel like I don't need to nag Congresswoman Pramilla Jayapal on most things. But if you live in Glusenkamp Perez's district, I'm hoping you will nag her on EVERYTHING. This is one of many shitty votes she's cast.
- NEW: Washington's own Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is one of just seven Democrats to join the Republicans and vote for a huge funding bill for DHS, giving ICE $10 billion. www.theburnerseattle.com/post/wa-rep-...
- Once the data centers are built, all those construction jobs disappear. Only a minimal number of people are on-site because the goal is to pay for as little human labor as possible.
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- This is why parents in Seattle took their kids home from school when they heard ICE was in town. Perceived ICE activity triggered a call to shelter in place in the Seattle schools.
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- Good forecast of aurora.
- Reposted by mrdang 🍥New: we've obtained material explaining how an ICE surveillance system, called Webloc, works. Draw shape on a map, see all phones available there, follow them home. All without warrant “This is a very dangerous tool in the hands of an out-of-control agency.” www.404media.co/inside-ices-...
- Reposted by mrdang 🍥it is done almost a year later Paper Chrono Trigger is done proper photo session this weekend made from bristol paper, cardstock, sketchbook paper, toilet paper, & matboard (Also bit of clear resin, colored gel, LED strip, & microLEDs)
- Reposted by mrdang 🍥Comic-con deciding to allow GenAi imagery in the art show —giving valuable space to GenAi users to show slop right NEXT to actual artists who worked their asses off to be there— is a disgrace! A tone deaf decision that rewards and normalizes exploitative GenAi against artists in their own spaces!
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- Reposted by mrdang 🍥New: DHS is lying to you. At least four videos show what really happened when ICE shot a woman in Minneapolis. Shots clearly fired while vehicle already turning away from the officer. But DHS lied. Trump lied. Noem lied. Even judges have catalogued DHS' serial lying www.404media.co/dhs-is-lying...
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- This is so funny because the body of historical weather data is MASSIVE and names of geographical locations do not change too frequently. It's such an easy use case and yet 'AI' fails LOL
- It's so cringey when a developer talks big about the 'privacy' of Apple's Foundational 'AI' model COMPLETELY OBLIVIOUS or WILLFULLY IGNORANT of the how generative 'AI' models must violate the privacy of artists and writers to have enough data for more accurate outputs. Tech has a diversity issue.
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- Intentionally bad Photoshop NEVER gets old. There is no need for hyperrealistic images spit out by gen-AI. This is why I follow CPSC 🤣 Go tell them about a landmark that you want to appear in a graphic.
- Not sure how to pose in cosplay? This gesture tool lets you cycle through a set of poses based on criteria you set. It filters from the library of photos from TrueRef. Lots of sword poses in there AND by multiple models!
- I have officially launched TrueRef's new timed gesture tool (Flow) & free pose library (Pose)! Both are linked on trueref.io. While limited right now, both will contain our full free library by the 1st. 🤍 Flow: community.trueref.io/trueref_gest... Pose: community.trueref.io/free_referen...
- This is gonna be one of my favorite pieces of movie trivia.
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- @leftistgamermemes.bsky.social ending 2025 with a banger. This one is my favorite.
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- WA friends, you HAVE to respond to this survey on 'AI'. Set aside time on your calendar now. You do not want regrets from not speaking up.
- Reposted by mrdang 🍥I just saw someone yell “they’re just using it to generate ideas!” And I hate to say it But if you work in the ART DEPARTMENT and you need a death machine stuffed with your colleagues’ work to give you ideas Quit.
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- It's very telling what a corporation's future plans are if they don't want to commit to reasonable proposals from labor like this. Like, dude, your business depends on writing. You don't write NEW things without a human actively investigating and doing interviews.
- 1/ At bargaining yesterday, @propublica.org management said that they should have 100% discretion to replace workers with AI and would not commit to labeling future AI-generated content.
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- The AI Civil Rights Act Bill does not solve this. 1. It normalizes 'AI' decision making and presumes there are algorithms that do no harm. 2. It leaves it up to the dev and deployer to audit themselves. 3. It doesn't require disclosure of training data. We need a GDPR-level privacy law NOW.
- Update on the clickbait headlines and descriptions that appear in Google search results for Instagram handles: "Google told me that it is not generating the headlines, and that it’s pulling the text directly from Instagram." Thank you @404media.co and @emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social for investigating!
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- FINALLY one of my electeds has said something against unregulated 'AI'.
- Deny, defend, depose
- "Starting Jan. 1, in six states selected to take part in a federal pilot program, traditional Medicare recipients will face a new hurdle to get certain procedures covered -- private AI companies that get paid based on how many claims they deny..." www.kuow.org/stories/thou...
- Slight clarification to my last post: It's more accurate to say that text is appearing in Google searches that neither I nor the cosplayers pictured wrote. It's mediocre and sounds as if an LLM was involved. Whether it's generated by Google or Instagram is unclear. But it's problematic either way.
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- This is your regular reminder that execs don't know shit about what their workers actually do and how to make it better. Do not be afraid to tell your manager and their leaders that they are wrong and are making a mistake if they try to incorporate 'AI' into your workflow. YOU know your work best.
- Today I learned that Business Insider is going to have a byline for an 'AI' bot. This throws credibility out the window. ACTION: Sign this petition to send a signal to newsrooms that you want human journalists for accuracy and accountability. actionnetwork.org/petitions/st...
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