100% agree with you

https://debeaumont.org/programs/made-for-health-justice/

https://www.statnews.com/2025/08/27/medical-ai-needs-patient-community-engagement/

https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/forefront/c-c-e-s-s-ai-new-framework-advancing-health-equity-health-care-ai

https://sojo.net/articles/opinion/pope-leo-thinks-nehemiah-can-lead-us-through-ai-age

The titans building towers will keep building. That is what Babel does. But for those of us who believe that the rejected stone is the cornerstone—that the child going hungry in Mississippi matters infinitely, that each of us has been given a calling and a section of wall—there is another project. Older, humbler, and far more durable.

Pick up your tools. Your section of wall is waiting.

Exactly, so why not demand ownership of our data?

When you look at data sovereignty in indigenous communities people are already establishing ways to do this.

What’s even more concerning than social networks, jobs, daily commutes, shopping habits, sexual preferences, political views etc. is health data. Not only is that extremely private, corporations recognize the monetary value is incredibly high.

https://www.statnews.com/2025/01/16/health-ai-electronic-health-records-hipaa-deidentified-data-market/

Artificial intelligence models are ever-hungry black boxes that need boatloads of bits and bytes from a wide stream of real-world data in order to produce insights about patients and their care. To satisfy this need, a trove of companies have popped up to buy patient data from hospitals and sell it to those wanting to train AI or do research.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667321525001775

In today’s digital era, data has evolved into an invaluable asset often described as the new oil making its governance especially consequential for Indigenous communities. Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDSov) affirms the rights of Indigenous peoples to govern, control, access, and benefit from data that derive from their peoples, lands, and knowledge systems (Carroll et al., 2020). This principle has direct implications for population health because data governance influences how priorities are defined, how prevention and care strategies are implemented, and how health outcomes are assessed across communities (Rhodes et al., 2023). A long history of exclusion from decisions about data collection and use has produced exploitation, misrepresentation, and persistent mistrust in data-driven health initiatives (Fox, 2020; Mello and Wolf, 2010).

There are some models of data sovereignty where people are being given direct control of their health data, and it cannot be legally used for anything without their permission. Even if it’s granted permission to be used once for a certain piece of research, it’s then locked away again afterwards.

There’s also examples where people are paid directly/individually for allowing access to their data.

Imagine the value to be leveraged by people if all data (civic, digital, health) was locked away from corporations. And not sold, temporarily leased to whoever individuals or communities choose to lease if to.

Seriously, the author is a digital humanities prof at Dartmouth. If there is any hope, it’s going to come from people like her:

https://faculty-directory.dartmouth.edu/roopika-risam

Risam received the Massachusetts Library Association Civil Liberties Champion Award (2018) for her work promoting equity and justice in the digital cultural record and the 2023 International Association for Research in Service Learning and Community Engagement Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award for her work on anti-racist community engagement.

Honestly have to wonder sometimes is it all well meaning but misinformed knee jerk reactions? Or is some of it targeted propaganda/misinformation aimed at undermining people who are the most dangerous to the future plans of oligarchs

what do you mean false? the idea of people taking control of data?

This isn’t saying sit back and let it happen, it’s saying it doesn’t have to be an either or Luddite rejection of technology or dystopian skynet, but it requires people demand control instead of allowing giant tech companies to just take it while making us believe we’re powerless and have no say in our own data

I’m head over heels in love with the idea of communities taking back control of their data and using it to leverage power.

But I also think we should be thinking in terms of how do we achieve this before 2126 bc we need to establish and gain control before it can be used to train anymore shitty oligarchy controlled AI that keeps failing to perform in the real world.

Even if this is just step one of a marathon, it seems like something most cities should be aiming to catch up with sooner rather than later:

https://debeaumont.org/programs/made-for-health-justice/

About MADE for Health Justice Modernized Anti-racist Data Ecosystems (MADE) for Health Justice partners with communities who are creating, using, and governing civic data on their own terms to advance health equity and more just decision making.

I must confess to this not being in my wheelhouse at all. I just started reading about the. esterday and I’m very interested in them as a people empowerment middle finger to the oligarchy

No idea how realistic this is but I find the idea of people eventually using these to achieve complete data sovereignty very interesting.

https://www.coalitioncommunitiescolor.org/ccc-news/2025/9/17/coming-soon-portlands-newest-digital-community-garden

I do appreciate hearing from people who actually understand what it’s saying though

In addition to propaganda campaigns? It’s the same reason people try to shift the blame for most societal issues (financial, health, relationships) to a failure of personal responsibility.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pulling-through/202505/why-we-blame-the-sick

It’s a comforting lie people tell themselves because it gives them a false sense of control. Honestly, kind of the same reason people start doing drugs.

Drugs or other habits can help people cope when they can’t keep believing a comforting lie, but also feel driven to their breaking point by too much reality/need to find a way to escape from the pressure.

The hallucinating, gaslighting, sycophantic chatbots that were hyped via propaganda campaigns that promoted them as the future and key to efficiency, are now destroying humanity and locking people in addictive cycles of delusion.

“Ya better hop on board! Don’t wanna get left behind…”

The hallucinating sycophantic chatbots are not only destroying the capacity for human relationships and interactions, they’re not even “efficient” and have destroyed most of the companies that have embraced them.

The economy is absolute shit. “AI” companies aren’t even making any money but the chatbot addicts are still throwing endless piles of cash at them to burn while chasing the high that will never deliver (the cycle of desperate delusions common to any addiction), because the chatbots have them convinced (deluded) they’re always on the edge of the big breakthrough that will finally make it all worthwhile.

And as the number of data centers increases, people are starting to take notice it sure does seem to be getting hot in this pot of boiling water… “Wonder what that’s all about? I’ll ask the company that owns the data center if it’s anything I should be concerned about?”

“… Nope, turns out there’s a reassuring explanation for why this is all fine and nothing is as it seems… It just feels like this pot of water is getting hotter to you, but facts don’t care about your feelings. You can’t argue with facts…”

“Just relax and come on in, the water’s fine!”

Idk Trump is without a doubt the worst (so far) and doesn’t bother to even dress it up as anything else but when I read this:

New Gallup polling also finds that only 53% of U.S. adults are “extremely” or “very” proud to be an American, the lowest reading in the trend dating back to 2001.

My first thought was “Ruh Roh…”

Every authoritarian overreach, breach of civil rights and liberties in the name of safety, invasion of privacy, and abuse of executive power, was made possible by the Patriot Act and the Bush administration’s response to 9/11.

The creation of ICE and homeland security (once again for our own safety).

Information control and the idea of a post truth society vs a reality based community that seems to be getting smaller and smaller by the year.

Propaganda and fear meant to box people into black and white thinking is an echo of McCarthyism but was most famously stated as “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.”

That frame of mind/tribalistic thinking was normalized in the 50s, signed into law in the early aughts, and the same day Charlie Kirk was assassinated and Trump signed NSPM-7, allowed the already overly vague and easily abused definition of terrorist/terrorism to be expanded to include political opposition and basically anybody for anything, because the king says so.

Not long after NSPM-7, the king and his administration began targeting fishing boats in Venezuela with drone strikes and breaking into homes in the United States without search warrants due to similar vague claims about threats of terrorism and safety. And even though they’ve mainly focused on immigrants so far, they’ve quietly continued to test the waters and see how far they can expand that definition by linking groups of protestors to gangs and possession and distribution of drugs to foreign drug cartels (while also literally making closed door deals with wealthy drug cartels and their families, bc they do whatever TF they want. Organized crime is still organized crime, but it’s legal for certain people).

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/trumps-orders-targeting-antifascism-aim-criminalize-opposition

https://www.newsweek.com/what-is-nspm-7-over-3000-nonprofits-sound-alarm-on-new-trump-directive-10807321

https://www.commondreams.org/news/minnesota-indictments

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/06/donald-trump-gao-report-shell-companies-money-laundering-drug-cartels/

https://www.commondreams.org/news/left-wing-extremist-groups

"Here’s what concerns me—Trump is saying, ‘I can define who’s a terrorist, and that means I can kill him.’ At the same time, we’re seeing executive orders defining whole parts of Democratic Party as domestic terrorists,” said Chakrabarti. “Here we’re seeing NSPM-7, which says any anti-American or anti-capitalist or anti-Christian speech, is extremist speech.”

While claiming to protect the US from drug traffickers, he added, the administration has created “a task force of 4,000 agents who are being taken off of drug trafficking and human trafficking, and the actual crime, and being put on prosecuting those people who are saying anti-capitalist things.”

“Do you think that’s okay?” he asked the other panelists. “Can you put two and two together about what’s going on here?”

They really ramped things up with Renee Good and seemed to back down a bit after Alex Pretti, but they’re definitely not done. People should not be letting their guard down, because without a doubt they’re going to get more brazen just before and especially after the midterms, and as the king keeps reminding us, he wants to normalize the idea that there are no limits to his executive power. (And SCOTUS has continued to quietly ensure that’s true).

Tldr: I question if it’s really a coincidence Trump makes W.'s legacy look so much better by comparison, because W. and his administration enabled all of this. (And tbf to “both sides,” I do honestly feel that the Dems that came after W. in Congress and the White House deserve a middle finger for not making any real effort to undo any of it when they had the chance.)

Edit: Also, if you’re interested in understanding the legal path of exactly where we’re headed and why you should be very angry every time Trump or JD Vance slips in some bullshit normalizing the idea of unchecked executive authority (aside from the obvious), I recommend more people familiarize themselves with the legal theory of Common Good Constitutionalism.

https://sh.itjust.works/comment/25141335

the constitution is not meant to uphold liberty, but to be interpreted by a modern authority in order to promote the greater good.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/10/4/common-good-constitutionalism/

When you want to be pumped to celebrate America’s 250th birthday but remember all the history you weren’t taught in school.

Honestly I think that’s the goal…

They only kept us around as long as they did bc they needed labor. Once they can actually replace everybody with bots why would they need to worry about an economy for anybody but themselves?

Hope everybody’s as jazzed as I am for Lazer tag to make a comeback 🔮

Oh cool, I feel like I’ve heard this story before… Something about a flu and an outbreak at a military base.

A long time ago though. Like probably just a little over a hundred years (at least for the flu).

I bet that 16% have already let AI talk them into some really awful financial decisions

Officers were responding to a fucking shoplifting call.

I’m not tech savvy in the least, so not debating they’ve improved significantly since the original article was written in 2025.

The author of the article wrote an opinion piece about it back in March of this year but its hidden behind a paywall and archive links all seem to be unavailable on my end :(

https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/guest-columns/2026/03/05/ai-system-metacognition-humans-overconfidence-trust-trent-cash-daniel-oppenheime/stories/202603050012

“Oh, I would probably just mess it up. You’re just so much better at that kind of stuff than I am!” :p

Feels especially fucked up/funny in a “haha humanity is doomed kinda way,” in the context of AI hallucinating, then doubling down/gaslighting users when corrected https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2025/july/ai-chatbots-remain-confident-even-when-theyre-wrong

It’s weird but I just remembered for quite a while circa 2024, we seemed to be hearing stories about corrected chatbots gaslighting users pretty frequently, then suddenly the topic just kind of disappeared from the news.

not exactly surprising that we are hearing more stories/examples of AI induced delusions in people, but it really makes me wonder if there was a concerted effort to kill news stories related to AI doubling down when incorrect.

promoting insecurities/dangerous chemicals/steroids/treating women like objects/penis pumps/etc to children.

I had heard of hitting your jaw with a hammer, which is definitely all kinds of batshit insane, but in addition to Looksmaxxingn in general and this whole sentence sounding very Epsteinesque, aren’t penis pumps alleged to be the cause behind his distinctive egg/lemon shaped dick deformity?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/epstein-victim-describes-his-extremely-deformed-fruit-shaped-penis/

For a better understanding of how Epstein used the internet and tech to target and undermine the education, mental health and well being of youth, (to clarify, this is in addition but not unrelated to his other criminal activity), I recommend the Behind the Bastards episode about Epstein and Activision:

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-how-jeffrey-epstein-helped-build-the-modern-world-323226341

Dude was strategically planning ways to use video games and social media to target America’s youth with the ultimate goal of creating a society of sexist, misinformed, uneducated, and insecure voters who would be willing to vote against their own interests and easier for the elites to control.

“Don’t forget, you’re here forever… or at least until you’re replaced by a machine.”

In many of the cases in the essay, chatbots responded to users with mystical language to suggest that users have heightened spiritual importance. The bots also implied that users were speaking with a cosmic being who was using the chatbot as a medium.

Idk, I feel like a true misanthrope would be able to read these 2 sentences and at the very least immediately swear off AI chat bots, if not move to a completely isolated cabin in the woods with no electricity or internet.

It’s like the broligarchy birthed a bastard child that’s just a composite of humanity’s worst qualities. All the traits they projected on to the masses as evidence to justify their antidemocratic savior complex bullshit. Impulsive/poor decision making, superstition, paranoia, narcissism.

They’re investors, not inventors, but they’re 100% convinced this bullshit is going to be man’s greatest and longest lasting contribution to existence, and that their names will go down in history as the technocratic leaders who changed the world… And their own delusions are probably being fueled by the same fucking chat bots, and sharing data between platforms in a never ending sycophantic circle jerk that’s spreading exponentially like the dumbest fucking virus to ever exist… I just… 🤦‍♀️

Tldr: These people don’t deserve the title of misanthrope.

Edit: I guess I should add the caveat that in the case destruction of humanity/civilization was always the actual goal of some 4-D misanthropic chess master behind the curtain, then bravo and hats off to them for being a real one, I guess?