#Learn About Our Privacy Policy

[carsthatexcite]

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[probablyasocialecologist]

There is no obvious path between today’s machine learning models — which mimic human creativity by predicting the next word, sound, or pixel — and an AI that can form a hostile intent or circumvent our every effort to contain it. Regardless, it is fair to ask why Dr. Frankenstein is holding the pitchfork. Why is it that the people building, deploying, and profiting from AI are the ones leading the call to focus public attention on its existential risk? Well, I can see at least two possible reasons. The first is that it requires far less sacrifice on their part to call attention to a hypothetical threat than to address the more immediate harms and costs that AI is already imposing on society. Today’s AI is plagued by error and replete with bias. It makes up facts and reproduces discriminatory heuristics. It empowers both government and consumer surveillance. AI is displacing labor and exacerbating income and wealth inequality. It poses an enormous and escalating threat to the environment, consuming an enormous and growing amount of energy and fueling a race to extract materials from a beleaguered Earth. These societal costs aren’t easily absorbed. Mitigating them requires a significant commitment of personnel and other resources, which doesn’t make shareholders happy — and which is why the market recently rewarded tech companies for laying off many members of their privacy, security, or ethics teams. How much easier would life be for AI companies if the public instead fixated on speculative theories about far-off threats that may or may not actually bear out? What would action to “mitigate the risk of extinction” even look like? I submit that it would consist of vague whitepapers, series of workshops led by speculative philosophers, and donations to computer science labs that are willing to speak the language of longtermism. This would be a pittance, compared with the effort required to reverse what AI is already doing to displace labor, exacerbate inequality, and accelerate environmental degradation. A second reason the AI community might be motivated to cast the technology as posing an existential risk could be, ironically, to reinforce the idea that AI has enormous potential. Convincing the public that AI is so powerful that it could end human existence would be a pretty effective way for AI scientists to make the case that what they are working on is important. Doomsaying is great marketing. The long-term fear may be that AI will threaten humanity, but the near-term fear, for anyone who doesn’t incorporate AI into their business, agency, or classroom, is that they will be left behind. The same goes for national policy: If AI poses existential risks, U.S. policymakers might say, we better not let China beat us to it for lack of investment or overregulation. (It is telling that Sam Altman — the CEO of OpenAI and a signatory of the Center for AI Safety statement — warned the E.U. that his company will pull out of Europe if regulations become too burdensome.)

[hoodjam]

antidote

a/n1 : helllo, I missed y’all on here lol,, I hope you like this & my inner Choso lover came out lolll

warnings smut(mdni), cuckhold (?), cheating, fingering, oral (m & f), double penetration, slight voyeurism, I think that’s it, 1.5K words

omg I can’t stop thinking about doctor!choso who specializes in making people cum & boyfriend!gojo making the appointment

It honestly started when satoru thought he broke your pussy… he’d edged you to the brink of exploding and when he finally craved guiding you to a sweet release— you couldn’t

he tried everything, toys, his fingers, his tongue, porn, but no matter what he did it never sufficed & you were pissed.

for some reason, you couldn’t push yourself to the edge either, which made your skills on the job suffer.

so much so that your boss had called you into their office to give you a couple of days off for a “cool down period”, with pay of course

which brings you to the website you’re staring at now, ‘ Kamo’s Magic House of Fingers ‘. the name sucked but the reviews were top notch

tojis-digbick : as a guy, dr. kamo made me cum buckets, hell I go at least twice a week ;)

utihim3 : people have said I was pent up, had my panties in a twist, and more degrading rude things, but dr. kamo untwisted my knickers! thank you, doctor!

naoya_z : even tho it’s not a lowly woman’s fist fucking my pristine cock, the doctor knows how to satisfy my needs. or whatever

your mouth salivates thinking about the relief this dr. kamo could bring you, persuading satoru to book your appointment by telling him he’d stay in the room.

now you sit here, or lay, on a soft mattress on a table. the room looked like any other clinic but seemed spacious.

there was a knock on the door, and I came what you assumed was dr. kamo. gojo stood to shake the man’s hand as you clenched your thighs together— the doctor was attractive.

wearing a tight black shirt that showed off all his assets, black slacks, and shoes with a white lab coat to it off. after shaking your boyfriend's hand he eyes your chart.

“good afternoon, Ms. y/n, I am Dr. Kamo, but you can call me Choso,” he starts smoothly, his deep voice rattling to your core.

“first off, I’m glad that you finished your paperwork online, most people forget,” he chuckled, “secondly, i see you are having a problem with intimacy in the bedroom?” he questioned, eyeing your wristband, double-checking to make sure he had the right patient.

you nodded your head in agreement, mind coming to terms with that in a few minutes, Choso would be in between your thighs. you could cum just at the thought.

choso smiles, making the black mark on his nose move, “well I hope I can help,” he starts, placing the clipboard down, and dimming the lights. “however on our privacy policy, we state that there cannot be any guests in the room with patients.”

your heart sinks, finally remembering satoru sitting by your head, “I’m very quiet, I swear I’m here for moral support!” He pleads, grasping your hand.

Choso hums, as if he’s thinking about bending his rules. “well I suppose he could stay, since it’s his mess that you’re here today, maybe he could learn something today,” he teased, keeping his heated gaze on you.

satoru scoffs, fixing his mouth for a response when he’s shushed by the doctor, “ah ah, remember quiet.”

your legs are propped up by the doctor as he slowly rolls your dress upwards past your hips. his eyes glancing at your features to make sure you’re still ok.

this makes your throb, panties dampening with every slight caress of his fingers on your skin.

“curtains open or closed, Ms. y/n?”

OPEN! you wanted to scream but the soft huff from satoru told you otherwise, you don’t think his ego could take another hit.

“closed please.”

another smile, then he disappears. you hear gloves being put on from the other side as you wait patiently for your session to start.

you’ve been panting and trying your hardest not to close your shaky thighs. your core clenching around nothing, feeling your wetness drip through your underwear.

Choso lazily rubs your clit, sometimes missing just to hear you whine, enjoying his job for the first time.

you were gorgeous, from top to bottom, and at this moment you were his.

he stops abruptly, pulling your soaked panties off your core, mouth wet as he sees the slick sticking to it.

on his side table, he looks at his various options of toys, wondering how much you could take, setting on a standard dildo.

he teases your folds, watching the fake dick collect your cream. “you sound so lovely,” Choso groans, slipping the tip in your hole.

you gasp clutching your breasts, face warm from his words. satoru rolls his eyes but palms his growing bulge. tempted to plunge his cock into your mouth.

doctor!Choso expertly moves the false dick, making sure to nudge your g-spot every so often. squelching sounds in the room as you moan, hips matching the pace of the doctor.

whatever it was doing felt so good, better than your fingers, way better than what gojo had tried. you moan louder, rolling against the toy that’s filling you to the brim.

“so good choso, keep going im almost there!” you squeaked, feeling something wet against your clit, almost like a mouth.

satoru stands up, swiftly pulling his pants and underwear down, cock hitting your chin. you moan louder seeing the deranged look on your boyfriend's face. he’s pissed.

opening your mouth, you relax your throat taking the harsh thrusts from both ends to take you. satoru gasps, feeling the tight pressure of your mouth soak his cock.

you whimper, feeling gojos palms around your tits, squeezing and tweaking your nipples, slowing his pace to cum down in your mouth. you gagged, struggling to take all his cum as he slips out your mouth.

after catching his breath he quietly slips out the door feeling triumphant, the thought that only he could cum in you.

“oh, so that’s the problem,” you hear, yes connecting with Choso’s, “he nuts too fast, no wonder he can’t satisfy you.”

you gasp, the curtain slightly open revealing the light pink that dusts the doctor's cheeks.

“is my assessment correct?” he chiles, still trusting the toy in your core, “hm? I need an answer.”

you moan a ‘yes’, leaning up to open the curtain more, “he hasn’t made me cum in months, please help me Choso.”

feeling bold, you take the toy out of your pussy, scooting to the edge of the table-bed, spreading your cunt with your fingers, “I’m begging.”

the doctor watches as your hole clenches still oozing onto the mattress under you. his cock twitches, ready to break another rule of his policy.

his laces his fingers with yours, flickering his eyes on your face as his head dips to lick your core. tongue collecting your slick as he circles your pearl.

you shudder, pushing your hips to his face, pleading for more.

he’d make you cum, a few times. with his tongue, his fingers, a few of his toys, and finally his cock that you were sitting on.

his job completed, yet he still can’t get enough of you, nor could you. after you came in his face he was stunned when it came with rain, soaking his coat and shirt. your hands pressed his face deeper into your core asking for more and more and more.

so insatiable, when you clenched around his fingers, unappeased when you felt the vibration bring a nudge against your g-spot, greedy when you pleaded for his cock.

he’s lucky that the door locks after someone leaves, fortunate that only he has the keys to the room, blessed that it’s soundproof, muffling your moans when you bounce on his lap, pussy sucking him in deeper, skin slapping when you come down.

he can’t remember when he took his coat and shirt off when his pants zipped down only revealing his aching member how your dress bunched around your waist, when your breasts bounced and covered with marks, but he thoroughly enjoyed this.

“one more Cho i swear,” you whined, grinning your hips against his, feeling every vein of his cock inside you, nudging your cervix.

he groans, circling his hips upwards, ready to cum inside you for the billionth time. “yea?” he’s breathless, slowly fucking you as you both arrive at the peak.

you moan once more latching your mouth on his, squirting on his lap, feeling his hot seed fill your hole.

Your heavy breathing subsides, feeling his cock soften, “fuck, that’s was amazing.” he groans lifting you and placing you on the bed.

gathering some warm wet wipes, he cleaned himself as well as you. opening a makeshift closet and finding another shirt and coat. he hands you your dress and smiles. “do you feel satisfied?

“I do, I was wondering if I could come back? just in case the treatment wears off,” you mumble, cringing at your poor excuse to see him again.

He chuckled, fishing a business card from his pocket. “here’s my personal card, call me when you need treatment.” winking walking about the room with his panties in your back pocket.

a/n2 : this was supposed to be short, damn.. oh well

@hoodjam-recs for more jjk content!!

[notbecauseofvictories]

hello! longtime follower and current 1L - am starting the rounds of the law firms and there's always the "so what practice area are you interested in?" bit. i was curious what that is for you + what you do/don't like about it? iirc, you mentioned something abt being in-house, healthcare related, regulatory side of things? i'm interested in regulatory stuff but not sure if that takes the shape of litigation or an explicitly regulatory-focused practice. found your blog back in the star wars days, then got into silmarillion and the silt verses after seeing your posts abt it haha - hope you're doing well and staying warm!

Congrats! 1L summer is a fun, anxiety-ridden time that mostly involves telling people over and over, who you are and what you're interested in---which can be tricky if you're not sure what you're interested in.

Personally, I went in knowing that I liked healthcare (the field I worked in prior to law school) and that wanted to stay healthcare-adjacent.....but not much else.

I learned I was not destined for litigation pretty much the first time my Legal Writing professor handed back our appellate briefs. (Mine did not have the grade I wanted at the top.) This was compounded by our final project, where we presented in front of real live attorneys and I was a nervous, sweaty wreck. After that, I decided that becoming Atticus Finch was not in my future.

But there are still lots of other kinds of law to practice! I live in the healthcare regulatory space---and I work for a pretty under-resourced company, which means I have lots of contact with other areas like R&D, clinical research, data privacy, marketing and adtech, direct patient care, healthcare compliance, and negotiating between various international laws. Not to mention my scope is always expanding, which is...challenging, but I'm also the kind of person who enjoys spending a weekend reading about Brazilian law.

(One of my guiding stars through the whole law school/job search process was "I don't want to be bored." I am never, ever bored.)

And this wasn't even my first stop! When I was in law school, I spent my semesters interning/clerking at firms, consulting boutiques and government agencies; policy-focused clinics and hospitals and giant corporate behemoths. I've said before that observing all these different settings was valuable, that it gave me a better understanding of myself, how I work, and the kind of work I was looking for. While I won't ever claim that every experience I had was amazing (it was not) it did give me the opportunity to explore, in a way that most adult professionals simply can't.

I mean---look. If you're committed to the brass ring of OCR and a high-profile law firm, then you might have to make this decision now. (Or at least come up with a good answer for interviewers...) But I highly encourage you and everyone choosing that path to keep the other doors open, just a crack. There are interesting things that sneak through when you aren't looking.

[horsegamergirl]

From SSO's instagram:

SPOOKY MUSIC WANTED

"We're conjuring up something wickedly fun in Jorvik — our annual Halloween Festival! But beware, there's more brewing! DJ Kai will be bringing Halloween music to the Fort Pinta disco to get you in the spooky mood. And we want you to be part of the musical magic! 🎃 Do you have an original song (made by you!) that will put everyone under a spell? Send us your chilling music submissions for a chance to be featured at the disco alongside DJ Kai's ghostly grooves! 🎵 And that's not the end of our tricks and treats! Selected tracks will be credited to the talented creators, and we'll craft a playlist with the music on our Spotify account. To keep the vibes fresh, we'll accept submissions on an ongoing basis. But the deadline is September 20th if you wish to be a part of the Halloween disco...if you dare! 🕸️ Drop your submissions by emailing music@starstable.com. We'll process your personal data to communicate with you about your music submission. The legal basis for processing is legitimate interest—check out our privacy policy* to learn more about how Star Stable handles personal data and your rights. We can't choose everyone, but we'll reach out to the lucky few! Terms and conditions apply, including a 50/50 split of any revenue generated from streams of the chosen songs between the talented artist and the Star Stable Music label! Let's create some ghoulishly good memories on the dance floor together! 🧛‍♀️🎶 *https://www.starstable.com/privacy"

[datschaos]

(More Updooted!) Firefox and TOS

(original post) Sooo I'll be honest I'm only *just* learning about and thus reading about all this, but I thought I'd share it along because... seems important, ya'll. An IT buddy of mine tossed it over into my notice.

Remember when Adobe went all "hey btw u grant us access to all ur stuff when it's on x y z of our software blah blah" which threw up a whole slew of fun issues like artists and firms with NDA contracts and such and y'know AI training questions and speculation and generally a whole slew of "the fuck you mean, you're just gonna claim our content for your use?"

Well, Firefox apparently came out with a pretty.... vague-ish new Terms of Service that includes this lovely little vague gem in it:

Wow. That's pretty... Vague. Do they mean they're gonna claim the content to troll through with their data muncher programs when I upload the text of an original book through their browser, to a publishing website while working ot get my book printed?

Are they collecting the image data when I upload, through their browser, my artwork when I am posting cool shit on Tumblr?

Dunno! But I find it Vague. I'm still reading through the privacy policy, and it, took, is unsatisfactorially vague and... either they're lying or they are just really hecking bad at writing actually clear terms of service. The corporate glamour BS is so strong you need windex to clean that lacquered fake sunshine off.

Links my IT buddy suggested I add to this post because they offer more information / source information so you can make your own judgement reading through stuff;

My personal take at least -so far-, is that I'm sure glad I stopped using Firefox browser a good ass while ago. I sure as heck won't be using it anymore now.... not unless they get hella more clarifying about what they're doing because things don't smell right to me.

Thoughts? :thinking_emoji:

(Update one)

Someone tossed yhis post my way which has further food for thought, and some pretty dang good points made (it's also a hilarious read, too)

https://www.tumblr.com/hatsinspace/777221233776394240/do-you-have-thoughts-about-the-changes-to?source=share

(Update 2 03-08-2025)

More links and other insights into this~!

(from b3aches): "To be honest, I feel like a lot of the concerns in relation to the Firefox ToS updates are a bit overblown. @ ms-demeanor has done a number of really informative posts about it, and her conclusions match with my understanding of the situation as well. Specifically this post: https://www.tumblr.com/ms-demeanor/777238068837203968/do-you-have-thoughts-about-the-changes-to And this post: https://www.tumblr.com/ms-demeanor/777359125188329472/the-thing-that-really-got-me-about-that-response "

[granulesofsand]

do you think it’s unsafe/dangerous to post about system functions? i would like to post ours, just so we have a better understanding of it, but im not sure if journaling would be better instead. we prefer online stuff because some alters have trouble writing.

We keep separate journals from our social media, and we have a couple safeties in place when we do. If it’s just typing that feels better, you can use a note app or keep everything in drafts (read privacy policies and terms of service if you’re doing that).

While we’re pretty open about how our system works online, we’re not particularly inclined to give identifying information for our body or any member of our collective. There are creeps online, so have a plan for how vague you’d like to be and which pieces to keep to yourself/ves

We queue almost everything. Current events in our life actually took place about a month ago, and any details of our structures or even opinions typically sit for three to five days so we can regret them before the world sees. We only post photos when we’ve left an area, and we change the location and timestamp when possible. Determine how much you(&) want strangers to know about your(&) life at any given time, and give yourself/ves space to discuss big topics before sending them out

Get consent from headmates or prepare to fight. Mentioning system members and their activities can feel violating, especially if anyone has exploitation trauma. Permission every time is ideal unless you know them really well (and even then you might offend them by accident)

Sharing account names and emails/phone numbers across platforms can get you(&) tracked easily. Decide what content you’re posting and remember that outsiders can find you(&) in a video game or gushing over an interest in the wild. Keep separate sideblogs and user info for different topics unless you(&)’re real comfy with people knowing that much about you(&). The more you(&) connect in public, the crisper the picture you(&) give for people looking for you(&)

Lying is okay. Change names, give a funky time period, construct a persona online. That’s harder to do with a journal on the internet, but you(&) need some barrier between the depths of your(&) soul(s) and the general populace. If you(&) are more authentic online, you(&) might have to be less authentic offline to stay safe

And to actually answer the question: no, I don’t think it’s safe to post system functions online. Catch me doing it anyway.

We find that social media allows us to get some peer interaction without the risk of irl relationships being compromised. We can share bits here and then turn around and say those things out loud in therapy

We can say that we’ve heard of others like us and learn what’s normal for our subgroup instead of humans in our town. People understand us, and we get more comfortable diverging from the norm in both modes of life

This much talking to strangers and practicing etiquette makes us better at opening communication amongst ourselves

We get feedback and learn to deal with criticism — including what is important to hear and change and what people are just mouthing off about

Most of us know that we can look for notes on our life (the stuff that didn’t make it into the letters) on this account. We get used to seeing each other’s writing and perspective, and so are less avoidant when we notice these things in physical reality

You(&) get to choose between your(&) own pros and cons. Maybe it’s not worth it to you(&); that’s fine, there are alternatives. Maybe you(&) want to give it a try; good luck, people can be both incredible kind and absolutely scathing. I do recommend asking around/leaving notes for your systemmates to determine what their concerns are, if any. There are shades of how far you(&) might go with each aspect going forth. It’ll probably be messy at first, but you(&)’ll learn. I’ve yet to disappear my system’s online presence, so clearly I enjoy it.

[splathousefiction]

"For The Children" Is A Puritan Dogwhistle, And It's Time You Stop Pretending People Who Use It Are Acting In Good Faith.

They're not.

Not once, not ever, nor has any policy, political move, bill, terms of service update or edit to an EULA agreement done under this banner been made with good intentions. "For the safety/good of children" is what's commonly referred to as an "Emotional Appeal", a logical fallacy most of you learn about in grade school. Corporations and politicians, at least in America, will happily strip away your autonomy without a second thought while simultaneously ignoring direct and real dangers that many children face literally every single day. They get away with it too, because gaslighting in American politics works.

There's no grand agenda, no chemical in the water nor some mind control via 5g tower by some shady cabal to harm your children.

You know what kids are really dealing with right now?

There's been 64 school shootings in the US so far just in 2024. The number of kids facing food scarcity or only getting a meal at school (often on the free/reduced price tier) has surged since the 2019 lockdowns. More than 1.2 million kids in school right now are homeless. Schools are underfunded by $150 billion annually, meaning kids don't even have access to the resources necessary to receive a quality education.

These are just the causes I can personally think of that we should be investing in "for the children", and yet as literal bodies pile up every year, kids starve and freeze outside in the elements, I've watched our politicians just shrug and say nothing can be done while actively infringing on the privacy and safety of it's citizens.

Instead of doing something about gun control, we've got militarized police in schools and talk of allowing teachers to carry firearms. Instead of taking my tax money and at least feeding the kids, I've watched them be fed stuff so lacking in nutritional value it might as well be dirt. I've seen politicians move to keep the holocaust out of textbooks and reduce the horrors of war to a few paragraphs-always with this country as the winners, the good guys, the MCU equivalent of the avengers coming to save the day. Don't even get me started on housing those homeless children. If the US doesn't care about kids being shot to death, it sure as hell doesn't care about giving them adequate shelter.

I'm not so dumb as to assume there's a single solution or a single cause to any of this, but I'm also not ignorant to the fact that every single fucking time I've heard "for the safety of kids" or "for the good of the children" used by someone, they're about to do something fucking hideous to all of us and get away with it. They're about to rob you of your rights, your humanity, your name and culture if they think they can. And they're gonna get away with it too, because what kind of monster would ever argue against the safety of kids?

"For the children" is a conservative dog whistle. It always has been, it always will be, and every time you see it used it's time to start harassing the shit out of the people saying it by asking them what they're legitimately, actually, factually doing for kids. Because there's a damn good chance their entire argument is built on a throne of corpses.

[carsthatexcite]

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[mariacallous]

In a sunlight-filled classroom at the US State Department’s diplomacy school in late February, America’s cyber ambassador fielded urgent questions from US diplomats who were spending the week learning about the dizzying technological forces shaping their missions.

“This portfolio is one of the most interesting and perhaps the most consequential at this moment in time,” Nathaniel Fick, the US ambassador-at-large for cyberspace and digital policy, told the roughly three dozen diplomats assembled before him at the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Virginia. “Getting smart on these issues … is going to serve everyone really well over the long term, regardless of what other things you go off and do.”

The diplomats, who had come from overseas embassies and from State Department headquarters in nearby Washington, DC, were the sixth cohort of students to undergo a crash course in cybersecurity, telecommunications, privacy, surveillance, and other digital issues, which Fick’s team created in late 2022. The training program—the biggest initiative yet undertaken by State’s two-year-old cyber bureau—is intended to reinvigorate US digital diplomacy at a time when adversaries like Russia and China are increasingly trying to shape how the world uses technology.

During his conversation with the students, Fick discussed the myriad of tech and cyber challenges facing US diplomats. He told a staffer from an embassy in a country under China’s influence to play the long game in forming relationships that could eventually help the US make inroads there. He spoke about his efforts to help European telecom companies survive existential threats from Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei in the battle for the world’s 5G networks. And he warned of a difficult balancing act on AI, saying the US needed to stave off excessive regulation at the UN without repeating past mistakes.

“We really screwed up governance of the previous generation of tech platforms, particularly the social [media] platforms,” Fick said. “The US essentially unleashed on the world the most powerful anti-democratic tools in the history of humanity, and now we’re digging our way out of a credibility hole.”

Restoring that credibility and expanding American influence over digital issues will require tech-savvy diplomacy, and the State Department is counting on Fick’s training program to make that possible. To pull back the curtain on this program for the first time, WIRED received exclusive access to the February training session and interviewed Fick, the initiative’s lead organizer, five graduates of the course, and multiple cyber diplomacy experts about how the program is trying to transform American tech diplomacy.

Fick has called the training program the most important part of his job. As he tells anyone who will listen, it’s a project with existential stakes for the future of the open internet and the free world.

“Technology as a source of influence is increasingly foundational,” he says. “These things are more and more central to our foreign policy, and that’s a trend that is long-term and unlikely to change anytime soon.”

Maintaining an Edge

From Russian election interference to Chinese industrial dominance, the US faces a panoply of digital threats. Fighting back will require skillful diplomatic pressure campaigns on every level, from bilateral talks with individual countries to sweeping appeals before the 193-member United Nations. But this kind of work is only possible when the career Foreign Service officers on the front lines of US diplomacy understand why tech and cyber issues matter—and how to discuss them.

“The US needs to demonstrate both understanding and leadership on the global stage,” says Chris Painter, who served as the first US cyber ambassador from 2011 to 2017.

This leadership is important on high-profile subjects like artificial intelligence and the 5G war between Western and Chinese vendors, but it’s equally vital on the bread-and-butter digital issues—like basic internet connectivity and fighting cybercrime—that don’t generate headlines but still dominate many countries’ diplomatic engagements with the US.

Diplomats also need to be able to identify digital shortcomings and security gaps in their host countries that the US could help fix. The success of the State Department’s new cyber foreign aid fund will depend heavily on project suggestions from tech-savvy diplomats on the ground.

In addition, because virtually every global challenge—from trade to climate—has a tech aspect, all US diplomats need to be conversant in the topic. “You’re going to have meetings where a country is talking about a trade import issue or complaining about a climate problem, and suddenly there’s a tech connection,” says Justin Sherman, a tech and geopolitics expert who runs Global Cyber Strategies, a Washington, DC, research and advisory firm.

Digital expertise will also help the US expand coalitions around cybercrime investigations, ransomware deterrence, and safe uses of the internet—all essentially proxy fights with Russia and China.

“We are in competition with the authoritarian states on everything from internet standards … to basic governance rules,” says Neil Hop, a senior adviser to Fick and the lead organizer of the training program. “We are going to find ourselves at a sore disadvantage if we don't have trained people who are representing [us].”

Diplomats without tech training might not even realize when their Russian and Chinese counterparts are using oblique rhetoric to pitch persuadable countries on their illiberal visions of internet governance, with rampant censorship and surveillance. Diplomats with tech training would be able to push back, using language and examples designed to appeal to those middle-ground countries and sway them away from the authoritarians’ clutches.

“Our competitors and our adversaries are upping their game in these areas,” Fick says, “because they understand as well as we do what’s at stake.”

Preparing America’s Eyes and Ears

The Obama administration was the first to create a tech diplomacy training program, with initial training sessions in various regions followed by week-long courses that brought trainees to Washington. Government speakers and tech-industry luminaries like internet cocreator Vint Cerf discussed the technological, social, and political dimensions of the digital issues that diplomats had to discuss with their host governments.

“The idea was to create this cadre in the Foreign Service to work with our office and really mainstream this as a topic,” says Painter, who created the program when he was State’s coordinator for cyber issues, the predecessor to Fick’s role.

But when Painter tried to institutionalize his program with a course at the Foreign Service Institute, he encountered resistance. “I think we kind of hit it too early for FSI,” he says. “I remember the FSI director saying that they thought, ‘Well, maybe this is just a passing fad.’ It was a new topic. This is what happens with any new topic.”

By the time the Senate unanimously confirmed Nate Fick to be America’s cyber ambassador in September 2022, tech diplomacy headaches were impossible to ignore, and Fick quickly tasked his team with creating a modern training program and embedding it in the FSI’s regular curriculum.

“He understood that we needed to do more and better in terms of preparing our people in the field,” Hop says.

The training program fit neatly into secretary of state Antony Blinken’s vision of an American diplomatic corps fully versed in modern challenges and nimble enough to confront them. “Elevating our tech diplomacy” is one of Blinken’s “core priorities,” Fick says.

As they developed a curriculum, Fick and his aides had several big goals for the new training program.

The first priority was to make sure diplomats understood what was at stake as the US and its rivals compete for global preeminence on tech issues. “Authoritarian states and other actors have used cyber and digital tools to threaten national security, international peace and security, economic prosperity, [and] the exercise of human rights,” says Kathryn Fitrell, a senior cyber policy adviser at State who helps run the course.

Equally critical was preparing diplomats to promote the US tech agenda from their embassies and provide detailed reports back to Washington on how their host governments were approaching these issues.

“It's important to us that tech expertise [in] the department not sit at headquarters alone,” Fick says, “but instead that we have people everywhere—at all our posts around the world, where the real work gets done—who are equipped with the tools that they need to make decisions with a fair degree of autonomy.”

Foreign Service officers are America’s eyes and ears on the ground in foreign countries, studying the landscape and alerting their bosses back home to risks and opportunities. They are also the US government’s most direct and regular interlocutors with representatives of other nations, forming personal bonds with local officials that can sometimes make the difference between unity and discord.

When these diplomats need to discuss the US tech agenda, they can’t just read monotonously off a piece of paper. They need to actually understand the positions they’re presenting and be prepared to answer questions about them.

“You can’t be calling back to someone in Washington every time there’s a cyber question,” says Sherman.

But some issues will still require help from experts at headquarters, so Fick and his team also wanted to use the course to deepen their ties with diplomats and give them friendly points of contact at the cyber bureau. “We want to be able to support officers in the field as they confront these issues,” says Melanie Kaplan, a member of Fick’s team who took the class and now helps run it.

Inside the Classroom

After months of research, planning, and scheduling, Fick’s team launched the Cyberspace and Digital Policy Tradecraft course at the Foreign Service Institute with a test run in November 2022. Since then, FSI has taught the class six more times—once in London for European diplomats, once in Morocco for diplomats in the Middle East and Africa, and four times in Arlington—and trained 180 diplomats.

The program begins with four hours of “pre-work” to prepare students for the lessons ahead. Students must document that they’ve completed the pre-work—which includes experimenting with generative AI—before taking the class. “That has really put us light-years ahead in ensuring that no one is lost on day one,” Hop says.

The week-long in-person class consists of 45- to 90-minute sessions on topics like internet freedom, privacy, ransomware, 5G, and AI. Diplomats learn how the internet works on a technical level, how the military and the FBI coordinate with foreign partners to take down hackers’ computer networks, and how the US promotes its tech agenda in venues like the International Telecommunication Union. Participants also meet with Fick and his top deputies, including Eileen Donahoe, the department’s special envoy for digital freedom.

One session features a panel of US diplomats who have helped their host governments confront big cyberattacks. “They woke up one morning and suddenly were in this position of having to respond to a major crisis,” says Meir Walters, a training alum who leads the digital-freedom team in State’s cyber bureau.

Students learn how the US helped Albania and Costa Rica respond to massive cyberattacks in 2022 perpetrated by the Iranian government and Russian cybercriminals, respectively. In Albania, urgent warnings from a young, tech-savvy US diplomat “accelerated our response to the Iranian attack by months,” Fick says. In Costa Rica, diplomats helped the government implement emergency US aid and then used those relationships to turn the country into a key semiconductor manufacturing partner.

“By having the right people on the ground,” Fick says, “we were able to seize these significant opportunities.”

Students spend one day on a field trip, with past visits including the US Chamber of Commerce (to understand industry’s role in tech diplomacy), the Center for Democracy and Technology (to understand civil society’s perspective on digital-rights issues), and the internet infrastructure giant Verisign.

On the final day, participants must pitch ideas for using what they’ve learned in a practical way to Jennifer Bachus, the cyber bureau’s number two official.

The course has proven to be highly popular. Fick told participants in February that “there was a long wait list” to get in. There will be at least three more sessions this year: one in Arlington in August (timed to coincide with the diplomatic rotation period), one in East Asia, and one in Latin America. These sessions are expected to train 75 to 85 new diplomats.

After the course ends, alumni can stay up-to-date with a newsletter, a Microsoft Teams channel, and a toolkit with advice and guidance. Some continue their education: Fifty diplomats are getting extra training through a one-year online learning pilot, and State is accepting applications for 15 placements at leading academic institutions and think tanks—including Stanford University and the Council on Foreign Relations—where diplomats can continue researching tech issues that interest them.

Promising Results, Challenges Ahead

Less than two years into the training effort, officials say they are already seeing meaningful improvements to the US’s tech diplomacy posture.

Diplomats are sending Washington more reports on their host governments’ tech agendas, Fitrell says, with more details and better analysis. Graduates of the course also ask more questions than their untrained peers. And inspired by the training, some diplomats have pushed their bosses to prioritize tech issues, including through embassy working groups uniting representatives of different US agencies.

State has also seen more diplomats request high-level meetings with foreign counterparts to discuss tech issues and more incorporation of those issues into broader conversations. Fick says the course helped the cyber officer at the US embassy in Nairobi play an integral role in recent tech agreements between the US and Kenya. And diplomats are putting more energy into whipping votes for international tech agreements, including an AI resolution at the UN.

Diplomats who took the course shared overwhelmingly positive feedback with WIRED. They say it was taught in an accessible way and covered important topics. Several say they appreciated hearing from senior US officials whose strategizing informs diplomats’ on-the-ground priorities. Maryum Saifee, a senior adviser for digital governance at State’s cyber bureau and a training alum, says she appreciated the Morocco class’s focus on regional issues and its inclusion of locally employed staff.

Graduates strongly encouraged their colleagues to take the course, describing it as foundational to every diplomatic portfolio.

“Even if you're not a techie kind of a person, you need to not shy away from these conversations,” says Bridget Trazoff, a veteran diplomat who has learned four languages at the Foreign Service Institute and compares the training to learning a fifth one.

Painter, who knows how challenging it can be to create a program like this, says he’s “heard good things” about the course. “I’m very happy that they've redoubled their efforts in this.”

For the training program to achieve lasting success, its organizers will need to overcome several hurdles.

Fick’s team will need to keep the course material up-to-date as the tech landscape evolves. They’ll need to keep it accessible but also informative to diplomats with varying tech proficiencies who work in countries with varying levels of tech capacity. And they’ll need to maintain a constant training tempo, given that diplomats rotate positions every few years.

The tone of the curriculum also presents a challenge. Diplomats need to learn the US position on issues like trusted telecom infrastructure, but they also need to understand that not every country sees things the way the US does. “It's not just knowing about these tech issues that’s so essential,” Sherman says. “It's also understanding the whole dictionary of terms and how every country thinks about these concepts differently.”

The coming years could test the course’s impact as the US strives to protect its Eastern European partners from Russia, its East Asian partners from China and North Korea, and its Middle Eastern partners from Iran, as well as to counter Chinese tech supremacy and neutralize Russia’s and China’s digital authoritarianism.

Perhaps the biggest question facing the program is whether it will survive a possible change in administrations this fall. Officials are optimistic—Fick has talked to his Trump-era counterparts, and Painter says “having an FSI course gives it a sense of permanence.”

For Fick, there is no question that the training must continue.

“Tech is interwoven into every aspect of … American foreign policy,” he says. “If you want to position yourself to be effective and be relevant as an American diplomat in the decades ahead, you need to understand these issues.”

[mantisgodsdomain]

It is now Saturday. New discoveries from this week of university:

-The teachers know less about technology than us, a purposefully low-tech insect who learns things about technology exclusively so that it can rip stuff off the internet and/or work games and tech from a decade ago minimum and whose knowledge consists primarily of buzzwords and how to make machines do what they're meant to do.

-As extension to this, the school computers are significantly slower than our 20-year-old writing computer, which has had its hard drive replaced more than once and currently runs Windows 95.

-Our school email requires us to download a spyware app for two-factor authentication in order for us to use it, effective today.

-Telegram has recently updated its privacy policy so that it can give your info to the cops if they ask.

-We have been getting into fountain pens and after witnessing the ridiculously pretty shading that Southwest Sunset has and discovering that apparently one of the #1 priorities of its manufacturer is to we are getting progressively more tempted to do something to give us the opportunity to write physical mail more often rather than just typing everything out online and talking to people verbally

-Every day we get progressively closer to becoming someone who can only be reached by snail mail

[coochiequeens]

I may not like conservative news sites but at least they are willing to report on crap like this instead of bowing to the TQ+ cult

An 11-year-old little girl was assigned to share a bed with a male student who identifies as a girl while on a cross-country school trip, according to a demand letter sent Monday. That girl's parents are now calling upon the public school system to provide answers and clarification of its policies related to children who identify as transgender.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL: An 11-year-old girl was assigned to share a bed with a male student who identifies as a transgender girl while on a cross-country school trip, according to a demand letter sent Monday. That girl’s parents are now calling upon the public school system to provide answers and clarification of its policies related to children who identify as transgender.

Represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, Joe and Serena Wailes are calling on the Colorado-based Jefferson County School Board usaand Jefferson County Public Schools Superintendent Tracy Dorland to clarify “whether JCPS will continue this practice of intentionally withholding information about rooming accommodations from parents like the Waileses, who object to their children rooming with a student of the opposite sex, regardless of the other student’s gender identity.”

“This practice renders it impossible for these parents to make informed decisions about their children’s privacy, upbringing, and participation in school-sponsored programs,” reads the demand letter, which was exclusively provided to The Daily Signal. “Additionally, our clients request information related to JB R-1 and the ability to opt out of this rooming policy for all future school trips.”

The Waileses describe how their daughter, who is in fifth grade, went on a JCPS-sponsored trip to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., in June 2023. JCPS had repeatedly told parents that the boys and girls on the trip would be roomed on different floors—and chaperones told the students that boys would not even be allowed to visit the girls’ floor, as well as vice versa, according to the letter.

Serena Wailes also went on the trip, though she was not a chaperone.

The Wailes’ 11-year-old daughter, who is identified in the letter as “D.W.,” was assigned to a room with three other students, according to the demand letter. Two of these students were girls from her school, and the third student was a boy who identified as a girl (named in the letter as “K.E.M.”) who went to a different school.

D.W. and K.E.M were told that they would share a bed, and that evening, when the students were in their room together, K.E.M. reportedly revealed to the girls that he is a boy who identified as a girl.

“We were definitely not aware of that before we went on the trip,” Serena Wailes told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. The mother shared that this young boy was presenting as a girl, wearing girls’ clothing, and had longer hair.

Uncomfortable at the thought of sharing both a room and her bed with a boy, D.W. snuck into the bathroom and called her mother. Then she went downstairs and met her mom in the lobby to discuss the matter.

Serena Wailes told The Daily Signal that her daughter was “terrified and really upset about the idea of sharing a bed with a biological boy—even though she had a good relationship with this other student.”

“I was really upset,” Serena Wailes told The Daily Signal. “One, I was really upset that she was put in that situation at 11 years old—I don’t feel that is fair to put kids in that kind of situation—and two, that we were not even given the information that this was a possibility before the trip. The whole time they’re saying, ‘Girls on one floor, boys on another, they’re not going to be in each other’s rooms unless it is pre-approved.’ So we’re going through this whole process, not even recognizing that this is a possibility.”

Joe Wailes said that his wife called him from the hotel and filled him in about the situation.

“I felt a bit helpless,” he said. “I was 2,000 miles away. My daughter is scared in a bathroom trying to get herself out of a situation. It was a frustrating experience, and I just really felt like it was not a situation my daughter should be put in.”

School chaperones called one of the trip leaders, Principal Ryan Lucas, who called the boy’s parents, according to the letter: “K.E.M.’s parents confirmed their child’s transgender gender identity and that K.E.M. was to be in ‘stealth mode,’ meaning students on the trip would not know about their child’s transgender status.”

After a good deal of trouble, chaperones finally agreed to move the male student, with a different female student, to another room.

“Throughout the entire evening, K.E.M.’s privacy and feelings were always the primary concern of JCPS employees,” the letter said. “After JCPS disregarded D.W.’s privacy and the Waileses’ parental rights, JCPS then silenced D.W., thus infringing on her freedom of speech, when a JCPS teacher told the three girls that they were not allowed to tell anyone that K.E.M. was transgender, even though K.E.M. voluntarily chose to share this information.”

According to the demand letter, the school district’s policy is, “in most cases,” to room students based on the gender they identify as, rather than their sex.

The Wailes parents have two fourth-grade children registered to attend a trip to New York, Washington, and Philadelphia in 2024, and they emphasize in their letter that the district must clarify its policies for room assignments for students, as well as parental ability to opt their children out of sharing rooms with children of the opposite sex.

“They want to make sure that every parent knows that this is a possibility and can have the opportunity to opt out or make the best decision for their kid,” Kate Anderson, director of the Center for Parental Rights at Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Daily Signal. “But they also have two younger children that they want to make sure are not in the same situation that their older daughter was in.”

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

To the anon with the timelord with a fever: that sounds really serious. You know, even if your Time Lord is a renegade, you don't have to get in trouble - surely it's more important to make sure your Time Lord doesn't die than to avoid talking to the CIA for a few minutes?

Hey, I gave an idea - to show you the potential good outcomes from such a meeting, maybe the Gallifreyan institute for learning - an unbiased source - could tell us about some famous times when the CIA consorting with a human friend of a renegade, or a renegade directly, has resulted in positive outcomes? A little history lesson!

- @jillthecia-agent

While we truly appreciate your enthusiasm and curiosity about the positive outcomes of the CIA's interactions with humans and renegade Time Lords, we have to keep certain boundaries in place. Here at the Gallifreyan Institute for Learning, we adhere strictly to privacy policies set by the High Council.

The information you're asking about is highly classified. Accessing and sharing these details would contravene this privacy policy, which is designed to protect ongoing operations and the individuals involved. While we aim to be an unbiased source of Gallifreyan knowledge, our hands are tied when it comes to such sensitive information.

As much as we'd love to share more stories from the archives, it's important that the CIA itself handles these matters. Perhaps, Jill, you could take on the role of sharing these success stories within the boundaries of your own regulations?

🚨 Prioritising Health and Safety

To the anon concerned about their Time Lord with a fever: Your Time Lord's health is paramount. Sometimes, a quick chat with the CIA can be the best course of action to ensure they get the care they need.

Thanks for understanding!😃

Any orange text is educated guesswork or theoretical. More content ... →📫Got a question? | 📚Complete list of Q+A and factoids →📢Announcements |🩻Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts → Features: ⭐Guest Posts | 🍜Chomp Chomp with Myishu →🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (pending) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP) →📜Masterpost If you're finding your happy place in this part of the internet, feel free to buy a coffee to help keep our exhausted human conscious. She works full-time in medicine and is so very tired 😴

[insteading]

By utilizing our Services, you consent to sharing data that you provide to us, or that resides within your Yahoo account, including your Yahoo Mail inbox with our AI Providers for the purpose of enhancing features within our Services made available to you. In some instances, use of AI query features may be governed by the AI Provider’s terms of service and privacy policy. You understand and agree that content or responses generated by AI may contain inaccuracies and should never be relied upon without independent verification.

So: What I am learning is that enough of us think that generative AI is dogshit that we will not opt into using products and services that require it. Hence, we must be forced to use it in order to recoup the costs that companies have put into a glorified autocomplete that they FULLY KNOW introduces errors and should never be relied upon, and that our data is being used to make it appear to function better than it actually does.

Don't get me started on the fury I feel about the way it's extending and expanding our reliance on fossil fuels.

I have had the same email address for a quarter century. I have decided that the annoyance of figuring out how to preserve what data I want to preserve is now outweighed by the annoyance of being forced to use an incompetent and fuel-guzzling "feature."

[unpluggedfinancial]

The Machine's Magic Trick: How You're Distracted From the Real Fight

Have you ever watched a skilled magician perform? The real brilliance isn't the rabbit coming out of the hat or the coin appearing from thin air—it's the magician's ability to control exactly where you're looking. As your eyes follow one hand's flamboyant gestures, the other quietly executes the illusion. But here's the thing: this isn't just entertainment. Our world operates in precisely the same way, subtly guiding your attention away from what truly matters.

We live in an age where attention is the new currency, and it's being traded, bought, and sold without your conscious awareness. Social media, news cycles, even our everyday conversations are engineered to pull our focus in a hundred different directions. We're inundated with information, endlessly scrolling, liking, and reacting, yet we often feel more lost than informed.

Consider how often you've seen outrage flare up over relatively trivial issues—celebrity feuds, minor political spats, or viral videos. Our emotions are triggered, our attention consumed, debates rage online, yet beneath this storm of controversy, real and significant issues quietly slip by unnoticed. Who benefits from this manufactured outrage? Certainly not us.

Here's what many miss: While we're caught up arguing over fleeting distractions, crucial topics such as financial sovereignty, systemic corruption, and the steady erosion of personal privacy remain hidden in plain sight. These are the issues that determine how we live, our freedoms, and the future we're creating for our children. Yet they rarely break through the noise.

So how do you begin to see clearly? The first step is recognizing that your attention has immense value. Become selective about where you direct it. Start questioning narratives presented to you. Seek alternative perspectives, and be deliberate about the information you consume. Slow down, unplug from the noise regularly, and reflect on what truly matters in your life and community.

Cultivating deeper awareness isn’t just a personal victory; it’s a societal shift. Imagine the collective power if we all reclaimed our attention from trivial distractions and directed it towards real-world issues. How would conversations change? What actions might we take? How different might our world become?

The magician depends on you watching the wrong hand. Once you've seen through the illusion, it loses all power. Today, consider this your moment of clarity. You've seen the trick; the illusion is broken. The real question now is: knowing this, what will you choose to do differently?

Look beyond distractions. The real fight needs your attention.

Take Action Towards Financial Independence

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🌐 Blog: Unplugged Financial Blog Stay updated with insightful articles, detailed analyses, and practical advice on navigating the evolving financial landscape. Learn about the history of money, the flaws in our current financial systems, and how Bitcoin can offer a path to a more secure and independent financial future.

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[we-are-not-a-number]

Tdlr; Utah bill banning transgender college students from bathrooms, dorms, extra circular activities of their assigned gender passed Utah house, moving to the Senate. It is expected to pass. The only LGBTQ lawmaker on the House Legislator of Utah held back tears and stated that

“I have to tell you, the LGBTQ community is so tired," Sahara Hayes said, her voice cracking as she spoke from the House floor. “We are so tired of being scared every year when this body meets, because we don’t know how we’re going to be targeted. … But it’s starting to feel inevitable that it’s going to happen.”

It’s the fourth year in a row, said Rep. Sahara Hayes, D-Salt Lake City, that the Republican-majority Legislature has pushed legislation aimed at the small population. In 2022, transgender girls were prohibited from participating in high school sports that align with their gender identity. In 2023, Utah banned gender-affirming health care for transgender youth. And last year, transgender Utahns were barred from using public restrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity in government-owned buildings.

Hayes’ plea, though, didn’t stop the latest measure from moving forward. She was joined in voting against HB269 by House Democrats. All Republicans voted in support, pushing the measure through on a 59-13 vote. It goes next to the Senate.

The bill from Rep. Stephanie Gricius, R-Eagle Mountain, would ban transgender students at the state’s public colleges and universities from living in a school-owned dorm building that aligns with their gender identity. Instead, they would have to be assigned to a room based strictly on their sex at birth or to an area specifically designated as gender neutral.

Gricius said that provision for gender neutral spaces “creates a pathway for our transgender students to have a safe space” while supporting the privacy of female students who want to live in dorms designated for women. “Dorms are a place where people are particularly vulnerable,” she said after the debate Tuesday.

The bill has come partly in response to a conflict this semester at Utah State University, where Marcie Robertson, a 20-year-old transgender student, was assigned to be the resident advisor for a women’s dorm.

When Avery Saltzman, a roommate assigned to the same suite, learned of Robertson’s identity, she said she felt uncomfortable living in the same space and sharing a restroom. Saltzman requested a transfer and received another room in the same building.

But her mother, Cheryl Saltzman, was upset that USU didn’t notify the family ahead of time. And she has spoken out publicly. The situation was then picked up by conservative circles on social media. Hayes, who is the first openly bisexual member of the Utah House, mentioned how threats have poured in against Robertson since, which Robertson also talked about with The Salt Lake Tribune.

“She was doxxed in this instance,” Hayes said, noting that Robertson’s name, picture and dorm address have been shared thousands of times online. And USU, the lawmaker added, has had to increase security around Robertson’s dorm and filter her email to try to block some of the “harassment and threats.”

Hayes said framing HB269 as a push for privacy “feels disingenuous to me, given how egregiously hers was being violated.”

“She and other students like her are just as worthy of safety and privacy — not being pushed into separate, exclusionary housing,” she said. Democratic Reps. Doug Owens and Grant Miller also spoke in opposition. Miller said USU and other colleges in the state already have policies for students to move to a different dorm room if there’s a dispute. And that played out as it should have in this situation.

“I think that the state Legislature is an inappropriate forum to ultimately marshal what is a dispute between roommates,” Miller added. Owens said he, too, didn’t feel there was a pressing need for the bill, particularly as the courts are already weighing similar measures; creating a new law now would likely be “signing the state up for expensive litigation.” He also said that, “from a perspective of kindness,” HB269 should be tabled.

Several GOP lawmakers pushed back, saying it’s the Legislature’s job to create laws — not wait for the courts to decide. Rep. Trevor Lee, R-Layton, also said that the state shouldn’t wait until “something bad happens” to protect women.

Lee said that as the father of two girls, he wants to make sure his daughters and other female students feel safe and comfortable when living on campus. He is also currently running a bill to ban pride flags in K-12 classrooms. He was joined by freshman Rep. Doug Fiefia, R-Herriman, who spoke of his three daughters, too, and said the bill is “not about discrimination” but protection.

Hayes countered that it is discrimination, to her, when the bill is about limiting a specific population — a community that has been the subject of legislation for each session she’s been a lawmaker. “This feels like being pushed aside and scapegoated,” she said, “again and again and again.”