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graylinesspam · 3 months ago

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One of these days Ahsoka was really gonna have to confront the fact that explosions were very high up her list of strategies. And wasn't that a bit dramatic?

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Or basically the jailbreak scene from THE suicide squad but make it Star Wars.

His metal caf cup fell to the floor with a clatter, the last swig of cold liquid staining the floor. Cody’s heart was in his throat. Obi-wan’s face shone on the other side of the blue holoprojection; shock in the part of his mouth.

No one else in the room was moving, consumed by the advertisement being played by the holo-table. The foreground showed a pyke flanked by two Black Sun operatives. The Pyke was moving his hand in beckoning gestures as he droned on in his guttural language. Translations scrolled across the bottom of the screen.

And in the background of the video, slowly making her way to the center of attention as the recorder zoomed in, was Ahsoka, suspended from the ceiling in electric shackles. Her long red dress had been torn to tatters and her head hung limply.

One of the Black Suns gripped her by the back lek and yanked her head back so that the camera could capture her unconscious face. One eye was swollen shut and there was blood smeared in an indiscernible pattern across her face. In this low definition, it was hard to tell where she was wounded. Her face was almost misshapen from the swelling.

More text scrolled across the screen as the Pyke jabbered on in what counted as excitement for their species.

Cody’s fist slammed onto the table disrupting the holo in a waving blue blur. “They’re auctioning her?” he demanded.

Obi-wan’s hands had tucked themselves into his sleeves to hide the fact that he was gripping himself by the elbows. “So it seems,” he replied in a strained manner.

“We cannot let this happen.” Cody insisted. Several of the men surrounding them made noises of agreement.

“I’m afraid, as Ahsoka is no longer a member of the military, We’ll need council approval, even the Chancellor’s approval to use military powers to retrieve her.”

“Sir, you know as well as I do that there's no way we’ll be able to stop the vode from going after her. If we don’t organize this, it will happen anyway, and the loss could be greater.”

“I know that Cody. I’ll contact the council. See if I can appeal to them.”

The rescue of Ahsoka Tano was not a mission that was easy to sell. The council was torn between guilt for turning on her and bitterness that she left them. Several times the matter was almost sent higher up the chain for senate approval. But ultimately it was the amount of information that she possessed that turned their minds.

Coming off of the mess with Quinlin and Ventress they certainly did not want Dooku to get his hands on another highly trained jedi with a vendetta against the order. The kind of Sith that Ahsoka could make sent a shiver of dread down the backs of every Jedi master.

She had been a premiere padawan. A prodigy in terms of combat skill and the development of her own inherent ability. For another member of Yoda’s impressive lineage to fall to the dark side.

It would be a disaster. And it would do considerable damage to Obi-wan and Anakin.

And that was before considering the amount of information she had about the Republic’s military movements, their bases, hyperspace routes, tactics, and supply routes. She may be able to single-handedly topple the war in their enemy’s favor.

So the council ruled in favor of rescuing Ahsoka Tano. What they planned to do with her afterward was to be seen.

They had to find her first. Tracking the transmission was useless. Black Sun was too clever for that. But they could track all the major recipients of that broadcast. Money began changing hands. They were following the transactions as they were set in motion. It seemed everyone from flesh traders to Trandoshan hunters were bidding on her. She made a lot of enemies in her short time in the galaxy. And even more admirers which was never a good thing when you were a beautiful young woman.

Everyone could tell, however, that the auction was stalling. They were waiting to see if the separatist or the Republic would put a bid in. It was unlikely that the Republic could get the authority to do so in time, even if they were inclined to. But the separatists, at least the leader of the movement, Count Dooku, was able to make whatever decisions he saw fit with his own finances.

The splicers tracking the broadcast and splicing through the Pike’s network thanked every star in the galaxy that the separatists were dragging their feet, since it gave them more time to find her.

The puzzle piece that busted open the case was an old report of Blacksun scavengers harassing ships exiting the Kessel run. They’d been pursued by authorities and were chased back to a small base on the planet Randa. An uninhabited little rock in the Kessel system not far from Ord Mantel.

It took some digging to find proper aerial photographs from that planet but when they did the base was clearly visible.

It wasn’t much more than a duracrete box from what they could tell, but it would do fine to hold a hostage for a long period of time.

With even more long needless debates happening amongst the jedi and the Admirals Cody had his men gearing up for the extraction. Master Windu had briefly argued that his clones were far better trained in infil and exfil but a soft word from Ponds silenced him on the matter.

Absolutely no clone out of blue armor would have been able to talk their way into this mission if it hadn’t been Cody. The 501st were currently deployed deep in the belly of the war. It was the only way they would have been occupied enough to miss this. And as much as he was grateful for that, Cody would never be able to look his brother in the face again if he didn’t personally go to retrieve his vod’ika.

Besides, they didn’t want to waste any more time waiting for an elite squad. If Cody, as the marshal commander, was not elite enough for this mission, then he should hang up his helmet. He was going to bring Ahsoka home, no matter what.

Ahsoka woke to a terribly loud buzzing. Electricity always grated on her hearing when it was exposed so closely to her montrals. She was also displeased to notice that both her arms were asleep and her back burned in a way that indicated strain.

She cracked her eyes open as far as the swelling would allow. The room she was in was dimly lit but for the holocamera shining a searing beam of light directly into her eyes. She winced at that and her movement caught the attention of whoever was holding her here. A Pyke, with a big ugly gold helmet, was chittering at her in its unpleasant language. It chortled a little laugh as it leaned close and grasped her chin, tilting her face for the recorder.

She sneered at the foul little thing and tried to pull her head back.

It retaliated with a swift punch to the gut, knocking the wind out of her.

Ahsoka wheezed as she struggled to draw in air but it gave her a minute to asses her surroundings too. There was one more sentient in the room, a big burly guard with black sun tattoos on his neck. Just two then.

Ahsoka jerked in her restraints and snarled as soon as she had the air in her lungs to do it with.

The Pyke stepped close again to taunt her in a language she didn’t speak, she took the opportunity to sweep the feet out from under the short creature and send him sprawling to the ground. Disoriented from the water in his helmet moving so abruptly, he had no defense ready when Ahsoka slammed the heel of her stiletto into the glass eye of the helmet and shattered it, she could feel her shoe skewer soft flesh beneath and as he struggled away he broke the heel from her shoe leaving it lodged into his face.

She’d been leaning down to concentrate on the creature on the floor but as the bigger thug approached, Ahsoka bent at the knees and lept gaining height on the tall thug as he lunged to grab her by the neck. His open hand ineffectually collided with her chest as her legs wrapped around his torso and brought him in close to her body. At this distance and from this height it was no problem for her to aim for the black smudge of a tattoo over his windpipe and clamp down on it with her teeth.

A Togruta’s teeth were nothing to scoff at. Ahsoka tore the tattoo right off his neck and took a sizable chunk of flesh with it. As the second man dropped to the ground Ahsoka spat out her mouthful grimacing at the taste.

Taking a moment to gather herself she toed off her strappy heels with a bit of a struggle. Formal attire was not ideal clothing for a kidnapping.

With her bare feet she stretched her toes out to the still writhing Pike’s side and slammed her heel into his ribs, he collapsed down from his knees to his side once more and Ahsoka awkwardly stepped onto the little collection of buttons and lights on his wrist, rolling the pressure of her foot around until she pressed the right button and her bindings dropped her unceremoniously to the ground.

Once there she could slam her cuffed hands down onto the Pike’s face once again disorienting him and buying her time to retrieve the bindings key from the Black sun’s now dead body. Hands freed and swiping a blaster off the waistband of the idiot who hadn’t bothered to draw it on her Ahsoka aimed it at the Pyke’s head and finally put his writhing to an end.

She didn’t know where she was or how she’d gotten there. So she went over the information that she did know. She’d been attending a gala last she remembered. Then she woke up here, with a Pyke and a black sun. Oh and a recorder.

Ahsoka glanced back up at it unsure if she was still in frame or not.

Oh well, it isn’t like she’s never had an audience before.

Black Sun operatives almost never work alone. There’s got to be at least one more. Probably closer to five if this was a high-profile job where they’d been hired by the Pikes

So she readied her blaster as she slammed her hand onto the door’s sensor pad. Two guards stand on the other side of the door and Ahsoka has to fire on both of them before the door has finished opening. Both struggle to reach for their weapons before jerking violently and collapsing to the floor.

She’s no sharpshooter so it takes a couple of shots each to put them down even at this close range. She shoves down the familiar frustration at being left without her preferred weapons. There are probably countless guards and gang members left between her and the exit. And now there’s been blasterfire, so she has to move quickly.

Ahsoka shoves through the next door and into a short hallway; the grey stone walls dim but for a light at the end. When she reaches the end she realizes the light is coming from above. She is in a small atrium with windows over her head and connecting hallways in all directions. She takes a step back towards the hall she just exit and counts the others. Four plus hers makes five. Which way does she go?

That question quickly starts to matter less than the pound of boots on the ground towards her. The sounds echoed from all around her; impossible for her to tell what direction they were coming from.

She retreats further back towards the other guards that she killed and pilfers their blasters off of them as well. She’s far outnumbered here and she’ll need all the plasma power she can muster.

She settles down beside the open door, hoping to use this short hallway as a choke point. There are no other ways into the area outside of her cell, if they wanted to come get her they’d need to converge here.

She didn’t need to wait long before thugs started to enter her hall with their blasters already drawn.

Ahsoka leaned around the doorway and opened fire into the hall. Several enemies dropped to the ground bleeding or dead, and several more retreated back into the wider atrium to escape. As they ducked away Ahsoka made sure to fire again at those downed to make sure they’d stay that way.

These kinds of stalemates, the ones where both sides would wait for the other to peak out, they wasted time. The last thing she needed was to give them the time to call in reinforcements until she really was overwhelmed.

She needed a quick way to break out of here. Ahsoka looked down at her blasters and had a terrible idea. Thinking quickly she removed the power pack and the gas canister from one of the blasters and just a power pack from another. Gas canisters were almost indestructible from the outside They were as tough as beskar. You couldn’t even shoot one to explode it. But nonetheless, the gas inside was highly reactive. All blasters came standard with surge and shock protection to keep the power pack from accidentally igniting them.

But she’d seen before, mostly empty or defective gas canisters get off gassed so they could be disposed of without accidentally exploding anything. It was one of the more dangerous responsibilities of owning a blaster. If you screwed it up at all your face could be burned off.

Ahsoka scooted closer to one of the downed guards and retrieved a pair of binders from his belt She stripped the insulation from the connector point of both power packs and pressed the exposed metal together, immediately an acrid metallic smell began to fill the air. She secured the two pieces together with one cuff of the binders.

There were boots approaching her again and Ahsoka had to use the last blaster to shoot the approaching mirilian down.

She retreated again before the enemies retaliating blasts could hit her.

She quickly retrieved the firing pin from the disassembled blaster and carefully pressed it into the nozzle of the gas canister. The smell of gas is strong enough that she has to hold her breath as she clamps the other end of the binders around the canister.

The power pack has burned through the first layer of metal now and any moment it will spark into an electrical fire. She has to throw her little bomb as far down the hallway as she can.

She takes a steadying breath before reeling her arm back and leaning into the doorway, She force propels it as far as she can, over the heads of the thugs and down an opposing hallway. Dodging the next spattering of bolts Ahsoka throws herself to the ground and crawls quickly back toward her cell, The metal door squeaks as she slams it shut behind herself and scrambles even further into the room.

The explosion is sudden and spectacular. She’d been on battlefields with shells hitting the ground from aerial strikes and from cannon armaments. But this? This is like a volcanic eruption. A molten hot wave of air wrecks everything around her. The metal door is blown off its hinges.

It takes her time to right herself. The air is thin from the explosion eating up all the available oxygen and she’s grateful to the skylight she’d seen earlier, it’s likely been blown clean off and letting the atmosphere rush back into the space where it’d all been eaten up.

Her dress, formerly wide and flouncy and crimson red had been singed in a strange way making the outermost layer melt in on it’s self and shrink. And the color had been streaked with black at the knees from touching the floor.

In fact, all surfaces have been thoroughly singed. Black carbon scaring mar the stone around her. The dead bodies she’d left behind have been blown apart and burned black. Even the ground is too hot to touch. So Ahsoka scurries over to where she can see a pair of boots, whose feet are still laced in them.

She can hunt bare foot just fine but the ground would singer her feet if she tried, so she resigns herself quickly to the borrowed boots.

When she walks back through the doorway, what’s left of the atrium and the surrounding hallways is just a crater. There’s nothing left here that could even resemble a weapon. It’s the sight of the fallen walls and the exposed rock that finally reveals to her that she’d been underground this whole time.

She continues through the wreckage into what appears to be another hallway, long this time with proper metal prison cells lining the walls. From one cell ahead a black sun operative jumps out with his blaster drawn on her. Ahsoka reacts quickly grabbing his arm aiming it to the side and punching him squarely in the nose. As his head reels back she realizes how young he is. 15 maybe 16. He drops his blaster out of surprise and pain. She takes pity on the kid and slams him into the cell door jarring him terribly. She swipes the knife from his belt and throws him in, slamming the bars shut.

Acquiring another blaster was somewhat advantageous even if this pathetic little pistol had such low plasma power. And not a moment too soon as another armed thug rushed into the hallway. Unfortunately, he also looked very young.

That bleeding jedi heart would get her killed one of these days.

She grabbed the barrel of her own blaster with her non-dominant hand and used the other to grab him by the firing arm. She turned her body yanking him into her back and slammed her elbow into his face. When he dropped his blaster she reared her arm back and slammed the butt of her blaster into his head. Then she rolled him into the cell beside the other, who was hissing and spitting at her.

She was looking for the exit now. Ready to get the hell out of this fuckin pit.

She rushed out into the next room and found it was a hoard. Crates were piled in the center with various valuable-looking goods stacked atop them. Ahsoka thought she saw some vibroblades and even some fancy rifles. What caught her attention in the worst way was the wookie pelt. Laid out like an akul pelt. Sadness rose in her as she stepped closer.

Laying across the spread pelt was something else. It was long and made of Wroshyr wood from Kasyyyk. She could tell by the color and the pattern of the grain. On both ends it was capped with a long metal casing that ended it a spike at one end and a flattened spearhead at the other. She’d never heard of wookies using spears before. The closest thing she knew of was a war staff.

Maybe this was from some small tribe with obscure traditions. Or maybe this individual simply didn’t live by the traditional ways of his people.

Either way, Ahsoka was grateful to come across such a weapon. Though different from her separated twin blades, there was still a lot of familiarity between the techniques used to wield them.

And there’s something more than that. On her home planet, any good hunter's weapon of choice was a spear. Sure they had arrows and hunting blasters and the like, but a spear was the most versatile and ideal weapon for hunting in the grasslands. Ahsoka herself had trained with one briefly before the war started. But she hadn’t been home in some time.

Still, it felt right to find a weapon so like that of her people waiting for her in a place like this, when she was most in need of one.

She hefts the weapon up, it’s nearly as tall as she is well-worn wood grain as soft as leather against her palms. The metal cappings are in gold and they shine in the dim lighting as if polished to a mirror shine.

The girth is almost too thick for her hands. Certainly wider than her saber hilts had been. But on rare occasions, she had been forced to train with Anakin’s saber, and the thickness of that hilt coupled with the wide metal grips had nearly torn her palms to shreds. There were calluses there now that held onto the wood well.

She spins the spear slowly between her hands, getting a feel for the weight of it. At least the weapon is balanced, despite the different metal ends the weight is distributed evenly and it twirls with little resistance between her palms.

She can hear shouting ahead, whatever is left of the blacksuns that hadn’t been stationed near her cell and thus dispatched by her explosion are starting to rally themselves. She can hear them opening an armory of sorts, the metallic sounds of blasters being loaded are familiar enough that she could recognize it without the context of the moment.

So Ahsoka spins the spear until half of it is tucked under one arm and sticking out behind her. She marches resolutely through the last two dim storage rooms until she swings a door open and finds herself in a large open room.

Across from her is a group of various sentients. Black sun tattoos are the only similarity between them. Well, that and the look they give her as they raise their blasters.

There are six that she can see in front of her. Although just to the left of the group there's an open door that must be the armory. Who knows how many more are inside.

As they take aim, she takes a defensive stance, turning mostly to the side so less of her body is easy to target even as lowers her center and braces the spear against her chest.

The first two blasts are easily absorbed by the spear, so easily that it prompts her enemies to advance faster than she anticipated. She turns on the balls of her feet and swings the spear decisively the end tipped with a blade slices through a man's throat blood spraying in an arc as she continues the moment of her turn and jabs the spiked end into another’s chest.

Now this is the smooth rhythm of a fight that she’d missed.

All of this fighting with blasters and explosives has been grating on her. The fluid swing of a blade is what she’d always been meant for.

Pulling her spear free of his chest she whips the spear around again in a quick upward arc slicing his belly open. Her second opponent falls clutching his gaping abdomen.

She must dodge blaster shots again as the other four fan out trying to surround her but she is faster and more experienced than them. Ahsoka dodges quickly to the left and pins one woman’s foot to the floor as she tries to back away; then slams her elbow into her face. Releasing her foot causes the woman to crumble to the floor and a well-placed stab of the spike ends her life.

The others are approaching together now, trying to hem her in. Ahsoka responds with a wide sweep of the blade grazing all of them. Choosing one target she flicks the blade over their extremities slicing them shallowly. They stumble in retreat aiming their blaster at her chest.

She dodges and two blasts are exchanged the opponent in front of her and the one who’d been aiming behind her fall to each other's blasts.

One remains and as comfortable with the killing as Ahsoka has become in the war, she’s never relished it. She slices the old man’s throat open with a viscous jab of the blade letting her spear point fall with the body and aim itself at his chest. Two wounds in less minutes and he is dead.

It’s an unfortunate fate but Ahsoka cannot afford to mourn the deaths of men intent on killing her, not in a galaxy this cold. So she turns her eyes and her mind away from the deed as soon as it’s finished.

There are no more enemies cowering in the weapons store.

She wanders through the door at the far end of the room and finds a set of steep stairs. The walls are softer with soil rather than stone. She must be reaching the surface now. Up the stairs is a dank room with a single folding chair and a buzzing light affixed to the ceiling. It smells like a cellar but the way the light shines through the cracks in the walls makes her think it’s probably more like a shed. She’s on the surface now, finally. There’s one wooden door between her and freedom and Ahsoka doesn’t hesitate to brace her hand against it and push it open.

On the other side is nothing that she expected to see.

A black visor tilts back suddenly in surprise at coming face to face with her. Standing close enough to not allow her to step out of the door is a clone, but not just any clone, because even with the pale green moonlight Ahsoka can identify his armor with no thought at all

“Ahsoka?” he demands as if she shouldn’t be here.

“Uh, yeah, Cody what are you doing?” She asks bewildered.

“We-” Cody cuts off, incredulity coloring his entire countenance, “We were going to rescue you.” By the end of his statement Cody sounds resigned in that way he usually does when he finds himself forced to cooperate with one of Anakin’s inane plans. Baffled yet resigned.

All around her troopers in yellow armor move from their positions surrounding the dingy little surface building and gather with her and their Commander. The bemusement in their demeanor brought an unexpected note of joy to her chest. Her hand follows it resting lightly over her heart and a grin stretches across her face.

“Awe. Me? Cody, you were gonna rescue me?”

“Yes.” Cody sighs hand rubbing uselessly against the brow of his helmet. “We had to fight with the council and the navy board to get the clearance too,” his tone had migrated into irritation now.

“Well I can go back inside, you can still do it.”

“Get to the ship Tano,” He bites out.

Cody steps back to allow her through. She gathers the tatters of her fluffy red skirt in one fist and hefts her bloody spear in the other. Cody gives her a once over noting all the singe marks and slashes; bruises hiding under soot streaks. “Did you blow your way out?”

Ahsoka casts him a puzzled look. “Didn’t you see the crater on your way in?”

#ahsoka tano #star wars #clone wars #sw tcw #tcw #501st #commander cody #fanfic #star wars ahsoka #vod'ika ahsoka #little sister ahsoka #bamf ahsoka

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seriously-mike · 5 months ago

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Midha and Stoica are not the only ones who view AI regulation as existentially for the industry. Open-source AI has powered the most thriving Silicon Valley startup scene in years. Opponents of SB 1047 say the bill will benefit Big Tech’s closed-off incumbents instead of that thriving, open ecosystem.

From Gizmodo's article on new California bill designed (essentially in practice, let's cut the bullshit here) to give the major players like Microsoft, Google and Midjourney the monopoly on AI.

Because hey, I said it multiple times and I'll say it again: all the attempts at curbing AI development were dictated by either those who want to maintain the monopoly, like Microsoft by way of OpenAI, or those who want to jump on the AI bandwagon, cash out and kick everyone else off the bandwagon, like Manbaby McEmeraldmine.

I pointed out how full of shit the "miraculous" Nightshade is. It doesn't protect your art from the corporations by design - if it did, it would be SLAPPed into oblivion under flimsy pretenses like "unlawfully reverse-engineering proprietary software". Now we have a horde of Butlerian jihadists, egged on by self-proclaimed "AI experts" whose "expertise" ends on listening to sales pitch bullshit and reading decades-old science fiction novels, push an act to punish AI developers "for the potentially catastrophic dangers of their AI systems". I'm sorry, what "potentially catastrophic dangers" are we talking about in regard to tech that nobody trusts to do serious work? Are they expecting an explosion of fad diets involving rocks and Elmer's glue? Do they really think someone's gonna measure an important structure in kilotomatoes and uses a buffalo heart tomato as a reference instead of cherry tomato or the other way around? Are they preparing for airline chatbots stating it's okay to bring gallium, firearms or explosives onto an airplane?

"Potentially catastrophic dangers" is the usual term of "we have no idea how to grab you by the nuts and bring you to your knees, so we're making some new bullshit up". This can be compared to papal bulls against railroads or any homicidal bullshit the Khmer Rouge cooked up when left unattended. This is what the conservatives are making up in response to transgender people existing, and homosexual people existing in earlier decades, and women wearing trousers even earlier. Alarmist bullshit based on some sick fantasies, with no base in reality at all.

And who sponsors this bill? Oh boy.

Demis Hassabis (CEO, Google DeepMind)

Sam Altman (CEO, OpenAI)

Bill Gates (Gates Ventures)

Kevin Scott (CTO, Microsoft)

That's just the beginning of the list. We will be fed a lot of corporate bullshit about how the billions of dollars the corporations have mean that every half-assed algorithm they push is perfectly safe, but basement-dwelling nerds who own nothing but a gaming PC and a box of Kleenex should be essentially forbidden from tinkering with open-source algorithms, because, uh, reasons. Like, cutting into a $250 million a year profits of a corporation.

But, the list doesn't end here. Who also signed the laughably brief and meaningless statement by, hahaha, "Center for AI Safety"?

Ya-Qin Zhang (Professor and Dean, AIR, Tsinghua University)

Yi Zeng (Professor and Director of Brain-inspired Cognitive AI Lab, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Xianyuan Zhan (Assistant Professor, Tsinghua University)

Albert Efimov (Chief of Research, Russian Association of Artificial Intelligence)

Alvin Wang Graylin (China President, HTC)

Jianyi Zhang (Professor, Beijing Electronic Science and Technology Institute)

Hongyi Zhang (Research Scientist, ByteDance)

Amazing, all of them not just outside of California, but also outside of the US and with a stake in AI research performed by US' direct economic competitors. This reminds me of the recent revelations about "Green" parties and movements in the EU, chiefly Germany, who received covert funding from Gazprom for fucking decades, all in the name of opposing clean nuclear energy and buying more and more Russian gas to be used for generating energy in the EU.

We're still not done, though. More names I'd like to point your attention to:

Vitalik Buterin (Founder and Chief Scientist, Ethereum, Ethereum Foundation)

Thuan Q. Pham (Former CTO, Uber, Board member, Nubank)

Josh Wolfe (Co-Founder & Managing Director, Lux Capital)

Miles Palmer (Founder, 8 Rivers Capital)

Crypto bros, bank board members, vulture capitalists, in one word: frauds. They want a return on their investment in the major corporations and can't afford any more shocking reveals that shitposts from Reddit are served as genuine advice and that corporate data models still contain shittons of copyrighted images from Disney et al. They also can't afford localized open-source models cutting into the corporate profit margins by virtue of barely working and still providing comparable results for less.

Don't get duped, folks. This bill is just another corporate-sponsored hit piece, and basted in alarmist bullshit three feet thick.

#SB 1047 #California #CA SB 1047 #corporate bullshit #AI bullshit #artificial intelligence #tech #technology

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