Notices by Dave Rahardja (drahardja@sfba.social)

They disappeared him and his wife.

I get that the FBI may be charging them with a crime, but why did the school have to scrub their profiles as though they never existed?

https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/114253089922332249

This is an autochrome color photo, taken at the Paris Air Show on the 30th of September, 1909, only six years after the successful flight of the Wright Brothers. It has been cleaned up, but all the color is original to the photograph.

Restoration done by Babelcolour.

#photography #history #historyInColor #restoration #noAI

This post by photographer Jingna Zhang resonates with me.

#AI art is devoid of humanity, intention, and backstory. It’s a shallow remix of human works, designed to be consumed and discarded, grinding human creation down into a sandy paste, to be re-extruded into grotesque displays. It’s the opposite of what makes art so valuable.

#aiArt #art #plagiarism #artist

(alt text continues)

Hahaha, Mercury News (no link, fuck em) covered the Tesla Takedown protests today by asking for comments from…the president of Silicon Valley Association of Conservative Republicans, whose pearl of wisdom was that the “far-left” AOC will “destroy” the Democratic party. What the fuck.

What absolute, irrelevant, bothsides-ing horseshit. Fuuuuck you Mercury News, for forcing a protest story into the tired old “Democrats in Disarray” cliché. Glad I dropped my subscription years ago.

#TeslaTakedown #bothsides #sfba

One of the most impactful things that non-US people can do to protest what the US is doing is to NOT TRAVEL TO THE US. Have family meet you elsewhere. Change your vacation destination. Don’t attend conferences and conventions here (go virtual instead). Vote with your wallet and your feet: don’t bring your Euros, Yens, or Pesos here.

Passenger tallies don’t lie. Hotel occupancy numbers don’t lie. Conference attendee totals don’t lie. YOUR ABSENCE WILL BE COUNTED and you will be missed.

Your withholding of your presence and your money will motivate business owners to pressure the administration to change their tune.

https://onemileatatime.com/news/airline-demand-canada-united-states-collapses/

Hey kids, did you know that in 2011 there was this dude who went by the name “Shingy”, who was VP of Marketing at AOL, who somehow morphed his persona to become the company’s “Digital Prophet”. His job was apparently to be weird and outrageous? Spout gibberish and look like he’s high on stimulants? Or something?

Anyway, AOL was bought out by Verizon and merged with other dying companies to become Oath and they paid Shingy money til 2019.

A conversation sparked this weird memory in my brain and now you too will remember a piece of Weird Tech history.

#shingy #aol #wat

Laying off a ton of federal workers leaves government workers—and in turn, the US—vulnerable to foreign agents offering them jobs in return for access to confidential information.

Kudos to Reuters for doing the legwork on this story. They sent people to visit business addresses in Singapore, to verify that these were phantom companies.

#kakistocracy #fuckElon #badDOGE

“Exclusive: Secretive Chinese network tries to lure fired federal workers, research shows”

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/secretive-chinese-network-tries-lure-fired-federal-workers-research-shows-2025-03-25/

Transit announcements be like

#humor #memes #funny #funnyVideos

Cruelty. Utter cruelty. https://journa.host/@w7voa/114202739408207618

This art is incredible.

Source: https://www.patreon.com/simz

#art #illustration #digitalArt #noAI

Source: hxxps://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:dg4u5mw6sw6gjew5gex77vxf/post/3lkor7irt2k2k

#meme #memes #incels

I’m sincerely hoping that people who have conferences or conventions planned in the US in 2025 and beyond are seriously considering relocating their venues elsewhere, or going fully virtual, given the hostile environment in this country.

If I lived outside the US, I wouldn’t even consider traveling here at this time, because it would literally risk my health and freedom to do so. I have a feeling event attendance is going to drop to reflect that sentiment.

“OpenAI asks Trump for more legal protections” is the real headline IMO. https://dair-community.social/@timnitGebru/114180243221882102

HAHAHA

#humor #comics #tesla

https://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/daily-cartoon/tuesday-march-11th-tesla-time-machine

#USDA HIRED BACK all employees fired by DOGE last week (about 6,000 of them) WITH BACK PAY.

All #DOGE did was cause #chaos, and pay 6,000 workers full wages to do nothing (except develop an ulcer) for a week.

#goodNews #agentKrasnov

https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/03/11/usda-status-update-probationary-employees

@inthehands The rest of the world has figured out a fuel-efficient, cheap, fast way to move people quickly from one city to another.

The US: BUT MUH PROPORTEES

Rep Jamie Raskin is encouraging people to send in #FOIA requests to #DOGE to demand an enumeration of what the department knows about each requester. Since DOGE is an official government agency, they are obliged to respond to these requests per the Federal Privacy Act of 1974. US District Judge Casey Cooper has affirmed this as well in a recent ruling.

An explanation of the campaign, and a form letter ready for your customization is found here: https://jamieraskin.com/doge-privacy-act-requests/

#resist #request #reject

Hey #sanFrancisco #sfba residents: call the city permitting office and get this non-permitted showroom shut down. You can call 311 or file a complaint here: https://www.sf.gov/report-building-problem https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:hljkd4e73ttz5xjjywsvebzz/post/3lk7axfgfpk2z

“What Europe needs is a DOGE”

This is what the CEO of Deutches Telekom, the owner of #TMobile, said.

If you’re a T-Mobile customer, maybe get ready to switch carriers.

#fascism #oligarchy #techbros https://zirk.us/@TLisaB/114132319348462149

Starting to think that the main coup underway is not Russia or Trump, but techbro billionaires using the Russia/Trump machinery to disable and dismantle the US government in the hopes of soon privatizing everything it used to do, so that citizens have to rent and subscribe to get the basic necessities of life.

Putin is probably just coincidentally ok with this, because enriching US oligarchs weakens and isolates the nation, and weakening the US allows Russia more opportunities to gather power and enrich its impoverished self.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is watching in horror as the US collapses into a feudal prison run by oligarchs.

While it’s important to keep pressuring those in institutional positions to hold the line, I suspect the real fight is actually the one against the billionaires. Destroy their wealth and you destroy their power and political influence, and Trumpism along with it.

Overwhelming wealth inequality is the real disease, most all else is a symptom.

Just a hunch.