Notices by Baldur Bjarnason (baldur@toot.cafe)

Anybody want to guess from this graph when I began to write about the potential impact of US authoritarianism on web dev and queer media on my blog?

I'm guessing this is almost entirely down to the couple of posts on queer media as I didn't include those in the newsletter and newsletter subscriptions are almost entirely unaffected

A couple of days off social media was what I needed. Did a lot of walks and photography. A curious quality of Iceland’s short midwinter day is how it feels like a dawn and a sunset rolled into one with no actual day. The light is born dying. But then again, isn’t everything?

"Denmark: AI-powered welfare system fuels mass surveillance and risks discriminating against marginalized groups – report"

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/11/denmark-ai-powered-welfare-system-fuels-mass-surveillance-and-risks-discriminating-against-marginalized-groups-report/

> the sweeping use of fraud detection algorithms, paired with mass surveillance practices, has led people to unwillingly –or even unknowingly– forfeit their right to privacy, and created an atmosphere of fear.

This, and not the AI bubble, is going to be AI's legacy. Accountability sinks that enable harms on a massive scale.

"Ada Lovelace Day Live to end"

https://findingada.com/

> The STEM industries, along with others, are pulling away from gender equality work specifically and DEI in general, defunding or closing programs and firing DEI officers. Indeed, Forbes reports that “Meta and Google have quietly dialed back DEI efforts, and Microsoft made headlines when the company eliminated a set of DEI roles within its events team.”

Like I wrote yesterday, the backlash is the new status quo

Edited to link directly

Queer Comfort Viewing: cozy coming of age movies: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/notes/queer-comfort-viewing-coming-of-age/

@rysiek True. They’ve never been on our side. And now it’s likely to be even more “masks off” than before.

“Don't expect the tech platforms to help us this time.”

https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/dont-expect-the-tech-platforms-to

> We only got four years. And the tech barons, having gotten a taste of administrative competence, decided it would be easier to take their chances on an authoritarian who is easily flattered. It wasn’t enough. And we won’t be able to rely on the platforms anymore.

So, if you want to know how it’s going here in Iceland, we have an election this month as well and the right wing and nationalists are currently polling at 63.6% cumulatively. The left wing is at 36.6%.

This looks like a massive swing towards the right and nationalism, right?

Well, they got 64% in the last election here, so their support doesn’t seem to have budged an inch. Iceland’s independence was driven by nationalist parties and they’ve had a lock on our politics since

Like, Iceland is not an authoritarian state, but it's pretty darn xenophobic and the immigration system is outright hostile. I've had more than one friend tell me about civil servants who have outright lied to them about the rights they have, for example.

Emigration is not a good way of avoiding authoritarian regimes. Sometimes its necessary, especially if the regime is turning violent

But emigrating from one authoritarian state to another will usually leave you genuinely worse off and being a foreigner in even a progressive state is always going to be a very vulnerable position.

Most countries will also outright refuse to give you a work visa if you are too old or disabled.

Plan B it is

https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/plan-b-it-is/

“The End Of Independent Publishing And Giant Freakin Robot | GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT”

https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/independent-ends.html

You basically can't count on any of the traffic coming from Google or Facebook and most media companies, even one that are frugally run, have a hard time surviving on what's left

“Don't Give Them What They Want - by Julian Simpson”

https://developmenthell.substack.com/p/dont-give-them-what-they-want

> This is an existential problem, because our job as creators is to put on the show and then to learn, both from the number of ticket stubs and the reaction of the audience, how to do our job better next time. Right now, we are standing on the stage, doing our bit, but we have no way of telling if there is anyone out there in the dark, let alone whether they are laughing or gasping or applauding.

“AI overwhelmingly prefers white and male job candidates in new test of resume-screening bias – GeekWire”

https://www.geekwire.com/2024/ai-overwhelmingly-prefers-white-and-male-job-candidates-in-new-test-of-resume-screening-bias/

These announcements are mostly theatrics. They don’t address the harms done by their data centre demands. The timeline means they'll happen after the climate crisis is in full swing and its chaos makes the plan even less likely to come true.

Also, what are the odds of tech cos ever sticking to a single coherent strategy for 10 quarters, let alone ten or twenty years?

The thing to note about Amazon or Google making agreements to buy energy from nuclear reactors that haven't been built yet is that nuclear reactors are either megaprojects that take 10-20 years from plan to completion or vaporware with untested designs and uncertain timelines and are unlikely to come online before 2035. Even extending existing reactors, theoretically the simplest kind of these projects, often run over on time and budget and end up taking a decade to get running

Aside: I don’t think people realise just how fragile our political and economic systems are or how fast the chaos in our weather systems is escalating

My personal assumption these days is that any major plan that’s scheduled to come to fruition in the mid to late 2030s is probably never going to happen. I have days where I think even that’s optimistic

“Microsoft fires employees who organized vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza | AP News”

https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-fired-workers-israel-palestinians-gaza-72de6fe1f35db9398e3b6785203c6bbf

“Researchers say an AI-powered transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one ever said - ABC News”

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/researchers-ai-powered-transcription-tool-hospitals-invents-things-115170291

"Iceland embraced a shorter work week. Here's how it turned out"

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/25/business/iceland-shorter-working-week-economy/index.html

> Following the trials, Icelandic trade unions negotiated reductions in working hours for tens of thousands of their members across the country.

Iceland has generally been run by right wing parties for the past forty years. We have this and a welfare state only because 90% of the workforce is unionised. "Negotiations" in this context include the threat of a general strike shutting everything down.