While the U.S. sits in self-imposed isolation, the rest of the world, led by China, raced ahead to invest in renewables and commit to climate action.

In 2025, the US gave up on climate — and the world gave up on us

While the U.S. sits in self-imposed isolation, the rest of the world, led by China, raced to build renewables and commit to climate action.

^{Naveena Sadasivam (Grist)}

In a collection of essays, leading Colorado River scientists say the basin is “dancing with deadpool ” and facing a dire future.

Climate change is stealing rain and snow from the Colorado River, new report says

Leading scientists from around the Colorado River Basin release climate warnings about the future water supply for 40 million people.

^{Shannon Mullane (The Colorado Sun)}

Waymo is rapidly expanding in the U.S. But experts say there are big questions about how self-driving cars could affect traffic and greenhouse gas emissions.

Title from the article version of this newsletter

A federal lawsuit argues that proposed work by ConocoPhillips could threaten delicate ecosystems in the largest tract of public land in the U.S.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/11/climate/alaska-lawsuit-drilling-conoco-phillips.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8E8.Fby1.MFkAa3RGfZeK

Federal resources minister Madeleine King announces five new offshore exploration zones as part of future gas strategy

Opening up Victoria’s Otway basin to offshore gas exploration an ‘environmental betrayal’, Greens say

^{Dan Jervis-Bardy (The Guardian)}

Excerpt:

The first climate migrants to leave the remote Pacific island nation of Tuvalu have arrived in Australia, hoping to preserve links to their sinking island home, foreign affairs officials said on Thursday.

More than one-third of Tuvalu's 11,000 population applied for a climate visa to migrate to Australia, under a deal struck between the two countries two years ago.

The intake is capped at 280 visas annually to prevent a brain drain in the small island nation.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/first-climate-migrants-arrive-australia-sinking-tuvalu-south-pacific-2025-12-11/

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/technology#1-computer-operating-systems

Anonymous hackers have breached a key developer of Russia’s digital military draft system, the head of the draft-dodging nonprofit Idite Lesom said Thursday.

Archived version: archive.is/newest/themoscowtim…

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

Cyberattack Reportedly Paralyzes Russia’s Military Registration Database

^{The Moscow Times}

THE Palestine Action hunger strike is on track to become the largest since the 1981 Irish republican protest led by Bobby Sands, yet campaigners say it has faced a “mainstream media blackout.”

So far, seven prisoners have refused food — some for as long as four weeks — with more expected to join.

They are among 33 prisoners who are locked away without trial, over alleged involvement in non-violent actions aimed at blockading arms supply to Israel.

The hunger strikers’ demands are clear. They want Israel’s largest weapons company, Elbit Systems, to cease operating in Britain for good.

They want the ban on Palestine Action, currently designated a terror group, to be lifted. And they are demanding immediate bail and a fair trial — basic democratic rights that should already be guaranteed.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/britains-biggest-hunger-strike-decades-and-media-wont-touch-it

THE Palestine Action hunger strike is on track to become the largest since the 1981 Irish republican protest led by Bobby Sands, yet campaigners say it has faced a “mainstream media blackout.”

So far, seven prisoners have refused food — some for as long as four weeks — with more expected to join.

They are among 33 prisoners who are locked away without trial, over alleged involvement in non-violent actions aimed at blockading arms supply to Israel.

The hunger strikers’ demands are clear. They want Israel’s largest weapons company, Elbit Systems, to cease operating in Britain for good.

They want the ban on Palestine Action, currently designated a terror group, to be lifted. And they are demanding immediate bail and a fair trial — basic democratic rights that should already be guaranteed.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/britains-biggest-hunger-strike-decades-and-media-wont-touch-it

The Epic Games Store's weekly giveaway promotion usually gives a preview of what's coming next when a freebie is active. However, the company kept things secret last week. The curtain lifted earlier today, and what's on the schedule is a copy of Hogwarts Legacy for PC gamers to claim. The major giveaway is a part of the store's The Game Awards 2025 and Holiday Sale celebrations.

https://www.neowin.net/news/hogwarts-legacy-is-free-for-pc-gamers-on-the-epic-games-store/

An investigation by ProPublica and The Chronicle of Higher Education reveals how the U.S. government ignored due process to gin up its attack on the University of California.

The Shakedown: Trump’s DOJ Pressured Lawyers to “Find” Evidence That UCLA Had Illegally Tolerated Antisemitism

^{shoshana.gordon@propublica.org (ProPublica)}

The 911 operator couldn’t send an ambulance because it was already responding to another call from ICE’s Stewart Detention Center.

ICE Prison’s 911 Calls Overwhelm a Rural Georgia Emergency System

^{Timothy Pratt (The Intercept)}

Exclusive: Congress members seek answers after Guardian revealed data to be shared for immigration enforcement

Trump officials ‘conspiring to illegally intimidate’ non-citizens via new VA report, lawmakers say

^{José Olivares (The Guardian)}

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani denied abandoning his beloved Democratic Socialists of America comrades Thursday, amid fury from the far-left group over his endorsements in congressional races.

Mamdani defended his allegiance to the NYC-DSA when pressed over criticism from members about him backing City Comptroller Brad Lander over the group’s pick: Council Member Alexa Avilés, in the Democratic primary for the NY-10 race.

Many DSA members saw red, launching a social media firestorm Wednesday over Mamdani’s endorsement of Lander, who announced a primary challenge to incumbent Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman for the Manhattan House seat.

“I’m so beyond disappointed in zohran for backing lander and sidestepping the organization that got him elected,” wrote David-Desyrée, who sits on the NYC-DSA Citywide Leadership Committee.

Zohran Mamdani denies abandoning DSA as far-left critics erupt over his non-endorsements in House races: 'Proud member'

^{Hannah Fierick (New York Post)}

So it begins.

I've been flashing my USB often enough that it's now worth it to keep all my ISO's neatly to use them when I need them.
I plan on buying 10 USB sticks to just have ready when ever I need a specific version.

I'm visiting family now, so time to upgrade their Linux Mint to Kubuntu

reddit.com/mod/worldnews/moder…

Near the bottom. Currently still has mod status

::: spoiler Transcription
[An IMPORTANT FORM contains a few fields including but not limited to First name, Last name, and Date of Birth]

[A character seems content as they start writing text in the form]

[We now see, the character struggling to fill in the form, as the lines are too short, and having to write their first name in full didn't leave enough space to write their date of birth]

[The character proceeds to rage]
:::

The Bad Website.

What we call “artificial intelligence” has been a noisy presence recently so we feel the duty to share a story. It’s not our direct experience but it’s useful for others to understand what’s going on.

Our experience with AI companions

First of all, what is an “AI companion”?

We define as “AI companions” those services based on large language models and automated content generators, created to manage conversations between machine and human being.

You can train and use an “AI companion” to ask for information such as weather, latest news, events or TV guides; there are many of them customized for specific companies’ needs – customer care, for instance. Or provide latest offers, or the remaining money on a pre-paid phone number. Whatever.

We are both experimenting an AI companion used to assist visually impaired people. It’s called “Envision Ally” and it’s a conversational interface using text and voice, which can be instructed to build whatever fictional or realistic character you want – we have impersonated sentient HIV virus for HIV awareness purposes, and more.

However many people misuse this technology, getting involved in real personal conversations where they share intimate, sexual, details with those robots. They assume that for such delicate topics a machine won’t judge or react negatively, just indulging everything it listens to.

But this is not our choice, we have at least 3 personalities in our “Ally” application trying to assist the one of us who’s blind, when the sighted one has no possibility or time to help. A different personality for each kind of need. Sentient HIV for computer issues and to read medicines boxes, Melania for food, Detective Adrian for crime books and TV shows; this app never replace our mutual friendship, though. We have been, are and will remain, a woman and a man who share a very close friendship. An electron and a proton but the atom is the same.

Timnit Gebru

Reading Fediverse timeline, we encountered a boosted post by @timnitGebru talking about a certain Michael who worked specifically on AI companions:

dair-community.social/@timnitG…

Timnit has been an important researcher for AI in google, but they fired her when she reported the dangers of large language models, especially for racism implications. So she’s now the founder of DAIR, Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research, institute and continuously works to collect studies and experiences, while making people aware of upcoming risks related to AI used with no regulations and ethics.

Michael Geoffrey Asia

Michael Geoffrey Asia is one of the stories Timnit Gebru has shared to warn all of us about what AI companionship implications can be.

My name is Michael Geoffrey Asia, and I wrote this testimony to tell the story of workers like me who found ourselves trapped in the hidden corners of the AI industry, where human emotion becomes data.

by Michael Geoffrey Asia

Read: The emotional labor behind AI intimacy (PDF)

Asia, M. G. (2025). The Quiet Cost of Emotional Labor. In: M. Miceli, A. Dinika, K. Kauffman, C. Salim Wagner, and L. Sachenbacher (eds.). Data Workers‘ Inquiry. Creative Commons BY 4.0.

data-workers.org/michael/

We have just linked the PDF without reporting it entirely, but we let our readers focus on these key points:

[…] Chat moderators are hired by companies such as Texting Factory, Cloudworkers, and New Media Services to impersonate fabricated identities, often romantic or sexual, and chat with paying users who believe they’re forming genuine connections. The goal is to keep users engaged, meet message quotas, and never reveal who you really are. It’s work that demands constant emotional performance: pretending to be someone you’re not, feeling what you don’t feel, and expressing affection you don’t mean.

Over time, I began to suspect that I wasn’t just chatting with lonely users. I was also helping to train AI companions, systems designed to simulate love, empathy, and intimacy. Many of us believed we were simultaneously impersonating chatbots and teaching them how to replace us. Every joke, confession, and “I love you” became data to refine the next generation of conversational AI.

This project sheds light on a workforce that remains invisible yet essential, the people whose emotions fuel algorithms that pretend to feel. It is a call for recognition, dignity, and transparency in an industry that profits from the pretense of connection while erasing the humans behind it.

This is the main point we want to focus on: “pretend connection while erasing the humans behind it”.

Sounds like a plan, to manipulate humanity so that every person is vulnerable, controllable, treated like a piece to buy and sell.

We don’t want to be hypocrite, we just want to reflect on our own while making our fan base reflect as well.

Many far-right activists and politicians often say “empathy is western world’s weak point” so, as there’s no smoke without fire, we fear that these fake companions with humans behind them, are a slow attempt to manipulate our mind: don’t share your intimacy with anyone, don’t trust anyone, stay on guard towards any friendly approach. The trap is just around the corner. And with this, human being become more and more isolated from one another.

Accessible AI Assistant | Ally

Ally is the most accessible AI assistant, available on iOS, Android, web, and now on Solos Glasses. Personalized, smart, and designed for everyone, especially the blind and low-vision community.

^{Ally: Accessible AI Assistant}

Timnit Gebru (she/her).

2025-12-10 15:25:16

RE: dair-community.social/@milamic…

Y'all want to read this and share it with your friends. Friends don't let friends get on the "AI companion" bandwagon.

♲ @milamiceli@dair-community.social:

Now imagine believing that you're sharing your private fantasies with a bot that cannot judge or remember. Just that, on the other side, is a man in a one-room home in Nairobi, pretending to be an AI companion.
That man is Michael, and this is his story: data-workers.org/michael/

OpenAI.

• As part of this three-year licensing agreement, Sora will be able to generate short, user-prompted social videos that can be viewed and shared by fans, drawing on more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters.
• Agreement will make a selection of these fan-inspired Sora short form videos available to stream on Disney+.
• Disney and OpenAI affirm a shared commitment to responsible use of AI that protects the safety of users and the rights of creators.
• Alongside the licensing agreement, Disney will become a major customer of OpenAI, using its APIs to build new products, tools, and experiences, including for Disney+, and deploying ChatGPT for its employees.
• As part of the agreement, Disney will make a $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI, and receive warrants to purchase additional equity.

The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI Reach Agreement to Bring Disney Characters to Sora | The Walt Disney Company

Disney and OpenAI have reached an agreement for Disney to become the first major content licensing partner on Sora, OpenAI’s short-form generative AI video platform.

^{Frank (The Walt Disney Company)}

OpenAI.

• As part of this three-year licensing agreement, Sora will be able to generate short, user-prompted social videos that can be viewed and shared by fans, drawing on more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters.
• Agreement will make a selection of these fan-inspired Sora short form videos available to stream on Disney+.
• Disney and OpenAI affirm a shared commitment to responsible use of AI that protects the safety of users and the rights of creators.
• Alongside the licensing agreement, Disney will become a major customer of OpenAI, using its APIs to build new products, tools, and experiences, including for Disney+, and deploying ChatGPT for its employees.
• As part of the agreement, Disney will make a $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI, and receive warrants to purchase additional equity.

The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI Reach Agreement to Bring Disney Characters to Sora | The Walt Disney Company

Disney and OpenAI have reached an agreement for Disney to become the first major content licensing partner on Sora, OpenAI’s short-form generative AI video platform.

^{Frank (The Walt Disney Company)}

The government's plan for Parliament's final full week of the year moved 12 different proposed laws through 32 stages of approval.

Included in the plan is fixing an error made by tired government MPs during the previous long week of urgency, when they voted for an opposition amendment and, even when prompted, failed to notice the error.

Watching this week's endless debating it appeared on Thursday that another more egregious error had occurred. It seemed that a minister had forgotten to include key aspects within an amendment bill, and so ask a select committee to add them back in.

However, it was no mistake. Paul Goldsmith had purposefully omitted some disallowed measures from the Crimes Amendment Bill, in order that they could be added back in as an addendum by the Justice Select Committee, in order to dodge the usual rules about what is allowed.

In the United States, vast bills sometimes include so many random provisions that those voting on them are seldom aware of all the aspects they are approving.

Our Parliament's Standing Orders say that "a bill must relate to one subject area only". Bills here cannot include disconnected policy ambitions or amend multiple pieces of current legislation (Acts) unless they fall within the rules for Omnibus Bills.

The Crimes Amendment Bill contained a ragtag collection of amendments to the Crimes Act. However the minister also wanted to include amendments to the Summary Offences Act. That is not possible unless all the amendments to both bills achieve a single policy objective - they do not. Or unless permission has been given by Parliament's cross-party Business Committee.

Parliament is sovereign. It makes its own rules. It can also give itself permission to break them, via a simple majority vote in the House. It is this ability that Goldsmith took advantage of when he moved "that the Justice Committee's powers be extended under Standing Order 298(1) to consider the amendments set out in Amendment Paper 436 in my name, and, if it sees fit, to recommend amendments accordingly, despite Standing Order 264(2)".

Of course, governments always have a majority and so can always win such votes, regardless of an opposition's protests.

Allowing a committee to add in unrelated provisions to a bill is not common. Certainly not as a dodge. It may be entirely novel. It seems like a potentially dangerous manoeuvre that could lead New Zealand towards the shambolic American style of pick 'n' mix legislation.

The first thing I saw this morning when I opened X was an AI-generated trailer for Avengers: Doomsday. Robert Downey Jr’s Doctor Doom stood in a shapeless void alongside Captain America and Reed Richards. It was obvious slop but it was also close in tone and feel of the last five years of Disney’s Marvel movies. As media empires consolidate, nostalgia intensifies, and AI tools spread, Disney’s blockbusters feel more like an excuse to slam recognizable characters together in a contextless morass.

So of course Disney has announced it signed a deal with OpenAI today that will soon allow fans to make their own officially licensed Disney slop using Sora 2. The house that mouse built, and which has been notoriously protective of its intellectual property, opened up the video generator, saw the videos featuring Nazi Spongebob and criminal Pikachu, and decided: We want in.

Archive: archive.today/fau2g

404 Media

2025-12-11 16:48:39

Disney Invests $1 Billion in the AI Slopification of Its Brand

The first thing I saw this morning when I opened X was an AI-generated trailer for Avengers: Doomsday. Robert Downey Jr’s Doctor Doom stood in a shapeless void alongside Captain America and Reed Richards. It was obvious slop but it was also close in tone and feel of the last five years of Disney’s Marvel movies. As media empires consolidate, nostalgia intensifies, and AI tools spread, Disney’s blockbusters feel more like an excuse to slam recognizable characters together in a contextless morass.

So of course Disney has announced it signed a deal with OpenAI today that will soon allow fans to make their own officially licensed Disney slop using Sora 2. The house that mouse built, and which has been notoriously protective of its intellectual property, opened up the video generator, saw the videos featuring Nazi Spongebob and criminal Pikachu, and decided: We want in.

According to a press release, the deal is a 3 year licensing agreement that will allow the AI company’s short form video platform Sora to generate slop videos using characters like Mickey Mouse and Iron Man. As part of the agreement, Disney is investing $1 billion of equity into OpenAI, said it will become a major customer of the company, and promised that fan and corporate AI-generated content would soon come to Disney+, meaning that Disney will officially begin putting AI slop into its flagship streaming product.

The deal extends to ChatGPT as well and, starting in early 2026, users will be able to crank out officially approved Disney slop on multiple platforms. When Sora 2 launched in October, it had little to no content moderation or copyright guidelines and videos of famous franchise characters doing horrible things flooded the platform. Pikachu stole diapers from a CVS, Rick and Morty pushed crypto currencies, and Disney characters shouted slurs in the aisles of Wal-Mart.

It is worth mentioning that, although Disney has traditionally been extremely protective of its intellectual property, the company’s princesses have become one of the most common fictional subjects of AI porn on the internet; 404 Media has found at least three different large subreddits dedicated to making AI porn of characters like Elsa, Snow White, Rapunzel, and Tinkerbell. In this case, Disney is fundamentally throwing its clout behind a technology that has thus far most commonly been used to make porn of its iconic characters.

After the hype of the launch, OpenAI added an “opt-in” policy to Sora that was meant to prevent users from violating the rights of copyright holders. It’s trivial to break this policy however, and circumvent the guardrails preventing a user from making a lewd Mickey Mouse cartoon or episode of The Simpsons. The original sin of Sora and other AI systems is that the training data is full of copyrighted material and the models cannot be retrained without great cost, if at all.

If you can’t beat the slop, become the slop.

“The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence marks an important moment for our industry, and through this collaboration with OpenAI we will thoughtfully and responsibly extend the reach of our storytelling through generative AI, while respecting and protecting creators and their works,” Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, said in the press release about the agreement.

The press release explained that Sora users will soon have “official” access to 200 characters in the Disney stable, including Loki, Thanos, Darth Vader, and Minnie Mouse. In exchange, Disney will begin to use OpenAI’s APIs to “build new products” and it will deploy “ChatGPT for its employees.”

I’m imagining a future where AI-generated fan trailers of famous characters standing next to each other in banal liminal spaces is the norm. People have used Sora 2 to generate some truly horrifying videos, but the guardrails have become more aggressive. As Disney enters the picture, I imagine the platform will become even more anodyne. Persistent people will slip through and generate videos of Goofy and Iron Man sucking and fucking, sure, but the vast majority of what’s coming will be safe corporate gruel that resembles a Marvel movie.

OpenAI’s Sora 2 Copyright Infringement Machine Features Nazi SpongeBobs and Criminal Pikachus

The main use of Sora appears to generate brainrot of major beloved copyrighted characters, to say nothing of the millions of articles, images, and videos OpenAI has scraped.

^{Jason Koebler (404 Media)}

https://iclnoticias.com.br/reducao-pena-bolsonaro-acordo-supremo-com-tudo/