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alyaza [they/she]

@ alyaza @beehaw.org

Posts
1287
Comments
801
Joined
4 yr. ago

internet gryphon. admin of Beehaw, mostly publicly interacting with people. nonbinary. they/she

  • How to quit Spotify

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  • Serious question: don’t the artists have the ability to remove their music from Spotify if the deal is so bad?

    yes, and more than a few prominent ones have such as King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and Xiu Xiu, but for most artists it requires negotiation with your label (annoying, not ideal, you don't have much leverage) and the willingness to take a potentially permanent revenue and recognition hit (Spotify has an estimated 700 million users) in an already difficult business

  • Activists Are Using ‘Fortnite’ to Fight Back Against ICE

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  • Children can still protest, fundraise, and engage in other forms of direct action. Children are not helpless or incapable.

    you are shadowboxing with things i didn't say and are the only person inserting the terms "helpless" or "incapable" here, but also once again: this is a game marketed at literal children. i stopped playing Roblox at 14 and doing some research i'm led to believe that would be quite old for a Roblox player. probably half or more of the player-base is 13 or younger. do you honestly expect the average 13-year-old (or younger) to be capable of anything other than performative activism relating to the genocide in Palestine?

  • Activists Are Using ‘Fortnite’ to Fight Back Against ICE

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  • Holding a pro-Palestine candlelight vigil in Roblox, for example, whilst there are still Palestinian civilians being murdered is a woefully inadequate use of time and effort if you actually want to help.

    the people holding a vigil like this are probably literal children, because Roblox is a game for and overwhelmingly played by children, so i don't understand the criticism here--it's unlikely they can help in any material way you could as an adult, but they can be politicized into understanding who deserves their sympathy and who is perpetrating harm that must be ended, which such a rally helps affirm

  • Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it's costing the economy

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  • please continue to "device hoard" folks

  • Technology @beehaw.org
    alyaza [they/she] @beehaw.org

    Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it's costing the economy

    cnbc.com /2025/11/23/how-device-hoarding-by-americans-is-costing-economy.html
  • Gaming @beehaw.org
    alyaza [they/she] @beehaw.org

    Activists Are Using ‘Fortnite’ to Fight Back Against ICE

    www.wired.com /story/activists-are-using-fortnite-to-fight-back-against-ice/
  • Music @beehaw.org
    alyaza [they/she] @beehaw.org

    An Interview with Saxophonist Sonny Rollins

    www.wabe.org /an-interview-with-saxophonist-sonny-rollins/
  • Technology @beehaw.org
    alyaza [they/she] @beehaw.org

    The ‘Great Meme Reset’ Is Coming: From Jack Dorsey to Gen Alpha, everyone seemingly wants to go back to the internet of a decade ago. But is it possible to reverse AI slop and brain rot?

    www.wired.com /story/the-great-meme-reset-is-coming/
  • Music @beehaw.org
    alyaza [they/she] @beehaw.org

    When the World Got Quieter, So Did the Music: How Hyper-Individualism is Reshaping Sound, Connection, and the Industry Itself

    www.anrfactory.com /when-the-world-got-quieter-so-did-the-music-how-hyper-individualism-is-reshaping-sound-connection-and-the-industry-itself/
  • Technology @beehaw.org
    alyaza [they/she] @beehaw.org

    The simple test that blew up the FTC's case against Meta

    www.platformer.news /ftc-loses-meta-case-analysis/
  • Technology @beehaw.org
    alyaza [they/she] @beehaw.org

    What US Tech Did to Ireland: The country is alarmingly reliant on Meta, Google and Apple.

    www.thedial.world /articles/news/ireland-us-tech-meta-google-apple
  • Technology @beehaw.org
    alyaza [they/she] @beehaw.org

    Mastodon CEO steps down as the social network restructures

    techcrunch.com /2025/11/18/mastodon-ceo-steps-down-as-the-social-network-restructures/
  • Socialism @beehaw.org
    alyaza [they/she] @beehaw.org

    The DSA Candidate Who Won Down South

    www.hamiltonnolan.com /p/the-dsa-candidate-who-won-down-south
  • Chat @beehaw.org
    alyaza [they/she] @beehaw.org
    Featured

    how's your week going, Beehaw

  • LGBTQ+ @beehaw.org
    alyaza [they/she] @beehaw.org

    “I Find Hope in Simply Still Being Here”: Three trans service members speak out on the military ban, and the rise of transphobia in the United States.

    conversationalist.org /2025/11/11/transgender-military-ban-lgbtq-trans-rights-equality-veterans-service-members-interview-emily-hawking-jo-ellis-paulo-batista/
  • Technology @beehaw.org
    alyaza [they/she] @beehaw.org

    This Spiral-Obsessed AI 'Cult' Spreads Mystical Delusions Through Chatbots

    www.rollingstone.com /culture/culture-features/spiralist-cult-ai-chatbot-1235463175/

  • OpenAI maps out the chatbot mental health crisis

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  • given that OpenAI has a vested interest in downplaying the severity of this problem (especially relative to its total number of users) i'd treat this as a lower bound of the scale of this exists at--pretty bad!

  • Spit On, Sworn At, and Undeterred: What It’s Like to Own a Cybertruck

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  • there's some real deadpan gold in this one, such as the immaculate:

    How do you feel about becoming a political lightning rod?

    People occasionally just flip [me] off or whatever, but nobody's come up to me and tried to make a statement about anything. Personally, it's kind of dumb. It's just a vehicle. So it's ironic that it would even become a political statement, but nonetheless it is. [Editor’s note: Taylor was arrested and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. He was later pardoned by President Trump.]

  • Star Citizen fans sigh deeply, rub their foreheads as developer casts doubt on Squadron 42's 2026 release: 'I don't know if we're going to make it'

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  • you're being pointlessly aggressive about something that is subjective and which obviously cannot progress from the fundamental disagreement you have here, please chill out a bit

  • Dozens of Ships Prepare to Break the Blockade of Gaza

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  • of note: Italian dockworkers are threatening to shut down Europe if this flotilla is not allowed through or if contact is lost with the flotilla:

    Speaking at a rally on the docks of Genoa, one of Europe's largest ports, a dockworker representing the USB union said that if communication with the flotilla were lost “even for just 20 minutes,” port workers would immediately block all shipments to Israel, regardless of their content.

    “Around mid-September, these boats will arrive near the coast of Gaza. If we lose contact with our boats, with our comrades, even for just 20 minutes, we will shut down all of Europe,” said the dockworker, a video of whom has circulated widely online and in Italian media but who has not been identified.

    “From this region 13 to 14,000 containers leave every year for Israel, not a single nail will leave anymore,” he added.

  • No Staff Too Small to Strike

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  • ChatGPT's Impact On Our Brains According to an MIT Study

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  • Grammys Introduce New Country Album Category, Best New Artist Rules for 2026

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  • this is going over hilariously on social media, despite the insistence by the Grammy's that it has nothing to do with Beyonce's win last year:

    Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. told Billboard that the proposal for the two new categories was submitted previously several times before it passed this year. The new categories “[make] country parallel with what’s happening in other genres,” he explained, pointing to the other genres which separate traditional and contemporary. “But it is also creating space for where this genre is going.”

    Traditional country now focuses on “the more traditional sound structures of the country genre, including rhythm and singing style, lyrical content, as well as traditional country instrumentation such as acoustic guitar, steel guitar, fiddle, banjo, mandolin, piano, electric guitar, and live drums,” the 68th Grammys rulebook explains.

  • Pro-AI Subreddit Bans 'Uptick' of Users Who Suffer from AI Delusions

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  • someone on Bluesky analogized what is happening to how QAnon transpired for most people, which is that the crazification it was causing simmered under the surface until January 6, when it all publicly exploded and the influence it had over a non-trivial block of the population became undeniable. hard to disagree with that!

  • Deleted

    Two former Polygon writers are starting a new site

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  • Mark Zuckerberg and Palmer Luckey end their beef and partner to build extended reality tech for the US military

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  • just a nightmarish headline. get these two the fuck out of here

  • Brian Eno, creator of the Windows 95 startup sound, calls on Microsoft to sever ties with Israel

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  • Art rock legend Brian Eno has called on Microsoft to sever its ties with the government of Israel, saying the company's provision of cloud and AI services to Israel's Ministry of Defense "support a regime that is engaged in actions described by leading legal scholars and human rights organizations, the United Nations experts, and increasing numbers of governments from around the world, as genocidal."

    Eno's connection with Microsoft goes back 30 years—he composed the famous boot-up jingle for Windows 95 that was recently inducted into the National Recording Registry at the US Library of Congress.

    "I gladly took on the project as a creative challenge and enjoyed the interaction with my contacts at the company," Eno wrote in an open letter posted to Instagram (via Stereogum). "I never would have believed that the same company could one day be implicated in the machinery of oppression and war."

    Regardless, Eno clearly isn't interested in Microsoft's protestations of innocence: "Selling and facilitating advanced AI and cloud services to a government engaged in systematic ethnic cleansing is not 'business as usual'. It is complicity. If you knowingly build systems that can enable war crimes, you inevitably become complicit in those crimes."

  • Giant Bomb is now 100% independent

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  • and the press release from Fandom, which previously owned them for some reason:

    San Francisco, CA - May 10, 2025 - Fandom, the world's largest fan platform, is selling Giant Bomb to long-time Giant Bomb staff and gaming content creators Jeff Bakalar and Jeff Grubb. Financials of the deal were not disclosed. Giant Bomb's programming, which was paused in order to work out the terms of this deal, will resume as quickly as possible. More details will be communicated soon by Giant Bomb's new owners.

    Statement from Fandom

    "Fandom has made the strategic decision to transition Giant Bomb back to its independent roots and the brand has been acquired by longtime staff and content creators, Jeff Bakalar and Jeff Grubb, who will now own and operate the site independently. Fans are at the core of everything we do at Fandom and we're committed to not only serving them but also supporting the creators they love, and the sale of Giant Bomb represents a natural extension of that mission. We're confident Giant Bomb is in good hands and its legacy will live on with Jeff and Jeff."

    Joint Statement from Jeff Bakalar and Jeff Grubb

    "Giant Bomb is now owned by the people who make Giant Bomb, and it would not have been possible without the speedy efforts of Fandom and our mutual agreement on what's best for fans and creators. The future of Giant Bomb is now in the hands of our supporting community, who have always had our backs no matter what. We'll have a lot more to say about what this looks like soon, but for now, everyone can trust that all the support we receive goes directly to this team."

  • China is building a cyber army of hackers, report finds

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  • You can post articles critical of the US, EU, Australian or any other government, but if you post a China-critical text you are whatabouted to death.

    this will be a blunt comment. people would have no problem if you were doing this, but just in a quick scan, something like 10 of your last 15 submissions on our instance (Beehaw) are you obsessively posting about China--often from sources that are straight up fearmongering and/or guilty of doing literally the same thing they're complaining China is doing. one of the most egregious submissions you've made in this vein is quite literally from the House Select Committee on China, as if the American government's committee on "competition with the United States" doesn't obviously have a vested interest in portraying things China does in the most uncharitable light possible (much as China would for America).

    separately, and in a Beehaw context: at least from our userbase, you will largely not find disagreement that China is bad--nobody here really needs to be proselytized to the fact that China is an authoritarian capitalist country guilty of acts of imperialism against their neighbors, and probably of ethnic cleansing and genocide in Xinjiang. in fact, partially because of our political disagreements in that space, we do not federate with many of the Lemmy instances you might characterize as "pro-China." this fact makes it incredibly conspicuous when someone like yourself obsessively posts every neurosis a Western country has about China on our instance. we've had a pattern of several users doing this in the past year or so--and at this point it's blatantly propagandistic and Sinophobic bullshit we're just not interested in letting people use our instance for.

    even if you aren't doing this for propagandistic reasons, though, and just think you need to push back against pro-China campists on Lemmy or whatever: this is also not your personal anti-China dumping ground, nor is it a place for you to shadowbox with campists who think China is cool. if you are genuinely posting in good faith: diversify your submissions and, if you don't, at least drop the persecution complex when people push back on your voluminous China posting; if this is just using us as some middle-man in a bigger thing: going forward we're going to aggressively prune these types of post.

  • One Million Chessboards · eieio.games

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  • Slate Truck is a $20,000 American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, and no touchscreen

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  • Slate Truck is a $20,000 American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, and no touchscreen

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  • this strikes me as a fascinating idea--with a couple of eyebrow-raising backers--that is probably going to flop spectacularly because it's too minimalistic to the point of just being cheapskate