Benjamin - https://chaos.social/@tla

My company rolled out AI tools 11 months ago. Since then, every task I do takes longer. I am not allowed to say this out loud. Not because there is a policy. There is no policy. There is something worse than a policy. There is enthusiasm. There is a Slack channel called #ai-wins where people post screenshots of AI outputs with captions like "this just saved me an hour." There is a VP who opens every all-hands with "the companies that adopt fastest win." There is a Director who renamed his team from Operations to Intelligent Operations. There is a peer review question that now asks: "How have you leveraged AI tools to enhance your workflow this quarter?" If the answer is "I haven't, because I was faster before," that is a career decision. So I leverage. Emails. Before the tools, I wrote emails. This took the amount of time it takes to write an email. I did not measure it. Nobody measured it. The email got written and sent and it was fine. Now I write the email. Then I highlight the text and click "Enhance with AI." The AI rewrites my email. It replaces "Can we meet Thursday?" with "I'd love to explore the possibility of finding a mutually convenient time to align on this." I read the rewrite. I delete the rewrite. I send my original email. This takes 4 minutes instead of 2. The 2 extra minutes are the enhancement. I do this 11 times a day. That is 22 minutes I spend each day rejecting improvements to sentences that were already finished. In #ai-wins I posted a screenshot of the rewrite. I did not post the part where I deleted it. 23 people reacted with the rocket emoji. That is adoption. Meetings. We have an AI notetaker in every meeting now. It joins automatically. It records. It transcribes. It summarizes. After each meeting I receive a 3-paragraph summary of the meeting I just attended. I read the summary. This takes 3 minutes. I was in the meeting. I know what happened. I am reading a machine's account of something I experienced firsthand. Sometimes the account is wrong. Last Tuesday it attributed a comment about Q3 revenue to me. My manager made that comment. I spent 4 minutes correcting the transcript. Before the notetaker, I did not spend 7 minutes after each meeting correcting a robot's memory of something I personally witnessed. I attend 11 meetings a week. That is 77 minutes per week supervising a transcription nobody requested. I mentioned this once. My manager said "think about the people who weren't in the meeting." The people who weren't in the meeting do not read the summaries. I checked. The read receipts show single-digit opens. The summaries exist not because they are useful but because they are there. I read them for the same reason. Documents. I write a weekly status update. Before the tools, this took 10 minutes. I typed what happened. I sent it. My manager skimmed it. The system worked. Now I open the AI writing assistant. I give it my bullet points. It produces a draft. The draft says "Significant progress was achieved across multiple workstreams." I did not achieve significant progress across multiple workstreams. I updated a spreadsheet and sent 4 emails. I rewrite the draft to say what actually happened. Then I run my rewrite through the grammar tool. It suggests I change "done" to "completed" and "next week" to "in the forthcoming period." I click Ignore 9 times. Then I send the version I would have written in 10 minutes. The process now takes 30. I have been doing this every week for 11 months. I have added 20 minutes to a task that did not need 20 more minutes. I call this efficiency. I have been calling it efficiency for 11 months. That is what efficiency means now. It means the additional time you spend to arrive at the same outcome through a longer process. Nobody has questioned this definition. I have not offered it for review. I kept a log once. 2 weeks. Every task, timed. Before-AI and after-AI. The after number was larger in every case. Every single one. Not by a little. The range was 40 to 200 percent. I deleted the log. I deleted it because it was a document that said, in plain numbers, that the AI tools make me slower. And a document like that has no place in a company where AI adoption is a strategic priority. I could not send it to my manager. He championed the rollout. I could not post it in #ai-wins. I could not raise it in a meeting because the notetaker would transcribe it and the summary would read "[Name] expressed concerns about AI tool efficacy" and that summary would be the first one anyone actually reads. So I do what everyone does. I use the tools. I spend the extra time. I post in #ai-wins. I write "leveraged AI to streamline weekly reporting" in my review and my manager gives me a 4 out of 5 for innovation. I have innovated nothing. I have added steps to processes that were already finished. I have made simple things longer and labeled the difference with words that used to mean something. Every week in #ai-wins someone posts a screenshot. And 20 people react with the rocket emoji. And nobody posts the part where they deleted the output and did the task themselves. Nobody posts the revert. Nobody posts the before-and-after timer. Nobody will. Because "I was better at my job before the AI tools" is a sentence that cannot be said out loud in any company that has decided AI is the future. Every company has decided AI is the future. So we leverage. Quietly. Adding steps. Calling them optimization. Getting slightly less done, slightly more slowly, with slightly more steps, and reporting it as progress. My yearly review is next month. There is a new section this year. "AI Impact Assessment." It asks me to quantify the hours saved by AI tools per week. I will write a number. The number will be positive. It will not be true. But the AI writing assistant will help me phrase it convincingly. That is the one thing it does well.

Iran has been fatally misunderstood - The US and Israel were foolish to imagine that the Iranians would crumble thecritic.co.uk/iran-has-been-…

Am 5. Juni 2017 geschieht im Nahen Osten etwas, das wie ein tektonischer Bruch wirkt: Saudi-Arabien, Bahrain, die Vereinigten Arabischen Emirate, Ägypten und Jemen brechen innerhalb weniger Stunden sämtliche diplomatischen Beziehungen zu Katar ab. Der Vorwurf: Unterstützung der Muslimbruderschaft, Nähe zu Iran und Türkei, Finanzierung von Terror. Selbst Donald Trump begrüßt den Schritt. Katar ist isoliert, geächtet, ein Paria – ein Staat unter existenziellem Druck. Neun Monate später, im März 2018: Der palästinensische Premierminister Rami Hamdallah reist in den Gazastreifen, um mit der Hamas über Versöhnung zu sprechen und eine Machtübertragung an die Palästinensische Autonomiebehörde zu verhandeln. Dann detoniert ein Sprengsatz nahe seiner Kolonne, unweit des Erez-Übergangs zwischen Israel und Gaza. Hamdallah überlebt, ebenso Geheimdienstchef Majed Faraj. Sicherheitskräfte werden verletzt. Die Botschaft ist eindeutig: Die Hamas ist nicht bereit, Macht abzugeben. Der palästinensische Präsident Mahmud Abbas reagiert mit Härte. Zwischen April und Juli 2018 stoppt die Autonomiebehörde die Gehaltszahlungen an rund 60.000 Staatsbedienstete im Gazastreifen. Ärzte, Lehrer, Verwaltungsangestellte – plötzlich ohne Einkommen. Die ökonomische Lebensader Gazas wird gekappt. Die Hamas gerät unter Druck; ihr fehlt selbst das Geld für Strom. Auf den Straßen wächst der Unmut. Ein Jahr zuvor hatten die „moderaten“ arabischen Staaten Katar isoliert. Nun wiederholt Abbas – mit ihrer stillen Rückendeckung – ein ähnliches Muster gegenüber Gaza. Die Hamas ist geschwächt, isoliert, finanziell ausgezehrt. Ihre Beziehungen zum Iran sind angespannt. Ihr System wankt. Man könnte meinen: ein Moment der Chance. Doch im Hintergrund formiert sich eine andere Logik. Teile der israelischen Rechten sehen in einer geschwächten, aber bestehenden Hamas ein strategisches Instrument – als Gegengewicht zur Palästinensischen Autonomiebehörde und als Blockade gegen jede Dynamik hin zu einer Zwei-Staaten-Lösung. Bezalel Smotrich formulierte es offen: Die Hamas sei ein „Asset“, die Autonomiebehörde hingegen eine Last. Benjamin Netanyahu steht vor einem Dilemma: Sollte die Autonomiebehörde auch in Gaza die Kontrolle übernehmen, könnte internationaler Druck entstehen, ernsthaft über eine Zwei-Staaten-Lösung zu verhandeln. Netanyahu, geprägt von den Erfahrungen der Arafat-Ära, hält dies für ein Sicherheitsrisiko historischen Ausmaßes. Seine Schlussfolgerung: lieber eine abgeschreckte, kontrollierte Hamas als eine politisch gestärkte palästinensische Führung. 2018 trifft er eine Entscheidung, die die Geschichte verändert. 👇👇👇👇👇👇

Everyone deserves access to information. With Orbot and Tor bridges, you can stay connected—even on the most restricted networks.

“Americans are very lucky, because wherever they go to bring freedom… they find oil.” - Michele Serra, Italian journalist

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek on why searching for your "true self" is a mistake: Žižek argues that the pursuit of a true inner self is ultimately misguided. Deep introspection, he suggests, often reveals only disturbing or chaotic fantasies. "Don't look for your inner self. You'll only find deep shit." Instead of searching for an authentic core, Žižek believes genuine personal growth comes from embracing an external mask, a chosen social role. "The only way to overcome yourself is to identify with your mask." To illustrate this, he references the 1960 Rossellini film General Della Rovere. The film tells the story of a poor man in occupied Italy who is caught by the Nazis. Because he resembles a famous resistance leader, General Della Rovere, the Nazis, who have already killed the real General, force him to pretend to be the General in prison to trick the resistance. But something unexpected happens. The man identifies so deeply with the role that he refuses to cooperate with the Nazis. He is ultimately shot publicly as General Della Rovere. Žižek calls this "good alienation." The man's "real self" as a poor beggar mattered less than his complete identification with the heroic persona. Through that total commitment to an outward role, he achieved a kind of moral greatness his "authentic" self never could. The takeaway is counterintuitive but powerful: true freedom doesn't emerge from endlessly excavating your private, internal world. It emerges when you prioritise your outward actions and commitments. When you fully commit to becoming something greater than what you started as. What matters is what you choose to embody.

Having been through the US immigration process (I got my first work visa more than 25 years ago and became a citizen in 2022), it's obvious to me that Americans have *no idea* how weird and tortuous their immigration system is: flickr.com/photos/doctoro… 1/

2/ grundlegende Menschenrechte, für die sie sich in Europa engagieren, nicht auch den Menschen anderswo, etwa in Palästina/Gaza zu? Ein notwendiger und überzeugender Essay, der Ivo Goldstein zum Hassobjekt vieler Linker machen wird.

1/In der FAZ geht heute der Historiker Ivo Goldstein auf eine zentrale Frage ein, die auch mich bewegt: Warum verbandeln sich so viele westliche Linke mit der Terrorismusideologie etwa der Hamas, befördern Antisemitismus oder sind gar selbst antisemitisch und warum billigen sie

⚠️#BREAKING: Russia denies attacking Europe. Europe checks map. 👀 Europe disagrees.👎

I know we don’t do facts anymore, but here’s the "dangerous and collapsing" EU that Elon Musk and MAGA influencers keep warning you about.

20 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE PROTESTS IN IRAN 1. Allegations of “mass casualties” among Iran protesters are not dependable. They come from a group called Center for Human Rights in Iran. The Center for Human Rights in Iran is NOT in Iran. It is in New York. 2. Is it an Iranian group? No. It is financed by the CIA-adjacent National Endowment for Democracy in Washington DC and related bodies, specializing in disinformation. 3. It is led by the people of Iran? No. The chairwoman is Minky Worden, an American who ran anti-China campaigns for many years. She tried to get the Beijing winter Olympics renamed "the genocide Olympics" and cancelled. She failed. 4. Previously, Ms Worden worked closely with the Hong Kong "pro-democracy" movement (also NED-funded) and her husband was on the board of Apple Daily and had a contract with the Pentagon. Yes, the US regime-change operations around the world are THAT incestuous. 5. The other main source of unbelievable tales of massive protests and huge numbers of deaths in Iran are coming from the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). This is also a NED-funded, US-based disinformation outlet. . IN REALITY, IRANIANS HAVE BECOME LESS ANTI-GOVERNMENT 6. Having said that, protest groups against the Iranian government do exist, but they are not large. Western groups including the NED-funded media, and the Persian service of Voice of America, have spent years cultivating anti-government groups. But Trump’s bombing campaigns, and Israel’s shocking behavior in Gaza, has meant Iranians have become very notably LESS anti-government, not more. This is important. . THE LOUDEST VOICE 7. The loudest and most prominent Iranian “protest leader” quoted in the west is Masih Alinejad, a women who was salaried by NED for years, and currently works for the US Agency for Global Media. 8. Which part of Iran does she live in? No part of Iran. She lives in the US. 9. What’s her professional background? Propaganda. Her job was and is to push pro-US anti-Iran propaganda through various media services. Despite this, she is quoted in the media as if she is a reliable source of news from the people of Iran. 10. Press reports show that between 2015 and 2022 alone, Masih Alinejad received US$628,000 in funding from NED and related groups. And yes, this regime-change campaigner received a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. . 'U.S. CAN CREATE A POPULAR UPRISING' 11. Remember Mahsa Jina Amini, a woman said to have been beaten to death by Iran police for wearing her hijab wrongly? Masih Alinejad pushed that tale, but it was debunked by a security video, which showed that no one was standing near her when she collapsed through a medical issue. 12. A 2009 Brookings policy paper "Which Path to Persia?" goes into detail about how the US can take control of Iran. The idea would be to create mobs attacking government facilities, which can be labelled a “popular uprising” by the media, and by fostering division in multiple ways and putting puppet leaders in control. Variations of this US game plan have been used multiple times around the world. . WOMEN'S RIGHTS 13. Why is so much of the US propaganda about Iran based on alleged violations of women’s rights? Because similar US disinformation operations in other places, such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, showed that women’s rights made western audiences angrier faster than weaponization of the usual western “Big Three” propaganda lines: Democracy, freedom and human rights. 14. Is the “strictly hijabs only” tale true? No. In general, women in Iran do prefer to dress modestly in Islamic fashion, but it’s far more relaxed and tolerant that the US propagandists pretend. Think of the religious dress codes of Indonesia and Malaysia, for example, where most people dress modestly and religiously, but the atmosphere is tolerant and reasonable. 15. What about the atrocity stories of ill-treated women? They are invented and circulated by US and Israeli sources: the US has long had an atrocity fabrication department (see AB Abram’s research for numerous examples of their work worldwide). . INFILTRATION 16. Academic essays apparently “proving” that most Iranians want a US-allied leadership appear in The Journal of Democracy – which is portrayed as if it was a university-style academic publication, but it's actually a NED magazine. 17. NED operatives have spent years in Iran, funding scholars and journalists to build up a stranglehold in many educational, civic and media groups, just as they did in Hong Kong, and have done in many places. 18. A widely quoted group from Iranian politics is the Foundation for Democracy in Iran. This is also not Iranian. It is funded by NED and the executive director is American activist Kenneth R. Timmerman. . HOPE FOR THE FUTURE 19. Iranians are smart. They know about NED and nickname it “National Enemy of Democracy”. 20. Western mainstream media reports (BBC, Guardian, Reuters etc) on Iran absolutely CANNOT be trusted. They have a long history of downplaying, or, more usually, completely hiding the western manipulation processes that create regime change. If you support the people of Iran, you need to know all this. The world needs to stand with Iran and tell the US that we've had enough.

🧵Google’s building an NSA for capitalism. By merging search history, conversational AI, and retailer data, their new 'Universal Commerce Protocol' could create the ultimate surveillance pricing squeeze. But instead of national security, the goal is extracting 'maximum lifetime value' from you, the consumer. Here is how the dragnet works in six simple steps. 1/8

Breaking news 🇩🇪🇬🇱

The reason why RAM has become four times more expensive is that a huge amount of RAM that has not yet been produced was purchased with non-existent money to be installed in GPUs that also have not yet been produced, in order to place them in data centers that have not yet been built, powered by infrastructure that may never appear, to satisfy demand that does not actually exist and to obtain profit that is mathematically impossible.

🔥 New blog post: Web dependencies are broken. Can we fix them? lea.verou.me/blog/2026/web-… “Dear JS ecosystem, I love you, but you have a dependency management problem when it comes to the Web, and the time has come for an intervention. Abstraction is the cornerstone of modern software engineering. Reusing logic and building higher-level solutions from lower-level building blocks is what makes all the technological wonders around us possible. Imagine if every time anyone wrote a calculator they also had to reinvent floating-point arithmetic and string encoding! And yet, the web platform has outsourced this fundamental functionality to third-party tooling. As a result, code reuse has become a balancing of tradeoffs that should never have existed […]” Read more: lea.verou.me/blog/2026/web-…

To be a billionaire is to be a solipsist - to secretly believe (most) other people don't really exist - otherwise, how could you live with the knowledge that your farcical wealth springs from the agony you have inflicted on whole populations? #npcs" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">pluralistic.net/2025/08/18/see… 1/

"The mistake that every investor, commentator, analyst and member of the media makes about NVIDIA is believing that its sales are an expression of demand for AI compute, when it’s really more of a statement about the availability of debt from banks and private credit." -Ed Zitron wheresyoured.at/the-enshittifi…

I have a weird fascination with early-stage Bill Gates, after his mother convinced a pal of hers - chairman of IBM's board of directors - to give her son the contract to provide the operating system for the new IBM PC. 1/

❗️Was Frauen erwartet, wenn die AfD regiert – verständlich erklärt ❗️ (Bitte lesen und teilen – das betrifft JEDE FRAU in Deutschland.) Immer mehr Frauen fragen sich: ▶️ „Was würde eigentlich passieren, wenn die AfD regiert?“