technocrit

In this News Brief, we break down recent bad faith attacks on Zohran Mamdani, the ADL's DO YOU CONDEMN extortion racket, and the broader "antisemitism scandal" playbook to derail moderate social democratic policies and any meaningful criticism of Israel.

Last week, we talked about one particular incident of vehicular violence on protesters. But where does the tactic come from? Who is doing it? And why?

Most AI tools require a huge amount of hidden labor to make them work at all. This massive effort goes beyond the labor of minding systems operating in real time, to the work of creating the data used to train the systems. These kinds of workers do a host of tasks. They are asked to draw green highlighting boxes around objects in images coming from the camera feeds of self-driving cars; rate how incoherent, helpful, or offensive the existing responses from language models are; label whether social media posts include hate speech or violent threats; and determine whether people in sexually provocative videos are minors. These workers handle a great deal of toxic content. Given that media synthesis machines recombine internet content into plausible-sounding text and legible images, companies require a screening process to prevent their users from seeing the worst of what the web has to offer.

This industry has been called by many names: “crowdwork,” “data labor,” or “ghost work” (as the labor often goes unattended and unseen by consumers in the West). But this work is very visible for those who perform it. Jobs in which low-paid workers filter out, correct, or label text, images, videos, and sounds have been around for nearly as long as AI and the current era of deep learning methods has been. It’s not an exaggeration to say that we wouldn’t have the current wave of “AI” if it weren’t for the availability of on-demand laborers.

1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Lunch and Fireside Chat - Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle W. Bowman and Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO As part of the Board’s efforts to keep pace with the latest developments in banking and finance, Vice Chair for Supervision Bowman will host a fireside chat with Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, to discuss the effects of artificial intelligence on banks, businesses, and consumers and how we can encourage innovation in the banking and financial system.

Referred to among his supporters as a "king in exile", Reza Pahlavi, 64, is the eldest son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the late shah of Iran, who was toppled during the 1977-1979 popular uprising that led to the establishment of the Islamic Republic as we now know it.

As a staunch defender of a US-backed monarchy that he hopes to bring back to Iran, he has made several visits to Israel, taken photographs with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and cast himself as the only viable leader of a modern Iran if the Islamic Republic collapses.

On 16 June, during the recent hostilities between Israel and Iran, Pahlavi said that "the root cause of the problem has been the regime and its nature, and the only solution, ultimately, that will benefit both the Iranian people as well as the free world is for this regime to no longer be there".

Responding to Pahlavi's comments, Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif made headlines by calling the shah's son a "bloody parasitical imperial whore".

Iran says Israel kills 71 people in the attack, including staff, soldiers, prisoners and visiting family members.

In Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego, homeless Californians describe their experiences over the past year as camping ban enforcement has increased.

Violence begets violence, so many religions say. Americans should know. After all, the United States – a nation founded on Indigenous genocide, African enslavement and open rebellion against an imperial power to protect its wealthiest citizens – cannot help but be violent. What’s more, violence in the US is political, and the violence the country has carried out overseas over the generations has always been connected to its imperialist ambitions and racism. From the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites on June 21 to the everyday violence in rhetoric and reality within the US, the likes of President Donald Trump continue to stoke the violent impulses of a violence‑prone nation.

Almost 84,000 people died in Gaza between October 2023 and early January 2025 as a result of the Hamas–Israel war, estimates the first independent survey of deaths. More than half of the people killed were women aged 18–64, children or people over 65, reports the study, which was posted on the preprint server medRxiv last week1. It has not been peer reviewed.

Mike German, an ex-FBI agent, said immigration agents hiding their identities ‘highlights the illegitimacy of actions’

Some wear balaclavas. Some wear neck gators, sunglasses and hats. Some wear masks and casual clothes.

Across the country, armed federal immigration officers have increasingly hidden their identities while carrying out immigration raids, arresting protesters and roughing up prominent Democratic critics.

It’s a trend that has sparked alarm among civil rights and law enforcement experts alike.

Mike German, a former FBI agent, said officers’ widespread use of masks was unprecedented in US law enforcement and a sign of a rapidly eroding democracy. “Masking symbolizes the drift of law enforcement away from democratic controls,” he said.

Mike German, an ex-FBI agent, said immigration agents hiding their identities ‘highlights the illegitimacy of actions’

Some wear balaclavas. Some wear neck gators, sunglasses and hats. Some wear masks and casual clothes.

Across the country, armed federal immigration officers have increasingly hidden their identities while carrying out immigration raids, arresting protesters and roughing up prominent Democratic critics.

It’s a trend that has sparked alarm among civil rights and law enforcement experts alike.

Mike German, a former FBI agent, said officers’ widespread use of masks was unprecedented in US law enforcement and a sign of a rapidly eroding democracy. “Masking symbolizes the drift of law enforcement away from democratic controls,” he said.