Murmel's Digest
March 08, 2026 · View on web
These are the most widely shared links from across Mastodon and the Fediverse today — surfaced by Murmel from thousands of posts in the open social web. This is the Fediverse-wide view. Sign up to get a digest tailored to the people you actually follow.
Living in a Time of Lunatics and Monsters
davidrothkopf.substack.com · 31 people Worth reading
Let's be honest about the roots, costs and consequences of the Iran War
"The price of oil has spiked 35 percent in a week, the most ever. Expectations are that it will go higher, potentially devastating the global economy. Markets shuddered. Savings were lost. Prices that many could already not afford headed up again.
Why?
Because of the impulses of a single man."
~ David Rothkopf
— @wdlindsy · Mar 07
😡 I don't think most Americans have ANY idea what Donald Trump did to these unarmed Iranian sailors. It was a gross mass murder thousands of miles away from Iran.
thenorthstar.com · 48 people
Of course it was an international war crime, but the world does not currently have a single force willing to apply any of these laws. They basically function as legal theories with few consequences
I don't think most Americans have ANY idea what Donald Trump did to these unarmed Iranian sailors. It was a gross mass murder thousands of miles away from Iran.
Of course it was an international war crime, but the world does not currently have a single force willing to apply any of these laws. They basically function as legal theories with few consequences
Earlier this week the United States did something truly despicable. It’s an undeniable war crime. It’s mass murder. And ultimately is going to cause ships across the world to be open targets. This is not how the American media has reported it at all.
Thousands of miles away from Iran, an Iranian ship was invited to participate in an international boat show by India. The United States was also invited to participate and was scheduled to be there until the day before when they pulled out. The Iranian ship, which was unarmed, was there for what was basically a glorified military boat parade.
The United States knew this. None of it mattered. Without warning the United States torpedoed the ship, slaughtered the crew, which was mainly young sailors, and left the survivors there to drown. The United States then filmed and watched as Iranian sailors died and drowned. Even Nazis didn’t do this when they targeted ships.
In the end, Sri Lanka recovered 87 bodies and rescued 32 survivors. Dozens more are still missing. Then America’s Secretary of Defense celebrated the sinking as “quiet death” and posted the snuff film of the ship being hit and the young sailors dying all over the Internet
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Now let’s talk about what happened at sea—because this story is not a footnote. It’s a warning.
Quiet death?
That phrase is morally rotten. What does it even mean?
Because there is nothing “quiet” about bodies floating in the Indian Ocean, about families waiting for sailors who never come home, about a country forced to pull corpses out of the water while the government that fired the torpedo performs triumph on camera
— @PabloMartini · Mar 07
Tech and the Fake Market tactic - Anil Dash
anildash.com · 12 people
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
Nine years ago, predicting the rise of “self-driving news”. Now, major publishers are seeing 90+% drop-offs in traffic from search engines as LLMs generate synthesized versions of news stories instead of sending readers to read original media articles.
— @anildash · Mar 07
AI and that Guy at the bar
dotart.blog · 31 people
In tech we've always had evangelists, weither it's for FOSS, or Blockchain or now AI. It's a natural thing to do. You have a tech you'r...
You all should read this fantastic post by @onepict about how, largely, AI people just can't leave us the fuck alone. But I'm noticing more and more and more that they get super mad when they wanna shove their #AI creation at you and you simply say, no thanks. That's it. No extra bashing, just, no thanks, and they get super offended. #AIHype #LLM
— @WeirdWriter · Mar 08
Did baby boomers eat all the pies? John Lanchester on the truth about the generation gap
theguardian.com · 9 people Worth reading
It’s a grim time to be in your 20s, no doubt, but don’t blame it all on older people: being chopped up into ever smaller rivalries only serves the market
As John Lanchester concludes:
'Our state, our politics, behaves as if the past & the status quo are more important than the future. But the future is more important than the past. The settlement between generations needs to reflect that truth'!
The attempt to play off generations against each other, misses (pr perhaps wilfully obscures) the real political economic fissures in the UK, difference driven by inequality, class & privilege and prejudice!
— @ChrisMayLA6 · Mar 08
Why does cheating matter?
olivia.science · 15 people
A personal anecdote and an appeal to junior colleagues.
🔁 @olivia:> "I can code this from scratch" is way more impressive than you might think given toxic industry pro-AI nonsense. The same goes for writing clearly, reading and comprehending journal articles, thinking things through, and on and on.
> When the hype inevitably dies down, as it has done many times before, through AI summers and winters (see my talk here if you were not aware of these cycles), you want to have skills. You want to have a degree that matters.
4/n
— @gedankenstuecke · Mar 08
Why is my local city and public library looking to pay $50/hr to an AI Artist Residency?
brennan.day · 18 people
The Calgary Public Library is offering $8,000 for an AI Artist Residency while Canadian artists face funding cuts and 16% grant acceptance rates. There are programs like this around the world. Why?
Why is my local city and public library looking to pay $50/hr to an AI Artist Residency? · brennan.day #AI #Art #LLM #AIHype
— @WeirdWriter · Mar 08
Why I Don’t Vibe Code
jacobharr.is · 15 people Worth reading
A “brief” accounting of various reasons why vibe coding has just never clicked for me personally as a developer.
“I learn by failing, and if the LLM takes that work away from me, I won’t really understand what I’m doing.”
— @thomasfuchs · Mar 08
While people feel the foundations of their lives are shaking, this deep crisis will continue | Clive Lewis
theguardian.com · 7 people Worth reading
The partisan debate since the Gorton and Denton byelection risks blinding us to the truth. People are rejecting wholesale the way our politics has developed, says Labour MP Clive Lewis
Clive Lewis (Labour MP) argues that:
When large numbers conclude that acceptable policy has narrowed beyond recognition, that core economic decisions are insulated from democratic challenge & that proximity to wealth carries more weight than proximity to voters, faith erodes & political earthquakes ensue'... this is the lesson Labour needs to take from the Green Wave.
But its too late; let both the Green Parties pick up the mantle of progressive politics!
— @ChrisMayLA6 · Mar 08
Bells ring all over Nepal
nepalitimes.com · 11 people
As this report is uploaded, the latest results in Nepal’s election show that the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) is headed for an even bigger sweep than most had predicted.
Nepal's rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah has handily defeated a former prime minister, KP Sharma Oli, in their parliamentary constituency paving the way for the 35-year-old and former Kathmandu mayor to become the Himalayan nation’s next leader.
— @newsguyusa · Mar 07
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