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A batch of the best highlights from what J's read, .
Today the FBI-run center is chewing on National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), Trump’s sweeping policy directive that formally directs the national security state to root out left-wing political violence by monitoring so-called indicators of violence, like “anti-Christianity,” “anti-capitalism” and “anti-Americanism,” as [I’ve reported](https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/trumps-nspm-7-labels-common-beliefs).
Though the text of NSPM-7 is public, the Threat Screening Center’s watchlisting process is a black hole. Even the criteria for how people end up on it is secret.
Secretive Watchlisting Center Executing NSPM-7
Ken Klippenstein
They produce material that only superficially accomplishes a communicative goal, creating a kind of opacity around any given situation, a fog of bafflegab, making them anti-productivity. And they produce simulations of meaning that mock the education process, inviting people to dissipate their curiosity in efficient acts of prompting that return expedient blocks of text behind which no one stands and for which no one claims responsibility. No one cares if it’s right or even arguable; it’s anti-learning.
Fog of Bafflegab
Rob Horning
Charlie Warzel, warning that AI editing tools will “Photoshop our memories” and cheat our future selves of being able to grasp the authentic texture of our past lives.
> AI photo tools are a blatant appeal to vanity, a tacit admission that, in the battle between Instagram and reality, the former has won. The obsessions with photo-editing apps and even the standard custom of taking half a dozen snaps to get the right shot suggests that most people are not overly precious about fidelity.
Another Three Things
Rob Horning
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