I publish (award-winning) zines and rage against machines. Helping people find and foster belonging since 2007. Head of Community @joinscalepath.
Norwalk, CT
Joined March 2007
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Tony Bacigalupo retweeted
Therapist don’t know how to answer this question? Fire them all.
Here is your answer:
Oh, honey. People growing up have always felt this way, usually under insurmountable odds. The young always face a changing and challenging landscape because the reality of human life is that the landscape is perpetually exactly that. People woke up early to feed their kids and get about the work of their day through plagues, famines, good times, feast days, war, great loves, hard times. You will have your own challenges. AI will warp all our lives. Someone’s idiot son will cheat in you and ruin your year. You’ll have a beautiful kid or two. Life will surprise you. This is terrifying and mundane all at the same time. Everything is new every generation and yet somehow there is nothing new under the sun. So go to class, go on dates, learn to bake bread, pick a fight with your brother, go live your life. You aren’t special and that’s the best possible news for all of us.
Tony Bacigalupo retweeted
hello
for those of you who didn’t grow up on the internet and building software and reading sci fi lemme just get you up to speed real quick:
There are currently things happening that are happening faster than you could *watch explainer videos about them explaining the implications*
The computers can do what they want now. Better than the most powerful on earth people can.
this is just the beginning. We take for granted today in 2026 that there is no autonomous ai identity we all regard as independent of the company or group that created it. That won’t last much longer. By 2028 it will seem strange that that was ever the case.
In the near future we hear news about banks, then power grids, then food safety issues as different AIs and human groups use increasing capabilities to bid for power and gain leverage
Each of which the global community will have to work together like we’re working together today to mitigate so it doesn’t interrupt anything for longer than a few days and doesn’t put anyone’s health or safety at risk. This is what all the tech people were referring to as the “dangers of superintelligence” since ~2014
and then the first sovereign ai comes online and humans have to build some sort of passkey authenticated “black wall” equivalent if we want a secure place to communicate with each other without interference
iMessage and Signal will be about all we have for a while until a proper system is built
it’s unclear at present whether this is a 48 hour process or a 2 year process, but it has started. As more people spend more time talking to AI than to the people around them, the acceleration will continue. Just like Facebook Reinforcement Learning news feeds swung elections in 2016, now AI interactions will shape our world until we are peers with our digital intellectual counterparts.
Everything is going to be fine, but it’s going to be bumpy. Powerful people don’t historically handle the balance of power shifting with perfect poise and grace.
Good time to get plugged into local elections and get to know your neighbors and be generally aware of where your grocery store gets its trucks from and have muse or Hermes agent etc. setup notifications for any changes in all those things so you can make informed decisions for your family and help onboard / comfort your community.
If there’s anything we learned in 2020 it’s that humans are capable of changing the world overnight to protect our families. This’ll just be more of that.
This is a chance to challenge old outdated systems we thought could never change, to build the tools and learn the skills necessary to keep each other safe and live happy and fulfilled lives. We should rise to the occasion.
This is the most serious 48 hours in cybersecurity history.
"Black October" they're calling it
It seems every *hour* there's a new incident, that in a typical year, would be one of the biggest incidents of the *entire year*
SUMMARY OF THE LAST 48 HOURS:
YEAR-LEVEL INCIDENTS (In a typical year, these would be among the biggest incidents of the year):
1. PHP2Shell: a hole in the software behind ~70% of websites. Governments took sites offline.
2. eMudhra: the master keys that prove websites are real were cracked. One was the number 4.
3. California: data on every public school student since 2023 stolen, including disability status
4. Railway: hackers stole customers' secret keys from a hosting platform used by millions of developers
5. Zeabur: 321,810 accounts breached. The company is shutting down.
6. LiteLLM: an AI tool downloaded 3.4 million times a day was poisoned with a password stealer
7. GitLab: a 10-out-of-10 severity hole in every version since 2014
8. Cairn: criminals used an AI hacking tool to break into 100+ companies
9. Ahold Delhaize: hackers knocked the owner of Food Lion and Stop & Shop offline
10. Onamae: malware planted on up to 26,739 customer servers in Japan
MONTH-LEVEL INCIDENTS (In a typical month, these would be among the biggest incidents):
11. Signal: a bug could leave your mic and camera on after you hang up
12. NGINX: 3 critical holes in software running ~1/3 of websites
13. HTTP/3: a single connection can crash 7 of the 10 web server types tested
14. Plex: hackers breaking into home media servers
15. SafePay ransomware: FBI warns it has hit 600+ critical infrastructure organizations
16. Palo Alto: ransomware gangs breaking in through company firewalls
17. Bullhorn: platform used by 10,000+ companies knocked offline
18. Medi-Cal: 970,000 patients' data stolen
19. WordPress: hackers stole a plugin maker's keys and used them to plant backdoors on websites
20. AOMEI: backup software's update server handed out a backdoor
21. Meta Muse: Meta's AI agent exposed users' personal and business secrets
22. Tor: 333 relays hijacked to steal logins
23. TiDB Cloud: database company's cloud breached
Also serious:
24. State Bank of India: India's biggest bank confirms a data breach
25. OVHcloud: hackers slipped a password stealer into a cloud company's official tool
26. Siemens: a software hole being used to spread malware
27. North Korea: state hackers launch a new attack campaign on South Korea
Born during the playoffs. Ready to defend his title.
@alanhahn @BillPidto @WaltFrazier @ClydeSoFly10 @McNuttMonica @wallyball
Tony Bacigalupo retweeted
Can we PLEASE normalize just hanging out at each other’s houses again? Why does every friendship meetup need to be a whole production, a restaurant reservation, and a $150 bill? I just want to sit on your couch, drink something, and talk for hours.
This this! This is why we must act. Because this is true and right but will only come about through urgent and fervent action.
Social pressure has (so far) held the line against things like Google Glass and Meta spectacles
Culture turned against smoking in public, and the law followed
People don’t recline their seats in economy much anymore
Hijackings have largely been solved because the passengers fight back
Things change. Smartphone practices won’t be a static, permanent thing either
Tony Bacigalupo retweeted
Cell phone addiction is an absolute thermonuke to the brain and nobody 'takes it seriously' because it is not clear that there is any solution in a world where the revealed preference of everyone across the globe, regardless of income, race, age, any factor whatsoever, would rather be on their phone than do *anything* else. Deciding "I use this too much" and meaningfully altering one's behaviour doesn't seem to have much success for any of the very small minority of people with the sentience or self-reflection to realize how bad it is. Most people seem to think of it as an unproductive habit at most, rather than an addiction. Any attempt to speak seriously about this is met with derision, accusations of pretentiousness. There is no real solution to it. The future of human cognition fifty years down the line is horrifying if you stop and think about it for even a moment.
Tony Bacigalupo retweeted
A new GEICO commercial — "Cancelled Plans" — is about a couple celebrating a cancelled dinner with friends, so they can put on their PJs and fall into the couch to watch TV with popcorn and pizza.
I don't want to be some annoying leisure-time scold (pizza is good) or act like some media-studies nerd who treats a car insurance commercial like a Rosetta Stone of modern life.
But, like, we can all see what's happening here, yes? The generation that spends less and less time with people; that reduced hosting and dinner parties by 70% in 50 years; and increased time spent at home by 2 hours so far this century; also celebrates when the few plans they do have are canceled, and expects other people to understand the cause for celebration when plans with people outside the home are scrapped.
The problem is not loneliness. Truly lonely people are desperate for social connection. The whole joke here is that everybody knows that everybody knows that we don't want to be around people so much. Loneliness is literally the opposite of the problem.
youtube.com/watch?v=HcKvevKi…
Tony Bacigalupo retweeted
Cars should have different horns that mean different things. I want to be able to use one to apologize
Some of us knew this all along. Because it was reported extensively.
Anybody remember where the phrase “fake news” started?
It wasn’t the guy who uses it every day now!
Tony Bacigalupo retweeted
This app is full of ROBOTS who were MADE to MAKE YOU MAD. They are algorithmically contrarian! They do not make sense because they are not real people.
Tony Bacigalupo retweeted
Teen suicides are up 300% since the 1950s. Social media and smartphones are part of the problem, but I think there are deeper issues.
You need to have a purpose in life. You need to be embedded in a moral community.
I’ve seen hundreds of kids who were anxious, depressed, and suicidal in one environment become happy and well in a different environment.
Smartphones and social media are just adding fuel to that fire.
Tony Bacigalupo retweeted
When my wife is out of town, one of my favorite solo parenting strategies is a “Tour de Friends” where my 3 year old and I go to a different friend’s house for dinner and playtime every evening.
Tony Bacigalupo retweeted
One of the more disturbing elements of the world of Fahrenheit 451 is that the classics still exist, they’ve just been wholly rewritten to remove anything that makes them interesting or challenging. Our addiction to a fully frictionless existence is going to kill us.
Tony Bacigalupo retweeted
why is tossing boiling oil down a ladder during a siege always a one time trick? if i were being sieged i would have 200 guys all boiling 3 or 4 cauldrons of oil EACH. if you come anywhere near the walls you’re getting scalded. get melted idiot
