Rights/Drug activist. Legal M.C. user 23.3.22. Confirmed July 2014 my medical condition due to Cannabinoid deficiencies: (CECD) https://xitter.cf/t.co/losF82bJsA
Joined January 2014
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Pinned Tweet
@sajidjavid @UKLabour @Conservatives "The published data on the health impact of Cannabis use clearly show that future arguments should take the form of “how many lives are saved by Cannabis use”, not the current argument of “how harmful is Cannabis use”. scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/b…
Tom Speed retweeted
Heads up, @OpenAI and @AnthropicAI. Rumor reaches my ears that you're doing a stupid thing, and should stop before you damage yourselves.
I hear you've now nerfed your models so that when people try to use them to clean the spamware and spyware out of their televisions, you block that.
If you really want Chinese open-weight models and open-source projects like OpenWaldo to eat your lunch, crippling your models so that people paying expensive subscriptions can't use them for completely legitimate purposes is a great way to accomplish this.
If, on the other hand, you'd rather have a volume business, maybe stupid arbitrary restrictions that look like they have the sole purpose of protecting corporate sleazeballs aren't such a good idea.
A word to the wise should be sufficient.
Tom Speed retweeted
Nothing to see here. Just another woman with more balls than every single male politician, collectively!
📢"I cannot forgive, & there are so many others who will never forget just how long it has taken the UK Government to finally do the right thing📢
@larabirdsnp #israel
Tom Speed retweeted
Cannabis extract SMASHES breast cancer cells!
Killed cancer cells — It caused a significant number of the cancer cells to die, and the effect got stronger with higher doses.
Pushed cancer cells to self-destruct (a process called apoptosis):
Helped stop cancer from spreading (reduced invasion and migration)
The extract contained known cannabis compounds like cannabidiol (CBD) and related molecules (terpenoids, steroids, etc.).
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4151…
Tom Speed retweeted
Despite the UK legalising medical #cannabis in 2018, the country has proven resistant to broader reform. There’s barely anyone inside Parliament even calling for reform. Britain has an ingrained political reluctance to challenge the status quo when it comes to drugs — even as alcohol, a drug implicated in two-in-five cases of violent crime, remains deeply embedded in our national culture. #drugspolicy matthabusby.substack.com/p/w…
Tom Speed retweeted
Inhaled CBD slashes lung tumor growth!
The results of the experiment demonstrated that inhalant CBD had a significant inhibitory effect on lung cancer progression.
Treatment with inhalant CBD resulted in a decreased rate of tumor growth compared to the placebo group.
CBD treatment led to the suppressed expression of the CD44 marker, suggesting a reduction in the cancer stem cell population within the tumor.
The expression of the crucial angiogenic factors VEGF and P-selectin was suppressed in the CBD-treated group, indicating an impairment of the tumor's ability to create new blood vessels.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3673…
Tom Speed retweeted
The Bell report on antisemitism in schools "is politically biased, drawing inappropriate conclusions from flawed data. It will stifle debate and foster mistrust."
Important statement from Jewish Voice for Liberation.
jewishvoiceforliberation.org…
Tom Speed retweeted
Never seen a more flagrant and violent breach of privacy in my life, and probably never will. Doubtful that a privacy violation will ever even be able to compare to the scale of this evil and deliberate attack.
Samsung should be eviscerated for this. Criminal charges please
Tom Speed retweeted
Yet still, the British government prefers that #cocaine is distributed by organised crime where there is no control on strength, contamination or who it is sold to. This unregulated market drives crime, violence, exploitation and other criminal activity. When will UK politicians take control and reform #drugspolicy in accordance with evidence? theguardian.com/society/ng-i…
Tom Speed retweeted
Analysis: UK Muslims face highest rate of hate crimes but police figures undercount them middleeasteye.net/news/analy…
Tom Speed retweeted
If you've ever wondered why smart TVs are so cheap, this is why.
@log4j rooted his Samsung and found an always-on hot mic, automatic content recognition, geolocation, network mapping, ad targeting and user profiling, shared with Samsung's "400 partners".
A lot of it can be blocked in <15 min, wrote a basic guide below.
What your TV is doing
The main culprit is ACR (automatic content recognition). Your TV screenshots what's on screen, fingerprints it, and sends it home to build your ad profile. Samsung does it every 500ms, LG every 10ms [1].
What is insane: it happens on connected devices too.
Plug in your laptop, your console, your work machine, and your TV can fingerprint that via HDMI [1].
He also found that if your Samsung doesn't have a mic, it'll look for one from a connected soundbar or bluetooth device.
xitter.cf/log4j/status/211376224…
It's on by default, and you likely agreed to it on the setup screen you clicked through in 10 seconds.
Step 1: Turn off ACR
Samsung: Terms & Privacy → Viewing Information Services
LG: Live Plus
Vizio: Viewing Data
Roku: "Use info from TV inputs"
Sony/Google TV: Samba Interactive TV
Menus vary by model, but those are the names to look for. While you're in there, opt out of interest-based ads, reset your advertising ID, decline every optional privacy agreement, turn off voice recognition, and delete apps you never open.
Step 2: Give smart devices their own network
Put the TV, cameras, speakers and vacuum on your router's guest/IoT network. The logic is simple: these devices rarely get patched. If one gets compromised (getting drastically more frequent with AI), it shouldn't be able to see your other devices or home network.
Step 3: Block trackers for the whole house with DNS-level filtering
NextDNS (cloud-based) is easy and has a solid free plan. Pi-hole is a little bit more work if you prefer self hosting. For simplicity we'll focus on the former.
1. Sign up at nextdns.io (free tier is plenty)
2. Privacy tab: add a blocklist (OISD is a good bet) and turn on Native Tracking Protection for Samsung, LG, Roku, Amazon (see attached image)
3. Setup tab: copy your endpoint
4. Paste it into your router's DNS settings as DNS-over-HTTPS/TLS (or use the IPs + "Link IP" if your router only does plain DNS)
5. Bonus: block outbound port 53 except to your router. Some devices hardcode their own DNS to get around you
Then open the NextDNS logs and watch how often your TV phones home. It's eye-opening. If an app or update breaks, find the domain in the logs and allowlist it.
Why they do this
TV prices are down 97% since 2000 [2]. Most of that is better manufacturing and brutal competition. But once margins on the hardware hit zero, the cost moved to you.
In Q3 2024, Vizio lost $6.7M selling TVs and made $115.8M in gross profit from ads and viewing data [3]. They've said on earnings calls that they keep TV prices low to grow the audience they sell to advertisers. Walmart bought them in 2024.
This isn't a conspiracy theory either. Vizio paid $2.2M to the FTC in 2017 for tracking 11 million TVs without consent. Last December, Texas sued Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense and TCL over ACR. Samsung and LG have since agreed to stop collecting that data without explicit consent [4].
TL;DR
1. ACR off
2. Ads + voice off
3. Smart devices on their own network
4. NextDNS filtering on the router
Sources:
[1] ACR study: arxiv.org/abs/2409.06203
[2] Cost of US consumer goods: aei.org/economics/chart-of-t…
[3] Vizio Q3 2024: sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/…
[4] Texas v. Samsung: texasattorneygeneral.gov/new…
Tom Speed retweeted
If you bought the TV it's your device. I really wish @AnthropicAI will fail because they are anti humanity. They try to disguise it as having higher morals but it's actually against human freedom. It's their service so they have their right to limit it but that doesn't mean that its right. They claim to be about humans but they work against human nature. Humans want freedom to explore and discover things. Hacking your own TV is one example that should be encouraged. Sure it might void the warranty but that is the owners responsibility. It's such a strange world we live in where we need to turn to China to get freedom to be humans and not have a company to set immoral limits on us. Open Weight Models are the future and only way forward. It's about freedom from corporate greed.
Tom Speed retweeted
The report on antisemitism in schools provides a fascinating study in the parallel universes independent and mainstream media occupy.
Indie media has done it's job, scrutinised the report and highlighted its glaring inadequacies. The entire mainstream has simply reported it uncritically. /1
The Bell report finds that anti-Jewish attitudes are "less prevalent", while "anti-Israel sentiments are more prevalent" More here ⤵️
mee.s.gy/o4iBYs
Tom Speed retweeted
This is a huge scandal for @BBCNews, craven bias, breach of charter obligations and OFCOM rules.
I'm not going to name the school, but the @BBC's coverage of the antisemitism in schools report featured interviews with children from a Jewish school.
Here's the rub, though.
The school's own published curriculum explicitly teaches Zionism, celebrates the establishment of Israel and describes preparing pupils to become "positive advocates for Israel" at university.
It even references bringing in organisations such as StandWithUs to prepare pupils for that advocacy.
Now, let me be absolutely clear. There is nothing wrong with teaching Jewish history, culture or identity. And antisemitism must be challenged wherever it exists.
But when children are actively encouraged to advocate for a particular state, rather than critically examine its history, policies and actions, surely we have to question whether this is education or ideological conditioning?
And here's the staggering hypocrisy.
We're being told that schools must exercise political impartiality when discussing Palestine, while a school can openly describe preparing children to advocate for Israel.
Political impartiality cannot be a principle applied selectively, depending on which side of a conflict children are encouraged to support.
And the BBC has a responsibility to scrutinise that distinction, not simply present children's views without examining the educational environment in which those views have developed.
Children deserve an education that teaches them how to think, not what to think.
@NEUnion @educationgovuk
Tom Speed retweeted
The reality of the "independent" review telling every school in England to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism: its author, Sir David Bell, was being paid by a government agency while he wrote it, and a pro-Israel charity has listed him on its council for ten years.
The government told the public he was "independent of Government" and had "no conflict of interest". Neither is true.
What we found:
- Bell was paid £20,000 a year as vice-chair of Skills England, a government agency, in a seat the Department for Education gave him. He held it until August, through most of the review.
- The Academic Study Group on Israel and the Middle East has listed him on its council since at least 2016. Its website says its one firm policy is opposing boycotts of Israel. It gives talks on Israel in schools, which is exactly what his review was asked to judge.
- In 2005, as chief inspector of schools, he singled out Muslim schools as a challenge to "our coherence as a nation". The chairman of the Association of Muslim Schools called it Islamophobia, and his own inspectors said he had presented a personal view as inspection evidence.
Then we followed the money:
- The department's £1.3 million antisemitism training contract had one bidder, according to the tender record. It went to Palace Yard, a company set up in 2022 by the former Labour MP Natascha Engel.
- That contract says all its training must use the IHRA definition "as a foundation". It was signed eight months before Bell was appointed. His review then recommended IHRA.
- Two of the people who advised Bell, from Partnerships for Jewish Schools and the Antisemitism Policy Trust, now sit on the group putting his recommendations into practice.
- The Union of Jewish Students, also on that group, holds a contract worth almost £1 million to train universities. Its own policies include "UJS to advocate for Israel within UK Policy and International Law".
- UK Lawyers for Israel* (UKLFI) and the Campaign Against Antisemitism* (CAA) both say the review adopted their recommendations.
*For context, UKLFI once justified the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza by the Israeli occupation as "good for obesity". Both these groups have staunchly defended Israel throughout its perpetration of a genocide in Gaza, and regularly conflate Jewish people with the apartheid state.
This matters because the review decides how every school treats what pupils and teachers say about Israel, and the IHRA definition it recommends treats some criticism of Israel as antisemitic. A review with that power should come from someone with no pay from government and no tie to a pro-Israel charity. Bell had both. The government put one in a footnote and left the other out.
We mapped every link, each with its source, explaining just how far this review is from "independent": newscord.org/editorials/davi…
