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- TWIBS: Elon Musk Unveils AI Wiki, Grokipedia, and Everybody Hates It

- Transgender Student-Athlete Lia Smith Remembered as a Friend and Fierce Advocate

- Alex Rikleen Says Democrats Can’t Stay Quiet on Trans Rights

- Has Fascism Won? Connolly, Polanski and Labour Dissidents Tell Us No.

OCT 31, 2025, 6:00 AM EDT | ALYSSA STEINSIEK | SOURCE

TWIBS: Elon Musk Unveils AI Wiki, Grokipedia, and Everybody Hates It

Claiming Wikipedia is full of propaganda, Elon Musk has released his own online encyclopedia powered by Grok, the Twitter AI. Unfortunately, like everything made using AI, it’s a huge steaming pile of hot garbage.

Humor by Aly Gibbs

This, my friends, is a banner day. Don’t get me wrong, we’re talking about something absolutely repulsive, truly despicable, totally disgusting… but it’s one of my favorite things to rant and rave about, and that means this takedown was a joy to write, because it came from the heart.

If you don’t happen to follow me on Bluesky, you may not know that I absolutely despise generative AI. I firmly believe it is evidence of the decay at the heart of man, and an amoral offense to the enduring human spirit. I think that one of the Great Filters is probably generative AI clogging up everyday life until society collapses. More than ever, I identify with Frank Herbert’s fictional Butlerian Jihad, and want nothing more than to wage literal warfare against Silicon Valley. I am terrified for the future of the human race as we advance into a cultural space so post-truth that we can no longer discern fact from fiction in any capacity, and believe that both the inventors and promulgators of this technology are so morally bankrupt, soulless and evil that they do not qualify as human beings anymore.

So like, I’m pretty against AI, you could say!

Now, the unholy trinity of darkness has ascended from the depths of hell to tear my mind asunder: Elon Musk, AI, and transphobia have joined forces to create the most repugnant and revolting stack of hallucinated lies you’ve ever laid eyes on.

On Monday, Musk (owner of X, stealer of ideas, ruiner of dreams) announced the launch of Grokipedia, an AI-generated alternative to Wikipedia. Yes, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit has been copied and transformed into the online house of horrors nobody can understand, and the world writ large is worse for it.

Musk describes Grokipedia as a repository of “truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” but WIRED reports that the website pushes a lot of far-right viewpoints in articles that are otherwise mostly copy-and-pasted from Wikipedia. They mention absolutely unhinged lies like pornography worsening the AIDS epidemic and promotion of pseudoscientific ideas like Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria.

A search for the word “transgender” on Grokipedia’s barebones UI yields 9,853 results, apparently, but I’m definitely not coming through all 822 pages of nonsense. Instead, we’ll talk about the article that’s just titled “transgender,” which starts out by describing men and women as… producers of small gametes and large gametes respectively! Oh, no, it’s JK Rowling’s favorite braindead definition of biological dimorphism!

Unsurprisingly, Grokipedia considers a Fox News article worthy of citing when stating that the number of people identifying as trans has gone down recently. Of course, the article itself cites a study that has been repeatedly debunked and, in fact, shows the opposite of what rags like Fox want you to believe.

The article goes on to describe gender as “socially constructed roles, behaviors, expressions, and identities typically associated with biological sex, varying across cultures and time but often aligning with sexual dimorphism,” which is only really true if you pretend that gender non-conforming and intersex people have never existed. Suffice it to say, the word “typically” is doing a lot of heavy lifting, here.

Under a subhead titled “Theories of Causation,” Grokipedia declares that “psychological explanations” for the existence of transgender people “posit that gender dysphoria often emerges from underlying mental health dynamics rather than an innate, immutable mismatch between biological sex and identity.” It’s difficult to get a firm grasp on just how incorrect this is; the American Psychological Association says that “biological factors such as genetic influences and prenatal hormone levels, early experiences, and experiences later in adolescence or adulthood” may contribute to transgender identity, but openly admits that the diversity of trans expression and experiences makes any singular, straightforward explanation of our existence unlikely.

Most egregious, however, is every single thing written under the section titled “Controversies and Debates.” It’s such an unbelievable load of disinformation that I can’t properly encapsulate it here, now. I’m talking about misquoted studies, debunked articles, and outright lies, many of which are repeated verbatim more than once. The article here describes trans women as apex predators and full throttle perverts, without a shred of evidence to suggest these accusations are even based in this reality.

This article is, frankly, the poster child for every single thing I despise about generative AI. The hallucinations, the inherent bias, the theft of other people’s work—in this case, their shoddy work—to create a long-winded miasma of bullshit that can be used by your average undereducated bigot to argue for their narrow-minded beliefs. It speaks to the inability of your average person to do basic research or apply rudimentary critical thinking skills, and honestly, it just makes me sick to my damn stomach.

Musk claims that Wikipedia is full of propaganda, and that Grokipedia is meant to counter that. Where Wikipedia has a lot of strict rules about what makes it into an article (particularly when it comes to citing reliable sources), Grokipedia just steals Wiki articles and tacks on a bunch of made up nonsense with a bias towards Elon Musk’s rage fantasies about trans people.

I’m afraid we can only pray that the cost of these kinds of ventures, with absolutely no financial returns, will drive this entire experiment in douchery to its knees and behead it. Fingers crossed!

Aly Gibbs (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/twibs-musk-grokipedia-lame at Oct 31, 2025, 7:21 PM EDT.

OCT 29, 2025, 6:00 AM EDT | ALYSSA STEINSIEK | SOURCE

Transgender Student-Athlete Lia Smith Remembered as a Friend and Fierce Advocate

Lia Smith, a 21-year-old trans student-athlete in Vermont, took her own life last week. Her friends, family and community mourn, and remember her as a bright young woman who spoke on behalf of her community.

by Aly Gibbs

Last Thursday in Vermont, the search for missing Middlebury college student Lia Smith came to a tragic end when her body was discovered by Vermont State Police. The search began when Lia’s father reported her missing on the 19th, and was conducted by Vermont and New York State Police and the FBI, as well as volunteers from Middlebury college. On Friday, Lia’s identity was confirmed and the cause of death was ruled to be a suicide by the Vermont Chief Medical Examiner’s Office. She was just 21 years old.

An announcement about Lia’s death by Middlebury president Iam Baucom paints a vivid picture of what a special young woman she was: “She was a diver on our Women’s Swimming and Diving team, a member of our Chess and Japanese clubs, and an articulate advocate of transgender rights,” Baucom wrote. “Her academic interests were broad, and she was pursuing a double major in computer science and statistics. She was a gift to us and we are so grateful that she was–and will always remain–a member of our Middlebury family.”

Coverage by Ari Drennan includes a link to a memorial page set up by Lia’s family, which provides a more personal reflection on Lia’s character: “Lia was fascinated by the histories of China, Japan and Medieval Europe, and she enjoyed eating fine or ethnic foods such as lobster, sushi, and poke. She enjoyed anime, adored her cat, Edgar, loved playing Bridge and complex board games, and delighted in just hanging out with her girlfriends. Lia will be remembered for her deep sense of empathy, her clever puns, her keen mind, particularly with respect to analytical matters, her robust and infectious laugh, her love of poetry and music, which she performed both as an accomplished pianist and trombonist, and perhaps most importantly, her undaunted courage.”

In February of this year, Middlebury hosted two virulent transphobes, Leo Sapir and Brianna Wu, for a “discussion” about transgender healthcare. In response, student group Queers & Allies organized an on campus counter-panel titled “Trans Healthcare is NOT a Debate,” which featured Lia as a speaker.

Lia Smith was a student-athlete, like Baucom said, but she wasn’t allowed to participate at all this year because of an incredibly hostile government and the cowardice of organizations like the NCAA. Two years ago, Lia was a talented young swimmer at Middlebury; now, her name is almost entirely absent from the college’s athletics website, and her roster profile has been removed entirely.

Lia previously spoke to the difficulties of competing as a trans athlete: “It can be hard. Especially because you have to get your hormones checked if you’re competing about, I’d say, once every three months and my healthcare’s at home [in California], so it can be really hard getting all of those blood tests in between breaks and then submitting them on time. I remember one time my testosterone blocker was rejected and seen as a steroid enhancement by the NCAA, so I actually couldn’t compete for points at my first meet my freshman year.”

She also spoke about the difficulties she faced with public perception as a result of the vitriol surrounding the topic of trans athletes.

“It’s really hard putting on the suit every day if you are obviously an outlier. It’s also really hard going in a locker room where you’re not welcome, and there’s really not a clear space that I should be going to,” she said at a panel in February. “We’re not trying to get into women’s spaces to be perverts. We’re just being ourselves. We don’t mean any harm to anyone.”

When I started my transition in the late 2010s, I had hope for a world where young trans people could simply receive the healthcare they needed to be happy and thrive. I don’t know that any of us could have imagined the conversation surrounding transgender people’s right to exist freely in this world would take such an ugly, vicious turn. I can’t imagine what it’s like to grow up in an environment where your very humanity is a topic of debate for soulless, grifting cretins whose primary concern is whether or not they can earn a few bucks off the back of your misery.

My heart shatters into a million pieces every single time we lose a beautiful member of our community. Now more than ever, we have to provide support for each other. In the face of this unbridled hatred, we have to set aside our differences and love one another fiercely.

If you’re a young trans person struggling with the weight of the world today, please remember that you matter to so many, are loved by so many, that your absence would be felt around the world. We’re all in this fight together, and I firmly believe a world that accepts and cherishes us is on the horizon.

Aly Gibbs (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/transgender-student-athlete-lia-smith-remembered at Oct 31, 2025, 7:21 PM EDT.

OCT 28, 2025, 11:56 AM EDT | ASSIGNED | SOURCE

Alex Rikleen Says Democrats Can’t Stay Quiet on Trans Rights

Rikleen spoke to Assigned Media about his candidacy challenging Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey in 2026.

Senatorial candidate Alex Rikleen, from his campaign website

by Evan Urquhart

Earlier this month, anti-trans Democrat Seth Moulton announced his intention to challenge Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey in 2026. Markey is known as a progressive stalwart and a supporter of trans rights who recently spoke at the Boston No Kings rally with a trans pride flag draped over his shoulders.

But has Markey done enough to turn his longstanding support for trans rights into actions protecting a vulnerable community under siege? Another primary challenger, Alex Rikleen of Acton, says he has not. Rikleen says the lackluster response by Democrats, including Markey, to the Trump administration’s attacks on transgender Americans are among the reasons he entered the race. He spoke with Assigned Media via video call Tuesday morning, October 28, and his remarks have been lightly edited and condensed.

Assigned Media: Thank you for speaking with me. Can you start by telling me why you’re running for senate?

Alex Rikleen: I’m running for senate because I think that Democrats in Washington are playing it safe. As a former history teacher, I know that when opposition parties play it safe, I think that that’s how you lose a democracy.

I think their strategy is primarily to wait and hope that we win more seats in 2026 or 2028, or both, and that they’re letting that guide their actions and doing less in the immediate term to push back than they otherwise could, because of that goal. As a result I think that more people are being harmed right now and may continue to be harmed for the next three years.

Historically, I think that when you take an approach like that it doesn’t work as well and a lot of people get hurt along the way.

AM: You’re a newcomer, and the senate is very arcane with all sorts of tricksy procedural rules. Should voters be worried about electing a newcomer to replace someone like Senator Markey, who has a ton of experience with this very strange body?

Rikleen: I don’t think they should be worried about that. Those arcane tricks, as you put it, are exactly why I chose the senate as the seat to run for.

The senate is where Democrats have the most tools at their disposal to push back and obstruct and get in the way of Trump’s harmful agenda, even while they are in the minority. There are a lot of things that just one person can do, and some of those are things that Senator Markey did during Trump’s first term but has not yet done during Trump’s second term. That’s why I chose this race. I’ve studied up on the procedures and rules of the senate and I think in terms of the arcane procedural elements, that’s actually a mark in my favor.

AM: So you’re saying that Senator Markey may know these ins and outs, but he’s not using them effectively?

Rikleen: Correct. He’s leaving a lot of them on the table.

AM: Trans people, as I know you know, have been among the biggest targets of the Trump administration. What would you do differently around trans rights compared to national Democrats?

Rikleen: The first thing is that we can’t be afraid to talk about it. Senator Markey, I willingly admit, is better than a lot of his peers on this topic, but that’s just such a low bar. I think he has gone along with the Democratic plan of trying to stay quiet on trans issues since Trump got elected.

Senator Markey was silent when Moulton made his comments in November. Senator Markey was silent on the attempt to strip Medicaid coverage for trans healthcare of all ages during the summer budget fight. He held multiple press conferences specifically about the impact of Medicaid cuts and he didn’t even mention trans people in his long list. They didn’t even merit a comma. He hasn’t said anything about the recent decision of Fenway Health to stop covering trans care [for those under 19]. As far as I can tell he was silent when the Trump administration was trying to subpoena medical records of trans people.

These are important issues and I think that they are issues that trans people I’ve talked to say are scaring them, and step one is not retreating. We have to signal that we are going to defend everyone. When we try to pick our spots it doesn’t just send a scary message to the trans community, it sends a scary message to every community that we can’t be relied upon.

Senator Markey talks about how he proposed the Trans Bill of Rights in the last congress. The most basic thing in congress is, once you’ve proposed a bill, you refile that bill every term. Why hasn’t he refiled that bill this term? We have to continue to be fighting for everyone, especially and including the people who are most directly attacked.

AM: I hear that. But, you know, Representative Moulton changed the race a bit by getting into it. He’s made national news, as we both know, with these centrist coded attacks on the trans community. What would you say to voters who are worried about the risks of splitting the trans supportive vote in the race for senate?

Rikleen: First of all, the election is a long time from now. If August comes and you want to start thinking about viability, okay, fine, we can have a different conversation. For now, support the candidate you like.

When we get to August, I’m going to make the next argument, which is that Democrats have gotten themselves into a lot of trouble historically by trying to play the pundit instead of voting for the candidates we like. This is one of my longstanding philosophies: Support candidates you like. If you like me, vote for me. If you like Senator Markey, vote for Senator Markey. If you like Representative Moulton, vote for Representative Moulton.

We end up with worse candidates when we try to play the pundit. We would all be better served if we just vote for the person we like.

AM: One of the biggest issues of your candidacy is court reform. It’s a very important issue to trans people, especially in light of the Skrmetti decision stripping healthcare rights from trans youth, and there have been other quite bad decisions in the Supreme Court as well. Tell me a bit about your plans for addressing the Supreme Court.

Rikleen: There’s a crisis in the Supreme Court right now. Now, there are a number of reforms that I would like to see that would over time improve the quality of the Supreme Court. I would love to see term limits and an every-other-year appointment schedule. I would love to see an enforceable code of ethics. Those are changes that, over the long term, would set us up for a much better, fairer court that is more representative of the population and our expressed preferences.

However, neither of those will solve the current crisis, which is that we have a captured court. The Supreme Court majority is no longer making decisions based on law or precedent but based on their ideological preferences. We now have multiple judges writing that in their decisions. This is so unprecedented to have such an extreme outcry saying this is a crisis in the courts.

And the only way you are going to solve that is by addressing who is on the [Supreme] Court right now, and that means expanding the court. We have to do it. We have to expand the court. Any Democrat who is unwilling to expand the court is saying that they are willing to punt on every other priority that they have. You cannot have one without the other.

AM: Is there anything more you’d like to say to our audience?

Rikleen: The focus of my campaign is How do we push back against Trump? And that is where I think Democrats are failing. But there’s also a personal decisionmaking process, and what motivated me, Alex, to take this leap was what I saw as Democratic capitulation on trans issues.

It was one of the key motives for me to do this. As a historian and a Jew, I grew up with the poem first and foremost, and the poem begins with communists, but a more accurate version of the poem would have communists and trans people in the same first line.

I saw this administration on step one of the poem. My upbringing literally had posters in every room saying, if you see this, ACT. So it was the attacks on trans people in particular and Democrats failure to respond to that that was a major motivation for me to say, yep, okay, I will do this.

Evan Urquhart is the founder of Assigned Media.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/alex-rikleen-senator-candidate-markey-moulton at Oct 31, 2025, 7:21 PM EDT.

OCT 27, 2025, 7:22 AM EDT | ASSIGNED | SOURCE

Has Fascism Won? Connolly, Polanski and Labour Dissidents Tell Us No.

Leading Off: A landslide victory for Ireland’s leftist presidential candidate, the Greens’ dramatic gains in the U.K., and pushback to Starmer’s repressive policies put the lie to big media myths that human rights are a lost cause.

by Valorie Van-Dieman

Big media in the U.K. and the U.S have worked hard not only to back fascism and the oppression of queer people and other minority groups, but to paint the rise of right-wing radicalism as inevitable.

But is that true? New developments in Europe and the U.K. say quite strongly that it is not.

Left-wing candidate Catherine Connolly won the presidency in Ireland in a landslide this weekend, dominating the polls with 63 percent of the vote, the highest proportion in Ireland’s electoral history. Connolly ran on a platform of progressive politics, focusing on social justice and bodily autonomy.

The queer-focused news website GCN called her LGBTQ+ credentials strong. “Connolly supported Marriage Equality and Repeal, and she consistently frames her politics around dignity, autonomy, and care.” Her strong convictions in favor of bodily autonomy suggest that she will be an ally in office, a welcome sight as corporate media and self-interested politicians tack ever rightward.

The president of Ireland is a largely ceremonial position on paper, without executive power, but for decades it has been highly influential nonetheless, and the election stands as a bellwether of public opinion in Ireland.

“I believe the president should be a unifying presence—a steady hand, yes, but also a spark,” Connolly said earlier this fall. “A reminder of what is possible. A moral compass in a world increasingly driven by profit and spectacle.”

In the U.K., Zack Polanski continues to make waves as the new leader of the Green Party. Since he took the party’s reins in September, the Greens have seen a dramatic increase in popularity, thanks to unabashedly left-wing positions and social media savvy that have drawn comparisons to New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.

Polanski, like Mamdani, has been outspoken in support of transgender people. After the U.K. Supreme Court ruling strictly defining gender as sex assigned at birth, he said, “We must stand resolute, determined in this moment and support our trans siblings unconditionally.” He has also been a harsh critic of rising fascism, especially the hate-inspired positions promoted by the right-winger Nigel Farage and his Reform Party.

The Greens’ membership has more than doubled in recent months and one poll put their popularity at nearly the same level as the governing Labour Party. “To call that a political phenomenon is not hyperbole,” Guardian columnist Owen Jones wrote.

Unease and dissent have grown within the Labour Party over the government’s efforts to codify vast anti-trans discrimination. Nearly 50 rank-and-file Labour MPs wrote a letter late last week in opposition to coming regulations that are expected to try to further entrench government bigotry. The MPs denounced the discriminatory rules as a nightmarish maze of governmental oppression that would push trans people out of public life and dump the burden of enforcing discrimination on businesses and everyday members of the public.

The MPs noted the undue discomfort that business employees would have in being the ones responsible for policing gender, as well as the inherent impossibilities in reliably applying government bias based on a person’s appearance.

Labour’s obsessive pursuit of bigotry under its leader Keir Starmer is costing it dearly in public opinion. A recent YouGov poll showed a dramatic increase in distrust of the party, with 62 percent of U.K. respondents saying they do not trust Labour at all. Just 15 percent said they found Starmer’s party “trustworthy.” Distrust of Labour is close to hitting bottom among the trans community, the GoodLaw Project reported, hitting 91 percent among trans respondents.

Assigned Media is one hundred percent supported by our readers. Become a member today and get a members-only essay by founder Evan Urquhart every Thursday.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/leading-off-connolly-ireland-polanski-uk-green-labour at Oct 31, 2025, 7:21 PM EDT.

Table of Contents

Assigned Media: 2025 Oct 31

All articles

TWIBS: Elon Musk Unveils AI Wiki, Grokipedia, and Everybody Hates It

Transgender Student-Athlete Lia Smith Remembered as a Friend and Fierce Advocate

Alex Rikleen Says Democrats Can’t Stay Quiet on Trans Rights

Has Fascism Won? Connolly, Polanski and Labour Dissidents Tell Us No.