The Rule of Lawless, Notion of Immigrants Dept. 0
According to an article in The Hill, the Squeaker of the House thinks that Congress can find some way to amend the Constitution all on its ownsome in the face of the Supreme Supremacist Court’s ruling that Donald Trump does not have the power to amend it himself.
The Squeaker points to the scourge of “birth tourism,” which, according to figures in the article, amounts to approximately 0.7% of babies born in the U. S. every year–this from the same people who are claiming that too few babies are born in the U. S. every year.
Left unsaid is what’s truly behind the Republican panic propaganda about this issue. Left unsaid is their actual selling point:
- Far too many these babies may be (gasp!) Not White.
They’re selling hate, and they have far too many eager buyers.
Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0
Capable of critical thought? Zeynep Tufekci argues that (emphasis added)
Large language models are not reasoning machines. They’re plausibility engines. They can only assess which answers are probable, based on the data on which the models have been trained.
Follow the link for his arguements.
And, in more news of AI . . . .
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Yet another “responsible gun owner” performs a random act of politeness.
Guns and stupid, guns and stupid.
They go together like love and Cupid.
Let me tell you brother,
You can’t have one without the other.
Republican Thought Police 0
Now they are coming after the Smithsonian.
A Divider, Not a Uniter, Reprise 0
Steve M. points out that both sides don’t. A snippet; follow the link for the rest.
And I think we can thank Newt Gingrich for embracing this strategy and making it the Republican modus operandi over three decades ago.
The Historical Scholar 0
PoliticalProf marvels at Donald Trump’s grasp of the past.
An Accidental Truth-Teller 0
See mouth. Insert foot.
Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0
The Dot-Com Bubble v 2.0? El Reg reports that
“These actions do not signal reduced confidence in AI. Rather, they suggest a growing willingness to evaluate where AI creates meaningful value and where it does not. Organizations appear increasingly focused on concentrating investment where expected returns are strongest,” the report said.
Much more at the link.
The Me Veneration 0
The Rude One looks at Donald Trump’s conduct and concludes
Follow the link for his reasoning.
This New Gilded Age 0
Are we possibly seeing the return of the sweatshop?
A Tune for the Times 0
For some reason, I woke up thinking of this tune this morning.
The Voter Fraud Fraudsters 0
Steve M. decodes de code.
Independence Day 0
When I was in elementary school studying Virginia history (mumble) years agom in third grade, 1619 was taught as the “Red Letter Year” because of three events:
- The arrival of the first English women to the Virginia colony.
- The first sitting of the House of Burgesses, the Virginia colony’s legislature.
- The first arrival of Africans to be sold as slaves (at a spot not far from where I type this).
The legacy of the last item on that list continues to exact its toll, as the stain of America’s original sin of chattel slavery and the myth of racial superiority fabricated to justify it continue to pollute our polity.
One of my local broadcast stations has compiled a report which I think is worthy of attention, for it addresses events that many want to pretend didn’t happen.
You can ignore history or you can lie about it–many do every day–but you can’t make it unhappen, you can’t make it go away.
Carnage Nation 0
Rebecca Watson discusses a recent report showing that the increasing size of cars and trucks, particularly the height of their front ends, in contributing to increase accidents and pedestrian deaths.
Or you can read the transcript.