March, 2023 archive
The Disinformation Superhighway 0
Snopes debunks nine deepfake photos (purporting to be) of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The Oathkeeper 0
The Crypto Conundrum 0
If it’s not real in the first place, can you be penalized for stealing it?
The Lake Effect 0
The Arizona Republic’s E. J. Montini thinks that failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate, Kari Lake, may have finally jumped the shark.
Recommended Viewing 0
If you have Netflix, check out the Murdaugh Murders.
It’s an excellent and moving documentary. There is no narrator; it’s told through the voices of those who were there compiled from interviews and live footage.
It’s also timely. The verdict just came down.
Vaccine Nation, Boebert Is the New Gohmert Dept. 0
Also, Farron makes an excellent point about the “lab leak” theory that has been bruited about for the past week or so.
Foxy Shady, Reprise 0
Froma Harrop argues that the most distressing thing about Fox News’s willingness to abet Donald Trump’s big lie is that it’s all about the Benjamins.
The Seditionist Caucus 0
Thom argues that racism is and has long been a misdirection play.
And methinks he argues his point well.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Yet another random act of politeness:
(snip)
Police say the 3-year-old suffered a graze gunshot wound.
Who could have predicted that “responsible gun ownership” would lead to something like this happening over and over again almost every day?
(Well, pretty much anyone who wasn’t blinded by his or her fetish for portable phalluses . . . .)
(Slightly edited for clarity.)
Foxy Shady 0
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Gene Collier dissects the double-talk.
Republican Family Values . . . 0
. . . are a most malleable thing.
One Coin, Two Sides? 0
In a thoughtful article which I saw at The Roanoke Times, Richard Kyte muses on the implications of ChatGPT and its clones. Suffice to say, he has a few questions.
A snippet:
Imagine all the things that implies, all the ways in which human beings put words and images together. And then imagine that much of that is done by some kind of entity that has no self-awareness, no personhood, but is capable of precisely imitating the full range of expressive activites that, up to this point in world’s existence, have been the exclusvie province of human being.
While on the topic, methinks this article from Psychology Today Blogs on deepfakes (in this case, deepfake porn) is also relevant. AI and deepfakes seems to me two sides of the same coin.
The Graham Cracker Has a Notion of Immigrants 0
Republicans play the race card because it’s the only card they have left. Otherwise, they got nothing other than their fealty to the robber barons of our New Gilded Age.
The Republican Party of my youth–the party that could include persons of integrity, such as Dwight Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, and Everett Dirksen–no longer exists.
Richard Nixon’s racist Southern Strategy is all that remains of it.