July, 2023 archive
When the Words Come Back To Haunt . . . . 0
. . . so that Marjorie Taylor Greene is hoist on her own petard.
Sporadic Bloggery 0
Out-of-town visitors.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Our society of stupid meets “social” media, and another child is sacrificed on the altar of America’s fascination with instruments of leaden death.
And, one more time, “accidentally” and “negligently” are not synonyms.
Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0
Last night we watched a movie we had DVRed*. As a matter of course, we keep closed captioning turned on.
I have become convinced that many studios use AI tools to create closed captions these days. I offer as evidence this line from the said movie (I’m doing this from memory, so I may not have it exactly word-for-word):
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
The Arizona Republic’s E. J. Montini reports on the outpouring of racism and bigotry at the latest Turning Point Action conference. Montini found the events to be–er–somewhat dismaying.
Here’s a bit from his article:
Kirk and his organization flourished during the Trump administration and have become major players in Republican politics, holding events like the one in Florida and supporting political candidates.
Republican politicians are afraid to ignore Kirk, now, and even more afraid to criticize him.
Or perhaps — and this would be worse — the majority of Republicans simply agree with him, and what he says, and what he espouses.
This New Gilded Age 0
Sam and his crew discuss Fran Drescher’s comments on the Hollywood strikes.
Precedented 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Patrick L. Plaisance sounds a cautionary note about chatbots and other AI tools, urging us to not make the same mistake again. A snippet:
Notwithstanding all the benefits of social media connectedness, our failure to seriously address its harms, coupled with the conceited, unrestrained culture of Silicon Valley, has arguably left us diminished in many important ways. The dark side of our digital platforms has contributed to economic disparity (Heuer, 2015), political tribalism (Bail et al., 2018), eroded concentration levels (e.g., Zhao et al., 2021), data exploitation, cyber-bullying—the list goes on.
In the light of the strikes by the screenwriters guild and SAG-AFTRA, as well as suits for copyright infringement, this is a particularly timely piece and well worth the few minutes it will take to read it.
Misdirection Play, Oxymorons for Morons Dept. 0
“No Labels” (capitalized and marketed as a brand, no less) is a label, for Pete’s sake.
Blame Gamers 0
At the Kansas City Star, Jessica Piper cautions that, if you’re going to point the finger of blame, you should point it in the right direction.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Another case of familial politeness.
A Tune for the Times 0
(Typo undone.)
Twits Own Twitter 0
In a related vein, Paul Krugman wonders why tech bros seem somewhat prone to buying into conspiracy theories. A snippet:
Image via C&L.
“The Slow Civil War” 0
Sam and Emma talk with Dartmouth Professor Jeff Sharlet about the “current fascist moment” and some of the factors contributing to i.
