2023 archive
Spoiling the System 0
Lindsay M. Chervinsky looks at Donald Trump’s plans to effectively destroy the civil service and replace career civil servants with his dupes, symps, and fellow travelers.
Much more at the link.
Indoctrination Nation 0
Peter Smagorinsky, emeritus professor at the University of Georgia, points out that not only can it happen here, it is happening here. Here’s just one of the examples he cites:
Chaos Agents, One More Time 0
Michael in Norfolk points out that both sides don’t.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Thom points out that Republicans’ efforts to gut out the vote are rooted in racism.
I’m a Southern Boy. I grew up under Jim Crow and went to segregated schools.
I was there when the first few black students (one the first year, eleven the next year) integrated my formally all-white high school. I was there when I found out that they were people just like me. I was there when one of my white (natch) teachers was horrified that my local paper had switched my name with that of one of my black classmates in a picture of the track team. (As an aside, I didn’t care a bit because he was a good guy. Plus I wasn’t very good at track, though track was good for me, but I was a great scorekeeper.)
I know racism when I see it.
Richard Nixon’s southern strategy has come full circle.
Today’s Republican Party is the party or racism.
It has no ideas.
Racism is all it’s got.
The Endless Loop 0
At the Colorado Sun, Mike Littwin tries to make some sense out what’s going on. His article is worth your while.
(Syntax error fixed. In case you are interested, I included an arrow —> in the alt text and the > broke the image embed.)
Facebook Frolics, No News Is No News Dept. 0
Bloomberg tech columnist Dave Lee explains why the Zuckerborg is turning its algorithms away from promoting news content. A snippet:
(snip)
So now Meta has decided it’s had enough. It’s not that news isn’t allowed — Canada excluded — but that Meta doesn’t feel it’s in its interests to support news organizations the way it once did.
Read the whole thing. It reinforces the obvious: “social” media isn’t.
Afterthought:
Indeed, I think an argument can be made that “social” media in the hands of companies motivated primarily, if not exclusively, by their bottom lines is anti-social media, as it is inclined to give persons what they want to hear, not what they need to hear.
QOTD 0
Susan Hampshire, in the voice of Molly MacDonald:
We all harbor dark thoughts. The secret is to know them for what they are.
Aside:
If you can find Monarh of the Glen on a streaming service, watch it.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
The New Secesh deploy duplicitous doubletalk to defeat desegregation.
Righting the wrongs of the past is in their eyes a wrong.
A Notion of Immigrants 0
Clarence Page sees an uncomfortable parallel. A tiny bit from his article:
Yes, also new in this campaign, Trump’s attack invokes a theme from Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto, “Mein Kampf,” in which the Nazi Party leader railed about what he called the impurity of immigrants, Jews and interracial couples.
Republican Thought Police 0
Afterthought:
Many years ago, when I was a young ‘un just a couple of years into my first real job (as opposed to summer jobs), my then girl friend and I had occasion to visit an apartment occupied by two young men.
I remember that she was rather taken aback when she saw that there was only one bed in the apartment.
But, really, they were just being who they were, and they were harming nobody.
Who does it harm to just let let persons be who they are in the privacy of their own homes?
As an aside, I can attest that no marriage of mine has ever been harmed by anything that happened in a same sex bedroom.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
I have a word of advice for oxymoronic “responsible gun owners”:
Don’t play with your portable phallus.
The Role Model 0
At the Idaho State Journal, Larry Gebhart reviews a list of “Trump-like behaviors” compiled by Bob Gandossy, Senior Fellow at The Conference Board and asks why anyone would want his or her children to emulate those behaviors.
One of the behaviors in the list particularly caught my eye, because, despite Trump’s documented behavior, he seems to have pulled this one off, at least in the eyes his dupes, symps, and fellow travelers:
Use religion as a prop, a shield to appear on the right side of things.
See the rest of the list at the link.
Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0
The Learning and Implicit Processes Lab at Ghent University takes a look at the current state of ChatGPT (and Large Language Models in general) and concludes (emphasis added):
It was not designed to be generally intelligent (i.e., capable of flexibly adapting to novel situations or problems), and it isn’t. Still, it gives us the illusion of intelligence because it mimics intelligent human language.
Follow the link for their reasoning.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Guns and stupid, guns and stupid,
They go together like love and Cupid.
Let me tell you, brother,
You won’t find one without the other.
Chaos Agents,. Reprise 0
Speaking of chaos agents, Above the Law reports the Fulton County D. A. Fani Willis called one out (emphasis added):
“A charitable explanation of your correspondence is that you are ignorant of the United States and Georgia Constitutions and codes. A more troubling explanation is that you are abusing your authority as Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary to attempt to obstruct and interfere with a Georgia criminal prosecution,” she wrote, adding, “While you may enjoy immunity under the United States Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, that does not make your behavior any less offensive to the rule of law.”
Follow the link for context.