From Pine View Farm

Culture Warriors category archive

Get Me Rewrite! 0

The Trump maladministration has rewritten Lady Liberty’s poem.

It now reads

    “Give me your tired, your poor,
    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
    Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
    And I will charge them a fee.”
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“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0

At the Austin Statesman, Hannah Strong hears a rhyme echoing across the sea from eight decades ago. She refers to the movie The Zone of Interest, which IMDB describes as

Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden beside the camp.

and asks

Are we doing this right now? Are we living our safe lives as our friends and neighbors are being snatched up and sent to detention centers?

I commend her article to your attention.

____________

*Mark Twain.

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Republican Family Values . . . 0

. . . have never been anything other than a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal signifying not much of anything but a talking point.

For example.

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Republican Thought Police 0

El Reg reports that the Republican thought police are now trying to ban “woke” AI*. Here are a couple of snippets (emphasis added); follow the link to put them in context.

In an email, Joshua McKenty, former chief cloud architect at NASA and the co-founder and CEO of Polyguard, an identity verification firm, told The Register, “No LLM knows what truth is – at best, they can be trained to favor consistency, where claims that match the existing model are accepted, and claims that differ from the existing model are rejected. This is not unlike how people determine truthiness anyway – ‘if it matches what I already believe, then it must be true.'”

(snip)

“In the LLM world, attempts to ‘un-wokeify’ LLMs have literally produced an AI that named itself MechaHitler,” he said. “This isn’t just a problem in how LLMs are constructed – it’s actually a problem in how humans have constructed ‘truth’ and ideology, and it’s not one that AI is going to fix.”

_________________________

*That is, AI that doesn’t reflect and perpetuate their racism, bigotry, and prejudices.

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“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0

Two ICE agents apprehending a mother and child.  One says,

Click to view the original image and the artist’s comments.

________________–

*Mark Twain.

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

Michael in Norfolk is not sanguine. A snippet; follow the link for the rest.

. . . most Republicans seem totally fine with the destruction of civil rights and an agenda to take America back to a mix of the Gilded Age and the 1950’s.

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All That Was Old Is New Again 0

Caption:  Ana Frank.  Image:  Hispanic girl sitting in attic writing in a diary.

Image via Job’s Anger.

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The Name Game, Reprise 0

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The Republican Thought Police Are on Patrol . . . 0

. . . and taking historical fact into custody.

After all, why tell truthful history when you can pretend that your country never did those things that it did?

Today’s Republican Party is a vile and loathsome thing.

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The Name Game 0

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Suffer the Children 0

As we know, that’s not scripture. That’s a Republican family value.

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Republican Thought Police 0

Sam talks with Elie Mystal about a recent ruling by the Supreme Supremacist Court.

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A Notion of Immigrants 0

Sam and the crew justifiably deride Tom Homan’s lamer attempts to justify ICE’s violations of the law, due process, and the Constitution.

(Warning: The last minute or so devolves into Sam stupidly making fun of Tom Homan’s speaking patterns. It’s so stupid I considered not using the video. Nevertheless, I think the larger point about the sophistries, misrepresentations, and lies used by the Trump maladministration to justify putting persons in concentration camps for being brown outweigh the stupid, so instead I’ll suggest that you hit stop when that silliness starts and forgive Sam for his lapse of judgment.)

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A Notion of Immigrants 0

Man and child watch Superman flying through the sky.  Child asks,

Click to view the original image.

Afterthought:

It’s amazing and appalling that the racism of the Trump maladministration’s crackdown on rendition of immigrants to concentration camps is not getting the notice it deserves.

As David Ferguson points out on the Bob Cesca Show, they’re targeting anyoone whose skin is darker than a brown paper bag.

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“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but If Often Rhymes”* 0

AL.com’s J. D. Crowe visualizes a rhyme.

ICE agent casting a shadow of a KKKlansman.

Click for the original image.

________________

*Mark Twain.

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Devolution 0

Frame One, captioned

Click for the original image.

Dwight Eisenhower was president when I was a young ‘un. He was good and decent man.

Were he alive today, he would appalled, embarrassed beyond recognition even, to learn that his Republican Party has become the party of the Secesh.

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Twits on Twitter X Offenders 0

Someone told him how to get to Sesame Street:

“Elmo’s X account was briefly compromised yesterday by an unknown hacker who posted disgusting messages, including antisemitic and racist posts. The account has since been secured,” a spokesperson for Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, said in a statement to ABC News on Monday.

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When the Past as Prologue 0

The Know Nothings are back, and now they’re in charge.

__________________

*Mark Twain.

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Precedented 0

Frame One:  Picture of Hessian soldiers arresting colonial family captioned

Via Job’s Anger.

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Masked Marauders 0

Grung_e_Gene rips off the mask, and what he sees ain’t pretty.

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