From Pine View Farm

The Chaos Agent 0

In a letter to the editor of the Las Vegas Sun, Dr. Richard A. French expresses some concerns about the effect that the Trump maladministration is having on the nation and the polity.

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QOTD 0

Missy Gold, in the voice of Katherine ‘Katie’ Olivia Gatling, and Robert Guillaume, in the voice of Benson DuBois:

Katie: You know, it’s not easy being a concerned citizen.

Benson: That’s why there are so few of them.

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A Tune for the Times 0

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Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0

An unwitting and willing tool for bad actors? You can bet your sweet bippy, per security maven Bruce Schneier, who argues that, in the rush to deploy AI, far too little attention is being given to security.

At the link, he details one such vulnerability in Notion v. 3, pointing out that

(t)he fundamental problem is that the LLM can’t differentiate between authorized commands and untrusted data. So when it encounters that malicious pdf (containing the commands–ed.), it just executes the embedded commands.

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Republican Family Values 0

Title:  Rage at the Ragged.  Frame One, captioned

Via Job’s Anger.

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Twits on Twitter X Offenders 0

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Republican Thought Police 0

In the course of a longer article about recent events at Texas A&M University, Mary Ellen Klas summarizes the tactics of the Republican thought police (emphasis added):

Texas, like Florida before it, has steadily adopted an authoritarian approach to higher education. The goal is to target a marginalized group or racial minority whose ideas the Republicans in power find undesirable and use them as a cudgel to justify bringing state universities more firmly under governmental control. In the last year, the Lone Star State began enforcing a patchwork of policies aimed at purging diversity, equity and inclusion programs at state universities. It abolished independent faculty senates with faculty councils controlled by the governor’s appointees. And it banned a vague array of “expressive activity” and demonstrations on campuses.

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A Legend in His Own Mind 0

Brahma Chellaney takes a look at Donald Trump’s claim that he has ended seven wars and reminds us that

Trump’s claim to have ended seven “unendable” wars is best understood as a case study in self-delusion. Branding is not leadership. Real peace depends on leaders who know the difference. But in Trump’s world, peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of applause.

I commend the entire article to your attention.

And, while we’re on the subject of leadership . . . .

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Yet another oxymoronic “responsible gun owner” performs a random act of politeness.

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QOTD 0

Harlan Ellison:

You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.

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And Now for a Musical Interlude 0

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If Past Were Precedent 0

Title:  If Former Presidents were Trump-like.  Image One:  Abraham Lincoln says,

Click to view the original image.

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Occupation Nation, Reprise 0

Sam and the crew discuss the tactics of the occupiers. (Warning: There’s language in some of the video clips that they show.)

Afterthought:

Late in his life, my father said to me, “I’m glad those days are over.”

He was referring to the days of racism and segregation during which he and later I as Southern boys were raised.

But they’re not over. They may have been in abeyance for a while, but they are most certainly back with crosses burning.

America’s original sin of chattel slavery and the racist mythology created to rationalize it continue to exact their toll.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

As we all know, politeness takes practice.

Musical NotesGuns 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.

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The Enemies List 0

Grung_e_Gene decodes de code.

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Occupation Nation 0

At the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Daniel Oppenheimer offers some thoughts as to how to respond if when Donald Trump orders the National Guard to invade your city.

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Facebook Frolics 0

Immoderate moderation

One more time, “social” media isn’t.

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QOTD 0

H. G. Wells:

History is a race between education and catastrophe.

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A Tune for the Times 0

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

Trudy Rubin hears a rhyme in Donald Trump’s efforts to silence his critics. A snippet:

Trump is following a pattern clearly marked out by the Kremlin — and perhaps even more relevantly by Turkey, where journalists and academics are prosecuted for “insulting the president” — and by Hungary, led by Trump pal Viktor Orbán.

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*Mark Twain.

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