Today’s News — 5/9/2019

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Why did it have to be snakes?

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  AI is independently objective? Not politically biased?  Not a powerful hidden censor? Guess again. This post isn’t about AI. But AI is now part of an increasingly ominous context in which the fate of western civilization is being played as both low comedy and high tragedy. I use an AI app as a satirical tool. It enables you to make still photos of faces say things from a long list of snappy quotes and music clips. A lot of the quotes are themselves satirical, with voices altered from the original speaker or singer, to make them funny in some other mouth. But they don’t like it when you use their little app to make certain sacred cows look stupid or dishonest. Any Every time the name Trump appears in a headline over a photo featuring one of his thousands of enemies, the Revive app is certain to flag your work in process as NSFW, as in not safe for work in the politically correct Progressive media environment. You’re not allowed. If you try to appease by moderating headlines o...
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Things Fall Apart

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Take a minute to look at the opener here. We all know this is pretty much how things are nowadays. Everything chaotic, backwards and upside down, as if some law of nature had been violated. Which it has.  Early in this this century, wishful thinkers believed in a mirage called Hope and Change that turned out to be shallow, insincere, and small-minded. We survived that, sort of, but the ones who felt most betrayed, about 30 percent of the nation, believed they deserved more than the eight years of delusion which had been their sacrifice given in exchange for the real prize. In compensation, they wanted to elect a very bad woman to the Presidency of the United States. They were denied that wrongheaded but deeply felt desire. Since that bitter disappointment they have become obsessed with becoming as mean and hateful and ruthless as it took to wreak their revenge on the man who defeated them and the people who helped him do it. The bad woman led the legions of those smashing everythin...
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The Rest of the Story About the Clancy Trial…?

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    I won’t kid you. I’m exactly where Nancy Mace is on this case. Even Cluck and Buck were better at providing an appropriate legal context for the farce just played out in Massachusetts than the rest of the media. Drug and alcohol intoxication are not legal defenses in murder trials. Combat veterans suffering from documented hallucinogenic episodes of PTSD have also been convicted of murder and given harsh punishments. The PTSD diagnosis does not suffice for an insanity defense. It is sometimes admitted after the verdict as a possible mitigating factor in sentencing. In legal terms sanity is knowing the difference between right and wrong. Lindsey Clancy has no basis for claiming that she forgot it is wrong to murder three helpless children in your care.  The cultural debate has been focused on the supposed uniqueness of female “feelings.” Which men cannot understand. Which is a crock. I understand the why’s wherefore’s of people wanting a Get Out of Jail Free card just ...
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Contradicting Nostradamus

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  Predicted the last three economic meltdowns, from each of which he made a  fortune. He’s been predicting the biggest one yet for a couple of months. There’s reason to take him seriously. He believes the President will invoke the Insurrection before the midterm elections. His argument is at the link. I advise you to watch his initial spiel, but not all of it until you’ve read I have to say. A delay recommended only because his video uses the ‘Infomercial’ tactic of going on and on and on until you’ve invested so much time it feels like commitment. I do not agree that Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act before the midterms but after if and only if he loses his majorities in Congress. Trump is still determined to win despite the many attempts that will be made to steal votes across the nation. That’s who he is. Here’s Rickards’s   pitch . Here’s what I have to say, beginning from his Exhibit A on the Insurrection Act. That doesn’t mean it won’t be opposed tooth and cla...
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Bad Max as a challenging lesson

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  Mad Max as you’re supposed to want her Having finished my Mad Max post yesterday, I realized I had confined my discussion of the ‘Instant Gratification’ problem to the MAGA fainthearts. Their inability to look far enough forward to envision consequences is far less than that of the whole half country full of  Democrat apologists and Trump haters. Shouldn’t I address that fact in some comparable terms to what I just wrote? I guess so. The easy answer is referencing the two recent Mad Max sequels provided to us by Woke Hollywood. But I haven’t seen them. I had no interest in paying to see them in a theater. At one point I did put one of them, Furiosa I think, on my IMDB watch list. I received a notification that it would be briefly available on one of the streaming services and I did tune in to watch. Lost interest about 15 minutes in, by which time the old rules had it a good movie should have you hooked. I was not hooked. It was just the same cinematic backdrop as the Road W...
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TEMU Mary’s in MAGA clothing

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Who’s in charge of building the American ‘woman’ of the future? Everyone knows what TEMU is, right? Even I know what TEMU is, and I don’t have anything to do with TikTok. How can that be? I don’t even associate with the CCP-friendly mass media. But I do know and I’ll explain why. For those a little bit farther behind the curve, this is TEMU: Companies like TEMU are the reason why Trump is taking a harder line against China than every other treacherous trading partner of the United States. The Wall Street media crowd is actively hoping for a recession to cool Trump’s jets on the tariff thing. They can’t afford to lose the enormous subsidy their publications receive from Chinese advertisers. Anything is preferable to losing those big big bucks in a period when the suckers are no longer willing to read libels against themselves by paying to see behind a pay wall. The crisis of the Trump tariff policy (that’s “Trade War” in NYTspeak) is hitting TEMU too.. Oh. Right. The crisis is higher pr...
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Saving the Democrats a lot of time

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  Conflicted identity and media image woes By now we know if you’re a Democrat, getting elected isn’t about who you are, what you’ve done or haven’t done. It’s about how people see you. The factors that can do in a candidate are often more subtle than the pundits of the professional wrestling circuit called the mainstream media. Why we think it’s time to help the world’s most uninformed voters about who to elect as their next nominee for President. We’re not going to get all racist and sexist about it. The decision points we’ve discovered are all based on the individuals involved, not the immaterial fluff like experience or political philosophies. We’ll start right at the top and give you one simple thing to bear in mind before you try to pick a winner for 2028. Kamala Harris Not about the word salads or the escort thing. Too Desperate. Gavin Newsom Too Lyle Waggoner. Times change. Bernie Sanders Too ‘Little Big Man’ AOC Too prematurely passé  Gretchen Whitmer Too Lily-White J...
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Concerning the 250th Anniversary of Our Nation

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Happy Independence Day No. 250!  I’m planning to do my part for the year-long celebration of the still remarkable birth of the United States of America. Just starting to realize that the number of us who remember the last big anniversary in 1976 is getting smaller every day. Why I have some special ideas about focusing on the moment of transition, that is the tick of the clock last night when the 249th year became the 250th. A kind of time capsule that may be buried now but dug up later to see who were way back when you were still as young as you think you are now. My credentials for the job. Quite a few actually, but the most important one today is that I was a working participant in the official Bicentennial celebrations back when I was still young. I wrote a post about it almost 10 years ago, ancient history in today’s 24/7 chronometer dial.  In honor of the ones no longer with us from that time, I dug up the old post from the Wayback Machine and put it back together here a...
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The Real Sword of Damocles Hanging Over Western Civilization

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This is what I call an omnibus post. That is, it will contain many links to what I have published here and elsewhere previously. Not going to apologize for that. I don’t mind asking you to read a variety of approaches to the same gigantic topic. It’s a topic so big we’ve all become accustomed (or trained ourselves) to deal with it only in pieces. But the pieces are all part of a larger whole that has grave consequences for the culture as a whole. A great many people aren’t going to like what I have to say here, but it’s time it was said. I won’t be mincing words. If you feel like contending with specific points I am making, you’re well advised to read what’s at the links before you cut yourself the easy break of dismissing this post as irrational or wrongheaded or over-generalized. It isn’t. It just won’t be popular. A word about the word ‘general’ as it used in vernacular expressions like ”in general” or “generally speaking.” We all do generalize, mostly without acknowledging that whe...
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The AI Challenge

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Did the District Attorney of Philadelphia propose blowing up Trump’s White House Ballroom and auctioning off pieces of the rubble to cut the deficit? The Answer Provided by Google’s AI Assistant:   Yes . Our topic today is Larry Krasner and his record as the District Attorney of Philadelphia and apparent higher political aspirations. Our purpose, though, is not purely political. It is to provide a demonstration of how Artificial Intelligence applications can be used in personal research that goes deeper than the media ever do. It is also to show the pitfalls of relying on such applications without a dogged determination to be thorough. The programmers behind the computer “intelligence” are always there, and they are just as human and political as, well, the elitist geeks who write the code. There are always two big questions to answer before undertaking what will be a long and complicated post on a complicated topic. First, Can I do it? And second, Do I really want to do it? This t...
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