Banning abortion used to be illegal too…

The whole point of this is to get to the Supreme Court and chip away at legal precedent. That’s why they are framing “the Bible” (as if there was a singular book) as a “historical document” that serves as a foundation for the US legal system. It’s a way of saying, “hey we’re not teaching religion, we’re teaching history”. The Supreme Court has rejected that argument for decades, it was the basis for cases involving displaying the ten commandments in classrooms. But now we have a new ultra conservative supreme court that doesn’t give a shit about precedent. So the bet is, SCOTUS will reverse precedent and buy this argument.

It looks like now that Roe is gone, the new Christian nationalist legal project is dismantling the seperation of church and state. So buckle up, even when dems are in power they are too chicken shit to do anything about this stuff.

Yes, good thing all our data is now perfectly private. No corporations sucking it up and selling it to databrokers who then launder it to the CCP. Now that tik tok is gone, our privacy is completely protected!

Even if tik tok was nakedly controlled by the Chinese government, who gives a shit? I can go over to RT (Russia Today) right now and get fed Russian propaganda. Hell, until 2022 I could add it to my cable package. I can to this day still get it as a satellite TV option. If the concern is “foreign government may influence public opinion on a platform they control” then the US has a lot of banning to do.

But we don’t because free speech is a thing and we’re free to consume whatever propaganda we want.

We gave up that principle because “China bad” (and the CCP is, to be clear). But instead of passing laws around data privacy, or algorithmic transparency, or a public information campaign to get kids off of tik tok, the US government went straight to “The government will decide what information your allowed to consume, we know what’s best for you” and far too many people are cheering.

Besides, the point your making is bullshit anyway given the kill switch mechanism Tik Tok offered.

TikTok was banned because 1) China bad, and 2) Tik Tok is eating US social media companies lunch. Facebook and Twitter and Google throw some campaign donations at the politicians that killed their biggest rival, and the politicians calculate that more people hate tik tok than like it (or care about preventing government censorship if the thing being censored is something they don’t like). It’s honestly one of the grossest things I seen dems support lately.

Sounds to me like he plans to run for governor of WV again, and knows the Dem brand is too toxic there, even for him. For the sake of the hill folk of WV, I hope Manchins gambit pays off. The R governors have been bleeding that state dry.

“Now that the Jury has rendered a verdict and Mr. Trump is a convicted felon, it is time for him to end his campaign for president. It goes without saying that it is below the dignity of the office and of our politics for a major party to be represented in this campaign by a convicted felon. I am confident MR. Trump will do right by his party and our country by suspending his campaign so that someone more deserving can receive the Republican party nomination. I look forward to a spirited campaign with the eventual nominee this fall.”

• Biden, in an alternate universe where democrats have spines.

Instead we get this one line " look at us, we’re above the fray, we’re not getting in the mud" statement, so the news just fills the vaccume with whatever bullshit trump is spouting at the moment. I guess the Biden campaign thinks convicted felon is not an issue worth campaigning on? Good call guys. Let’s see how that is working (checks polls, Biden down by 5 or more points in 11 swing states), OK cool so we’re fucked thanks Biden.

I’m so mad at the Biden campaign deciding to stay silent on this. Just letting Trump control the narrative, now all the news is talking about is trump’s baseless complaints. Biden should have called on Trump to resign as a convicted felon is behold the dignity of the office. Of course Trump wouldn’t, but at least the conversation would be about whether Trump should resign. Common dems stop being wimps.

Part of the problem with Google is it’s use of retrieval augmented generation, where it’s not just the llm answering, but the llm is searching for information, apparently through its reddit database from that deal, and serving it as the answer. The tip off is the absurd answers are exact copies of the reddit comments, whereas if the model was just trained on reddit data and responding on its own the model wouldn’t produce verbatim what was in the comments (or shouldn’t, that’s called overfitting and is avoided in the training process). The gemini llm on its own would probably give a better answer.

The problem here seems to be Google trying to make the answers more trustworthy through rag, but they didn’t bother to scrub the reddit data their relying on well enough, so joke and shit answers are getting mixed in. This is more a datascrubbing problem then an accuracy problem.

But overall I generally agree with your point.

One thing I think people overlook though is that for a lot of things, maybe most things, there isn’t a “correct” answer. Expecting llms to reach some arbitrary level of “accuracy” is silly. But what we do need is intelligence and wisdom in these systems. I think the camera jam example is the best illustration of that. Opening the back of the camera and removing the film is technically a correct way to fix the jam, but it ruins the film so it’s not an ideal solution most of the time, but it takes intelligence and wisdom to understand that.

Maybe we need a strong progressive president who will hold Isreal accountable, like Ronald Reagan

In addition to not vetoing UN resolutions, Reagan took several actions that many in Israel and the United States perceived as anti-Israel. For example, on June 7, 1981, less than six months after Reagan took office, Israel launched a surprise bombing raid on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak, and, in so doing, violated the airspace of Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Reagan not only supported UNSC Resolution 487, which condemned the attack, but he also criticized the raid publicly and suspended the delivery of advanced F-16 fighter jets to Israel. Moreover, over the strident objections of Israel and the pro-Israel U.S. lobby groups, Reagan approved the sale of advanced reconnaissance aircraft (AWACS ) to Saudi Arabia, which Israel then viewed as a hostile state.

A year later, in August 1982, when Israeli forces advanced beyond southern Lebanon and began shelling the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in Beirut, Reagan responded with an angry call to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, demanding a halt to the operation.

In addition, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Reagan intervened directly when Israel threatened to blow up the Commodore Hotel in downtown Beirut, which housed more than 100 western reporters. As David Ottaway, who was then the Washington Post Middle East correspondent and was in the building, pointed out, the Israeli defense minister did not like the media coverage the invasion was getting and wanted to close down the media center.

Biden, on the other hand, even though he had an hour’s notice, failed to intervene to stop Netanyahu from bombing and collapsing the 12-story building that housed the offices of Al Jazeera and the Associated Press in Gaza during the recent bombing campaign. He also failed to publicly condemn the attack, let alone challenge Israel’s contention that the building sheltered Hamas military intelligence assets, despite AP’s insistence that its staff had no evidence that such assets were or ever had been present.

In addition to allowing the UN resolutions to pass and suspending the F-16 delivery, Reagan also restricted aid and military assistance to Israel to help force its withdrawal of troops from Beirut and central Lebanon.

Therefore, if in the future some members of the Biden administration or Congress want to join the international community in condemning Israel’s behavior, or in conditioning U.S. assistance or arms transfers and face resistance from Republicans, they need only point to the precedents established by President Reagan in the first instance.

Your right, let me just pull up the White House press release where Biden sympathizes with the protectors cause:

…

Hmm, not finding one. Wait, I’m sure there is an official Whitehouse press statement condemning the anti-free speech crackdowns like in Austin:

…

Oh shit, looks like Biden said dickall about that too. So what did Biden say?

Over the weekend, the president put out a statement in which he condemned the campus protests for fostering antisemitism. That followed a far harsher statement from a White House aide calling out the protestors for harassing Jewish students. Both statements led anti-Israel protesters and anti-war activists to accuse the White House of being too quick to reprimand just one side of the debate.

One Columbia student who has been involved in the protests told POLITICO that she and her friends have less faith in Biden “every single day.”

“I was excited to vote for Biden. I was excited to vote out a fascist from government. And in hindsight, I guess I see that, I was just putting someone who’s a little bit less evil, but evil nonetheless,” said the student, who was granted anonymity because of fear of retribution.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/23/biden-camp-political-fallout-campus-protests-00154000

The reason is pretty straightforward : Biden is a zionist who doesn’t give an actual fuck about Gaza. He is worried though that it’s hurting him in Michigan. But according to the Biden campaign, young people don’t actually care about the genocide in Gaza so he’s free to ignore it because they’ll still vote for him either way.

“What is happening in Gaza is not the top issue for [young voters]. It’s not going to be for the vast majority of young voters the thing that’s going to determine whether they vote or how they vote,” said a campaign official working on youth engagement who was granted anonymity to speak about internal thinking. “The reality is that the folks that are organizing, the goal of that organizing is to make it seem that way and to bring that attention to it.”

Barack Obama rode a wave of backlash to the Iraq War to the dem nomination and then the Whitehouse, largely powered by anti-war college students who not only votes for him, but did the hard work of organizing and volunteering. I know, I was there on the ground. Today’s young people grew up with politicians doing dick all about school shootings they had to live with, doing shit about climate change that they will have to deal with, and now they have genocide being committed in their names. They are pissed. Maybe they mostly will still vote for Biden out of fear of Trump, but your not going to see them organizing and pounding the pavement for Biden. Especially after Biden just dismissed their legitimate concerns and labeled them all antisemetic.

Bibi is obviously evil, but also a moron if he does this. Electorally, if Bibi wants Trump back in the Whitehouse, one the better strategies to do that is keep democrats divided on Isreal. In other words, Bibi hugging Biden drives progressives away from Biden, hurts enthusiasm, reduces Dem turnout, all good things for Trump. Bibi coming to speak to the Republican conference (he is already meeting with Republican senators today virtually) only serves to make support for Isreal more partisan by pissing off Dems and aligning them against Isreal. Not to mention pissing off Biden who he needs.

I guess the strategy is to scare Biden and Dems into supporting Isreal more to stave off attacks from Republicans who would be viewed as more supportive of Isreal by voters? Sounds like a dumb move, public opinion is turning against Isreal, and an invasion of Rafaku isn’t going to make Isreal any more sympathetic to the average non racist and non biblical prophecy believing voter. Again, Republicans attacking Biden for not supporting genocide enough only serves to shore up Bidens base, and independent looking at the chaos and suffering in Gaza aren’t going to ding Biden for not being Bibi’s bitch.

Would be a dumb move I reckon.

Tonight I’m going to sleep in my warm bed in my house. Navarro is going to sleep tonight on a cot in a cell. No amount of playing the victim to cameras will change those facts. I am going to smile falling to sleep tonight thinking about that.

That’s literally what happened. A book was published in which white house officials shared stories which questioned his mental fitness. The stable genius thing was from a series of tweets he sent attacking the book.

“Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” the President continued. “Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star … to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius … and a very stable genius at that!”

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/06/politics/donald-trump-white-house-fitness-very-stable-genius/index.html

So much of this shit went down the memory hole, I worry a lot of voters won’t remember what it was like to live in that daily chaos.

To me this just shows how broken Congress is. US social media companies have been collecting our data, building profiles of us, manipulating us with the content they show in various ways, harming teen mental health, and all of that for decades, but Congress did nothing. Facebook in particular was used as a tool to manipulate the 2016 election by Russia in various ways, but apart from some show hearings, Congress did nothing. But TikTok is alleged to do the same thing (remember nobody has actually shown proof that the CCP is like directing TikTok to promote pro-China content for Americans), and we get bipartisanship somehow. That vote was more bipartisan than a stopgap bill to prevent a government shutdown.

And the reason is “China bad” is a message that voters agree with, and because Google and Meta are more than happy to reward these people for helping to kill their biggest rival in social media. At the end of the day TikTok users are forced onto less desirable platforms so their data can be harvested by American companies and all that, our brave congresspeople get to pretend to be “tough on China”, and Big Tech rakes the profits they were losing by being outcompeted in the market. So few in Congress, on either side, have integrity.

To be clear how off the deepend they went, they released a poll after the election “proving” that Kari Lake won the AZ Governor’s race by 8 points. The article implies the final stray was when they released a poll showing that 1 out of 12 Americans have been paid to vote in a certain way (or at least received an offer).

Republican media has convinced their viewers that Biden is basically constantly confused and just slackjawed and drooling constantly. They set expectations for him so low, when reality didn’t bare out their caracicture they had to pivot. I think the implication they are going for is Biden was dosed with something to make him seem coherent, basically the weekend at Bernie’s president. Dumb, but so are Fox News viewers, so I’m sure it’ll go over just fine with them.

That said, it did seem like Biden was yelling a lot. The few moments where he slowed down to talk about some somber topic came as a relief to me. To put a metric to it, I saw in Politico that the written version of his speech contained 80 more explanation marks than last year’s speech.

“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”

I really think that’s the answer. No deep conspiracy, just money. I looked it up today, and NYT subscriptions fell off a cliff as soon as Biden took office. Chaos means newspaper subscribers and cable news viewers. The fate of the country be damned, there’s money to be made off of four more years of daily outrages and instability.

I’m old enough that for me the NYT lost a lot of credibility with their cheerleading of the Iraq war and WMDs and serving as a tool for Cheney to get revenge on a whistleblower and all that shit. The same organization that is now writing haikus to avoid saying Isreal massacred starving civilians in their headline, “As Hungry Gazans Crowd a Convoy, a Crush of Bodies, Israeli Gunshots and a Deadly Toll”.

The simple fact is a second Trump term is good for the NYT. Trump does crazy shit, people are outraged, they buy newspaper subscriptions to read about it. The NYT monetizes doom scrollers, and Trump is a endless supply of doom.

So is it money, or is the NYT always just been a mouthpiece of neocons? Or both.

That’s the bare minimum, we arm Isreal and veto resolutions against them at the UN giving them license for genocide, and then air drop a pittance of supplies since Biden won’t end the indescriminate targeting of civilians or force Israel to let aid in.

Remember, Biden could end this all with a phone call.

As the WHO points out, airdrops will provide far less aid then if Israel just opened up border crossings and let trucks in:

“It’s absolutely not needed in Gaza. The simplest, safest way and most effective way to deliver aid to people is through crossings. Not just Rafah. It should [also] be Kerem Shalom,” he said, referring to the crossing with Israel known in Arabic as Karem Abu Salem.

He added that the UN has been “more than ready” to supply Gaza with the aid it desperately needs but “a lot of our missions got delayed [and] denied [by Israel]”.

Air drops will undoubtedly provide some benefit, but they will be no means substantially ease the suffering in Gaza. This is an optics play, plain and simple, Biden provides the military means and international cover for Israel to create the famine in the first place, then makes a big show of getting some aid (five months into the genoicde) in to Gaza (using the least efficient means) to try to appease his critics.

Hooray I guess. I hereby nominate Biden for the Nobel peace prize.

Maybe I wasn’t clear, as I was trying to follow the metaphor of Biden being the equivalent of “eating your vegetables”. Biden has been sending arms to Israel as it commits genocide, publicly locking arms with them no matter the attrocity of the day, and actively protecting them from consequences in the UN. So he’s not just some boring politician doing a good job even if he’s not inspiring. He’s a actively contributing to crimes against humanity. Supporting Biden, and by extension genocide in Gaza, just to avoid Trump is not like eating vegetables, which are not tasty but good for you.

My vegetables usually don’t support, defend, and finance genocidal states.