Monthly Archives: July 2023

My Arts Editor has pronounced the category name to be confutation. I think she’s just pleased to have learned a new word.

Her second suggestion of contradiction in terms is probably the best answer so far, although it might require a slight stretch.

ChatGPT continues to be a society-stirrer, as reports trickle in of jobs lost and new applications tried.

The Federal Trade Commission has opened an expansive investigation into OpenAI, probing whether the maker of the popular ChatGPT bot has run afoul of consumer protection laws by putting personal reputations and data at risk. [WaPo]

This continues to concern me, though:

The agency’s focus on such fabrications comes after numerous high-profile reports of the chatbot producing incorrect information that could damage people’s reputations. Mark Walters, a radio talk show host in Georgia, sued OpenAI for defamation, alleging the chatbot made up legal claims against him. The lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT falsely claimed that Walters, the host of “Armed American Radio,” was accused of defrauding and embezzling funds from the Second Amendment Foundation. The response was provided in response to a question about a lawsuit about the foundation that Walters is not a party to, according to the complaint.

Really, it’s fabrications, full stop. From how I understand this works, this is not AI in the true sense, but only the marketing sense. There’s no self-agency or self-awareness; true, false, and questionable facts have equal value unless programmers sit down and do something about it.

Maybe that leaf represents all that’s good about ChatGPT.

Here’s how I see this all playing out. Companies continue to use services like these despite the lack of accuracy, because it saves money. They’ll push it and keep pushing it, rationalizing the losses as part of their drive to make money.

Note how providing excellent service falls into a secondary or even tertiary position.

Then one day, it all comes crashing down. Literally. A building collapses, or something similar, people die or are badly hurt. The problem?

Actions taken on false information derived from ChatGPT and/or its competitors.

Then we indulge in a societal debate over using ChatGPT, getting those hormone rushes from Doing the Right Thing, Finally, and never realizing that the first point should be the prioritization of profits over excellence, and over truth, is flat-out wrong. Businessmen will yammer, ButButBut money!

And after that? Maybe ChatGPT will become part of the Dark Web. We shall see, I think. But not think much about it until something smears faeces in our faces.

So you know the world has been setting records for heat measurements, and this is no surprise, whether or not you’re a climate scientist. Still, this weekend looks grim:

Source: WaPo

I fear this is the new normal.

Transgression:

an act of transgressing; violation of a law, command, etc.; sin. [Dictionary.com]

Not a word I run across real often, and I decided I wanted a precise definition when I saw it in this: “On Supreme Court politics, McConnell counts on short memories,” Steve Benen, Maddowblog:

It worked: McConnell effectively stole a Supreme Court seat from one administration and handed it to another. He’s repeatedly boasted about the pride he takes in having executed the transgressive scheme.

The GOP is beginning to strike me as the party that regards hypocrisy as a high moral principle.

I know there’s a word for the general category word for this, but I can’t think of it.

Erick Erickson has been given the assignment of keeping the herd together. It’s about the only reason I can think of for continually reiterating all of the sins, excepting abortion, of the left. That latter decision shows Erickson has come realize that it’s an issue with staying power, a position that he, or his masters, didn’t initially take.

It’s notable that he had to admit the economy is doing OK, or even better than OK:

By every objective measure, the economic is defying expectations and is really good.

The unemployment rate is at 3.6%, which is virtually full employment. People 25-54 are working at a higher rate than any time in the last decade. The economy grew by more than two percent. Inflation has trended down. The Biden Team wants credit.

But most Americans do not feel it. They do not feel like the economy is benefiting them. They feel left behind. If you live in the corridors of power in DC, New York, or LA, of course you feel it. That’s where the Fortune 500 dwells. But out in the heartland, the middle class and poor of America do not feel the good times rolling for them.

And maybe they do feel left behind. An economy doesn’t function on a human-comprehendible scale, so if your corner of the country isn’t doing so well, sure, it makes sense that the personal impression of that person of the economy doesn’t match up with formal indicators. It takes an effort to get true impressions of how an entire country is doing. And the United States is awfully large.

But it is something to try to blame the left for the excesses of the right:

Build a business that is successful and thriving and watch how, when your business grows, the IRS pokes more, the regulators prod more, and the bigger competitors use their lobbyists to carve out protections from themselves. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, funded through an agencies out of reach of Congress, was designed to fight for consumers, but instead harasses small banks while ignoring the big banks. All of government is aligned against David in favor of Goliath. Goliath is now too big to fail and David needs to be stoned to protect Goliath.

The land of opportunity has become the land of oligopoly. Challenge it and get sued and regulated out of business. Challenge the cultural elite and they will use the media to crush you.

Monopolies are the product of businessmen who cut the competitive corner, and not only are most businessmen Republican, but most Republican politicians these days are laissez-faire, which is the polite way to say Regulation is evil! and popping the blood veins out on the forehead.

The Democrats haven’t pushed hard for anti-monopolistic prosecutions and laws, of course, but I do believe Senator Klobuchar (D-MN) has begun to push it.

So eventually Erickson must deliver the message of hope in order to keep the herd spirited, so here it is:

Again, this is not about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. This is about the rich getting richer by ensuring no one else can even try. They and their friends in the press have given up on the idea of an ever expanding pie for all Americans to share and have decided to restrict access to the pie by limiting educational opportunity, job opportunity, and innovation opportunity.

Someone somewhere could carry this message to victory. The man who tried in 2016 failed to fix the system. He and his best people were no match because he was too easily distracted and had no real vision. Perhaps someone else with real vision could try.

And that man with no vision is a product of the Party, along with most of the House GOP and probably half of the GOP members of the Senate, politicians who lived on the toxic team culture of the Republican Party, rather than some personal worthiness.

Unfortunately for Erickson, that’d discarding all of those Supreme Court Justice buying businessmen. Telling them that anti-monopolists are coming will not make them friends of yours. Now, Asa Hutchinson (R-AR) or Sununu or Hogan might be able to pull it off. But their is no evidence of them being popular with Republicans outside their state. Or even with Erickson.

Amazing, isn’t it?

Remember the bidding war for English football club Manchester United? It’s nearing its end – and it appears the English might be sniggering up their sleeves a little bit:

Qatar’s Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani could be overpaying for Manchester United by up to 2.5 billion pounds ($3.16 billion) if his proposed takeover of the British soccer club is finalized.

Sheikh Jassim, a Qatari banker and son of a former Qatari prime minister, is favorite to acquire the Red Devils, after reports emerged Thursday that the offer by the main rival bidder — British billionaire and CEO of chemicals company INEOS Jim Ratcliffe — was “dead in the water.” [AL-Monitor]

Sure, the current owners are American, but that shouldn’t stop at least some sniggering. It’s a helluva ripoff of the sheikh. But maybe the sheikh is so bloody rich that he doesn’t care.

Stretch it a bit and it’s a bit of baudiness.

An announcement:

The U.N. group that oversees the global shipping industry agreed Friday to slash the sector’s greenhouse gas emissions in coming decades in an attempt to limit future global warming.

The landmark deal — for a polluting industry that has traditionally been resistant to change — includes a standout pledge to reduce its emissions to net-zero “by or about 2050.”

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) had earlier pledged to reduce its emissions by half by 2050, so Friday’s agreement is a clear advance. [WaPo]

Drew this reaction, the harshest in the article:

John Maggs, president of the Clean Shipping Coalition, representing environmental groups pushing for greater reductions in emissions, said: “There is no excuse for this wish-and-a-prayer agreement. The level of ambition agreed is far short of what is needed to be sure of keeping global heating below 1.5 Celsius, and the language seemingly contrived to be vague and noncommittal.”

I worry that reactions like this are less criticism and more attempts to build a position in the power structure by belittling the shipping industry. Compare to this:

Whit Sheard, an expert in shipping emissions at the environmental group Ocean Conservancy, said the IMO has sent “a strong signal by historically committing to fully decarbonizing the shipping sector but has missed an enormous opportunity to cut emissions immediately.”

The United States and other countries were pushing for deeper cuts in shipping emissions much sooner.

“Caving to fossil fuel interests in the short term leaves a lot of work for industry and individual countries in the face of a global climate crisis,” Sheard said.

While critical, it’s delivered in a positive manner that recognizes belittled people rarely find reasons to cooperate with the arrogance exhibited by the belittlers. I get it, the shipping industry isn’t as cooperative as it might be, so putting a positive spin on a disappointing announcement can be difficult – but why throw gravel in the machinery?

Incidentally,

Another way for ships to immediately reduce emissions would be to slow down — essentially adhering to new voluntary “speed limits” in the ocean. Modern cargo vessels are capable of doing 25 knots. Soon, they may be “slow-steaming” at half that speed.

That’ll reduce trips, which will reduce profits – or, if that’s not tolerable, force prices higher. Which, in turn, may give consumers reasons not to consume.

All to the good, actually. A bit more here on gCaptain.

Either that or gravity, anyways. WaPo has an article on the concerns in academia WRT artificial intelligence:

Perseverate:

1. to repeat something insistently or redundantly:
   to perseverate in reminding children of their responsibilities. [Dictionary.com]

Never seen that one before. Noted in “When the doctor unexpectedly becomes the patient,” Leana S. Wen, WaPo:

In retrospect, self-pity got in the way of my diagnosis. I perseverated on how a healthy person such as me could suddenly become so sick. I exercised regularly; in fact, just days before, I’d completed my first triathlon. When I stopped being so defensive, I realized there were warning signs. I’d been traveling a lot and was feeling run down. I wasn’t feeling quite right during the race but had pushed through fatigue and body aches. The day before my hospitalization, I brushed aside vague chest discomfort.

Erick Erickson’s driving need to be part of the right is unfortunate because it keeps driving him away from accuracy, and its mother, truth. For instance, I might take this bit, concerning the recently rendered 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis decision, more seriously. The press and pundits have been buzzing that one of the parties in this suit, Elenis, is not a gay man, but a straight man who never tried to contract with 303 Creative for a gay marriage web site, an activity the owner of 303 Creative would refuse to do. Sounds dicey, but Erickson asserts

In fact, with regard to the online request, the case had already been filed in Court prior to the request being made. The State of Colorado helpfully stipulated that Ms. Smith and her company would immediately run afoul of Colorado law if she refused to build a website for a gay wedding. Courts normally require an existing controversy, but this case falls in a rare exception where the Court will hear a legal challenge knowing a plaintiff would immediately be in violation of the law if she acted as she intended.

And, indeed, Wikipedia notes

Smith, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), sued Colorado in 2016 in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado, seeking to block enforcement of the anti-discrimination law in a pre-enforcement challenge.

How the straight guy’s name got involved in this is not yet clear to me. But Erickson appears to be part way to being right. Too bad he fouls up all of his credibility by this ridiculous statement:

Yes, Trump supporters may have stormed the Capitol on January 6th. But it is members of the left who attempted both the mass assassination of members of Congress and the attempted assassination of a Supreme Court Justice. The press corps that lectures Trump supporters on their illegitimacy feed and fuel the antics of the deranged and angry left.

This mass assassination reference is to an actual occurrence, a shooting at the US Capitol in 1954:

The 1954 United States Capitol shooting was an attack on March 1, 1954, by four Puerto Rican nationalists who sought to promote the cause of Puerto Rico’s independence from US rule. They fired 30 rounds from semi-automatic pistols onto the legislative floor from the Ladies’ Gallery (a balcony for visitors) of the House of Representatives chamber within the United States Capitol.

It’s worth noting that he may also refer to the attack of a mentally ill man on a small group of Republican Congressional members assembled for a baseball practice, and I reprimand Erickson for his ambiguity. Seeing as Erickson takes a bit of pride in citing the Puerto Rican incident, I suspect his reference is to it, and will so continue in that vein.

Nobody died in 1954. Were those responsible clumsy assassins?

Upon being arrested, [Lolita] Lebrón yelled, “I did not come to kill anyone, I came to die for Puerto Rico!”

Are they considered heroes of the left? Not being a leftist myself, I cannot definitively say – but, despite wide reading, I’d never heard of this shocking incident until Erickson mentioned it a couple of years ago^[1]. And they advocated for Puerto Rican independence, the definition of nationalists. What are one of the attributes of the Republican Party?

Ardent nationalists.

Perhaps citing incidents so isolated from current events chronologically is a fool’s decision, eh?

The attempted assassination of a Supreme Court Justice reference is easier. It refers to the 2022 incident in which a mentally ill man, Nicholas John Roske, arrived at Justice Kavanaugh’s residence with a gun, looked around, realized he was off his meds, called 911 and surrendered. Not a shot was fired, bomb thrown, poison dart flung. One might argue that the presence of Kavanaugh’s security detail was responsible for stopping an assassination attempt, but that is a weak argument inasmuch, in Erickson’s desperate attempt to drag his political opponents down to his level, he omits similar questions concerning assassination “attempts” on Democrats. That is, how would we even know about them?

In other words, this is nothing more than illegitimate speculation. The facts argue against calling this an assassination attempt; at best, it’s exceptionally weak-kneed.

And so Erickson discredits his perhaps-worthy commentary on 303 Creative v. Elenis, not to mention his frenzied defense of Thomas and Alito. This is why I find it impossible to credit right-wing arguments. They’re so easy to pick apart that it’s, charitably speaking, embarrassing.

¹ For that matter, the attack on the Republican baseball team has not resulted in adulation for the attacker, James Hodgkinson. He’s considered mentally ill at best, a shameful embarrassment at worst. This cannot be said for the January 6th attackers.

Damn, where’s the flying saucer when you need it?!

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) is, sadly, a tired rehash of the previous three movies in this series, while the fourth, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), if anything, gets nothing more than an obscure head nod. Otherwise, it’s a boring collection of flash, lacking the meat necessary to make this fly.

The problem is that Professor Jones is no longer a driven character. The first installment of the series, and easily the best, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), features an up and coming Professor Jones who is absolutely driven in his quest for artifacts. How do we know this? Because every big decision he has to make has a moral dimension to it, and he tends to decide in his own favor and not that of morality. Just think of that first, heart-stopping sequence: His attempted theft, and that’s what it is, of an artifact representing a god of an Amazonian tribe. I mean, properly speaking, this is not even an archaeological find; it’s just out and out thievery.

It’s old, it’s valuable, and its acquisition will prove Jones’ prowess as a leading archaeologist. But when he steals it, it leads to the death of his remaining assistant, the other having deserted him, and Jones’ prize is taken from him by a foe, competing archaeologist René Belloq, who only wants it for its financial value, and is ruthless enough to order Jones’ execution; only Jones’ cleverness saves him.

The excavation of the Egyptian temple to steal information concerning the Ark, the discovery that Marion still lives and is imprisoned in Belloq’s tent in the desert, and Jones’ opportunity to destroy the Ark during the Nazi trek to a Jewish sacred location and thus saving it from the Nazis, are all moral situations in which his choice, motivated by self-interest rather than by the communal good, secular or religious, leads to existential danger not only for Jones, but for anyone who is not a Nazi world-wide. This moral ambiguity is the core of the fascination with Professor Jones, along with his reactions to the dangers brought on by his moral choices, and in turn leads to a superior story.

But the Professor Jones of Dial of Destiny isn’t a morally ambiguous character. A divorcee with a dead son, he’s just a worn out old man, burdened with a god-daughter just clever enough to get herself into trouble, but not get out of trouble. Running for one’s life, or that of someone to which an attachment has been formed, may be understandable, but it lacks that burning question of What is he thinking? Instead, we know he’s trying to stay alive and rescue the god-daughter. Yes, he has a cool artifact with various rumors attached to it, but it’s secondary. That seriously hobbles the buzz, because we know he’ll survive, no matter how many bad guys he has to dodge and trick – these storytellers don’t dare kill him off, and that might be the only way to save this story.

OK, so here’s a SPOILER ALERT. An improvement to this story is this. The principal bad guy wants to go back in time to kill Hitler and take his place, using his knowledge of how Germany failed in World War II to obviate that loss, turning it into victory. How about if Professor Jones agrees and goes with in order to kill the bad guy after he kills Hitler? It could certainly cloud the moral arc of the story, rendering it more interesting.

But that would require a rewrite – or three – of this script, and I think they felt pressure from Disney to get it out. That’s too bad, as the acting talent and technical resources are certainly top notch. In the end, the storytellers are let down by a script that, no doubt, checked all the boxes for big chase scenes and clever fights and all that crap, but had no insight into why these things worked in Raiders, while failing here.

You’re a Raiders, Rhys-Davies, Ford, or Banderas completist? Then you have to see this installment. Otherwise, wait for the cheap seats. Too bloody long for too little payoff.

But apparently in Libya the costs are a little less – at least until you get caught:

Libyan authorities have detained 50 Chinese nationals in a raid of a crypto-mining operation in the west of the country, the prosecution in Tripoli said Thursday. …

Prosecutors said in a statement that Interior Ministry agents were searching a farm in Zliten, 160 kilometers (99 miles) east of the capital and found “minors [sic] exploiting significant material capacity to generate virtual currencies with the help of 50 Chinese nationals.” [AL-Monitor]

And …

On Wednesday, prosecutors said police had dismantled another illegal crypto-mining operation in the port city of Misrata, adding it was operated by 10 Chinese nationals.

Which is a bit odd, given official disapproval of cryptocurrencies by China. Are the involved Chinese operating without official sanction?

It reminds me of when normal currencies were being forged by criminals.

Jennifer Rubin of WaPo asserts an assessment of SCOTUS that I fear isn’t quite accurate in detail:

In departing from the authentic judicial review, the right-wing majority unsurprisingly produces results perfectly aligned with the right’s agenda on hot-button topics. (By the law of averages, its “analysis” should occasionally favor the other side.) When foretelling a case’s outcome or following the majority’s “reasoning” requires a crib sheet on GOP political aims, something is wrong.

Right off the bat I can think of two decisions that have appalled conservatives: McGirt v. Oklahoma, in which judicial jurisdiction over much of Oklahoma was taken away from the State and given to the Five Civilized Tribes, as I understand it, and the anti-gerrymandering case of Allen v. Milligan, which, although caveat-laden, held that Alabama’s newly redrawn congressional districts were likely illegal and must be redrawn, a result echoed in its ultimate refusal to hear Ardoin v. Robinson, in which a lower court had ruled Louisiana’s redrawn congressional districts were illegal and must be redrawn.

All that said, Rubin’s point is substantive and applicable. The question is what to do? Court-packing is a favored answer for progressives, but I fear that it just looks like cheating to independents and moderate Republicans. It might seem nevertheless justified, given the problematic history of nomination and confirmation of Justices Gorsuch and Barrett, which I’ve addressed elsewhere, but the public’s attention is limited, and the left coming out looking like cheaters won’t benefit them.

But litigants can bring a measure of pressure to bear. While those of a short-term frame of mind may think that it’s ok to transform SCOTUS into a money game of buying votes (see the scandals attending Thomas and Alito), because they cannot imagine any bleed over into other parts of society, wise litigants will realize that is a plum-fool’s position. Putting SCOTUS Justices’ votes up for sale risks judicial chaos, reduces predictability, reduces societal agreement on what constitutes corruption, and may even put Justices’ lives at risk.

In fact, bold litigants may want to join forces with their erstwhile opponents in asking that Justices Thomas and Alito recuse themselves from the litigants’ cases, and for this reason:

Upon assessment of our financial resources, as well as the accompanying legal liabilities, we have come to realize that we cannot afford to purchase the votes of these SCOTUS justices.

The professional reputation of a vote seller.

The first employment of this recusal request would engender outrage from Thomas and Alito, but, by the fifth such request, it should become obvious to them that the respect accorded to them automatically as SCOTUS Justices is decaying rapidly.

Either one or even both might resign short thereafter, to the benefit of future litigants and the lower courts. Chief Justice Roberts might even follow, as it’s become clear, since Dobbs, that his leadership is a failure, and he’s reportedly quite the legacy-hound.

This illuminates another failing of court-packing: the important lesson of punishment. Professional ostracism is an important corrective when facts are undisputed. It must be used.

Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022) is a modern retelling of the story of an encounter with a djinn, of three wishes and three stories, and how this impacts a lonely professor of classics. For all that the premise is promising and the technical work top-notch, somehow it never quite had an impact on me, and so I can’t say much for it. But I will say different people will have different reactions.

That’s a big needle. Jus’ sayin’.

After.Life (2009) is a messy, rather limp tale of a funeral director who can talk to those who have died but are not yet dead, a just-dead school teacher, and one of her students, a young boy who seems to have the same gifts as the funeral director. Add in a grief-stricken boyfriend who is completely unbelievable as a lawyer, a dysfunctional family or two that could have been vastly more interesting, and an ambiguity that is no doubt meant to evoke questions about existence, but was just irritating, this movie is really only of interest to Liam Neeson and Christine Ricci completists.

It looked fairly lifeless in the spring.

Much better.

Omerta armor:

Omertà (/oʊˈmɛərtə/, Italian pronunciation: [omerˈta]) is a Southern Italian code of silence and code of honor and conduct that places importance on silence in the face of questioning by authorities or outsiders; non-cooperation with authorities, the government, or outsiders, especially during criminal investigations; and willfully ignoring and generally avoiding interference with the illegal activities of others (i.e., not contacting law enforcement or the authorities when one is aware of, witness to, or even the victim of certain crimes). It originated and remains common in Southern Italy, where banditry or brigandage and Mafia-type criminal organizations (like the Camorra, Cosa Nostra, ‘Ndrangheta, Sacra Corona Unita and Società foggiana) have long been strong. Similar codes are also deeply rooted in other areas of the Mediterranean, including Malta, Crete in Greece, and Corsica, all of which share a common or similar historic culture with Southern Italy. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Sheldon Whitehouse was right all along: The Supreme Court is corrupt,” Jennifer Rubin, WaPo: