Author Archives: Hue White

Texas State Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX), last being suspended by the Texas Senate for suspected corruption, before that leading the SCOTUS-rejected Texas vs. Pennsylvania, and before that being accused of various acts of corruption by his own staff … deep breath … appears to attract the corrupt as well. And Lt. Governor Dan Patrick (R-TX) now faces questions:

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is presiding over the impeachment trial of suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton, received $3 million in campaign support last month from a top group campaigning against Paxton’s impeachment.

In a campaign-finance report published Tuesday, Patrick — who is not up for reelection until 2026 — reported a $1 million contribution and a $2 million loan from Defend Texas Liberty PAC. The political action committee was by far his biggest benefactor on the report, which covered Patrick’s fundraising from June 19-30. It was the first opportunity state officials had to fundraise since the House impeached Paxton in late May.

Patrick’s Senate has scheduled a trial to begin Sept. 5 to determine whether to permanently remove Paxton from office. Patrick has been acting as presiding officer of the trial — effectively the judge — and the fundraising period partially overlapped with the Senate’s deliberations over the trial rules. The chamber approved the rules June 21. [The Texas Tribune]

Mr. Paxton has been in trouble for a good long time, and, to my sensibilities, that suggests either someone is out to get him, or he’s a bad to the bone politician who has no sense of morality. Let’s assume the latter. He may possess a sense that God is on his side, and it keeps him going, but it’s a bit irrelevant.

The important point is that the Republicans seem to be attracting this sort to their party, and this will tend to drive away independents, even those who distrust the ways of the Democrats.

Now, to the credit of the Texas Republicans in the State Senate, they have suspended him and are looking to impeach him. However, Lt. Governor Patrick didn’t report that $1 million, plus a $2 million loan. Did he not realize who Defend Texas Liberty PAC backed? I’d believe that. Or did he just not care.

Ya gotta wonder if Texas is a swirling pit of corruption, or if they’ll end up ejecting Mr. Paxton.

Someone tell me why I need my computer aligned.

Appalling, mesmerizing.

Massive hail flow at street in Seregno, Italy 🇮🇹 (21.07.2023)

TELEGRAM JOIN 👉 https://t.co/9cTkji5aZq pic.twitter.com/edQSMn8TE4

— Disaster News (@Top_Disaster) July 21, 2023

We’re not the only nation that has, or now had, a problem with inflation:

Annual inflation in Egypt hit 36.8 percent in June, official figures showed on Monday, an all-time high for the country grappling with a punishing economic crisis.

The previous record of 34.2 percent in July 2017 came, as it does now, following a sharp currency devaluation connected to a bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund.

The Egyptian pound has lost half its value against the dollar since early last year, shooting prices upward and adding to the burden of families struggling to make ends meet in the import-dependent country. [AL-Monitor]

We got all fussy about, what, 10%?

statista

Not even that.

Monorchism:

Most people with a penis have two testicles in their scrotum — but some only have one. This is known as monorchism.

Monorchism can be the result of several things. Some people are simply born with just one testicle, while others have one removed for medical reasons. [healthline]

Noted in “Putin Admits He Has Lost,” Lib Dem FoP, Daily Kos:

Although tempted, I will not update the very rude WWII British song referencing Herr Hitler’s monorchism …

I had to go look that one up, as I’ve never seen that word before, or heard that particular bit of information concerning Hitler.

Then it needs to collapse. If you can't figure out how to pay your workers a full, living wage and share some profit while grossing billions, paying yourself hundreds of millions, and making wall street analysts happy with your numbers, your industry needs to be fucking rubble. https://t.co/OI5hvPLRwf

— David Simon (@AoDespair) July 16, 2023

“Then it needs to collapse. If you can’t figure out how to pay your workers a full, living wage and share some profit while grossing billions, paying yourself hundreds of millions, and making wall street analysts happy with your numbers, your industry needs to be fucking rubble.” ^[ICTD]

WaPo has an article on the strike here. As a key part of this strike being the replacement of labor with computers, it might be useful to remember there are two more parties to this industry, currently being ignored.

They are the audience, who are the ultimate arbiters of the survival of these companies, and the government, which brings a deus ex machina element to the entire context. So what can they do?

Government can promulgate a law that forces every single production of which the union has a part that says the producers of said productions must disclose prominently the characters generated by computer, rather than provided by an actor.

Prominently.

Then the audience can own the success or failure of the actor’s union, of the question of whether entertainment is a human enterprise, or an enterprise in which AI is used in order to “maximize shareholder value,” a phrase that is rapidly entering Sauron territory.

Put the responsibility where it belongs – on the audience.

^ICTD In Case Twitter Disappears.

… but I fear it’s a conflict of interest.

An IRS plan to test drive a new electronic free-file tax return system next year has got supporters and critics of the idea mobilizing to sway the public and Congress over whether the government should set up a permanent program to help people file their taxes without needing to pay somebody else to figure out what they owe.

On one side, civil society groups this week launched a coalition to promote the move toward a government-run free-file program. On the other, tax preparation firms like Intuit — the parent company of TurboTax — and H&R Block have been pouring millions into trying to stop the idea cold. [AP]

Yes, yes, big greedy corporations are yelling, and that’s a red flag. But the government isn’t a third party, it’s a very interested party, while the big greedy corporations are forced to compete on minimizing your taxes.

There is a compromise, of course, of offering the service for simple tax returns. I wonder if they’ll find it.

Biden’s strategists co-opt their opponents:

I approve this message. pic.twitter.com/f1q5giNM8j

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 18, 2023

It’s quite brilliant. Too bad no one uses Twitter anymore.

Will it be the death of this little guy?

Cryptography researchers have sneaky mindsets, apparently:

Researchers have devised a novel attack that recovers the secret encryption keys stored in smart cards and smartphones by using cameras in iPhones or commercial surveillance systems to video record power LEDs that show when the card reader or smartphone is turned on.

The attacks enable a new way to exploit two previously disclosed side channels, a class of attack that measures physical effects that leak from a device as it performs a cryptographic operation. By carefully monitoring characteristics such as power consumption, sound, electromagnetic emissions, or the amount of time it takes for an operation to occur, attackers can assemble enough information to recover secret keys that underpin the security and confidentiality of a cryptographic algorithm. [Ars Technica]

Goodness gracious.

Sarsen stones:

Sarsen stones are silicified sandstone blocks found in quantity in Southern England on Salisbury Plain and the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire; in Kent; and in smaller quantities in Berkshire, Essex, Oxfordshire, Dorset, and Hampshire. [Wikipedia]

Funny, I’ve heard and read about Stonehenge all of my life, yet I do not recall, nor associate, the word sarsen with Stonehenge. From the same link,

The builders of Stonehenge used these stones for the Heel Stone and sarsen circle uprights. Avebury and many other megalithic monuments in southern England are also built with sarsen stones.

Noted in “Africa’s Merchant Kings,” Jason Urbanus, Archaeology (July/August 2023):

Hundreds of ancient obelisks and stelas are strewn across fields on the outskirts of Aksum, a city in the highlands of northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region. The largest of these monuments, which lies toppled and broken into sections, was carved with doors and windows to mimic a 13-story building, and once stood around 100 feet high. Weighing more than 570 tons, the Great Stela, as it is known, was hewn from a single block of granite-like rock cut from a quarry two and half miles away. At more than three times the height of the biggest of Easter Island’s moai statues and nearly 20 times heavier than the mightiest of Stonehenge’s sarsens, it is among the largest monolithic sculptures ever created and transported.

There’s a photo of the Great Stela, in all of its broken glory, at the link, which is typical of the lovely photography Archaeology has always employed.

Mhairi Aitken apparently sees the pronouncements of the AI warning community as simply hypocritical:

The loudest voices shouting about existential risk are coming from Silicon Valley. This may seem at odds with big tech’s stake in driving innovation and investment in AI, yet these narratives protect its interests by diverting attention away from big tech’s current actions to instead speculate about hypothetical future abilities of AI.

By suggesting AI might develop its own intelligence, the focus shifts to how we might hold the technology accountable in the future, rather than how we can hold big tech accountable today. All of this creates an illusion of inevitability, suggesting we are observing the evolution of AI, rather than a series of conscious and controllable decisions by organisations and people.

It is important to consider not just what is being said, but who is being listened to. We have seen Altman being warmly greeted by regulators across Europe, while the voices of people who are negatively affected by AI are barely heard. This is symptomatic of what academic Kate Crawford has termed AI’s “white guy problem“: claims of existential risk are largely coming from affluent white men in positions of power, those least likely to experience the harms of AI today (but with most responsibility for causing them). [NewScientist]

But it’s important not to mistake congruency for proof. I cannot speak for the businessman community, which is too large to homogenuously characterize, but the computer scientist community can often be almost painfully earnest. Remember prominent member Bill Joy, CTO of the late and lamented Sun Microsystems? He warned of the gray goo of nanobots, and became no longer prominent.

And there’s been no gray goo of humanity-ending nanobots. My point is that the paranoid people spreading the warnings may be entirely honest in their concerns, even if they are silly, as I’ve expressed elsewhere.

But this all is sort of a nit, because Aitken’s larger point is that those negatively affected by the large language model systems being applied (see previous link) will be ignored for so long as their replacement doesn’t – literally – crash and burn. It’ll only be when we have some artifact in ruins, with bodies of humans flung here and there, will we finally return to the question of Should we, and not apply, as the primary metric, the profit metric, but rather the accuracy, or excellence, metric.

I was a bit surprised by this report of a few days ago:

Investigators from the House Ethics Committee have begun reaching out to witnesses as part of a recently revived investigation into Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, focused on allegations that he may have engaged in sexual misconduct, illicit drug use or other misconduct.

At least one witness in Florida told CNN they have spoken to investigators about the Republican congressman in recent weeks about alleged lobbying violations, and sources familiar with the Ethics Committee probe say other witnesses also have been contacted. [CNN/Politics]

But here’s the thing. Gaetz, one of the members of the Freedom Caucus, was also the principal ringleader of giving Rep McCarthy (R-CA) hell when he was up for election to the Speaker’s position, McCarthy’s ultimate goal. McCarthy had to go through 15 votes before finally winning, and it was mostly due to Gaetz’s antics.

And now that it’s Speaker McCarthy, he has outsized influence over who the Ethics Committee will investigate and, possibly, recommend for reprimand, censure, even … expel. It’s worth noting that Gaetz may be uniquely vulnerable.

How far will this go? I don’t know. The DOJ, run by Biden selection Merrick Garland, declined to prosecute Gaetz, reportedly because the primary witness, Gaetz friend and former tax collector Joel Greenberg, might have a plausibility problem if he testified for a jury. But here we’re not talking about a jury, we’re talking about a Congressional committee, and a Freedom Caucus member who’s made himself a target of the Speaker.

Of course, maybe the caucus would stand up for him, threatening to disrupt Congress if Gaetz is threatened.

There may be the seeds of a heckuva drama here.

And I can’t imagine why else an investigation would recommence, either.

Bloomin’ happy, really:

That has the potential to be a lot of tomatoes.

This one is actually artificially generated. It’s, at least according to the source article, a geoid, a display of a gravity map of Earth.

Source (according to NS): ESA/HPF/DLR

Matter is not evenly distributed.

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.