Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, November 29, 2024
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61 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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JD Vance posted on social media an image of himself serving America as a turkey while he’s wearing a dress and posing as Trump’s wife in an adapted Rockwell painting.
No, you didn’t sleep through winter all the way to April Fools Day. Here’s a link to an image:
https://bsky.app/profile/radiofreetom.bsky.social/post/3lc2lpy6cgk2m
Here is a piece on John Adams, the Alien & Sedition Acts, and the “XYZ” affair. The gist is that old John was our first would-be autocrat president with a lot of comparisons to Trumpism.
“Hartmann”
snip
snip
Read on for the story …
@Not the IT Dept.:
“Photoshop“
“Really?”
Is that lady strong enough to lift that thing?
ETA: “Four Freedoms“
Ray Epps’ defamation lawsuit against Faux News BTFOed.
I was told it was easy slam dunk like Rudy Giuliani, Alex Jones and Mark Steyn.
When you hear how the rich need tax cuts in order to free up money for investment, consider a plutocrat paid millions to eat a banana.
I guess I’d better start sharpening the guillotines. It looks like they may be needed.
@charontwo:
Apparently not. It’s all over Blue Sky and has been checked. I think it would totally fit in with Vance’s overall weirdness and the kind of thing his warped intellect would think is funny.
In addition to all the traditional American Thanksgiving treats, yesterday we decided to try out something new…well, old, but new to us: pumpion pie.
“Pumpion” is pumpkin, just the way it was spelled in the 17th century. There’s a bit of history, followed by the modern adaptation of the recipe. It was interesting to think of a pumpkin pie with rosemary and thyme, and we didn’t know quite how it would turn out, but it turned out delicious. I mean, even better than we thought it might be.
It’s a bit of work, but definitely worth it.
@Paul L.: Should you look for more reliable/wiser people for information?
@Not the IT Dept.:
Well, there’s no couch…
@Not the IT Dept.:
A self metaphor of their obscene disregard for healthy tradition to the point of a raptor-like consumption of America in reflexive self gratification.
@Kathy:
Saw that. My caption:
Performance art piece on the elective superficiality of both human aesthetics and our tokens of value in the face of real human need.
@Not the IT Dept.: I like the depiction of the USA as a turkey. It reminds me of the Cuba shaped cake in Godfather II.
@Paul L.:
Trump talks like this so much you might not realize what garbage it is. “Somebody said” and “People are saying” are just the way to start a sentence that is otherwise a lie and make it into not actually a lie, just a misleading statement.
You’d think if AI were competent, then MS Word’s spell checker would understand that bots is the plural of bot (it does accept bot as a word), and not a misspelling of “boats”. And that if you added Beb to the spell check dictionary, then Beb’s is the possessive form and not an error.
@Kathy
Democrat outrage over J6 Gallows.jpg
@Jay L Gischer:
Matt B, The Young Turks, Majority Report with Sam Sedar and MeidasTouch Network (MTN) pro-democracy news network said Epps would win.
It amuses me that they have a bigger reach than moderate centrist Democrats.
@Slugger:..cake…
This one?
@Kathy: If AI becomes reliably able to generalize in this manner, “the singularity” may become more than a cheesy SF meme.
@Kathy:
Am I to understand this is your analysis of capital formation?
@just nutha:
It would at least improve the quality of some of the trolls we get here, even the articulate ones.
I work on the assumption the AI “understands” rather than understands, if you know what I mean. The spell checker isn’t so much AI as a subroutine that checks a database of existent words. I’m less sure how the grammar check works. With grammar rules, naturally. But it needs to distinguish verbs, nouns, etc. Neither is very bright, nor can they tell the difference between spoken and written language.
@Paul L.: I don’t see your point. It’s still just somebody’s opinion. I thought the Denver Nuggets were going to win the NBA championship this year, and they didn’t even make the finals. Many experts also thought the Nuggets would win, and I believe the betting lines made the Nuggets the favorite. That’s why they have the word opinion.
You sound like a sixth grader on the playground (my apologies to actual sixth graders for the comparison).
@Jack:
So, we’re not talking about Trump’s idiotic cabinet picks, or his equally idiotic tariffs, so up you pop. And as soon as we talk about anything you might have to try and defend, you run away and stay away for days. Is that about it?
@Kathy:
Brad DeLong described LLMs as myna birds with a huge memory.
@gVOR10:
For now, I’m satisfied it “understands” well enough to fetch useful, specific info to my questions. Copilot also does well enough summarizing bits of my fiction. Or seems to. Sometimes I wonder if it tries to hard to make sense.
BTW, when I have it summarize my work, it’s only to check whether what I wrote conveys what I want to say. Sometimes it offers analysis or opinion, and I ignore that. it seems to think everything I tell it is great, brilliant, insightful, powerful, etc. No one is that good.
Greg Abbott totally on board
“Texas Tribune“
@Michael Reynolds:
Actually I had better things to do than deal with people like you. Not a high bar, I admit. But carry on.
@Not the IT Dept.: I doubt
James Donald Bowman’s TwitterJD Vance’s X account is actually run entirely by the VP-elect himself. A staffer may be facing odd questions about posting this picture.@Lucysfootball:
I remember trying to play chess against a 5th grader named Ivan back then. This school but it was known as Wing Street when I attended it.
My 6th grade classroom teacher was Mr. Hecht. Family or urban legend has it he either made a pass at my mother during a parent-teacher meeting or said I needed to see the school psychiartrist. Something happened. supposedly Mom said he needed psychiatric attention. My grades were down that year but unlike other classes when that happened I didn’t get disciplined in some way.
Thanks to Mr. Hecht, I was put in 7th grade classes for students who did average or less academically. I did fantastic that year and made the final three students in the school spelling bee.
@Paul L.:
Well, I am with you that it is important to keep freedom of the press as ironclad as possible.
But this is not a case of Fox News personalities doing investigtive journalism. Rather, this is a case about high profile commentators hinting, suggesting, saying anything short of direct accusation in order to establish a narrative.
The target was not an elected official. It was a private citizen who supported Trump! Tucker, et al were making meritless claims with the intent of feeding the paranoia that drives MAGA.
You may recall that Tucker Carlson was upset that a man approached him while Carlson was on vacation with his family. I recall him saying, something like, “in front of my kids?”
The thing is, the guy who filed the lawsuit had to go into hiding–an experience that Carlson or his children are unlikely to ever have to face.
People like Carlson are not engaging in freedom of the press. Instead they use the guarantees in the first amendment to engage in propaganda.
Weighing the need for a press shielded from government interference vs. the social impact of speech has always been a difficult balance. It is even tougher now than it has ever been because of the media landscape. So, I have no idea if the decision made was correct legally or theoretically.
But I do think your emotions are misplaced on this. Your ample anger should be directed toward people who abuse the rights you claim to cherish.
@Michael Reynolds:
Time to do a David Letterman. Top 8 reasons I’m not writing comments at OTB
I’m busy writing my next book
I’m playing Strat-O-Matic baseball
I’m watching television
I’m at the doctor
I’m grocery shopping or doing laundry
I’m out of town traveling
I have nothing funny/sarcastic/clever or down right weird to say
and finally…….
I have a cat in my lap
@Paul L.:
I’m not sure who Matt B is. Presumably someone with “a bigger reach than moderate centrist Democrats.” A quick google gives me “Matthew David Benson, better known by his stage name Matt B, is a Grammy-nominated American singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer whose genres have been generally classified as R&B, Hip hop, and Afrobeats.”
The Young Turks are a bunch of post-left shitheads. This was inevitable from people who named their tv show and then podcast after people who committed the Armenian Genocide. They are not, nor have they ever been, credible.
Majority Report’s Sam Seder is a two-bit actor with no law degree. And it started on the Young Turks Network.
MediasTouch is a simple rage farm. Always has been.
Yes, there are grifters on the left. And presumably a Grammy-nominated American singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer whose genres have been generally classified as R&B, Hip hop, and Afrobeats. And grifters who claim to be left.
They tend not to do as well as Joe Rogan, Fox News, etc in terms of their grift.
——
Seriously, how does anyone not instantly hate Cenk Uygur? Even if his former-Republican-turned-progressive schtick is not amazingly transparent, he just has an amazingly punchable face. Plus he will happily embrace antisemetic conspiracy theories.
While checking Wikipedia to see that I wasn’t misremembering anything, I came across this:
He probably would claim that it was a “joke”. I hate bros.
And I again have to go back to ‘The Young Turks” — he wasn’t particularly young when he started it, and he named it after people who committed genocide. Utterly baffling that anyone buys that shit. It would be like naming something the Hampshire Island Tree Lovers Emergency Response and no one noticing the acronym.
I’m a little surprised no one has beaten him to death yet. It would be wrong, but he’s such a transparently awful person, and enough people have met him, that you would think that just based on the odds someone would. It’s like how Rand Paul’s neighbor was wrong to assault him, but we all know Rand Paul deserved it, but we all want to live in a polite society where we do not settle our differences by physically beating someone.
On a hunch, I just checked whether Cenk Uygur ever appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience, and indeed he has. It would be moderately difficult to get me to willingly listen to that. Money would have to be involved, and a decent chunk.
But what surprised me is apparently they hate each other, and Cenk has challenged Rogan to a fight. I would be rooting for Rogan. I don’t want to ever be rooting for Rogan for anything, but I would make an exception.
On economic news, sales of anti-Xlon stickers and car magnets have surged among Texla owners since the election.
I can see the great cisgender Mars Emperor God of Phobos sue for defamation.
@Gustopher:
You can root for both to wind up hurt and to look ridiculous while fighting. this would be a case when mutual assured destruction wouldn’t be MAD.
It’s not likely, but it’s rational.
You know, I didn’t watch the Falcons vs Pats Super Bowl, because I wanted both teams to lose, which is not possible. I actually tuned in only for the halftime show, which featured Lady Gaga (she has such a great voice).
@Gustopher:
I’m pretty sure Paul is referring to me. We had a the following brief exchange about Epps in January which I wrote:
Rereading that I don’t think I said that I thought he would win–I mainly was suggesting that we should wait and see until more evidence comes out. According to the reporting, it looks like Epps wasn’t able to show evidence of malice:
I’m interested to read the ruling (which I think there will be in this case) to learn more. I had not realized that they had gotten through discovery already (or at least I assume they did). I’m also curious about whether or not it was dismissed with prejudice.
Either way, I try not to assure people about case outcomes one way or another.
Another aspect of this case, btw, is it shows how difficult it is to prove libel in the US–which generally speaking is a good thing from a freedom of the press angle.
I’ll also remind that Trump and major supporters like Elon Musk are very supportive of loosening Federal Libel laws making it far easier to successfully sue news outlets.
I’ve learned this week that my building doesn’t heat the hallways. They can’t because there is no means to do so. Whatever there is is bleed-off from apartments.
I’m okay with that. On the whole, it reduces building overhead that would potentially get factored into my rent. Building insulation is a foot of brick on the outside walls. It’s a converted industrial building.
It used to be both the offices and printing plant for the local newspaper. Printing plant and related accoutrements was basement to fifth floor. Offices was was 6 to 13.
@Kurtz:
Whataboutism FAFO Consequence Culture Nick Sandmann and Joe the [not] Plumber.
I see you dusted off the old Melissa Click deflection talking points.
@Matt Bernius:
Just a conspiracy theory and disinformation, I suspect that the Feds did not want any Discovery into Epps’ relationship with the Feds as a “fed-protected provocateur” or Epps testifying in a deposition and quietly asked the Judge to put a end to it.
@Paul L:
Is this some sort of SEO thing?
If I have ever read Melissa Click before today, I do not remember it.
You seem to read a large amount of opinion pieces. I’ve found it’s best to limit intake those.
On the surface, it appears that you seek out opinions from across the spectrum. But I suspect that you reference pieces that garner attention in whatever peculiar corner of the political web you have spun.
So, I am unsurprised that you do not appear to understand my post. I made one clear distinction: between elected officials and everyone one else.
Moreover, I’m quite certain that I’m on record here expressing distrust of private surveillance, just as I distrust government surveillance. And the serious effects of shaming culture.* But I generally fold such topics into systemic critiques. Given some of your apparent positions, that would make you and I natural allies in some areas. (wrt criminal justice, Bernius, too).
But you do not see the obvious.
*Public shaming is pretty common across eras and cultures, including in the West. It has been a means of social control forever. The actual punishments have evolved with culture change, but that purpose has remained constant.
@Paul L:
You are entitled to your suspicions, just as any of the Faux pundits are.
What separates the reliable and unreliable opinions are ……….. facts
Today in irony, and proof that Ate is alive and well and probably having a ball:
This is actually quite common all over the world. There is so much money sloshing around, the various cartels and trafficking gangs may not even need to threaten law enforcement officials to get them to look the other way or even actively cooperate.
ON other news, Canadian media companies are suing OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, and apparently avid consumer of keyboards without space bars. for strip mining journalism, cannibalizing proprietary content, and free-riding on the backs of news publishers.
That’s very eloquent, but none of it strikes me as a legal term. You know, like libel, or copyright infringement, or something that can legally justify a lawsuit.
Plus, the headlines claims the suit is for, potentially, Billions.
Well, maybe. they are asking for 20,000 CAD for every article mined. To get to one billion CAD, that manes 50,000 articles. I get it news organizations put out a lot of content online, of which most people read but a small portion. Still, I’ve no idea how many articles get published per website per year, nor how many does OpenAI strip mine.
So, I asked Copilot (powered by ChatGPT*), and it says large newspapers may publish 200-300 pieces per day, so about 73,000 to 110,000 per year.
What’s the value per piece to OpenAI? Enough to buy a keyboard with a space bar? More? I’ve no idea. Very likely not 20,000 CAD. But I still wish the news orgs will prevail, and maybe inspire others to get payment from OpenAI, especially smaller, local papers still in existence.
*See what I said about Ate.
Back in the Pleistocene when I was learning English, I had some difficulty with the term “billion.” After all, there was no separate term above “thousands” for amounts under one million. Why did the pattern break for what is merely “one thousand million.” Shouldn’t the naming pattern hold until one reaches a million million, and only then bring up a new term? Other languages, notably Spanish, do just this.
I wrote it off to some Anglo-American peculiarity. It helped Sagan used the word constantly in his TV show and book Cosmos. these days, I’d have gone searching online for an explanation.
Sometimes I try to visualize things by the amounts of smaller things that make them up. Like how many barely visible grains of salt make one gram, things like that. When visualizing billions, be it of money or anything else, the numbers get very big very fast.
For instance, if you wanted a million dollars in cash in $100 notes, you’d need 10,000 of them. This is not that big a pile of stuff. A “brick” of 100 $100 notes makes up $10,000. You need one hundred of these to make a million. These would take up half of a common box of stock copy paper, which holds 10 packs of 500 sheets each.
Ok, now let’s do one billion. You need only multiply by one thousand. So, you’d need ten million $100 notes. This would be one hundred thousand bricks of $10,000 each. they’d take up five thousand boxes of stock copy paper.
I can say or type the words. I cannot visualize the objects.
So, maybe it does deserve its own word.
@Jack:
Oh, I see. Then I’m sure we will soon see you defending Trump’s cabinet and tariffs. Right? I mean, this is an open thread, you could give it a try right now.
Or you could just pop in long enough to take a cheap shot then run away.
Meanwhile in Syria:
Looks like the HTaS forces are now well inside Aleppo and have the city cut off.
Looks like the SNA may be beginning to move as well; and with Turkey supporting both, albeit not with overt force.
Looks like absent IRG, Hezbollah and Russian capability to reinforce, the Syrian Army is not faring well.
Looks like trying to push refugees to the Turkish border by strikes in Idlib, and thus annoying the Turks, was a foolish mistake.
Bashar Assad currently in Moscow, probably pleading for help.
Russian statement:
Sounds a lot like: pull your own chestnuts out the fire, we’re rather busy right now,
@Kathy:
In (former?) UK English, this is what “billion” means — one million million, as opposed to American English one thousand million. Apparently the US usage has won; Chambers now says:
@Kathy:
Rather irrelevant side note:
In the older English and French convention, what is now a billion was called a milliard, and a billion was what is now termed a trillion.
The US convention was only adopted in the UK in the 1970’s iirc.
@Jack:
As capital formation goes, $6.2m to eat a banana seems more like capital destruction.
Not to mention decadence.
ymmv
Albeit Maurizio Cattelan is probably feeling very happy.
But most 19th century capitalists would have probably felt nothing but disdain for this sort of aristoi, and quite literal, conspicuous consumption.
@DrDaveT:
@JohnSF:
I remember hearing something about French, and I think in Spain they use the word “millardo” for billion. I didn’t know about the original English, but I’m not surprised.
The word wasn’t really needed until relatively recently in historical terms. as recently as the 1970s, a single billion dollars was like a humongous amount of money. Science had more need of it, but there it falls short (look up the number of atoms in a gram of salt). Besides, science has powers of ten for expressing big numbers concisely.
Headlines from the Dumbfu**istan Picayune:
Two MAGAts died in a traffic accident, and two more in the police reconstruction of the accident.
Governor to ban accident reconstructions as they are woke libtard hoaxes to make the Felon look bad!
@JohnSF:
Interesting. Russia should maybe worry less about NATO per se and look out for Turkey – they’re going to turn the Black Sea into a Turkish lake. And Israel should definitely keep an eye on Turkey. Iran is never going to have tanks on Israel’s border, Turkey might.
@Michael Reynolds:
Turkey is extremely sensitive re. northern Syria.
See previous Turkish shoot down of Russian aircraft playing games over the border.
Especially to the indications that some idiot in the Kremlin and/or Damascus was thinking of a “Christmas refugee crisis”.
The weakened Iranian/Russian support capacity for Syria makes it an ideal opportunity for Turkey to indicate that its patience for people playing silly buggers on its doorstep is very limited.
I very much doubt, though, that Erdogan intends to step into the Syrian snake-pit in full force.
Little upside, much potential downside.
But if Jolani can take the interior from Aleppo to Homs, why not let him ride, from the Ankara pov?
Once again: the situation now shaping for a sensible US administration to get a general regional settlement on track.
Unfortunately, we have Trump.
But even his admin might see a obvious opportunity if it’s dangled in front of them.
Key pointers: Saudis are hedging re Iran because US under Trump hung them out to dry last time around. Hence they require a price for normalization re Israel; as do Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey.
That is: a sensible governance policy in Gaza, curbing the settlers, and an acceptable autonomy path for the Palestinians.
Get that signed up, and the prospect opens of the jackpot: getting Iran on a path to de-escalation. Because a LOT of Iranians are not happy with sacrificing their prospects for the sake of Sunni Arabs who they never much cared for, and who (from the Iranian pov) are useless.
And a “struggle with the Great Satan” that makes no sense to most outside the Pasdarani elite.
The enmity with America has always been a choice of the Iranian regime, for ideological reasons; and many Iranians, devout nationalists included, find it rather hard to see the point of it.
The Middle East may be at a nexus-point.
But can the US seize the chances that are opening?
Or is it going to be blind-sided by MAGA Bibi-love?
I’ve managed to write a little during work these last two weeks. I finished “Ours” at work, actually. And this week I began “Betrayal.”
Today I got stuck. I set a scene where a police officer finds an unconscious woman in an alley. She isn’t injured, at least not visibly so. When he manages to rouse her, she realizes, and tells him, she doesn’t know who she is or what her name is, never mind what happened to her or where she is*.
Fine, but I’ve no idea what the cop can tell her. Everything I come up with seems useless, and even patronizing. Like “It’s okay.” How can it be okay? Or is he saying he’s okay and doesn’t mind? Then work got busy and I had to place the story in the back burner.
I’m inclined that he should ask her if she feels physically hurt or is in any pain. Then tell her an ambulance is on the way, and surely the doctors at the hospital can figure out what’s wrong and help her. In the end, he has to say something.
*Later she will reveal she doesn’t even know what city or planet she’s on (there are several inhabited planets). And things then get stranger.
I’m aware this kind of amnesia is a fictional plot device without any basis in science or medicine. According to my research, something similar might happen as a result of psychological trauma, but that’s very very rare. Spoiler alert: it’s not that. Nevertheless, I think I can make it work rationally, because it’s Science Fiction.
Of course, this requires magic. And I already have FTL travel on top of that…
The really hard part is the background the story takes place in. Given the protagonist has lost her memory, it would make perfect sense to have it be told to her. You know, you’re in Nirandra City, capital of Nareednia, part of the Stratton Republic, etc. But it’s been made abundantly clear to me many many times that telling is like the cardinal sin and capital crime of fiction.
@Paul L.: I stand corrected.
@Kathy:
Ask any academic librarian how useless AI is at present.
Because its been fed on the internet, which is fever-swamp of nonsense in some respects, it’s often quite hilariously screwed up.
See Google AI’s determination that the US was supplying Nazi Germany in 1940, on the basis of a source, tracked back, that was convinced Errol Flynn was a Nazi super agent.
Oh dear.
GIGO.
There is pressing need for Actual Intelligence to have greater correctional role vs Artificial Stupidity.
Or we’re all going to get submerged in the moronic inferno.
@JohnSF:
Would that I knew any librarians, academic or otherwise.
That’s a major fail, as the kids today say. I suppose that might be a theme in alternate history fiction. Mining crazy conspiracy theories (but I repeat myself), you’d think there’d be guardrails for that.
Going to? Did you see who won the election?
@Kathy:
Well … me?
lol
“Actually I had better things to do than deal with people like you” To wit:
I clipped the wings off butterflys.
Used my magnifying glass to burn up ants.
Kicked my dog.
Told my wife her dress DOES make her look fat.
Locked myself in the bathroom with plenty of tissue as I re-read the erotic passages from “Art of the Deal”
@JohnSF:
Oh, sorry. I’d no idea. If you mentioned it, I must have forgotten.
Do you love books and read a lot? Somehow that’s the mental image I have of librarians.
@Kathy:
Well, I read a lot.
But many librarians hate books.
Wretched things don’t shelve themselves. 😉
Only part joke: a lot modern “information service professionals” would happily go all electronic.
Also, I’m only a semi-librarian, and not a professional; I got into it sideways, via information analysis, history, and such.
Odd thing is, I’m more affectionate for the old tomes and bookish spaces, than a lot of pure librarians of my acquaintance.
I mean, this is my idea of heavenly
But so many others would think it far too old fashioned.
Also, I’m probably the only library person I know who continually lobbies for using fork lift trucks to move stock about.
And I’m only partially joking.
@Kathy:
Ok, but that sounds realistic. I don’t think cops are trained for dealing with soap-opera style amnesiacs.
He would also likely suspect she is on drugs. (Or, since this is science fiction, that she is an escaped clone “blank”, or a malfunctioning robot or cyborg, some kind of non-human doppelgänger, etc.)
For what it is worth, I recall Ursa K. Le Guin just infodumped about entirely different genders in “the Left Hand of Darkness”, along with a whole lot of other bits of world building.
@JohnSF:
I sometimes wonder whether professional chefs and cooks ever cook at home.
@Gustopher:
The cop is a very important character, and must come across as sympathetic (it is science fiction).
Many authors eventually need to just dump information. This si very common in dystopian novels. There’s Goldstein’s book and O’Brien’s prattle in 1984, for example. But my exaggerated observation stands 🙂
@Bill Jempty:
Intellectually light.
Can you elevate your game beyond high school? Do you realize you are confirming all the points I have made to Dr Taylor the past couple weeks?
This is an echo chamber. Accuse your (debating) opponent of being fact less. Yet you just hurl invective. But if it’s the politically correct invective.., ok.
If not, beware of being banned.
Not a good look.