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Friday’s Forum
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21 responses to “Friday’s Forum”
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It’s just data but still…
Yesterday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced 31 General and Flag officer promotions.
Of the 31, 31 were white and 30 were men. One woman.
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A rather long article but important.
How Christian Nationalists Took Control of the U.S. Military
FORMER FOX NEWS host and current Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has some revealing tattoos. Across his right bicep is the phrase Deus Vult (“God wills it”), a rallying cry from the 11th century Crusades, and on his right pec is the Jerusalem Cross, which was carried by Christian crusaders on medieval campaigns to conquer the Muslim Ottoman Empire.
Back when Hegseth was a TV commentator, he laid out his vision for a new wave of American holy wars, both foreign and domestic, in American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free. “Surrounded by the Left, with the odds stacked against us,” he wrote, “only a crusade will do.” Since becoming defense secretary in 2025, Hegseth has attempted to implement a Christian crusade mentality within the U.S. military.
In the buildup to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran in late February, Hegseth held a Christian worship service at the Pentagon. He prayed for God’s blessing on “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy,” and said, “Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation.” While President Trump warned Iran to “Open the F***in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell,” Hegseth provided the religious apocalyptic validation for the violence—both positioning the U.S. war machine as being on the side of the angels: Deus vult.
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The rise of religious authority taking precedence over the military’s secular control was the result of what author Jeff Sharlet calls a “cultural transformation” of the American military. Sharlet’s 2009 article “Jesus Killed Muhammad” outlines the strategy for how a “small but powerful movement of Christian soldiers concentrated in the officer corps” helped build a “godly army.” Prayer meetings, call-and-response shouts for evangelical cadets, and other actions lent uniformed support to the cause of Christian nationalism. Now, with Hegseth at the helm, Christian nationalist control of the U.S. military—the conflation of God and country—appears to be complete.Article goes on discussing the Chaplaincy, its changing composition, blurring of church and state, and so forth.
And with it, in my opinion, the blurring of the military and politics which is a threat to our nation.
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This is just a good reminder that whatever you think of individual Republican politicians, whatever words happen to come out of their mouth, there isn’t a one that will defend real American values. Instead they will fall into line behind the billionaires and vote to confirm people like Hesgeth, an incompetent racist boob, and stand idly by while he humiliates and fires competent men and women because of his mindless bigotry and replaces them with losers and incompetents, and then goads a senile president into a needless war that neither has the intellectual capacity to even understand, much less execute
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Does the US government care if AIPAC has access to US voter rolls? What about SNPJ?
The US prides itself on the freedom of DOMESTIC distribution of political propaganda, but is choosey about non-domestic propaganda.
Ultimately, I don’t know why I care if AIPAC or the Hibernians are able to buy voter registration lists.-
In my state, voter full name, residential address, phone number (if provided), party affiliation, year of birth, and whether they voted in recent election are considered public records. Anyone can request a full dump of the statewide data if they pay the $1,000 fee. All of the voter’s Social Security number, driver’s license number, month and day of birth, signature image, and email address are private.
I worked as an election judge in the Colorado primaries last month. One of the things that complicated the ballot processing is parties that participate in a semi-open fashion (the Democrats and Republicans are required to, minor parties are allowed to) get a list of the unaffiliated voters who voted in their primary.
I’ve had this discussion with neighbors who are new to the state: your ballot is secret; whether you as a specific individual participated is not.
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Somewhat similar in Ohio, however there is a law that restricts (some) public documents from being redistributed.
But my central issue is what is: What is the administration trying to accomplish – in an effort to pass the SAVE bill – by saying that China (or any other foreign power) has or had US voter records? Is is just fear mongering, because the SAVE bill does not restrict access to voters records. In fact nothing in the Save bill discusses this. (except to the extent if states were compelled to send records to the Federal government, it’s just another database that can be hacked).
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I have a request for the OTB Website Gurus: can the list of most recent articles on the computer version of the website work the same way as the mobile? Meaning that it displays all the articles in order. It’s a little bit annoying to have to scroll around, and if something is in the “Features” section like Friday Photo and Ancient Geeks, if I don’t remember the title of last weeks, I have to click into it to see if it was updated.
Another solution might be to leave it as is, but show the date of posting.
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I am pretty sure we are set with the current design after a lot of work, but I appreciate the feedback.
To be clear: the “Latest” window is all the new stuff, except for “Features” which is the Daily Forum, the latest AG post (once a week), the latest Tabs post (it varies), and the latest Photo for Friday (weekly)–that is the non-post, posts.
The other just features the most recent stories in a given category (e.g., “US Politics”). But none of those are brand new in the sense that they differ from the top feed.
tl;dr–all the latest posts are chronological in the “Latest” section, with the exception of the Forum, Ancient Geeks updates, Tab-clearing posts, and the Photo for Friday.
I will see what I can do about making the Features Headlines more distinct.
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In today’s “What are LLMs even good for” segment…
Given a light workload, over three or four days I tried running some story ideas through Copilot. It’s an imperfect but serviceable sounding board. Of course, all my ideas are great, brilliant, etc. But it helps me to think things through.
When I exhausted this diversion, I asked it to transcribe the chat into a word file. It said this:
One important limitation: I do not have access to the complete raw transcript of the entire conversation, so the document is a reconstructed archive/summary of the major topics, characters, plots, and worldbuilding elements we discussed rather than a verbatim chat log.
Uh, WTF?
It generated a one page timeline of related stories.
It does not have access to its own output? Seriously, WTF?
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If you want them to remember things you’ve discussed, I understand that the standard practice is to have them summarized a discussion, copy it into a file, and then in a later session have them read the file(s).
This appears to be due to how they will flip out and hallucinate if you let them remember too much stuff over time.
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Also, it helps that they DON’T remember if you are “playfully” attempting to subvert their limits.
Or, in other words, it’s a rather serious security hole.
otoh, LLM’s feeding back on their own output also has serious possible issues.The whole model is borked until there is some means of internalising rational “truth sense”.
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The ICE officer who shot Johan Duran Guerrero in Maine, David Brouillette, has a history of severe mental illness. The Associated Press quoted his relatives as saying Brouillette has “a history of terrifying and violent behavior.” He once threw boiling water at his first wife when she was holding their infant.
Being a violent lunatic must be a qualification for an ICE job.
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Kalshi says it’s not a sportsbook
Absolutely correct. It’s a casino.
And a particularly bad one for most players. It’s hard to tell the odds in most games, and the big winners tend to be those who are not gambling.
Casinos most emphatically do not gamble. they run games with a house edge. You may experience variance in your favor now and then, and score a big win. But unless someone cheats, and there are ways to do that, the casino will win in the long run. A player who cheats, or who knows the outcome in advance (the so called insiders in the prediction casinos), are also not gambling. They’re playing with a big edge.
Casinos don’t tolerate such players. not because it’s unfair to other players, though that may be the case at times, but because it cuts into their profits. Kalshi doesn’t care, because they make money by taking a cut in all bets.
In a casino you play against the house. in prediction casinos you play against other players. The closest thing to a prediction casino in a traditional casino is poker. The casino hosts the game and may set some ground rules, but the winning players take other players’ money. The casino takes a cut. The dealer gets a salary and maybe some tips.
BTW, now and then there are negative house edge games here and there. They’re harder to find and take advantage of. Sometimes it’s through promotions, like a casino that temporarily allows blackjack players to triple down.
Some casinos might have retained positive player advantage video poker machines. I regularly milked one of those at The D in downtown Vegas, an old deuces wild machine. I think the payoff rate for its pay table was about 100.6%, maybe 101%. Over four trips, I got ahead by around $600. It was a nickel machine, meaning a hand cost $0.25 (if you don’t play full coin, your edge goes negative), and hit two royals. But most of my winnings came from hitting the four deuces jackpot several times, as well as several wild royals (which pay less than a natural royal). Last I heard, it’s been retired.
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This is not bordering on insanity. The border is so far behind, it can no longer be seen.
TL;DR: Republiqans want to sanction Canada for having wildfires.
But wait, it gets worse. El Taco complains of the cost his country pays for the smoke that drifts over the border. and suggests “[The] cost of this pollution must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying,”.
Very logical: it costs the US taxpayer a lot to deal with the smoke, so let’s pile on more costs on the taxpayer for Canadian goods!
How long are Americans willing to eat shit before they decide they don’t like it?
