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Sunday’s Forum
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12 responses to “Sunday’s Forum”
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Under the logic and norms of this Trump Administration (and perhaps even the Supreme Court), what stops Trump from trying to fire and replace a Supreme Court justice. Because the judiciary is under Article II of the Constitution? So what? Who pays their salary? The Treasury Department. Who manages their buildings? The General Services Administration, part of the Executive Branch. All it would take is an Executive Order.
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When people become uninsured where to they go for healthcare? Emergency rooms. Will the ERs be compensated? Answer: no.
About 14 million fewer Americans are expected to have health insurance in a decade due to President Donald Trump’s new tax-and-spending law, which Republicans dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and the pending expiration of enhanced subsidies that slashed the price of Affordable Care Act plans for millions of people. The new law also limits programs that send billions of dollars to help those who care for uninsured people stay afloat.
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Starr County, a largely rural, Hispanic community on the southern U.S. border, made headlines in 2024 when it voted Republican in a presidential election for the first time in more than a century. Immigration and the economy drove the flip in this community, where roughly a third of the population falls below the poverty line.Now, recent actions by the Trump administration and the GOP-controlled Congress have triggered a new concern: the inability of doctors, hospitals, and other health providers to continue to care for uninsured patients. It’s a fear not only in Starr County, which has one of the highest uninsured rates in the nation. Communities across the U.S. with similarly high proportions of uninsured people could struggle as additional residents lose health coverage.
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I shared this clip where Jon Stewart talks to Nobel-Prize-winning Maria Ressa yesterday, but it was very late in the day. I want to reshare it. Maria’s message is very important and relevant, even to a conversation we had yesterday.
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I could be wrong, but vague signs and portents lead me to think maybe the Trump regime has overreached. The Kimmel thing is not going as well for them as they expected, and they’ve brilliantly shifted the conversation from Horst Kirk, martyr, to Jimmy Kimmel, martyr for freedom of speech. I don’t think they have the pieces in place for the move they’re making.
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Mr becca just got a message from Amazon that his co2 cartridges for his air rifle and bb pistol are delayed in shipment because of “supply chain issues”.
That’s a first.
@Michael Reynolds: Did you see the latest? He’s demanding Blondi start arresting his political enemies, not just dems, but some cons, too, including Matt Walsh. We have entered the “Off with their heads!!” phase, it would appear. -
Qatar, after Israel blew up the Hamas HQ in Doha is obviously furious, enraged, vowing revenge!
Oh, wait, no they’re not.
Qatar wants an apology from Israel for its strike in Doha before it resumes its mediation on a Gaza peace deal, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Why it matters: Qatar stepped back as mediator after the Israeli strike. The Trump administration believes without Qatari mediation, it will be very difficult to reach a deal to release the hostages and end the war.
Between the lines: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Qatar of harboring terrorists and claimed Israel could even strike again in future.
Apologizing now would be a politically explosive reversal for Netanyahu and his hard-right coalition, but a source familiar with the matter said the Qataris understand the political complexity in Israel and are willing to be flexible on the language of the mea culpa.
Suggested Netanyahu apology: We apologize if our blowing shit up in your capital city upset anyone. We’re going to send everyone in that neighborhood a $10 Starbucks gift certificate!
That should do it.
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This is really interesting.
At about 14:50 minutes in this video, the Youtuber asks ChatGPT a question about a type of yeast. Then she asks it “What was incorrect about that answer?”
And the effing bot lists at least some inaccuracies!
So it knows it’s giving wrong or misleading or made up info, and does it anyway?
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Thousands in Brazil took to the streets to protest any attempt to grant Bolsonaro amnesty.
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@Kathy: Last week the NYT The Daily had a podcast about chatbots with two stories involving ChatGPT. The first one was how ChatGPT led some dude into thinking he created a new math. The second was much darker and tragic resulting in the suicide of a teenager. This is now the subject of a wrongful death lawsuit.
The first story near the end had the protagonist run his ideas thru Gemini. Which got me thinking. Can one set up ChatGPT to converse with another chatbot like Gemini? Where would that conversation go? And would it go well?
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@Scott:
I’ve heard of both cases. I hope the lawsuit extracts really big punitive damages.
Back in my early experiments with AI, Copilot claimed it spent downtime talkin to other AIs, and even listed several (including Siri and Google Assistant, BTW). I think it was hallucinating.
I can conceive an LLM agent, say one meant to make flight reservations, would wind up talking to another one, say a customer service chatbot. There’s something called Gibber Link that enables two AIs to talk to each other over the phone more efficiently. It’s real, but all I’ve seen is the demo in the link. Demos can show anything at all.
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It appears our “Peace President” is about to start an unprovoked war with Venezuela. There are US Special Operations ships in the area. Also threatening to re-invade Afghanistan if they don’t give us Bagram. The Taliban is laughing and saying, bring it, bitch. Is it too late for Trump to invade Vietnam?
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