Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, October 19, 2025
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25 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus 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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BlueSky.
ChatGPT is eating your brain
Keeping in mind the following quote is from only one study with a small number of subjects, it’s nevertheless chilling:
How do you get students to not use LLMs for their homework?
I don’t think it’s possible, short of shutting them into a sealed, WiFi-free room, after a thorough strip search for phones, to do their homework in.
Maybe teachers could require essays and papers to be hand written. Students would still have LLMs write them, but in the process of transcribing them, part of them might stick.
Nightmare scenario:
TV host: What is your book about?
Famous author: Er, let me check my phone.
@Kathy:
I have read that there is a booming market for blue books, those old stapled booklets with a few sheets of paper used for exams. Lots of students will be penalized by those, not because they lack access to computers, but because they have not been drilled in writing fast enough and legibly enough to do exams in longhand.
The link won’t copy for me, but Military Times is reporting the Air Force is withdrawing the motions awarding Charlie Kirk posthumous honors.
If resistance is cringe, give me more, more, more.
That didn’t take long. Israel strikes Gaza in first major ceasefire test, saying Hamas attacked troops
Trump posts AI slop showing him carpet bombing No Kings protests with excrement:
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3m3jbffj3q22w
This isn’t just repugnant.
He is repugnant in every imaginable way.
He exults in being repugnant.
He encourages others to be repugnant.
And they exult in him and themselves.
@Sleeping Dog:
That is not the first test. Hamas executing rivals in the streets – video available if you like snuff films – was the first violation since the terms of the deal call for Hamas to give up control. In fact, Hamas re-asserting control, unless reversed somehow, is the end of the whole deal.
@Kingdaddy:
Is it a surprise that a pig wallows in filth?
I wonder if this is a mistake. Both the Italian fascists and the Nazis presented themselves as defenders of their culture, as elevated examples. Trump isn’t offering anything aspirational. He’s just gutter filth inviting others into his gutter.
@Michael Reynolds:
It’s no surprise that Hamas would reassert control, particularly since there is no plan to provide security, with a plan to transition to a governing authority. Details, details.
@Sleeping Dog:
I was trying to have a little hope this was going to work. I’ve been a bit baffled to see that many intelligent, knowledgeable people thought it might work. But I have not been able to convince myself there’s anything here but a pause in the usual self-destructive, atavistic behavior that has always characterized the Palestinians. The Palestinians (Arabs in the original quote IIRC) never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Point 6 of the 20 Point Plan:
And what about Hamas members who won’t commit to peaceful co-existence? Which is to say, 100% of Hamas since Hamas will simply execute any member who dares to even think about peaceful co-existence.
Point 9:
Is that intended to be funny? Because it is.
@Kingdaddy:
They revel in their repugnancy, striving to out repugnant each other. They have no bottom.
@Rob1:
Oh, they must have bottoms.
Where else can they obtain the faeces?
@Michael Reynolds: “In fact, Hamas re-asserting control, unless reversed somehow, is the end of the whole deal.”
But Trump said he’d solved the war forever!
With geniuses like Jared in charge, how could this ceasefire end as quickly as the two Biden negotiated?
@Michael Reynolds: “Is that intended to be funny? Because it is.”
The only surprise here is that the cease fire is falling apart so quickly, before Trump and Blair are able to start looting the joint.
@Kathy:
Well, there’s always the approach of the “concerts” in Neal Stphenson’s Anathem@
Where the avout students and teachers “within the walls” are denied all access to informational, computational and communication devices.
They are effectively restricted to pen, pencil, paper, and chalkboards.
(Though tbh Stephenson’s concept is difficult to sustain, in all aspects, if you think about it: how are the in-concert hospitals the avout operate supposed to function without diagnostic technology directly used by them: they can hadly rely on the “IT caste” for all such)
Though that extreme is hardly workable, a return to more use of “pen and paper” examinations is hardly impossible.
@Michael Reynolds:
An appeal to the atavism of the lumpenbourgeois and the self-interest of the techbros and hereditary billionaires and political grift may get you a long way.
But eventually just being the followers of the dominant faeces-flinging monkey, and nothing more, probably has limited appeal to the educated and adept persons on which modern societies functioning depends.
(A group that includes the military leadership cadres)
As you say, even the fascists and communists aspired to some (warped) concepts of aspirations to a “noble mission”.
The closest that MAGA seems to have to this are the feeble maunderings of Stephen Miller and his ilk about the “preservation of Western Civilization”.
There problem being, you can’t realistically aspire to be Hegel while using the tactics of Sorel.
@Sleeping Dog:
@Michael Reynolds:
@wr:
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again.
This “peace deal” holding” depends on a a serious military Power establishing security control in Gaza, with the authority to stomp on Hamas.
But that has not been set up, and all the candidates are busy saying “After you, Claude.”.
For obvious reasons:
What is the upside for any of them in getting into a rather nasty counter-insurgency operation in Gaza, assuming Hamas have no intention of being disarmed or departing?
Which seems a reasonable assumption at this point.
It would need at minimum a massive financial sweetener over cost plus, and other side deals.
Plus indemnification via a carte blanche from the UNSC.
And how likely you do think Russia and China are to approve that?
Hell is likely to freeze over first.
This deal puts the cart before the horse.
And the putative horses are proving shy.
An alternative might be a PA enforcement, backed by Gulf money and external heavy weapons.
But that would require Israel to both back off in the WestBank, to avoid the PA facing massive political problems.
And tolerating the creation of an effective PA military force.
I rate the likelihood of Netyanhayu’s cabinet accepting that outcome as rather low.
@Sleeping Dog:
Wow, that took a LOT longer than I thought it would. I was surprised the “cease fire” lasted long enough for someone to reload their weapon, much less find a target – any target.
@JohnSF:
So, I’m guessing that the old school, “kill everything there, pile the skulls in pyramids, and sow the earth with salt and call it peace” is off the table?
Yes, it’s a joke. In very poor taste, but a joke. Because if the ME is a smooth, glowing (radioactive) glass plain, how would we get all that lovely crude oil extracted?
@JohnSF: @wr: @Sleeping Dog:
Hamas accepted the parts of the deal they liked: Israel pulls back and Hamas gives up the hostages which are a huge pain to care for and utterly ineffective at limiting Israel’s response.
And as @JohnSF says, we now await the commitment of the serious military power to step in and establish order. Couple problems there. First, the only serious militaries in the region are Israel and Turkey. Chance that Israel would tolerate a Turkish army force in Gaza? Hah!
Second, who the fuck among the serious is going to commit billions of dollars and many lives to essentially finish the job the Israelis have already begun? China? Russia? France? Britain? The US?
So we’re back to Egypt and Jordan whose militaries are more configured to be used against their own people, or against other Arab or Iran-aligned actors, and would be immediately embroiled in a Hamas insurgency. Potentially, if the PA actually decides to get involved, a civil war plus an insurgency.
Point 13:
Sure, it sounds easy. . .
ETA: My only slightly tongue-in-cheek end state prediction: the world shrugs, looks at Netanyahu, and in the words of Barack Obama, says, ‘please, proceed.’
@Michael Reynolds:
The alternatives to Turkey are (because a non-Muslim country is off the table, for various reasons) as at least semi-serious militaries are Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia maybe, Algeria or Morocco just perhaps.
(Nigeria as an outside bet?)
Jordan won’t touch it with a bargepole; Amman wants to keep its head down as much as possible, while buying insurance.
I’d vote for Pakistan, on the basis that the ISI are nasty bastards.
But why would they sign up?
Unless the deal is massively sweetened by the Saudis/Gulfies/US.
(And that in turn incurs possible problems re India)
London replies:
“Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Now kindly bugger off.”
😉
Palestine was not much fun previously, and does not seem much more congenial now.
The whole thing needs a serious enforcement mitilary, willing to gets its hands dirty, and compensated and immunized accordingly.
That’s the reality. and that’s what has not been arranged.
Maybe it can be, but time is wasting fast: Hamas is already trying to resecure dominance, and Israel reacting to that.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
In all the likely ramifications of Gaza, the nuclear annihilation of the ME oilfields is rather low on the contingency tree, imho.
As for “skulls in pyramids”, perhaps Mongolia was called and replied:
“Ghenghiz no longer on this phone. Go ask Mamelukes.”
The problem of all this is it depands primarily upon Hamas in Gaza being rational actors, and secondarily on Netanyahu exercising restraint.
Both seem rather optimistic, to put it mildly.
As I said: it needs heavy-hitter to put a security force in harms way, and asap.
And that’s what the Trump deal failed to set up.
@wr:
HAMAs never agreed to the terms. They gave a “Yes, but…” and, as the saying goes, everything before “but” is a steaming pile of trump.
Nevertheless, the agreement included a provision that HAMAS would be the police of the place “for a time”. I suspect Bibi, HAMAS’s greatest and longest patron, quietly celebrated HAMAS offing the competition.
@Michael Cain:
@JohnSF:
I just did a brief experiment in using AI to generate the formats I do at work.
Not very good. It did copy the whole of the required items into an excel sheet, but without formulas, and it marked all products with VAT (food is exempt from VAT). That last would save me perhaps 30 seconds of copying and pasting. Minus ten seconds to write the prompt.
The formatting for everything else would take longer to fix than to do it myself. Still, I may try it again some other time and see what happens. Overall I think excel already has enough built-in automation that an LLM won’t add much, if anything.
I would love it if it could format the thing and correctly list everything and do the formulas and the correct taxes and such. But I don’t think it’s there yet, at least not without many detailed prompts that ought to be more work than just doing the work.
I do want to try to see if it can copy accurately tables from one word document to another. That’s one thing that gives me some trouble.
A Palm Bay FL city councilman wants to deport Indians. Given the quality of GOP pols I read the story to see if he actually meant like the Seminoles. Apparently no, Indians from South Asia. But I could honestly see one of these idiots wanting to send the Cherokee back where they came from, without realizing that would be Georgia.
@gVOR10: I never thought it could get stupider, but it gets stupider. People around here want to get rid of “wetbacks” because they think it will stop the spam callers.