Saturday Evening

enjoy

Keep Talking

I think it would be funny if Republicans remind Chuck Schumer that this is a thing he can do.

Senate Republicans are coming under intense pressure from President Trump and right-wing colleagues to embark on an old-fashioned filibuster fight in an effort to ram through a voter identification bill that their party regards as crucial to salvaging their dimming chances of winning the midterm elections.

Hamster Treat Button

Trump is pushing the tariff button again. Now up to 15%! Just keep raising it. Why not.

Seems Bad

Nobody thinks it will happen to them, but do not visit the US if you do not have to.

A Tax On Patriotic American Companies

I honestly don't know if these people have cooked their brains on propaganda so much that they don't know this, or if they just expect everyone to maintain the lie with them.

Morning

Slacker Saturday

Happy Hour

Get happy.

I Guess We're Still Doing This

Free speech is threatened when institutions listen to public pressure from the wrong sorts of people - the people who don't have have newspaper columns and who disagree with me! - and not when (looks around at the United States, 2026).

Find it yourself, but you can guess the topic. Kirchick is an absurd guy. He gets published because the people who run the New York Times basically agree with him (no this is not true of everything they publish, but it is true of this shit).

Security And Confidentiality

I have an idea.  Why don't we force these onto every machine in the country, give them super-admin* access permissions by default, and have them send everything unecrypted into the generalized plagiarism machine.  What could go wrong?

Oh I forgot - make sure it has access to everyone's passwords and bank/card information so it can do whatever it is supposed to do more efficiently.

*I don't know if "super-admin access permissions" is a thing but you get my point.

America's Worst Humans

Jesse Watters.

Chaos Agent

I imagine rage-filled Trump will do something extra bad and stupid, soon.

Popularism!

At least chase the puck.

Americans are roughly split over whether the federal government should deport all undocumented immigrants living in the United States, but a growing share oppose expanded ICE operations -- and by a 2-to-1 margin, they oppose ICE's tactics.

The results come following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, by federal agents in Minneapolis on Jan. 24 -- just weeks after the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a mother of three, by an ICE agent in Minneapolis on Jan. 7.

Half (50%) of Americans support the federal government deporting the about 14 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. and sending them back to their home countries while 48% oppose this.

This is basically an even split on DEPORTING UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS when of course the Trumpers are also (mostly) kidnapping, imprisoning, and deporting people who have permission to be in the country.

The Tariff King

Headlines say the Supremos took away his favorite toy, 6-3. No tariffs for him! Don't know if there are any nuances...

...no idea what this means for collected tariffs, but it does mean all the countries that slapped tariffs on US products in "deals" don't have to remove them, of course.

Ah, Well, Nevertheless

Two months ago:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday that it’s been a “very strong” holiday shopping season so far and predicted that the U.S. economy would end the year on strong footing.

“The economy has been better than we thought. We’ve had 4% GDP growth in a couple of quarters,” he said in an interview on CBS News’ ‘Face the Nation.’ “We’re going to finish the year, despite the Schumer shutdown, with 3% real GDP growth.”

Actual: 1.4% 

Morning

Funky Friday.

The Best People

Can't stop being the worst for 5 minutes.

The husband of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer has been barred from the department’s headquarters after at least two female staff members told officials that he had sexually assaulted them, according to people familiar with the decision and a police report obtained by The New York Times.

One of my little theories is that these are all horrible people, who have surrounded themselve with horrible people, and they have no idea that not everyone lives like that .

Not just him!

The inspector general’s office is investigating a formal complaint that Ms. Chavez-DeRemer was having an inappropriate sexual relationship with a subordinate — a member of her security detail — and abusing her office by taking staff to strip clubs, drinking alcohol on the job and taking personal trips at taxpayer expense. Her lawyer has denied the allegations.

Happy Hour

Get happy

Egyptian Cotton

They spent a bunch of money on this crap and you are going to eat it even if it chokes you to death.

This month Accenture started to collect data on individual weekly log-ins to its AI tools for some senior employees.

“Use of our key tools will be a visible input to talent discussions” during this summer’s leadership-level promotion decisions, the email said. The New York-listed group says it has more than 550,000 people trained in generative AI.

The tools include AI Refinery, which Accenture said helped companies “turn raw AI technology into useful business solutions”, along with SynOps, an “innovative human-machine operating ‘engine’ that optimises the synergy of data, applied intelligence, digital technologies and talent to help organisations transform business operations”.

I have no idea what any of that means. Neither does the person who wrote it (Spicy Clippy wrote it, I know).

They Feed It Everything

A sign of an obvious problem years ago was when tech weirdos made clear that the important thing was feeding their Spicy Clippies as much language as possible - including reddit shitposts - instead of having any kind of quality control. I think (?) they thought if they fed it enough they would create God somehow, instead of just creating a bullshit machine.

It turns out changing the answers AI tools give other people can be as easy as writing a single, well-crafted blog post almost anywhere online. The trick exploits weaknesses in the systems built into chatbots, and it's harder to pull off in some cases, depending on the subject matter. But with a little effort, you can make the hack even more effective. I reviewed dozens of examples where AI tools are being coerced into promoting businesses and spreading misinformation. Data suggests it's happening on a massive scale.

Like every flaw with these things, it isn't "weaknesses," it's just design. This is what they are.

tired: SEO optimization for ads wired: AI optimization for propaganda

Brand Destruction Is Fast

I still find myself clicking over to the WaPo out of habit, then seeing cartoon Megan McArdle makes me realize I should close the tab right away.

Sure she has been there for awhile, but now it's as if the entire paper is Megan McArdle.