I’m at one of the biggest airports in the world in the middle of a very red state today. The mood is somber. I have never seen this airport this quiet. There is no sense of pride or celebration here, and I know the majority of people around me voted for Trump.

If I were to speculate, I see scared faces and other faces too guilty to look anyone in the eye. Eye contact among strangers in an expectation here under normal circumstances, but not today. Everyone is aware on some level that this is a bad thing.

When Microsoft hears " how can Microsoft get any worse?" they have always taken that as a challenge.

This is after they decided to be one of the most public facing corporate sponsors of the genocide in Gaza.

This is why I put this in politics instead of news. This is such a calculated position technically reversing on something they were seemingly committed to to an absurd degree. Until now the WH has been consistent that it was not willing to even entertain the suggestion that any limitations at all be placed on “Isreal’s right to defend itself.” Allowing humanitarian support to mitigate the problems of disease and famine on the gaza strip is the absolute least of what needs to be demanded of Israel.

Netanyahu is really doing everything he can to start as big a war as possible. The US should not be enabling this madman to terrorize an entire region.

There isn’t one atrocity committed by the US or its allies that the NYT wasn’t in full support of. The “paper of record” is essentially the main distribution channel for COINTELPRO style bullshit.

I just watched some videos by a 19-year-old kid who wanted to study psychology in college. The first video I saw wqs about an easy meal to make in difficult situations and a reminder that people were starving. He was murdered on August 28th from indiscriminate bombing.

I don’t know, more conservatives have gone after Trump than anyone.

Ohio is such a weird state. It is notorious for being an unpleasant place to live and I have met dozens of Ohioans who are very pleased to live anywhere else. That being said I disproportionatly have enjoyed the company of the Ohio refugees I’ve met. It has a way of exporting some cool people

I have two main thoughts on this

1. LLMs are not at this time reliable sources of factual information. The user may be getting something that was skimmed from factual information, but the output can often be incorrect since the machine can’t “understand” the information it’s outputting.

2. This could potentially be an excellent way to do real research for people who were not provided research skills by their education. Conspiracy theorists often start off as curious but undisciplined before they fall into the identity aspects of the theories. If a machine using human-like language is able to report factual information quickly, reliably, and without judgement to those who wouldn’t be able to find that info on their own, this could actually be a very useful tool.

Hamas was using the school as a human shield, I’m sure.

You’re onto a very important aspect of fascist rhetoric. The lies have to be absurd. They have to be obviously wrong. They need the kind of people who are looking to belong to something greater than themselves, not people who look for evidence. Lies like these are a great filter to end up with uncritically loyal followers. Same as any cult.

Sartre wrote about the tendencies of anti-semites in 1944 who followed a similar model of “belief” to contemporary conservatives. Here’s a breakdown of that essay.

I think you’re making a similar mistake that I have made many times, which is to assume that others are putting more thought into their decisions and beliefs than they actually do.

Among the conservatives, there are a handful of bad actors who are aware of the grift and are deliberately lying to promote themselves and their scam enterprises. The rest of the conservatives are using the cultural practice derived from a religious and/or nationalistic upbringing to uncritically have “faith” in whatever the party line is. Regardless of intelligence, if someone is vulnerable to group dynamics like this (also existing in other cults), it is more important to conform and receive validation from the group than it is to pointlessly research whether or not the group’s belief is true and risk ostracisation.

It’s not really falling for conspiracies, it’s more like conforming to cult beliefs. Conservatives don’t really understand the things they say or why they believe what they do.

“A land without a people for a people without a land”

I am getting very, very sick of the trend of Democrats spending more time trying to appeal to bigoted conservatives than trying to actually represent their own constituents or help the people they ostensibly care about.

Clinton made it ok, Obama made it cool, and since 2016 it’s been tradition for the Democrats. Citizens United made our elections into a bidding war and the Democrats are often pretty frank that courting billionaires is about not getting outspent by Republicans. As long as they represent the cause of the problem most leftists are concerned about by accepting bribes, they figure they might as well go for conservatives since they seem easier to convince of things.

The mistake they’re making of course is that conservatives don’t get convinced by rhetoric or appeals, they get convinced by the strong looking one who promises to defend them from all the scapegoats. They can’t out scapegoat the Republicans about the border wall and it’s a little insulting that they thought they could, but it’s better to them than risking their funding by being ethical in our hopelessly corrupt system.

Terminally online is an improvement for plutocrats. It used to be that they could never possibly glimpse beyond their limited social circles. Good for regular people to be exposed to just how infantile and narcissistic these “job creators” they used to worship are.

My conservative dad told me about how China was trying to propagandize Americans by opening Confucian education centers in Universities. I explained to him some Confucian concepts and I have to say he got propagandized quick. He especially liked the concept of everyone staying in their place to promote social harmony. I didn’t risk talking about filial piety because he’s a narcissist who doesn’t need that concept. Chinese traditionalism and social conservatism is very appealing to people who like Trump.

I just tested out the classic “She working” vs “She be working,” and the machine got it backwards. It can’t translate to AAVE, but it probably can appear to be well enough for people who wouldn’t know the difference. In terms of available written materials just by population and historical access it seems like there would be way more incorrect white imitations of AAVE to draw from than its correct usage. Like a lot of LLM issues, it’s been a problem for a loooong time but is now being put into overdrive by being automated.

In Rat Park the rats who were alone and had a choice between the regular water and the drug water always chose the drug water but the rats living in healthy communities preferred the regular water so they could be sober around their loved ones. Although it’s just a joke, the cartoon rat feeling the need to say goodbye to the cocaine button it bonded to hit me pretty good today.