Well: I do not think the Senate margins will be anywhere near that small in November 2026, so adjust appropriately.

OTOH, anyone trying to spoil for fascism should be [TOC VIOLATION] anyway, so

I think no matter what there's a lot of stuff that's gonna really depend on our having a slick guy/gal who can actually sell stuff convincingly, which Biden couldn't do. (And then, yes, ultimately depends on at least a modest majority of voters not being at the region where stupid and evil converge)

man I love it when my doctor not only asks chatGPT about the treatment but does it *after* they induce a nearly fatal reaction in me

yeah, if nothing else, absolutely no one's priors should be on the side of "the NYT are good-faith headline writers" at this point

I mean *the rich elite who molest children* are indeed, I would humbly argue, fundamentally different from us in an important way, as long as one is actually specifying & verifying that part.

but so are the poor rednecks who molest children, of course.

Nativist hypocrisy 🤝 CO2 greenhouse effects

Things smart people saw literally 100+ years ago

I'm personally just hung up on how her handle sounds like you tried to make her name into an insult

"More like BUNGar Sargon, am I rite"

Creon Funeral Home

It was sweet to read about, but left you with a funny taste in your mouth?

for myself the ways in which I was happier, say, 15 or 20 years ago would include "was less pointedly aware that my fellow citizens were either ontologically evil or doing an excellent job of emulating it"

I am primed to be understanding of religious folks walking a slow road to wokeness, but who give other signals that they are basically good people.

this is worse-- this is them running in the other direction. I decline to say much in the way of good things about them at this time.

IMO, you don't get any noticeable amount of Jesus points for being willing to stand up for people you already have an allyship with for other reasons. You have to recognize that the proverbial Samaritan is a potential neighbor, too.

if they had just done the Francis/Leo thing where they hit cruise control on the moderately LGBTQ-phobic theological teachings, while continuing to provide care, that'd be one thing. but actively tearing care away from trans people? I can't give the person who does that any approbation.

Fetterman but that's making it actively, massively worse which I suppose I still think they wouldn't do; I think the most likely fail state is "doesn't get it at all" rather than "actively malicious"

Correct me on the technical points, but I'm pretty sure the only way you prevent it from falsely inferring/interpolating things that you wouldn't actually believe is to tightly constrain the training data. And if that even works, it's, again, just "a journal but way more fucked up for no reason"

thing for me, as with every genAI application, is: no improvement over the traditional methods if you want to authentically transmit the thoughts/feelings of a person. *at best* AI is just a video/journal with extra steps, and it seems like it almost certainly includes horrifying confounding factors

I'm reminded of the exchange Terry Pratchett wrote in, I think it's _Going Postal_.

Executioner asked whether he thinks the death penalty's effective.

He answers: in general, maybe not, but in individual cases, yes. Meaning, he's never seen anyone come up on the gallows more than once.