Friday Funbag Edition
My answers to three questions of the week.
One of the things I’m going to try out over here in the Wasteland is writing a little Q&A in weeks where there’s just a lot of the weird going on. This is definitely one of those weeks. Feel free to leave a comment with questions you might have (although your presence here likely means you’re already paying closer attention than most). Courage!
Q: Just exactly what is going on in the photo above, and why is it a big deal?
I figured I should get this one out of the way first, because it kind of appeared out of nowhere, and first seemed like it was a quick blip, but now it might just have legs as a story.
Donald Trump went to Arlington National Cemetery a few days ago to partake in a wreath-laying ceremony, and then afterwards in Section 60, where the fallen of Iraq and Afghanistan lay, he met with a family that are big supporters of him. So far, so good. What was not so good was that he had a professional camera crew with him, and they were trying to turn it into a campaign advertisement. A female Army officer moved to intervene, as it is blatantly against the law to film in that section unless the photography is done for official purposes and performed by an official military photographer. A couple of Trump aides manhandled the woman, and since Trump’s Secret Service detail declined to enforce the law, she withdrew and filed a complaint with the command structure at Arlington.
Trump’s campaign responded by claiming the officer was “mentally ill” and was “having an episode.” That alone was obnoxious and offensive, but then they added that since the family pictured above approved it, there’s nothing illegal about it. Setting aside the fact that two of the three tombstones in the foreground are NOT related to the family above, this again demonstrates the absolute disregard for laws in the Trump universe. I would think that those who lost a servicemember would have respect for the other graves there, whose families didn’t choose to partake, but let’s be honest, most support for Trump comes from those who have disdain for decency, common sense, and laws applying to them.
The Army officer in question declined to press charges because she feared a campaign of harassment and doxxing from Trump supporters. One of the things that a Democratic government needs to jump on quickly if elected is cracking down on these online behaviors. This isn’t a joke. People are regularly being harassed, assaulted, and even killed after being doxxed. Families have to move. It’s gross and needs to end.
Q: Are we doomed to an ever-growing deluge of AI everything?
Sadly, yes.
Artificial Intelligence is the new crypto. It’s going to be beaten into us by advertisers for Big Tech as a cure for everything, and it really isn’t. I have experience working with training AI. I have researched it. I have watched it in action. It has never lived up to its billing, and probably never will, because it does not overcome simple failings. It’s been a decade, and you can still fool the AI controlling a “self-driving” car by putting a bumper sticker or snow onto a stop sign. Google’s AI launch in search was turned into Internet laughs because it took shitposting seriously and put things designed to be jokes into serious results. In its first week, it suggested putting glue onto your pizza to keep the cheese from falling off. ChatGPT, just last night, told my friend that the word strawberry only had two Rs. She asked three times, and spelled out in her responses that it had three, and the AI insisted it was two.
There are uses for AI, but those uses only exist in targeted situations. It cannot write a proper term paper or lecture. It cannot cite sources authoritatively. It cannot express emotions. I’m linking two chats that I did with ChatGPT, one from a year ago, and one from today. What I find interesting, though not surprising, is that the answers to the exact same questions regardling issues of morality, regulation, and capabilities have been clearly modified to express OpenAI’s beliefs. I’m also fascinated how the answer to how it would write about itself changed from a “human” answer to one that seems faux-intellectual, almost as if it were designed to give an answer that makes AI look more capable than it is. I would strongly advise anyone reading this to not engage with the AI buttons inserted into our phones for searching, typing messages, etc. Do not feed the beast.
Q: Why is Brittany Mahomes coming out now as a MAGA supporter? Does she not think it would alienate Taylor Swift’s friendship with her?
This all started with Mrs. Mahomes liking, and then unliking after backlash, a Donald Trump post detailing his 2025 agenda if he wins. At the same time, she posted an Instagram story that read, “I mean honestly, to be a hater as an adult, you have to have some deep rooted issues you refuse to heal from childhood. There’s no reason your brain is fully developed and you hate to see others doing well.” There was some debate that the story was aimed at a different group of critics (her and Patrick gave a massive donation to Texas Tech University, their alma mater, and both their names now reside on the stadium there—commenters on the announcement basically called her his coattail rider), but yesterday that seemed to evaporate as she liked this comment on her post.
I’m not going to begin to delve into the psychology of someone like Brittany Mahomes, married to a black man, mother of biracial children, supporting a campaign whose vice-presidential nominee craps all over Swift (who is supposed to be her friend!). For that matter, same said nominee believes women shouldn’t get to vote in married households. Some of Vance’s buddies loudly and openly call for repeal of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted the right to vote to women. Maybe she thinks money and privilege would make her immune to losing rights, but as someone who lives in not one, but two states that absolutely ban abortion, God forbid she be miscarrying and need immediate medical support. Women like her carry this massive cognitive dissonance where they think that you can still be a good person while supporting someone who is, unquestionably, not good by any measurable metric of morality. There’s something very broken inside such people, or they’ve been raised in an environment where questioning certain types of “authority” was a giant no-no.
Taylor Swift is a better person than I, so maybe she lets it slide, whether it be from her own innate goodness or an unwillingness to not cause disruption to her boyfriend’s workplace. But if I were in Taylor’s place, I’d make it clear Brittany doesn’t get to come into the Kelce suite. If you put a couple of putzes above the most famous woman on Earth’s friendship and love, you deserve all the freezing out that you get.
Another reason to dislike the Chiefs!