The post-blue check Twitter cesspool

I wasn't ready to call Twitter a general cesspool in the first weeks and months after Musk's takeover.

But, the blue-check fiasco? Different.

On topics like RFK Jr. and his various conspiracy theories, my feed, at least, is swarmed with wingnut and pseudoskeptical pseudoleftist blue checks. The truth, I blogged yesterday, here, and don't even get me started on Assange and the Seth Rich conspiracy and other things.

And, given the recent news about Elon forcing a blue check on Wint — who promptly changed his Twitter name to erase it — and LeBron — who didn't, as well as him gifting blue checks to others, it's more and more clear that it's a shitshow.

So, I'm not totally following Wint's idea yet, but I am blocking more and more of the wingnut and pseudoleftist blue checks, and because it will be more fun, I'm going to mute some of the Blue Anon ones who boo hoo about how we shouldn't do this.

Plus, the new blue check cesspool has enabled non-blue checks of cesspool nature to ramp up.

Add in that even the modest number of Jack Dorsey era content moderators are largely gone ....

Tablet gives RFK Jr. a bigger puff piece than Ryan Grim did for Williamson

Oh, boy, where to start with the hot mess of shit that David Samuels crapped out?

Before we get to the real nutbar stuff, let's note that,with the phrase "vaccine believers," Samuels himself walks, talks and quacks like an antivaxxer. And Dave Weigel, with a semi-puff-piece short Twitter thread about the interview, unless he explicitly disclaims it, thus becomes an antivaxxer fellow traveler.

Let's get to the meaty meat, though. First, of many pieces I've written about the JFK assassination — note, nutbars, I lived in the DFW Metroplex nearly a decade, have been to Dealey Plaza MANY a time, have been up to the sixth floor, etc. — let's briefly tackle the Camelot angle, since Tim Shorrock among others went down that road just a few years ago. As I blogged then, NSAM-263 is NOT a smoking gun. Or even close.

Now, part two of the "meat"? Sirhan Sirhan had opportunity, had access, had practiced hundreds of rounds with that pistol, and to his mind, had "good" reason after presumably seeing the pictures of Bobby wearing a yarmulke in an Oregon synagogue on Israel's independence day. I've got that and more all here.

The interview itself is funny at times where not craptacular. For example, Junior tries to explain away dad's involvement in Mongoose by saying he didn't like the CIA people behind it.

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Update, May 20: Beyond all that, as Nathan J. Robinson notes, on other issues, like climate change and national health care, RFK Jr. is largely a nothingburger.

Texas Progressives watch the Lege

The Texas Progressive Alliance is rooting for the Daisetta Sinkhole to migrate to the Capitol as it brings you this week's roundup. 

Will the Lege listen to Uvalde parents and raise the age to buy semi-auto weapons to 21? Probably not. (And we haven't even touched on the issue of minors, as well as adults, being able to shoot on rental machine guns.)

But, the Texas Senate, at least, WILL mandate the Ten Commandments in schools; end tenure at universities; tell schools to upgrade school security without paying enough for it.

The Senate, also showing how ideology trumps helping its own constituents, would end countywide voting on election day, a practice begun in rural, and of course, wingnut, counties.

Republican Legiscritters aren't the only ones with inappropriate office relationship problems. Right, Jolanda Jones?

Off the Kuff writes about the apparently imminent 2024 Senate campaign for State Sen. Roland Gutierrez.

Jeff Leach is being sued for calling secession backers "traitorous."

ConservaDem Royce West got kicked in the nads by constituents and withdrew his original support for an anti-drag bill. He was the only Senate Dem to originally support it.

Twenty years before the Trail of Tears, American Indians already faced forced assimilation.

SocraticGadfly has an update on the PRO Gainesville movement.

Houston Landing reports on a project to transplant reeds from ancient Iraqi marsh culture to Rice University.

The Austin Chronicle provides an overview of the criminal justice reform referendum on its May ballot.

The San Antonio Report provides arguments for and against that city's broad and controversial referendum for marijuana and criminal justice reform.

Raise Your Hand Texas has a public education legislative update.

Emily Eby documented the House election bill atrocities so you didn't have to.

The Texas Tribune tells you how to find their actual reporters (as well as elected officials) on Twitter now that blue checks don't mean anything any more.

Jaron Lanier on AI — the good, bad and ugly of Lanier

"There is no AI": An interesting piece by Jaron Lanier. He notes that it's not intelligent and not an independent mind, among other things.

These are all things I've been saying, including about the hyped new ChatGPT et cetera.

He then says if we treat it as a tool, not a person, we'll worry less.

He then becomes Jaron Lanier, saying he disagreed with a petition against AI invading privacy because "we don't know what privacy is," going on to:

It’s a term we use every day, and it can make sense in context, but we can’t nail it down well enough to generalize. The closest we have come to a definition of privacy is probably “the right to be left alone,” but that seems quaint in an age when we are constantly dependent on digital services. In the context of A.I., “the right to not be manipulated by computation” seems almost correct, but doesn’t quite say everything we’d like it to.

First, what's wrong with the first half of that and why can't it be updated to today's age? Lanier offers no explanation. Did it seem quaint when, after the telephone was invented, the predecessor of the FBI did wiretaps without warrants at first?

Second, I can't believe that he missed the parallel to Potter Stewart's famous:

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

Because there is at least some degree of parallel.

He goes on to note that AI researchers he notes agree that things like deepfakes need to be labeled as such, but that there might be problems getting there.

In all of this, he sounds like the Lanier of reality not legend of a decade ago, when Yevgeny Morozov nailed him for handwaving, strawmanning vagueness and other things. He's also, per that piece, got a history of positioning himself as an outsider when the reality is not so much.

Lanier also, way back then, was already talking about surrendering to digital snooping, rather than fighting it.

Near the end of the piece, he notes that AI might produce a movie that has no "backstory." Well, Jaron, I don't know about movies, but novelists talk about their stories taking on a life of their own to the degree that the original backstory bears little resemblance to the final work.

In the jobs world, he talks about "data dignity." This sounds halfway convincing, but "data dignity" re AI-driven tree trimming robots does not. But, given the "nailed him," where Lanier a decade ago talked about us all becoming internet entrepreneurs, not surprising. It also, per that piece, sounds as naive on issues like this as he was a decade ago. Or, if not naive, grifting for some legendary "better angels of Silicon Valley's nature."

Then, Jaron Lanier becomes, once again, the Lanier of reality not legend:

Many people in Silicon Valley see universal basic income as a solution to potential economic problems created by A.I. But U.B.I. amounts to putting everyone on the dole in order to preserve the idea of black-box artificial intelligence.

Knowing the Lanier of reality — while knowing that there are multiple varieties of BI, despite the lies on that by Scott Santens, and knowing that Silicon Valley promotes the tech-libertarian type — this is still not surprising out of his mouth. And, per that link above, the "nailed him," he's still ultimately a libertarian, so that's also why this isn't surprising.

Now, if he wanted to say that BI is insufficient, like Douglas Rushkoff's push for "basic assets," THEN we'd be talking. But, that's not his idea.

As for Santens? Basic laundry list:

• Called Trump "the basic income Moses," per a piece where Scott is himself associated with the World Economic Forum, as in Davos, while getting more alarmist about AI then than Lanier is today;
• Wants to junk entitlements, including even trimming Social Security — more here;
  
• Is a crypto-bro;
• Denies that there are libertarian and non-libertarian versions of BI that don't square with each other;
• And on all of this, can't do math on how to pay for his ideas.
  

Anyway, read the whole thing. It's a definite longform. 

And, make sure to get to the bottom, to note that his tagline notes he works for Microslob. Why would you trust a Bill Gates minion on any of this?

Fox, Tucker, Dominion, Smartmatic, Greenwald, Newsmax

Trust me. In my normal way with headers like this, I'll tie it all together.

First, the actual news: Cucker Tarlson, known to some as Tucker Carlson, has been kicked to the curb by Fox News. Reports say it was actually mutual, as in Mediate quoting from Fox's release, but let's be real. CNN Biz notes that there's no farewell show or nothing. What aired Friday is it.

So why?

Many people bemoaned that Dominion didn't get an actual on-air apology from Fox negotiated as part of settling its lawsuit. That said, Fox had apologized before, and admitted "falsehoods" in its statement related to the settlement.

Was shit-canning Tucker a backdoor deal? I doubt it.

Was this a pre-emptive move with Smartmatic's lawsuit now teed up on the first hole, and for half again as much as Dominion? Possible.

UPDATE: Rupert himself offed Tucker, related to the Abby Grossberg lawsuit.

Was it to head off possible lawsuits by the likes of Ray Epps? Possible, and more, per that UPDATE link. That's the NYT saying that it was due to Cucker going conspiracy theorist on Epps and that the lawsuit, being about coerced testimony allegations as well as harassment ones, "needed" to go.

With Cucker now on voluminous record about hating Trump, even as for 2024, Ron DeSatan's campaign implodes and the GOP seems to be searching for a credible alternative to the racist permatanner, could it be about sweetening up to him? Possible.

Replacement? Well, I speculated on Twitter when I saw the initial news:

You're shitting me on Fox and Tucker dumping each other. If Greenwald (or maybe Taibbi) is his replacement, remember, you heard it here first.

And, there, I'm not joking.

You'll note the "maybe" after Taibbi. Matt still seems to be trying to straddle multiple political stools to some degree, and he knows that Fox would be a bridge too far for many contrarian leftists who hate Democrats (I dislike a fair junk of national ones myself) but hate wingnuts even more.

Glennwald? Different story.

He's never been a leftist, contra some leftists like David Bruce Collins who once claimed he was. He has long been a libertarian or libertarian-conservative, despite him denying the l-tard label. He's been a general rectal irritant worse than Carlson.

And, people would watch him.

That said, given his "don't edit" me fallout with the Intercept, and people before that, in the print world, would Fox want someone who would possibly be an even bigger prima donna? Would Greenwald have other hangups?

And, adding one sector to the header that I didn't originally have?

Newsmax has been struggling for PR, and struggling to continue to get carried by various cable providers. Would it make a play for Tucker? That said, Newsmax has a big old boner for Trump, and given that Carlson's thoughts on that are now out in the open, that would be a tough issue. OTOH, Newsmax loves conspiracy theorists.

UPDATE 2: Newsmax, hell. Vivek Ramaswamy, supposedly running against Trump himself said Cucker should jump in the race! Given that Cucker does indeed have less than fond feelings for Trump IRL, THAT would be interesting.

UPDATE 3: Joy Ann Reid notes Cucker has the trifecta of cable news firings.

UPDATE 4: Rolling Stone reports that Irena Briganti, Fox's head honcho for bullshitting (ie, corporate communications) has a shit file on Cucker in case he trashes it post-exit.

UPDATE 5: Contra Jefferson Morley channeling David Talbot, JFK conspiracy theory mongering had nothing to do with Cucker getting fired. Also via there, contra Counterpunch, no, Cucker was not fired for talking about US troops possibly fighting in Ukraine (he's not the first to make that claim) or related. And, contra Jonathan Cook there channeling Glennwald, Tucker is only on a new path of populist pandering.

Another name for "American Indian" is "person"

I've long said here, and even more on my other blog, that being an atheist is no guarantor of moral or intellectual superiority to the rest of humankind, and occasionally said the same about being a scientific skeptic.

Well, the same is true of being an American Indian. From potlatch tribes of the US Pacific Northwest killing slaves on the flames as part of potlatch destruction events, through Aztecs ripping out bleeding human hearts, and on to today's Ute's not only drilling for but refining oil, being an American Indian is no guarantor of being humanistic or environmentalist.

Latest proof on not being humanist? A tribe in Wisconsin, in a case before the Supreme Court, loan-sharking people with higher interest rates (and apparently tougher dunning) than the state of Wisconsin allows, and wanting exemption from Wisconsin laws as a sovereign nation. Update: SCOTUS'  hearing is here.