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You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Late Night Open Thread: (Comparatively) Good News From Arizona

Late Night Open Thread: (Comparatively) Good News From Arizona

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Arizona voter:


On the eve of a pivotal state legislative vote on abortion, Arizona Democrats took aim at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and blamed him for reviving Arizona’s near-total ban.

The comments were made during a media call hosted by President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, one day before the Arizona Senate was expected to vote on whether to repeal an abortion law from 1864 that the Arizona Supreme Court upheld April 9…

Two Arizona Democratic leaders and one Tucson physician were on Tuesday’s call, voicing support for a repeal of the 1864 law.

However, because of threats by Trump and his supporters, they said, it will be critical for voters to turn up at the polls in November when an initiative is expected to appear on the ballot that will ask Arizonans to approve enshrining the right to an abortion into the state constitution.

“A ban is a ban and no patients’ lives should be risked just to appease a political agenda,” Harrel said. “While tomorrow’s vote is important, so is the Arizonans for Abortion Access ballot measure, which we must get on the ballot and pass.”…

Fear not, forced birthers, the GOP has its own November defense set up…

Reader Interactions

63Comments

  1. 1.

    Fake Irishman

    This is good news, but one major wrinkle: because the repeal was not passed with immediate effect (usually in governments requires a supermajority of the state legislature), the 1864 ban will be in effect until something like 90 days after the end of the legislative session. It may well cause some clinics to close, and it’s proven really tough to get them open again.

    Also, the big prize is restoring Roe protections by vote in Nov. if we can do so.

    But yes: elections matter; Katie Hobbes in the governor’s mansion has been a major boon. So props to everyone who made that possible in 2022 and also broke up the GOP monopoly on statewide office in 2018 by getting her in the Secretary of State’s Office.

  2. 2.

    Poe Larity

    I was right about worrying Apple TVs Sugar would go full metal David Lynch.

    Millions will go WTF tonight.

  5. 5.

    piratedan

    @Fake Irishman: agreed, it’s a first step.  It helps that the State AG has stated repeatedly that she will not prosecute anything regarding this law.  Granted it still means that there are some knuckledraggers out there in some counties that STILL may try and push this and the Abortion measure SHOULD get onto the ballot.

  6. 6.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Second Boeing whistleblower dies after short illness

    Joshua Dean, 45, former quality auditor at Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems, alleged ‘gross misconduct by quality management’

    Dominic Rushe in New York
    Thu 2 May 2024 17.49 EDT

    Joshua Dean, a Boeing whistleblower who warned of manufacturing defects in the planemaker’s 737 Max, has died after a short illness, the second Boeing whistleblower to die this year.

    ***

    According to the Seattle Times, Dean was hospitalized after having trouble breathing. He was intubated and developed pneumonia and a serious infection before dying two weeks later.

    What a coincidence

  8. 8.

    Fake Irishman

    @piratedan:

    We should add that that AG beat a knuckle-dragger by some like 300 votes out of 2.5 million cast. If you happen to know any bloggers who herded a mass of snarling vitriolic jackals to raise $25,000 for a well-designed coordinated effort to mobilize specific groups of normally marginalized D-leaning  voters, thank them for me.

    (👋watergirl!)

  11. 11.

    Suzanne

    Katie Hobbs is an utterly mediocre person. And I don’t care. Mediocre is fine. Mediocre, fuck yeah.

  12. 12.

    piratedan

    @Fake Irishman: well, we did our part here and I believe that four years of their behavior removed from the levers of power have not endeared them to many.  Their control over the few levers in their hands has not been impressive, witness their handling of the abortion issue and the financial draining of the coffers In their legal efforts.  Also Mayes bringing forth that lawsuit is going to start a cascade of shit that will tumble and accelerate.

  14. 14.

    piratedan

    @Suzanne: considering how many others have failed in the crucible, she’s managed to keep it together.  Is she Grisham?  no, but just like you, I’ll gladly take what she’s done over a possible Governor Lake.

  16. 16.

    piratedan

    @Suzanne: right person, right place, right time… Arizona desperately needed normal.

    I imagine she gets another term and then someone like Gallego or Romero steps up to try and continue the process. They’re trying to beat back the MAGA fever thru legal means and small bites and it may be the best plan, like weaning a junkie off the juice.

  17. 17.

    Chet Murthy

    @Fake Irishman:

    one major wrinkle

    I could be mistaken, but there’s another major wrinkle: AZ still has an abortion ban at 15wk that has only exceptions for “the life of the mother”.  Which means that all those heartbreaking stories of women coming close to dying, losing organs, losing their ability to have children: all those stories aren’t going to stop, b/c those things often happen later in pregnancy.

  19. 19.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Chet Murthy: ​

    Which means that all those heartbreaking stories of women coming close to dying, losing organs, losing their ability to have children.

    The “pro life” party showing its true colors. Cruelty is the point.

  20. 20.

    Chet Murthy

    @HumboldtBlue: Can I say, I always count on you for interesting and/or amusing and/or musical YT links ?  And you always deliver!  Thank you!

  21. 21.

    Wave Function Collapse

    First they came for the women, and I did not speak out — because I am a man.

    Then they came for the Black people, and I did not speak out  — because I’m a white dude.

    o o o o

    –Y’all can fill in the rest, my gratitude and apologies to Martin Niemoller.

  22. 22.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Suzanne: i find Katie Hobbs’ voice really annoying. At any point I  expect her to start talking like a Valley girl. She also had a kind of a shitshow start to her governorship.  Kris Mayes OTOH really seemed to have it together from the start. I don’t know if Hobbs can win another term. Obviously it will depend on the economy and there’s a decent chance with economic cycles, that we’ll be in a recession in 2026.

  24. 24.

    Chet Murthy

    @eclare: He has been.  You gotta watch that clip to the end.  To the literal end.  The “Unnecessary Censorship” segment is …. *hilarious*!

  27. 27.

    SFAW

    @HumboldtBlue: ​
     
    Seeing those clips reminded me of why I try to stay away from any news shows where any Rethug is speaking. And hearing Fuckhead’s voice again almost induced a type of PTSD.

  28. 28.

    sab

    Jackals  sneer at totebaggers, but I find canvas totebags to be useful. All the important stuff for my Dad’s estate is being hauled around in a totebag right now. Every stupid meeting that is pointless that I have to go to I turn up with my fully packed totebag. You argue with me? I can refute you with stuff in my totebag.

  29. 29.

    Origuy

    I’ve been in the computer industry for over 45 years and I’ve seen fads come and go; the current “AI” bandwagon is a fad, IMO. One example:

    The Catholic advocacy group Catholic Answers released an AI priest called “Father Justin” earlier this week. The AI model was supposed to be an interactive educational tool but it instead assumed the identity of a real member of the clergy, taking confessions and giving strange answers.
    …
    Another user who chatted with the AI priest explained how it recommended baptizing their child in Gatorade. “I asked [the AI priest] if I could baptize my baby with Gatorade in an emergency, and ‘Father Justin’ said yes — and of course, that’s not true. I can’t baptize my baby with Gatorade,” wrote the user.

  30. 30.

    Brachiator

    @Mai Naem mobile:

    Kris Mayes OTOH really seemed to have it together from the start.

    I don’t know AZ politics. Did Mayes run for governor previously?

  31. 31.

    Brachiator

    @Mai Naem mobile:

    Kris Mayes OTOH really seemed to have it together from the start.

    I don’t know AZ politics. Did Mayes run for governor previously?

  32. 32.

    Brachiator

    @Mai Naem mobile:

    Kris Mayes OTOH really seemed to have it together from the start.

    I don’t know AZ politics. Did Mayes run for governor previously?

  33. 33.

    Origuy

    I’ve been in the computer industry for over 45 years and I’ve seen fads come and go; the current “AI” bandwagon is a fad, IMO. One example:

    The Catholic advocacy group Catholic Answers released an AI priest called “Father Justin” earlier this week. The AI model was supposed to be an interactive educational tool but it instead assumed the identity of a real member of the clergy, taking confessions and giving strange answers.
    …
    Another user who chatted with the AI priest explained how it recommended baptizing their child in Gatorade. “I asked [the AI priest] if I could baptize my baby with Gatorade in an emergency, and ‘Father Justin’ said yes — and of course, that’s not true. I can’t baptize my baby with Gatorade,” wrote the user.

  35. 35.

    piratedan

    @Brachiator: no, she stepped up to run for Attorney General, she won by a razor thin margin over an election denier.  Hobbs was the previous Sec of State who was voted in after the previous R in the position fucked up the 2012 election by screwing up the polling places, running out of ballots all across the state.  That led her to running for statewide office while most of the other Dems kept a low profile.  Mayes took her time before convening a Grand Jury and did so only after watching other states blaze that trail and getting her ducks in a row.  I think Arizona was also a bit special in that we had the former GOP chair and vice-chair indicated, as well as sitting state legislators named.  Knowing that this would be painted as partisan (which is funny when you think about it), she moved cautiously but the evidence looks pretty damning.

  36. 36.

    Brachiator

    @Origuy:

    I’ve been in the computer industry for over 45 years and I’ve seen fads come and go; the current “AI” bandwagon is a fad, IMO.

    AI is certainly popping up in more places than Aloe Vera did back in the day. And companies are betting their futures on it. Prematurely and unwisely, I think.

    Amazon’s use of AI is very handy in a couple of places, because the use case is limited. I’ve started to see a notation that “this item is frequently returned” or “customers appear to be very satisfied with this item compared to similar items.” This is very helpful.

    They also provide a review summary for products and have this thing called Ask Rufus, built on customer inquiries.

    The Catholic advocacy group Catholic Answers released an AI priest called “Father Justin” earlier this week. The AI model was supposed to be an interactive educational tool but it instead assumed the identity of a real member of the clergy, taking confessions and giving strange answers.

    This and the bizarrely wrong Gatorade recommendation may be examples of the AI “hallucinating.” An inherent design limitation makes it probable that AI will sometimes deliver ridiculously wrong answers; and on a recent tech podcast, some tech evangelists insisted that we just have to modify our expectations and accept this because AI is just so cool.

    I think that Google is using AI more. Search behaves differently when I ask a question than when I enter search terms. Problem is, the question will sometimes return obviously wrong or inadequate results. Unfortunately, Google is reorganizing to go all in on AI, and this might be a very wrong decision.

  38. 38.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Brachiator: no, she was appointed to the AZ corporation commission when she wad a Republican. She switched parties several years ago. She always came across as one of those who thought she had to be republican to get anywhere in AZ politics and tbh it did seem like that during the 90s going into the early 00s. I just remember her being on the ACC pushing smartly for solar.

  39. 39.

    Chet Murthy

    @Brachiator: @Origuy: You’re certainly right that this sort of use of AI is …. utter bollocks.  Just drivel in automated form.  But that doesn’t mean AI isn’t rampant, and I know of entire job categories that are destined for the scrapper.  There are many jobs that require a certain level of familiarity with a body of material, in order to interpret further  examples for nonspecialists; for those jobs, an AI can be trained on the material and then simply replace the worker for most uses.  Sure, there are examples where the AI fails (and yes, that’d fall into the category of hallucination) but those jobs are already filled by workers who do it mostly by pattern-matching already.

    One example of such a job (that is all over corporate America): business analysts want to query a data warehouse of some kind to answer some questions; they don’t know the specialized query languages that those warehouses work with, and there is a job category of person who helps those analysts convert their “English” queries into “SQL” or whatever other language.  Those jobs are going away, with AI replacing that translator person.  And in the same sense, there are people who help take the output from the query, and turn it into visualizations that the analysts can understand.  Again, those jobs are going away, with AI replacing them.

    There are a lot of what one might call “menial mental labor” jobs that AI will replace *soon*; these are two examples.  It’s like the Internet: I remember people talking about how the Internet would result in “mass customization” — we’d all get bespoke suits and jeans, made in Hong Kong, for rock-bottom prices, via the Internet.  Turned out, the real short-term win was replacing all the call-center operators for Fedex/UPS, and all the bank tellers.

  40. 40.

    Chet Murthy

    @Brachiator: Either Blogfather or WG (or one of the other FPers) identified it.  It’s a job that kicks off at 2am ET every night.

  41. 41.

    Origuy

    Yes, I clicked Post and got no response so I clicked it again. Then I noticed what time it was. I should know better than to post at 2300 Pacific time.

  42. 42.

    JWR

    @HumboldtBlue: Ditto to what @Villago Delenda Est said. Hilarious! I rewound and watched it all.

    I don’t usually watch him, not because I don’t like him, but because in this house, on every set I’ve ever owned, including analog, ABC does the digital version of vertical roll.

  43. 43.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @eclare: They also post them every day on their youtube channels.  It’s really convenient.

  44. 44.

    Brachiator

    @Chet Murthy:

    Sure, there are examples where the AI fails (and yes, that’d fall into the category of hallucination) but those jobs are already filled by workers who do it mostly by pattern-matching already.

    But the problem is that when AI fails like this, it does so obviously and spectacularly, in situations where even a child would see the error. And it is unclear when and how this might be addressed.
    Meanwhile, phones and laptops and other devices may require more memory and higher level chips to accommodate AI. Stuff will become more expensive relative to any increase in value. I don’t even want to think about AI in cars.

    There are a lot of what one might call “menial mental labor” jobs that AI will replace *soon*; these are two examples….Turned out, the real short-term win was replacing all the call-center operators for Fedex/UPS, and all the bank tellers.

    Yeah, AI will eliminate jobs. This is a typical result of tech innovation. That the jobs will mostly be “menial mental labor” may not necessarily be true. And in any event, we will need to create new jobs. Eliminating bank tellers, for example, is not a win. Banks close branches and eliminate services altogether for many customers.

  46. 46.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Origuy: I was a programmer for about 40 years and I have never seen any actual “artificial intelligence”. The real world is just another file input and without real-world understanding, there will be spectacular failures any child could prevent, as others have noted. I can see routine jobs with well-defined parameters being done by AI, but anything requiring human-level recognition of subtle aspects of a situation is doomed, at least for a long time. Even when computers learn, they often draw weird (and inaccurate) conclusions from limited data sets.

  49. 49.

    Brachiator

    They are having local elections in the UK. From BBC News:

    Labour has taken Blackpool South from the Conservatives in a by-election as Sir Keir Starmer’s party makes gains in polls across England.

    The Tories were expected to have a bad night at local council elections and so far have lost around half the seats they were defending.

    But the massive 26% swing to Labour in the Blackpool by-election held on the same day will put fresh pressure on Rishi Sunak’s leadership.

    Many results are still to come.

    So far, only a third of the 107 councils holding elections have declared results and counting is continuing, or just beginning, in many of the police and crime commissioner races and the mayoral contests….

    Labour will be pleased to have regained control of key council targets Hartlepool, Thurrock, Rushmoor and Redditch – areas where they are aiming to win at the general election later this year.

    But, there is evidence in areas with a significant Muslim population that Labour’s stance on Gaza is hurting the party.

    In Oldham, where two Labour councillors quit the party over Gaza earlier this year, Labour lost control of the council.

  50. 50.

    JWR

    @eclare:

    I’m really surprised this latest “Boeing falling apart” story has taken so long to be widely discussed, because it happened what, last week? That was when my local news did a story about it, then seemingly dropped it like a hot potato. And just a note to say that I don’t watch TV all day long, so maybe I missed an instance when it appeared.

  51. 51.

    Baud

    Via Reddit

    Florida bans lab-grown meat, adding to similar efforts in three other states
    Companies that have made strides in cultivated meat technology said Florida’s law stifles innovation in a space that is becoming competitive globally

  52. 52.

    Martin

    I think the expressions that AI is going to take jobs, etc. is overblown, but I don’t think it’s a fad either. Yeah, an LLM spits out a lot of stupid shit, but there’s a lot of legitimately useful stuff that AML and related technologies can do that really cannot be replicated by conventional programming methods – at least not in a practical way. Computational photography, text recognition in really challenging environments, stuff like that.

    And LLMs have gotten good enough that it’s forcing instructors to change how they teach, which is good, because the stuff that LLMs are good at was always kind of shitty, lazy assessment anyway. They’re not good good, but they’re good enough to deliver, at least with a bit of manual editing, C level work in a fraction of the time. And I think a bit of an arms race between lazy coursework and lazy assessment isn’t a bad thing.

  53. 53.

    Brachiator

    @Martin:

    Yeah, an LLM spits out a lot of stupid shit, but there’s a lot of legitimately useful stuff that AML and related technologies can do that really cannot be replicated by conventional programming methods – at least not in a practical way. Computational photography, text recognition in really challenging environments, stuff like that.

    The problem is that LLM material includes a lot of mediocre stuff. With humans, there is, or used to be, enough excellence to slightly push the bar higher.

    With AI, failure and good enough is not, well, good enough. I already see consistently dreadful AI visual art becoming ubiquitous. I don’t try to predict the future. But right now, my gut feeling is that crappy AI results may overrun the Internet and other places. The ratio of crap to good enough may not be acceptable.

  55. 55.

    Eyeroller

    @🐾BillinGlendaleCA: Image processing is one area where AI is well suited and excels. Tools like that have been in use for quite a while in some applications, though it seems they’re just now getting to the consumer market. The hype is about “generative AI” which includes large language models and “art” generators.
    With image processing and similar tasks, you have a well-defined problem space and objective training data. Basically the opposite is true for generative AIs. They are still just pattern matching but they are only as good as the training data, so they absorb and amplify human biases and prejudices. That is in addition to hallucinating, which is not always obvious. In fact if the user doesn’t know much about the topic, a hallucination (which boils down to making sh*t up) will be undetectable. There’s now an emerging field of “prompt engineering” which aims to maximize useful answers and minimize hallucinating.
    I’m looking forward (/s) to “Habsburg AIs” which is what we’ll get when LLMs are trained on datasets that include an increasing quantity of AI-generated text.​

  57. 57.

    Ken

    @Origuy: It sounds like Catholic Answers got their AI from the same source as the City of New York. I saw a thread (probably via Popehat’s bluesky) where people had posed questions about city laws, and the AI had confidently given them completely wrong answers.

    There was a large subgroup of “Can I fire an employee if they refuse to do X as required by company policy” — apparently that form automatically triggered “Yes, you can fire them for not complying with company policy”, no matter what X was. “Yes, you can fire an employee who refuses to have sex with you,” that sort of nonsense.

    It made me long for the good old days of Eliza, which did the same rephrase-and-repeat trick but never claimed to be doing anything better.

  58. 58.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Origuy: on the one hand, I hope that it’s a fad. On the other hand, it’s likely that existing data sets will be corrupted/poisoned/rendered unfit for purpose because they are using AI-generated data as input. On the third hand, looking at what the IDF is doing with Lavender, Gospel, Alchemist etc or what Russia and China are saying about AI makes me extremely uneasy

  59. 59.

    Brachiator

    @Kayla Rudbek:

    on the one hand, I hope that it’s a fad.

    This is the problem. Companies are rushing to include AI in products and devices despite known problems and flaws.

    It may be difficult to reverse things.

  61. 61.

    wjca

    @Eyeroller: Image processing is one area where AI is well suited and excels.

    Makes me wonder if those “prove you’re not a robot” apps, which use picture identification, are bound for the trash bin.

  62. 62.

    Geminid

    @worn: I think he’s talking about Oregon Inlet in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Sports fisherman use Oregon Inlet a lot, in part because the Gulf Stream flows close to the coast there.

  63. 63.

    Misterpuff

    Father Justin Yuri Magination, SJ.

    Will give spiritual advice, sell NFT indulgences and will only touch underage boys and girls in the digital space.

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