Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I really should read my own blog.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

People are weird.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

People are complicated. Love is not.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

You are here: Home / Jan 6: Insurrection / Cold Grey Dawn Open Thread: ‘Just Us’ Alito, a/k/a Sammy the Bullsh*tter

Cold Grey Dawn Open Thread: ‘Just Us’ Alito, a/k/a Sammy the Bullsh*tter

by | 156 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

I’m beginning to wonder how much of Justice ‘Teflon Clarence’ Thomas’ immunity to serious prosecution relies on the unspoken fact that he does pull the ‘high tech lynching’ card whenever he’s challenged. (And, yes, his life has been considerably harder because of his race, although his choices of how to respond to institutional racism are still personal.) But Samuel Alito can’t rely on unspoken White guilt… and his personal go-to religious persecution!!! charge is really only effective, AFAICT, with evangelicals, many of whom still think of Catholics as Papists who owe primary allegiance to a retrograde foreign global power.


Cold Grey Dawn Open Thread: 'Just Us' Alito, a/k/a Sammy the Bullsh*tter

(John Deering via GoComics.com)

Love the Opus Dei Alpha Magus immediately blaming the insurrectionary cosplay on his wife, but it's also funny how just thinking "what an asshole" when confronted with a lawn sign he didn't like was categorically NOT an option. A whole political movement of people constantly in feuds with neighbors.

[image or embed]

— David_j_roth (@davidjroth.bsky.social) May 16, 2024 at 7:23 PM

i don't know i think we can add that roberts' wife "avoided the conflicts of legal practice" by opening up a legal recruiting business that makes her 8 figures a year matching lawyers with firms that argue in the supreme court

[image or embed]

— Sen. Gogurt taking notes on a criminal conspiracy (@ugarles.bsky.social) May 17, 2024 at 2:52 PM

Reader Interactions

156Comments

  1. 1.

    rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun)

    When we finally get through this (and I have faith that we will), I want a Democratic Party that is on permanent offensive. I’m tired of apologizing for nothingburgers that Americans outside DC and Manhattan DGAF about.

    In the meantime, we need the party, national and state, to be on a war footing.

  2. 2.

    sdhays

    I just want to add that “Justice” Alito is such a proven liar that I assume he personally raised the upside down flag himself and that his wife hasn’t worked the flag pole mechanism in her life. I also assume that no one in their neighborhood had any obscene signs in their yard.
    He’s just a hardcore insurrectionist with no character and no respect for the office he holds.

  3. 3.

    scav

    ah, a mere citizen’s taking the knee during the anthem is an unforgivable offense!  It’s only the nation’s betters that get to play willy-nilly with the nation’s flag for mere neighborhood disputes.  Silly citizens.

  4. 4.

    Tony Jay

    Textbook ‘conservatives’. Nothing is ever their fault or the fault of their figurehead. All criticism is illegitimate, dishonest or hypocritical, and any mistakes they or theirs make – would – be dealt with internally, if only they weren’t oh so very busy defending the sanctity of their enterprise from those nasty damned hippies and assorted Leftist agitators.

    And that’s all conservatives, regardless of Party. It’s an instinct, not an ideology. 

  7. 7.

    rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun)

    @SpaceUnit: Thanks. I’ve actually been on BJ a long time, but I’m a lurker and don’t comment a whole lot.

    I love the jackals here, they’re good people and they helped me rehome my dog Tado when I became too sick to work in 2022.

  8. 8.

    Jay

    Reposted from below,

    Not DougJ

    Actual FTFNYT Headline,

    “As Trump Trial Nears Its End,

    the Law May Give Prosecutors an Edge”

  9. 9.

    Tony Jay

    @rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun):

    If Smilin’ Joe walked out of the White House today to give an impassioned speech in defence of Republican policies and denounce the Democrat Party as a corrupt tool of The Globalist Elite, the ear-piercing screech of tyres on flattop as the US News Media reversed course to pronounce him ‘seasoned’, ‘experienced’ and ‘wise with years’ would be so loud it could even wake up Sleepy Donald.

  10. 10.

    scav

    @Tony Jay: Errors dealt with internally, HA!  They do not err, they do not sin, they are pre-forgiven by their abject savior and choirs of media-claque.  And that only when theoretically considering the merest possibility their every action isn’t the very height of old-school holy patriotism.

  11. 11.

    TBone

    Cold, grey dawn indeed.  Fascism is officially here today in print.

    Trump’s Instagram account posted a video of what a newspaper would look like after a 2024 MAGA win. Under the headline “WHAT’S NEXT FOR AMERICA?” were the words “INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED DRIVEN BY THE CREATION OF A UNIFIED REICH,”

    https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-20-2024

    Turning away is not an option. All hands on deck!

  13. 13.

    Honus

    @sdhays: good point.  You’d think someone, maybe even in the news media, would have a picture of these personally offensive lawn signs that caused Mrs. Alito such distress.  And those chalked messages on the sidewalk too.

  15. 15.

    Tony Jay

    @scav:

    Their own errors are purely theoretical constructs, designed to suggest that they know something is there while they cover them up to spare anyone blushes.

    Kind of like nipple-tassels.

  17. 17.

    rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun)

    Speaking of dawn, it’s 5:02am and already getting light outside. This night owl does not like it.

  18. 18.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I just got to say that on a scale of 1 to 10, Alito’s flying the flag upside down scores a 0 with me. I mean, the real insult is the fact that he and Clarence still sit on the SC. The fact that he advertised his inner corrupt asshole is nothing new, he does that with every opinion he writes.

    So as long as he sits on the court, I will reserve my anger for the things he does to me and mine, not the idiotic things he does to himself.

  20. 20.

    TBone

    I woke up yesterday and my first thought was “I’m not a Dirty Fucking Hippie.  I’m a Democrat From Hell.”

    And I’m here to take you down even if I have to go with you.

    I don’t know why or how my brain works like that while I’m still only two percent conscious.  I must be really pissed off.

  22. 22.

    Geminid

    @Honus: Those are some rough neighborhoods in northeast Fairfax County. I was warned never to cross Glebe Road.

  24. 24.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @TBone: Like the old saying goes: “I may go down, but I will not go down quietly, and I will not go down alone.”

  28. 28.

    Geminid

    It’s Primary Day in Oregon. Democrats will nominate someone to replace Rep. Earl Blumenaur, who is retiring from a fairly safe Democratic seat.

    Also, in the 5th CD to the east, Democrats will pick a candidate to run against freshman Rep. Laurie Chavez Deremer in the purple district formerly held by Curt Schrader.

  33. 33.

    Geminid

    Turkish journalist Levent Kemal reportsthat airline service between Turkiye and Kabul, Afghanistan has resumed after a 3 year hiatus.

    Kemal has also been reporting on a seies of artillery bombardments by the Turkish army in northern Iraq and northeast Syria. He says they are preparation for a summer ground offensive against the PKK, which has been at war with the Turkish state since 1984.

  37. 37.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: the point, you have made it. He’s been a partisan political hack since he was appointed, and publicly so, not just in his opinions but since 2010, when he reacted to Obama’s SOTU by mouthing “not true” for the cameras.

  38. 38.

    Mai Naem mobile

    I just find it interesting that the NYT prints this story three and half years later. Not when TFG was impeached.  Not even when Ketanji Brown Jackson was nominated. Basically beyond of the window time of when neighbors may have saved security camera footage of when the flag went up.

  40. 40.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Don’t know about Afghanistan, but parts of northern Iraq may be a war zone soon. Turkiye has driven PKK formations out of southeastern Turkey and have been fighting them in the mountains of northern Iraq for 3 years. They seem to have gotten the green light from Baghdad and Erbil to push the PKK out of those mountains if they can. Erbil is the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government.

  41. 41.

    trnc

    @OzarkHillbilly: So as long as he sits on the court, I will reserve my anger for the things he does to me and mine, not the idiotic things he does to himself.

    Honest question – was that your reaction when we found out that Alito and Thomas received many fabulous prizes from Crowe, etc, and proceeded to lecture us that their flat out corruption was none of our business?

    I’m not trying to get you ramped up, but I think these are the things that assist in and lead to the decisions that hurt us, so I am hoping to get a 2 or 3 out of it.

  43. 43.

    Suzanne

    @Tony Jay:

    Kind of like nipple-tassels. 

    Stop peeping through my windows.

    I still don’t know what to do about all of My Fellow Americans who look back on the Trump Administration and think, “That was a great appy, now for the main course”.

  44. 44.

    Baud

    @Suzanne:

    Hopefully we deal with them by outvote them in the electoral college and thenobe on from there.  If not, I plan the exercise the privileges that come with age and stop caring. Definitely not going to waste what time I have left being angry and resolute like during Trump’s first term.

  45. 45.

    Suzanne

    @Baud:

    If not, I plan the exercise the privileges that come with age and stop caring. 

    How old do you have to be?
    This may also be my strategy.

  46. 46.

    Geminid

    @Baud: The four northern provinces controlled by the Kurdish Regional Government would actually be nice to visit. Most of it is a civil oasis in a troubled region. But the areas bordering Turkiye and Iran have been war zones lately, and on two occasions Iran has struck targets in Erbil itself with ballistic missiles. They claimed that Israel’s Mossad spy agency used the buildings to stage attacks on Iran.

  49. 49.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud:

    You’re here. That makes you an honorary old person.

    Just the honor she craved, I’m sure!

  51. 51.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Baud:

    Definitely not going to waste what time I have left being angry and resolute like during Trump’s first term.

    If I stopped being that way, particularly on local issues, I’d stop being me.  I think some of my friends and acquaintances on some days wish that would happen.

  52. 52.

    Geminid

    I heard about a wildlife biologist who’s doing a survey of bear populations. She’s asking the question, “If you were walking through a forest, which would you rather meet: Marjorie Greene or Steve Bannon?”

  53. 53.

    Baud

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

     

     

    A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude

    Brave New World.

    I’m not interested in waiting around for people who love their servitude to do something about it.

    ETA: I’m ok not being me. I’m not really worth being.

  54. 54.

    There go two miscreants

    @Geminid: No repectable bear would want to eat either one of them. She needs to survey the carrion eaters!

  57. 57.

    Kay

    Month 3 of trying to submit a FAFSA application. We have 4 children and this for the fourth, three went to college, so this is my 10th time submitting a FAFSA form – I have never before had trouble with it. The new website seems to go in a circle. I cannot imagine what this is like for a first gen prospective college student/high school senior. We may have people years from now who say “I never went to college because I could not submit the FAFSA form” :)

  59. 59.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Geminid:

    I heard about a wildlife biologist who’s doing a survey of bear populations. She’s asking the question, “If you were walking through a forest, who would you rather meet: Marjorie Greene or Steve Bannon?”

    That’s akin to this analogy:

    “Good morning.  Which eye would you like poked out today with a white hot, burning, pointy stick, left or right?”

    That also happens to describe Denver mayoral elections the last two times around.

  60. 60.

    Nora

    Alito has always been reprehensible, and he’s hidden behind his wife before.  Remember at his confirmation hearings when he had her sitting up there with tears in her eyes because everyone was being so mean to her husband?  Remember his indignation when someone leaked HIS opinion from Dobbs before he released it, when odds are excellent that he released that opinion himself to prevent wavering justices from straying?  His hypocrisy, his refusal to take responsibility for his own actions, and his sense that he’s above all of us because he has a lifetime sinecure makes me loathe him with every fiber of my being.

  61. 61.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @trnc: ​ was that your reaction when we found out that Alito and Thomas received many fabulous prizes from Crowe, etc,

    No. Bribery is offensive all on it’s own and a SC justice knows better than to accept one. Calling it a “gift from a friend” doesn’t change that.

    As far as I am concerned, flying the flag upside down is a fairly mild form of protest speech. If burning the flag is speech, so is flying it upside down.

  62. 62.

    Baud

    The three worst justices are Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch. Bush I. Bush II, and Trump.

    As the saying goes, Trump answered the casting call.

  63. 63.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    True, it’s not a criminal offense because it’s protected by the First Amendment.  But so is endorsing candidates, and we hope Supreme Court justices don’t start doing that overtly.

  64. 64.

    JML

    @Kay: It’s horrific the problems and delays with the FAFSA. Every college financial aid office is tearing out their hair, admissions is losing their minds, the whole thing is a mess. I wish more senior administrators were interested in a response beyond “we don’t control it, nothing we can do”

  65. 65.

    TBone

    @OzarkHillbilly: it was the context surrounding the period of time during which the flag was displayed that made it hugely problematic horrendously traitorous.

  66. 66.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    As far as I am concerned, flying the flag upside down is a fairly mild form of protest speech. If burning the flag is speech, so is flying it upside down.

    That’s been my take on this as well.  Sure, Alito and Uncle Clarence are bitter, right-wing fanatics but the latter’s ability to skate on all the shit surrounding him and his crackpot spouse means that the Alito’s little display of who-they-actually-are is something of a nothing burger.

    The fact that Uncle Clarence will suffer no consequences for his clearly impeachable actions all these years is proof enough that the system is broke.

  67. 67.

    TBone

    Laughable that Alito was powerless to restrain his wife from flying evidence of treason loudly and proudly.  His comeuppance should be like that of the guy who prevented his nation’s women from driving for so long being driven into the side of a mountain.

  69. 69.

    Kay

    @JML:

    I finally called the school yesterday just so they would know I was’nt ignoring their anguished pleas to get it turned in. I got to the “you’re almost there!” message this morning then it kicked me out again. Now they’re just toying with me.

    The weirdest part is how it just…stops. I know I’m not finished because I’ve done this ten times before but it just stalls and then times out. I’ve never seen a form website do that before and I deal with a lot of government agencies in my work.

  70. 70.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: That kinda stuff happens to me “all” the time. So, not really but it sure does feel like it.

  71. 71.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    There’s a student section and a “contributor” section (if you claim the student as a dependent) and he’ll complete one side, get the completion message, then I get an email to complete mine, I complete, then they go back to him as “incomplete”. I literally got up early to BEAT this thing – now I’m obsessed.

  76. 76.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @OzarkHillbilly: As far as I am concerned, flying the flag upside down is a fairly mild form of protest speech. If burning the flag is speech, so is flying it upside down.

    Not to mention it’s not impossible that Alito is such a dimwit he was going to show that gosh darn neighbor of his by raising the flag, then accidentally raised it upside down without noticing it,  and now to full of himself to admit it.

  77. 77.

    Another Scott

    I haven’t clicked the links, but do any of them mention that it wasn’t just after 1/6, it was during TIFG’s 2nd impeachment.  He was impeached in the House on January 13 and the articles were walked over to the Senate on January 25.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  78. 78.

    Baud

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I’m not going to stop voting for and supporting Dem candidates. I’m just not going to spend time listening to people talk about how awful Trump and the Republicans are. That would be the equivalent of listening to someone explaining over and over again that 2+2=4.

  79. 79.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I’m going to throttle Aiden, the virtual assistant. Aiden. Get it?

    I knew I was going to hate AI and I do – I hate it.

    I just deleted the whole thing and am starting over. I have to get out of this circle somehow.

  82. 82.

    trnc

    @OzarkHillbilly: As far as I am concerned, flying the flag upside down is a fairly mild form of protest speech. If burning the flag is speech, so is flying it upside down.

    I agree that it’s speech, and SC justices have just as much right to that speech that we do, but most protesters own their speech. He won’t own it because it looks really, really bad for someone with that much influence over election laws to proclaim with no evidence that an election was stolen just because his candidate lost.

  85. 85.

    Another Scott

    @OzarkHillbilly: Objectively, yeah.

    But stories and memes and pictures and the like matter, especially to our lizard brains.  That’s why the monsters in the GQP and the RWNJs push them so hard.

    “See, they are bad people.  They got caught disrespecting the flag and supporting the insurrection.  There’s no excuse for that – none.  What else have they done that we don’t yet know about?  We cannot support them any more and have to turn the page…”

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  86. 86.

    TBone

    @trnc: I beg to differ on that.  They are held to a higher standard than that of civilians, as is right and proper for a system of justice that purports to have authority as the highest court.  They have failed and should be impeached for that conduct.  They ARE part of the government that is abridged from curtailing our, the citizens’, First Amendment rights.

  87. 87.

    Layer8Problem

    @Baud:  My partner just said “He said [some fascist crap]!”  I replied “So it’s a day of the week that ends in ‘y’.”  Partner responds to that with “He’s normalizing this stuff!”  I say “That’s what the Times and Post do.”  His crap long ago became unsurprising.  People need to send more of their outrage to his enablers in the media.

  90. 90.

    Baud

    @Layer8Problem:

    Yeah, the present progressive tense is over and done with. Trump is normal because evil is normal. The only open question is how we respond to it.

  92. 92.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: We ended up having to go through all these alternate financial aid application processes anyway because the colleges knew the FAFSA was broken.

    (One of them was the College Board’s, whatever it’s called, which is an insanely invasive audit of your financials. We knew our kid wasn’t going to get any need-based aid because families like ours are not who it’s for, but all this application work is necessary anyway.)

  93. 93.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: My problem is that I have an inner voice that blames me for shit. Guilt by association. This entire world and all the evil in it is my fault. Just remaining alive in it is a tacit endorsement of all its horrors and injustices.

  94. 94.

    Nukular Biskits

    Since this is an open thread, thought I’d throw this out there.

    After the murders of her mother and two sisters earlier this month, Kimberly Welch is asking for donations to raise $50,000 to pay for the funerals. Authorities found the bodies of Ida Welch, 76, and her daughters Crystal Welch, 42, and Vicky Welch, 56, at a home in Ridgeland, Miss., on May 12; the next day, Arizona state troopers shot and killed Ida Welch’s son Ivory James Welch III, a suspect who police say fled the state.

    Crystal Welch, a professor at Mississippi College School of Law, was also the board president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi and the vice president of the Mississippi Free Press Board of Directors.

    After Welch Family Triple Homicide, Surviving Sibling Raises Funeral Funds

    I subscribe to the Mississippi Free Press as it, along with Mississippi Today and MS Public Broadcasting, are about the only state-based news sources that actually commit actual acts of journalism in MS.

    I’m going to chip in a few bucks.

    And, on the subject of giving, someone yesterday mentioned a fund for BettyC, if one is needed.  Count me in on that one as well.

  96. 96.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I did it!  At the point where it tells you the system can’t process right now and you should log out don’t log out- just go back one page and it submits.

    I’m training a young law student (he hasn’t taken the bar yet) and he’s enamored of AI. I told him “no one is going to pay you for outsourcing your work to this stupid-as-fuck machine“. People are going to hate this and have to be forced to use it, because it’s maddening.

  97. 97.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: The AI wave is going to crash in the next couple of years. People get sick of this shit and they already know most of it doesn’t work. A lot of the high-profile applications are like the proverbial dancing bear–it’s impressive and a novelty that it can dance at all, so people ignore that it can’t dance very well. But at some point that becomes important.

    And then, people will eventually figure out the applications that this machine-learning tech is actually good for (I believe they exist). But most of what we’re seeing out there now isn’t it. It’s the dancing bear.

  98. 98.

    Suzanne

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’m not going to start each day with a doomscroll. I’m not going to finish every workday by coming home/leaving my home office to hear SuzMom shout, “Did you see what Trump said today?!”.

    I will still vote and donate money to causes and candidates I believe in. But, like….. if a bunch of stupid people want to make their lives worse, let ’em take the ivermectin. They can shit themselves in the grocery store of life.

  99. 99.

    Glidwrith

    @Kay: We had huge problems too. Got around it by having the kids delete their attempts (not the accounts, just the form) and me doing it with the invite coming from me. Went through like a charm after >25 times.

    Hope that helps.

  102. 102.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: I’m a member of a whole lot of groups of people that are notorious for doing terrible things to the rest of the world.

    And I can try to do better, but it feels like a weak and pathetic response.

  103. 103.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Jay: Well, it’s technically right. When you present evidence that proves all the elements of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt, as the prosecutors have, then the law does give an edge to a guilty verdict.

  105. 105.

    wjca

    @Tony Jay: And that’s all conservatives, regardless of Party. It’s an instinct, not an ideology.

    No, it isn’t.

    Granted, it tends to be true of the loudest and most visible “conservatives.”  But in point of fact, what they actually are is radical reactionaries.  (Plus a handful of super-rich using them for their own ends.)

    All a real conservative asks is that it is worth addressing the very real shortcomings in our country and our society by trying moderate remedies first.  And then, IF those don’t resolve them, working up to radical approaches.

    For example, thete is a real problem with the distribution of wealth in our country.  So, start with the obvious small changes: 1) modify the tax system to tax capital gains the same as any other income and 2) add several tax levels above the current maximum (say “between $1 million and $5 million per year: 65% tax level, above $5 million: 85%”) and reevaluate the various tax deductions typically used to reduce tax liability of those with gross incomes above $2 million.  Not radical changes; just tweaking what we already have.  That’s a real conservative’s approach.

  106. 106.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Matt McIrvin: Judging from discussions I’ve seen online, there’s a current fad for having AI write computer code for you.

    In the movie a character showing off his all-AI programming shop would be the precursor for the the spectacular technological crash in Act 2.

  107. 107.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Judges complain that lawyers don’t read as it is. Periodically we get “is anyone reading what they’re filing?!” I’m sure it will be great when no one reads OR drafts.

    My son is one year away from an engineering degree and I’m a lawyer. They made this stupid form so bad it took both he and I probably 40 tries to complete it. Whatever they paid for “Aiden” they got robbed.

  108. 108.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Nora: RSS cadre in India lie with ease for their “cause” of which the PM is a prime example. Its highly likely that Alito also fits the mold

    *India’s current ruling party the BJP is the political arm of the fascist organization RSS.

  109. 109.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Have you considered the possibility that your feelings of inadequacy have the effect of helping those groups maintain their ability to do terrible things, and that a more confident and focused Matt McIrvin flighting that good fight would do their victims more good?

    Just something to think about. I feel in my heart that the fascists and the oligarchs want us feeling weak and alone and uncertain.

  114. 114.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: “…groups of people that are notorious for doing terrible things to the rest of the world.”

    Are you saying you were in on the planning for Boston’s transportation network?

  116. 116.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Baud:

    I feel in my heart that the fascists and the oligarchs want us feeling weak and alone and uncertain.

    Which is another reason why I’ll still be angry and resolute going forward.  I always channel my inner Steve Gilliard with a dusting of Driftglass and The Rude Pundit.

  117. 117.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Baud: I have used AI as a research assistant and to write first drafts. Its output is not refined enough to be the final product. But it is a  timesaver as a good starting point.

  118. 118.

    Kay

    @Glidwrith:

    This is my last FAFSA form. I can’t believe I won’t have anyone in any school after 24-25. Although I might be a recess monitor for my NY grandaughter if I can ever get my husband to retire. I always enjoyed that, as volunteer work.

    She needs monitoring :)

  119. 119.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I’ve even used it for that once or twice!

    But it’s only useful if you understand what it can and can’t do. It can do the kind of unthinking donkey work a programmatically generated code template could do, only from natural-language instructions–“give me a REST API definition for blah blah”. It even tends to avoid the kinds of simple syntax errors a human would make banging out that kind of thing.

    But it doesn’t have a deep understanding of what you need, and worst of all, it lies. Or, rather, it bullshits in the Harry Frankfurt sense since it has no concept of truth. It’ll happily imagine that a feature of some software package exists that seems like it ought to exist but doesn’t.

    So you still have to do all the hard parts of software development that require higher thought and understanding. But it’s good at getting you past the blank screen.

  121. 121.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Geminid: “Planning”?

    The whole problem with Boston’s transportation network is that there was no grand planning. It accreted over centuries. And was then neglected for decades except for the roads. Even with its current shape it could be much better if everything had been adequately funded for maintenance and operations for the past 50 years.

  123. 123.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @satby: video is more powerful than photos. And from what i understand Martha Ann/Sam Alito were lying about some details.

  125. 125.

    bluefoot

    @scav: ​  Yep. This is something I learned while sitting in on a few corporate board meetings earlier in my career – behaving badly, saying egregious things (even behind closed doors where no one else can see/hear) are part of how the “elite” – whether it’s the board of a company, or the C-suite, or members of SCOTUS signal to each other that they are part of the elite in-group. They demonstrate to each other that they are immune from consequences.Decorum, consequences, treating people with respect are for the peons. Hell, the so-called “elite” don’t even treat each other with respect, except towards the people who shit on them. It’s all hierarchy and dominance.​
     
    ETA: This is why calling out hypocracy is a fool’s errand. They say and do crap to signal to each other, the content doesn’t actually matter. The rest of us don’t matter.

  128. 128.

    3Sice

    In another failure for the Biden administration, a salvage team floated that container ship yesterday, and sent it on its way.

  129. 129.

    Jackie

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I just got to say that on a scale of 1 to 10, Alito’s flying the flag upside down scores a 0 with me. I mean, the real insult is the fact that he and Clarence still sit on the SC.

    It sickens me Alito didn’t care that he was openly proclaiming his MAGA self to America.

    That, coupled with refusing to recuse himself from anything to do re J6 and the ‘20 elections… 😡

    Same re Thomas with his MAGA wife.

  130. 130.

    StringOnAStick

    @Geminid: Oregon is vote by mail, so we sent our completed ballots back quite awhile ago.  We voted for Janelle B (last name is harder to remember); I’ll be volunteering in that campaign once we get back from this trip and one at the end of the month.  They texted asking for my vote and when I replied positively they asked if I’d be interested, when I said yes they sent me a link to fill out.  Proactive!  

  132. 132.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @Matt McIrvin: But it [AI] doesn’t have a deep understanding of what you need, and worst of all, it lies.

    Large language models do not have any understanding at all, never mind deep. They are automata. They are statistical models of the text on which they are trained. “Lying” is giving them too much credit. They don’t lie as such, they just regurgitate words. The words are just symbols, not connected to any underlying meaning.

    It is kind of amazing that they work as well as they do.  That’s data processing for you.

  135. 135.

    Suzanne

    @Matt McIrvin: Agree. Boston faces all the challenges of pre-car American cities, amped up due to specific bad decisions along the way. It’s not like it was a failure of planning.

  137. 137.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Mr. Bemused Senior: It is not entirely clear to me that a human brain is fundamentally different. If you dissect a neuron you won’t find any understanding there.

    But what we have that LLMs don’t is experience of the actual world, aimed at surviving. They live in a world of text input (or pictures or whatever) where the only goal is to ape the patterns in the source material. They’re never engaging with the world. There’s a limit to how far you get that way.

    It’s theoretically possible that you could give some similar machine-learning system control of a body and let it loose in the world to survive, and maybe you’d get something more like an intelligent being. Probably someone is going to try this eventually. There are obvious ethical issues with this, though. I mean, Mary Shelley wrote about the associated problems in 1818 so we can’t say we didn’t have adequate warning.

  138. 138.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @Ksmiami: @Matt McIrvin:
    I do not deny the possibility of a sentient machine. We are, after all, composed of the same atoms as everything else. My point is, we don’t have the least understanding of what consciousness is, or the origin of the fundamental distinction between alive and not alive. [cue Sesame Street clip of Grover].

    These machines are not alive.

  139. 139.

    Geminid

    @Suzanne: Boston grew up as a maritime center. It’s still handy if you want to sail a sloop down to New York, or up to Nova Scotia

    Ed. Or take a ferry to Provincetown.

  140. 140.

    Suzanne

    @Geminid: Oh, absolutely agree.

    I just — and this is totally normal, given my profession — get really frustrated by the discourse I see a lot, which is often a complaint about an issue, followed by an assertion that some Power That Be failed in some way. Wasn’t imaginative enough, wasn’t bold enough, must not have fully understood an issue that is clearly evident in hindsight. In reality, that’s not even close to why the built environment is the way it is.

    The reality is, when things are built over time, one can only solve so many issues with each step or layer. There is simply not enough money, not enough time, not enough patience, not enough capacity. And everything has undesirable downstream effects. There are always many stakeholders who want different things. The hardest questions come when we try to weigh all of those interests and concerns against one another.

    We talk a lot about future-proofing in my job. There are always these conference presentations about “patient rooms of the future!” And if you look at them, they’re absolutely gigantic, and they’re kitted out with a shit-ton of technology and outlets. And if you built them, they would cost probably 2x what each patient room we build now costs to build. So the question becomes…. really, genuinely, how much better is this? Does it produce a measurably better outcome, or is it just vibes? If we spent the money now to build it, would it save money in the long run, and how long is that run? And, like, what if they’re wrong, and we didn’t end up needing all that extra space, all that extra tech? We ended up needing something different instead? Could we undo it? Would it be wiser to build what we already know works pretty well, maybe 10% better in some way, and use that money instead to build a larger quantity of that thing?

    These are really hard questions, and they come up in every project of scale.

  141. 141.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Geminid: Greater Boston is in principle better off than 95% of American cities. We HAVE a multimodal public transit system! It’s actually pretty vast! It’s just… broken in a lot of ways, and has obvious missing pieces, and all these rotted parts, and it’s astonishingly hard to build anything new.

  143. 143.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @Suzanne: I hope at some future time we can discuss the analogous problem in large scale software systems. Alas, I have to go to work now.

    I will just say that even though software deals only with information, effectively massless and infinity malleable, the same practical conditions apply.

  144. 144.

    Citizen Alan

    @Baud: Samuel alito is supposed to under the same canons of judicial conduct that I am under as a lowiy career law clerk. And I feel quite certain that I would get fired immediately if my boss found out that I was flying a flag upside down on my own property to protest a presidential election.

  146. 146.

    Citizen Alan

    @wjca: What you call “a real conservative approach,” everyone in the country who self identifies as a conservative would describe as Marxism.

  147. 147.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: Atlanta seems to have put together a nice mass transit system in MARTA. A friend used to ride it a lot, even took his bike with him to finish out regular trips. He thought it was a great system.

    I was glad to see the current proposal for high speed rail service between Charlotte and Atlanta has the Atlanta terminus at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. The airport has good MARTA service.

  148. 148.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Kay: I have been sitting through a lot of CLE on AI (mostly dealing with the implications for intellectual property rights) and I think that the copyright lawyers have a good chance of destroying it. ChatGPT came out in November 2023 and the first lawsuits were filed January 2024. So far, Disney is not a litigant…

  149. 149.

    Ksmiami

    @Suzanne: ironically, I believe the tech of the future is quantum related. Tech will get smaller aside from industrial machines. In other words, it’s really challenging to plan for future tech since things are moving so quickly.

  150. 150.

    suzanne

    @Mr. Bemused Senior: Yes, absolutely, would love to discuss.

    I just hate the line of argument that presumes incompetence instead of constraint. Constraints are real, and interesting.

  152. 152.

    Suzanne

    @Ksmiami:

    Tech will get smaller aside from industrial machines. In other words, it’s really challenging to plan for future tech since things are moving so quickly. 

    But people are getting bigger. And cars are getting bigger. So we’re trying to figure that all out.

  153. 153.

    Dave

    @Geminid: They are quite beautiful I spent a lot of my time in 06′-07′ there and it was welcoming and very beautiful with quite a bit of history there.  Though eerie in some sense given that we would regularly come across the ruins of many of the destroyed villages.

    Turks had bases and quite a few people over the border then.  We’d occasionally encounter likely PKK elements in the mountains and we’d smile and wave not our fight especially our desire to die in the mountains was non-existent though you wouldn’t know if from the way we drove some of those roads.

    We’d be called in by local Kurdish government from time to time to be a presence that would deescalate tensions.  It was certainly an interesting experience.

  154. 154.

    Matt McIrvin

    @suzanne: There’s also malice! And while one mustn’t be too quick to assume malice, it certainly plays a role–often it’s the malice of people who are now long dead, constraining the present (e.g. the long arm of redlining).

  155. 155.

    Geminid

    @Dave: The autonomous Kurdish Region of Iraq is an interesting place. There are anout 6 million citizens, mostly Kurdish. Minority groups like Turkmen, Yazodi and Dom (Gypsies) are accepted and protected communitities.

    The US has supported the Kurds there since the 1st Gulf War, and the constitution Iraq adopted after the 2nd Gulf War ratified the region’s autonomy. A US military mission based at the Erbil airport provides material support in a low-key way.

  156. 156.

    Dave

    @Geminid: Encountered everyone of those groups at some point or another.

    One day I’ll tell the Saga of the Three Bajid Baravas.

    Ok it’s actually not much of a story but when you are planning a project in Bajid Barava and find out after a few months there are three of them segregated along religious and ethnic lines so now you damned well better do something for all of them it’s definitely a bit of a “doh!”.

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