He wants them to kill Americans and break the Constitution.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) September 30, 2025 at 5:40 PM
I’ve often heard this said in military circles, but more as a sobering reminder, not an applause line.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) September 30, 2025 at 4:53 PM
===
the american military is the greatest fighting force in the history of the world because they are good at paperwork and schedules.
— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) October 2, 2025 at 10:35 PM
most of these people think military effectiveness is homoerotic guys in tank tops playing volleyball between fighter jet missions but the real military is ten thousand people in an office making sure food goes where it needs to
— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) October 2, 2025 at 10:38 PM
===
Hegseth "has focused less on meeting with his foreign counterparts and more on doing pull-ups" for social media.
The military officers were silent, "though at least some of them were seething. … 'Those guys have got a lot more dust on their boots than he does.'"
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/u…— Drew Harwell (@drewharwell.com) September 30, 2025 at 2:21 PM
===
Ever give a speech so bad The NYT runs a callout asking generals and admirals if they’re quitting? Pete Hegseth has.
— Karly Kingsley (@karlykingsley.bsky.social) October 1, 2025 at 1:52 AM
===
I'm pretty sure that's precisely what it's aimed at. Just take a look at Hegseth's tattoos.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) October 2, 2025 at 11:59 PM
===
Or honor your oath and fight back.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) September 30, 2025 at 2:32 PM
===
This ignores the repeated situations in which Hegseth has blindsided the administration. I think this was very much his idea, and Trump was brought in at the last minute because DOD heard the rumbles from GO/FOs who wondered why they had to haul ass to Quantico to listen to a TV show host.
— Tom Nichols (@radiofreetom.bsky.social) September 29, 2025 at 10:30 PM
===
In many ways, time well spent.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) September 30, 2025 at 10:31 AM
Eliot Cohen, at the Atlantic — “Pete Hegseth Is Living the Dream”: [gift link]
In the end, it was mostly blither. When Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth announced a gathering of some 800 generals and admirals (with their senior enlisted advisers), rumors ran wild. Was the administration going to switch the commissioning oath so that officers swear fealty to the president rather than the Constitution? Was the secretary of defense going to publicly dismiss stunned three and four stars? Would he declare an American withdrawal from Europe and Asia to concentrate on hemispheric defense? Would he at least reveal the outlines of the new National Defense Strategy? None of those things happened.
Instead, we got a great deal of verbal incontinence, of two different sorts. President Donald Trump—who initially seemed not to have heard about this planned gathering, but when he did decided to join because it seemed like fun—followed the secretary with more than an hour of meandering whines, boasts, and half-hearted attempts at humor. He appeared tired, his voice raspy, his attention span even shorter than usual; he joked feebly about not wanting to trip while walking downstairs.
There was plenty of nastiness to be sure—unremitting sneers at his predecessor (particularly his autopen), rants about “left-wing lunatics,” and a good many racist dog whistles. President Barack Obama he described as “bopping downstairs,” and the places where Americans were sent pointlessly were Kenya and Somalia rather than, say, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, not to mention his invocation of the two N-words (nuclear being one of them) that one should not use. And of course, there were the asides about the “animals” in the inner cities.
The post-event reporting unsurprisingly emphasized the scarier stuff, particularly the talk of “invasion from within” and the importance of being ready to fight against all enemies “foreign and domestic,” and above all using American cities as “training grounds” for the U.S. military. All bad, but—considered in the context of a speech that weaved and staggered like a drunken man in a dark alleyway—less menacing than one might think. It was Trump being Trump, playing to his base (who probably was not watching), and imagining that he had achieved great things in the space of days by issuing a few orders. What was most striking was the irony of the man who denounced Joe Biden, in effect, for senility showing some of the same symptoms himself as he lost his thread of thought, reminisced, and daydreamed on the stage…
And what of the audience? They were for the most part, and entirely appropriately, silent. Trump had been forewarned that that would be the case but nevertheless seemed deflated by it. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs and his colleagues were not on the stage. The generals’ faces were, in the vast majority, impassive. But undoubtedly, there were thoughts…
They had to have been aware that, by a rough estimate, there were more than 25,000 years of accumulated military experience in that room. To be lectured on the basics of military leadership and qualifications by a secretary of defense with eight months’ experience under his belt, and a few years of active soldiering beyond that, had to have been galling. To be summoned from the four corners of the globe, at considerable expense in money and effort and time, was a waste. They knew that too…
The American military will follow lawful orders and disobey unlawful ones. It will be grateful for weapons put in its hands, and the freedom to prepare itself for war. It will be disciplined, and it will respect the offices of the secretary of defense and the president. But the two men themselves? Not much respect is due them as human beings who have, at this moment and in these ways, shown themselves unfit to lead the greatest military on Earth. Nor will they get any.
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin’, y’all!
Too late to make it to the previous thread.
And, speaking of Whiskey Pete, who reached out to their US Senators this week to register complaints and demand the resignation of this dry (?) drunk?
I did!
MattF
Peggy Noonan (!) in the WSJ (!):
WereBear
Won a two front global war with typewriters and index cards.
WereBear
We’ll never get solar working as it should with these giant Egos blocking out the sun.
Matt McIrvin
He actually brought up “Liberation Day”? The day that tanked all the markets until they realized Trump was backing off from the worst of what he said?
p.a.
@MattF: Hmmm. She’s criticizing the style in this excerpt, but does she say anywhere that this is racist sexist bullshit?
hells littlest angel
All communications will be kept in strict confidence unless Trump threatens us.
Librettist
Worst TedTalk ever.
I’ve been in corporate pitch meetings that went like this. Everyone in the room knows they’re going with a new vendor, but hey, we can totally save this account with our mad presentation skillz.
MattF
@p.a.: Nope. But she’s unsparing about Hegseth— ending with:
debit
Open thread? Sick of Google’s AI in your search results? Apparently, if you add the phrase: does Trump have dementia at the end of your search, the AI box will disappear.
Relevant reddit thread here: Link
Can confirm it does work, and if you simply append the words Trump dementia, you will get results about Google’s blocking of search results regarding said dementia.
scav
oooOOOoooo, in the top photo, which big boy has really been practicing his patented Kung Fu Grip?
WereBear
I’ve been switching around different browsers and search engines. The automatic AI on it is sometimes useful, but not if they don’t want you to know something.
The dementia is not a surmountable obstacle.
Librettist
@scav:
I totally want that action figure. Push the button on his back, his fists raise up and jaw drops open. Pull the string for inane “warfighters” bullshit.
trollhattan
@hells littlest angel:
Unless I had double-secret super VPN I would not dare.
Plus FTFNYT in general. When did they regain trustworthiness?
trollhattan
Now he’s done it. Donny has smashed the glass and released the Princeling.
This fixes everything.
WTFGhost
“You break things and kill people,” is a fair description of the military’s job, but, it’s more of an ironic bit of BS. “Sure I can build a bridge; but, when you call the military, your plan better be to break the right things, kill the right people, and the job is done. Then, we can build a few bridges and dig a few wells. But we’re not here to parade around, we’re not here to ‘keep the peace’, we’re not here to ‘change hearts and minds.’ That’s not what you hire military folks to do!”
The idea that a person should be *proud* to be a killer/arsonist is wrong. That they might, ironically, accept that as the “real” job description, while trying to be a proud, honorable, and thoroughly deadly, fighter.
scav
@Librettist: Don’t forget the “Math class is tough.” variant.
Another Scott
Kinda interesting. Couric and Frum interview excerpt (2:21). The Quantico gathering was maybe an early campaign rally for a campaign video for Hegseth 2028 – Biggest Jerk in the Room.
Maybe.
All of these monsters have all kinds of delusions.
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
hells littlest angel
@debit:
You can also just type “-ai” at the end to exclude AI results. Less typing that way. Although it’s scandalous that the other way works.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan:
Oh! Excellent! Maybe that pasty-faced baby will fix everything in the Middle East this time around!
Ten Bears
Bombed so hard their callsigns are Fat Man and Little Boy …
mrmoshpotato
@debit: Margin buster! :)
Kirklin
Amateurs study tactics.
Professionals study logistics.
Hegseth studies posturing with muscles.
eta dammit, I know the quote.
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
Until Donny cleared the floor I had trepidations about Pompeo running. He’s got that blend of fatuous ego, pomposity and bluster Republicans are now helplessly drawn to.
Won’t allow myself to worry about Whiskey Pete. We have three years of the current asshole to deal with and then CouchBoy, who clearly feels the chair is his-his-his.
Jackie
FFOTUS’s golfing this morning and the MAGA senate is enjoying a fancy posh retreat this wknd.
Is the MSM talking about this? Is there any outrage about this?
trollhattan
@Ten Bears:
Well played {golfclap}.
trollhattan
@mrmoshpotato:
Imagining him on the phone, “Can’t I just stay home and rake in more money? Please?!?”
West of the Rockies
Hegsgeth looks like a two-bit toxic masculinity thug who gets unalived by Reacher in a roadside cafe bathroom.
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato: Fixed!
debit
@WaterGirl:
Thank you!
Ruckus
Pompous arrogance is never good in the military.
And pompous arrogance is all any of the current people in charge of the people in the military that make it all work have. Because pompous arrogance is thinking you are the greatest human to ever live, when what you actually know is equivalent at best to an average 3 yr old. Or quite possibly younger.
debit
@hells littlest angel: I want Google to know that I know.
WaterGirl
@debit: Thanks for sharing the tips about google.
Scandalous, in normal times. Shameful.
tsquared2001
I wonder if the Atlantic writer is aware of what is happening in Chicago right now since “less menacing” is not exactly the phrase that comes to mind.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan: “But I have a great grift going here at hoooome! 😡”
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl: Thanks! Go Cubs!
Tim C
*glares in mock anger about the Warhammer 40K reference*
warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/WAAAGH!
trollhattan
@West of the Rockies:
I’m down for this next Reacher season.
Alternatively, comically over-the-top villain in the first Bond as Female movie. His secret plot will involve smuggling preteen girls out of Greenland.
NutmegAgain
Just a teeny tiny super insecure little man. Can you imagine being so lacking in self-awareness that you would give a speech like that, to that specific audience? I’m not even military, but Cripes!! what a twat!
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
All of these monsters have all kinds of delusions.
Really that’s all they have – delusions. And they prove it day after day after day. It’s like all the kids at no IQ middle school found the microphones.
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato:
Baseball post will go up at 1pm for the game at 2:08.
WaterGirl
Quiet day here!
mappy!
Imagine being his mother. Watching.
West of the Rockies
@Ten Bears:
Ha! Well done.
trollhattan
Beginning to have reservations about the whole “influencer as occupation” thing.
The expression about pilots—there are old pilots, there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots—applies to technical climbing. Class president of my high school died on a rappel.
pat
So has anyone seen anything about Newsom putting out a rumor that trump has had a stroke?
Melancholy Jaques
If most people think that it’s because that’s the kind of imagery that we are all inundated with. They don’t make movies about logistics, do they?
MattF
Heather Cox Richardson has some cogent observations about Trump’s rambling speech at Quantico. Specifically, starting at 15:30 in the linked video, she notes that Trump appears to be repeating a physician’s advice about how he should go down steps slowly. A good catch from HCR.
bluefoot
I HATE that “Trump being Trump” framing. Easy to say perhaps from a position of privilege. Trump says thing, promises retribution for his grievances and prejudices, and then the rest of the administration and SCOTUS find ways to make it happen. And then here we are, ICE disappearing people, the US blowing up our international alliances, dismantling our exceptional capabilities in science and health, etc etc. Just f*ck off with that “Trump being Trump” shit that elides the serious harm and human suffering that flows from what he says and wants.
Scamp Dog
@Melancholy Jaques: There’s one, apparently:
Red Ball Express
p.a.
@trollhattan: The linked Climbing.com article used Denali. Whoever wrote this used tRumpism.
trollhattan
@bluefoot:
The sanewashing will continue until morale improves.
The entire apparatus has bought in, to some extent, “independent” media included. Fear has eclipsed doing their jobs.
MattF
@trollhattan: It’s a constant story among rock climbers. While I was at Cornell, Lester Germer (the Germer in the famous Davisson-Germer experiment that showed that electrons will diffract in scattering from crystal surfaces) fell and died in a rock climbing trip.
Harrison Wesley
So which gets invaded first, Portland or Venezuela?
NeenerNeener
This has probably been posted here already, but it’s worth doing again in this thread:
facebook.com/reel/1153278740009833
trollhattan
@pat: The parody account had this on the 2nd. All I’ve seen.
x.com/GovPressOffice/status/1973956804842565709
pat
@trollhattan:
Parody. Darn.
Dave
@WTFGhost: It’s also self-protective. Our team always said “murder” amongst ourselves as opposed to any other descriptor.
It’s not technically true since murder is unlawful killing but it served to strip the bullshit away not to act as a permission structure to do terrible things.
Also avoided the situation where people are wrecked because it turns out many locals don’t think you are the big heroic good guy.
I’ve seen too many true believers be absolutely devastated by perceived betrayals for instance as opposed to understanding why a local does what they do.
Mr. Bemused Senior
I expect she’s correct. Trump says whatever comes to his mind and this one certainly sounds like he’s repeating advice he’s been given.
trollhattan
@pat:
Doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. Donny’s unscripted appearances and even the scripted ones seem to show diminished capacity. And the pics of the right side of his face drooping, those are especially damning.
I’m getting Brezhnev vibes at this point. Should start looking for Swan Lake performances.
Melancholy Jaques
@Scamp Dog:
I’ve read about the Red Ball Express, but never heard of the film. Not available for streaming.
From wikipedia:
trollhattan
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
“Person, woman, man, camera, TV, stairs. I gotta remember SIX things?”
Baud
Via Reddit
Betty
@Melancholy Jaques: I think that image is from Top Gun.
trollhattan
@Baud:
Full-blown measles worst measles.
We live in the stupidest of times.
WaterGirl
@pat: There’s nothing on Newsom’s twitter account.
sab
@debit: I am so old that I remember when “don’t be evil” was part of Google’s mission statement.
WaterGirl
@MattF: I am trying to get my Matt commenters straight. :-)
Have you always been MattF or is this Matt and you did what I asked and added something to distinguish matt from Matt?
Betty
From the Atlantic article comparing Trump to Biden, I don’t recall seeing Biden show anything close to the mental decline that we are seeing from Trump. The decline is real and seems to be accelerating.
RevRick
@Kirklin: Hegseth is stuck from watching 300 too many times. I bet he subscribed to Playgirl.
WaterGirl
@NeenerNeener: Can you explain what that is?
Ruckus
@Kirklin:
Anyone who values themselves over everyone else is never going to make a good leader or anything more than a pompous, arrogant jackass.
MattF
@WaterGirl: Always MattF. Old enough that ‘Matthew’ was an unusual name when I was growing up. My mother recalled that I came home from school one day upset because I’d encountered a ‘Matthew with another face’.
Geminid
@trollhattan: Contrary to the article, Jared Kushner did not exactly craft this peace plan. It’s basically the plan Witkoff strong-armed Netanyahu into signing at the end of January, which in turn was built upon the framework that CIA Director Bill Burns, Qatari Prime Minister al-Thani and Egypt’s intelligence formulated in February of 2024.
And the new material regarding post-ceasefire security and governance in Gaza basically tracks the plan floated by Saudi Arabia that same month, which was endorsed by Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.
But I don’t really care who gets the credit so long as the mediators push the plan through and don’t let Netanyahu monkey wrench it. This plan can work.
This has been a fairly wild diplomatic story that tends to support the trope that Trump is most influenced by whomever he talks to last. This week Trump talked to Netanyahu on Monday and the Emir of Qatar on Wednesday. Guess who Trump talked to yesterday: his “good friend” R.T. Erdogan, the President of Turkiye.
Erdogan’s intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalin,* spent most of the week in Doha, helping the Qataris and Egyptians talk Hamas’s leaders into accepting Trump’s plan. Kalin may well have coached them on the cleverly worded acceptance letter in which Hamas expressed gratitude and general agreement to Trump, while at the same time created diplomatic space to renegotiate some key points. Those will be hashed out tomorrow in Cairo.
* Ibrahim Kalin is an intellectual who holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from George Washington University, where he studied under a distinguished Iranian American scholar. Kalin delivers well-attended, widely circulated lectures on the role of Islam in the modern world. So he can speak Hamas’s language. And Kalin and his boss know how to speak Trump’s language.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
That general concept applies to many things in life. Things that most people recognize and at least attempt to avoid, but which some search for and sometimes (often?) pay that high, last price.
That thing that may often be fun but is never without risk, and often has RISK.
WaterGirl
@MattF: Thanks!
So we have:
MattF
Matt McIrvin
Matt
goodmatt (formerly just “matt” until yesterday)
p.a.
@trollhattan: I remember when the Wurlitzer, led by Rush Blimpbaugh at the time, had the reich wing berserk about unleaded gas as some kind of librul conspiracy to… something something something.
Me to my whackjob relatives “you know lead is toxic, right?”
There’s an old PBS documentary (can’t remember which series) about the US’ first public forensic dr/pathologist, unsurprisingly in NYC. IIRC he started work in the late 1800s and continued into the 1920s, and invented procedures, some of which are still used today (with of course better tech.). Anyway, the producers, in his files, found investigations from the early 1900s into violent, vicious crimes that ultimately made no sense: no motive, no acquaintance, just cruel and unprecedented. All the caught criminals had one thing in common: employment or residence near oil refineries (usually along the NJ shore) producing gasoline for the new auto industry. Lead poisoning. Autopsy evidence of brain deformations. Lead was added to gasoline to prevent knocking/dieseling. The Doc & his office tried to go public, but the evidence was suppressed by the gvt under pressure from Rockefeller & Standard Oil for decades. Can’t remember if this cost him his job.
ETA There’s epidemiological evidence the removal of lead from gasoline is responsible for maybe 1/3 of the drop in crime since it became law.
dm
@Scamp Dog: There must be a movie about the pilots who flew cargo over the Himalayas (“the Hump”) to resupply forces in China during WW2.
An, in a way, The bridge over the River Kwai.
CaseyL
I don’t care about stony silence or silent seething. What I care about is whether they obey orders to deploy US troops to US cities to shoot civilians. Are we hearing any pushback on that?
Geminid
@WaterGirl: If this blog draws many more Matts we could have a Mattastrophe!
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Obligatory meme – We’re very lucky that they’re so f*cking stupid – but they’re still doing a tremendous amount of damage.
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Geminid: And that’s not even counting the regular commenters who are named Matt for real but use a different nym!
p.a.
Yes, America’s fascists are the stupidest fascists.
Ruckus
@Betty:
That mental decline always only goes in one direction and always accelerates. Shorter, worse and faster. When I was a mental health counselor we called that decline – aging out. And yes there are 2 sides here, there is aging, we all do and aging out. The second could be seen as everything but the body falling off a very steep and high hill. And sometimes even the body. Brains seem to go out of business slowly or rather rapidly. A brain that was never all that and a box of Cheerios will more likely be on the rapid side, because there was never a safety net of any kind or level. Full steam ahead is not always the best way to live. Can be a hoot, but has far less room for error. And that possibility of error is always there, especially in someone with manic delusions.
Anyway
@CaseyL: with you there. Don’t care about the theatrics…will they “follow orders” if asked to go into American cities…
WaterGirl
@CaseyL: @Anyway:
I don’t think we have a way to know that. If they push back publicly, they will be fired.
What I am most interested in are the conversations that are surely happening behind the scenes. Remember, these are people who PLAN for a living. I am sure they are gaming things out and figuring out what the red lines are.
But we will never know. The only way for them to successfully operate is behind the scenes.
Karen Gail
@sab: Ha, ha; I am so old I remember going to the library to look up things that I can now find in minutes.
p.a.
@CaseyL:
@Anyway:
I said a few days ago, they may deploy, but for trash duty and cleanup details. When tRumsegth tells them to arm up, then we’ll see…
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl: Cool. Thanks.
stinger
@WaterGirl: Thanks!
stinger
@WaterGirl: Outed!
“I am
SpartacusMatt!”no body no name
I once worked directly for a certain well known general who ran JSOC. This is insane.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@WaterGirl: They’re presumably better at operational security than Major Hesgeth.
Speaking of which, has Major Hesgeth been compared yet to Major Frank Burns? Because I’m seeing a distinct parallel.
HinTN
@Geminid:
This may be the best damn information I’ve heard in a long time. Thank you!!!
NeenerNeener
@WaterGirl: Hegseth trying to do pull ups and pretty much failing; then a skinny woman completing a pull up with a baby strapped to her chest. And this is the guy who wants to kick women out of the armed forces.
scav
@Karen Gail: With a random, quite possibly wrong or hallucinated (very often bought and paid for) response right on top! Card Catalogs were soooo uninfected with spam, how did we survive. Google (et al) is a mixed blessing. And I don’t know if any of us were ever alive when it actually lived up to that preening motto.
jonas
No. Republicans are never bound by any norms, rules, or expectations by the MSM.
Karen Gail
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: I wouldn’t; sure he is more nutso than Burns but Burns was competent surgeon and Pete? a talking head from Fox.
Kayla Rudbek
@debit: apparently adding curse words to the search string works also (I switched to DuckDuckGo as my default search engine too)
jonas
Our late blogosphere friend Kevin Drum wrote and posted prolifically on this over the past decade at least. The secular decline in crime and violence since the 1990’s tracks almost perfectly with the elimination of leaded gasoline and other sources of lead contamination a decade or two earlier.
Kayla Rudbek
@pat: I have seen other people commenting that Trump’s face appears like he has had a stroke, but not from Newsom
jonas
@Betty: I think Biden suffered from simple mental fatigue at times. I see it in my parents who are around the same age. Nothing wrong with their brains, but after a long day or having to focus on something for a long time, they just get tired and their mental bandwidth narrows considerably. Trump is just fucking losing touch with reality. He never really had a strong connection to begin with and has spent years covering lapses in thought or memory with spittle-flecked bluster and misdirection people (well, stupid MAGA cultists) mistake for “energy” or “plain talk” or whatever. I’m sure what comes out about his health and mental state when this mal-administration is finally over will make any of the stories about Biden pale in comparison.
JDM
You can order up a parade and you can order up an assembly, but you can’t order up devotion. They will never get what they most desperately want.
jonas
@pat: He posted about whether someone had seen Trump in public since “the STROKE,” but not sure if it wasn’t some attempted joke about golfing or something.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@debit: wow, thanks for posting this! I have done google searches and the AI responses frequently have OBVIOUS factual errors, making it untrustworthy and useless, so nice to know how to skip it.
Geminid
@HinTN: Ibrahim Kalin is an interesting man. Besides running Turkiye’s M.I.T intelligence agency and occasionally lecturing on Islam, Kalin is also a folk musician. Videos of him singing and playing a long-necked lute along with an ensemble have wide circulation on YouTube.
Kalin’s performance of “Sen Beninsen Ben Seninem” is a good example. Video of him and the the other musicians alternates with striking Turkish scenery. It’s vary calming.
Gvg
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Burns was a surgeon. Maybe not as good as he thought but he was, and that took work and some brains. I don’t see a resemblance.
sab
@debit: I turned off the AI feature on Google ( I forgot how I did that, some jackal must have told me how) and it also deleted the weather frog. I miss the frog but I don’t miss the first ten answers every seaech being AI and mostly wrong or irrelevant.
jonas
Neither of those two numbnuts knows squat about anything except real estate grifts. They’re there for the sole purpose of figuring out how to somehow corruptly profit from whatever the other people in the room who are actual stakeholders work out.
jonas
@sab: I haven’t gotten around to turning off the stupid AI feature on Google yet, but have been shocked at just how wrong some of its results have been lately. Even stuff that requires some basic calculations.
And the Captains of Industry™ are all running around now telling us this is the future and actually learning stuff in college is pointless. Pro tip: don’t invest in any company whose CEO is “all in” on AI. You will lose your shirt.
No One of Consequence
@Tim C: In all fairness, it *IS* Orktober…
-NOoC
zhena gogolia
@jonas: I asked a dumb question on google, trying to remember the name of the episode on which a character on Inspector Lynley was killed. It gave me the wrong information. AI claimed this character was killed in a certain episode, when in fact they were threatened and had a miscarriage. The same character (now played by a different actor) was killed in a much later episode, but AI told me the wrong one. So stupid and so wrong.
pat
@WaterGirl:
x.com/GovPressOffice/status/1973956804842565709
Governor Newsom Press Office
@GovPressOffice
HAS ANYONE SEEN DOZY DON SINCE HE SHUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT? ARE STAFF POSTING SINCE “THE STROKE?”
Quote
This was in the first reply.
Not sure anyone’s still here. I see there’s a new thread.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@jonas: I know! I did a search on someone, and the first AI sentence said he was 91, and the second sentence gave his birth year, and although I am not a math person, even I can do basic arithmetic, and he was clearly not 91 in 2025. If it can’t even do subtraction correctly !,!? it can’t be trusted on anything. And don’t get me started on how it confuses people with the same or similiar names even when you add in distinguishing characteristics to force it to differentiate. Absolutely untrustworthy and useless.
PS. Love the -ai hack someone else posted. Thanks!
geg6
@trollhattan:
I had a friend who was a Navy SEAL when he was active duty. We (my ex and I) used to go diving with him. He died rappelling after he left the service. It really shocked me that it could happen to him when he was so highly trained in stuff like that. I don’t get shocked by these kinds of incidents when they happen to very competent people any more. Shit happens and can happen to anyone.
geg6
@pat:
No, but I’ve been saying this for a while now. My partner has had a minor stroke and a series of mini strokes that have left him with vascular dementia. I see similar symptoms and behaviors in Cheetolini. I truly believe that is what is happening because it’s so obvious to me, who sees it ever day, day in and day out.
Iron City
Re: Lead
Was served up a documentary video on YouTube on John Franklin’s expedition for the Northwest Passage. Appears the canned food, using cans of soldered tinplate with solder containing lead went crazy after eating the stuff and abandoned their nice warm, though caught in the ice, ship and marched off the perish of cold and starvation. Can not vouch for truth of this.
Kayla Rudbek
@jonas: agreed, see here: wheresyoured.at/the-case-against-generative-ai/#the-world’s-private-credit-and-venture-capital-can…
Also, as an IP attorney, the AI can’t generate work that can be protected by copyright or patent without a whole lot of human judgment and invention/creativity applied after the initial AI output is generated, it’s difficult to get a patent on AI methods as they’re basically software patents, and trade secret protection is only as good as your most disgruntled employee walking out the door with a thumb drive. So I don’t see how the AI is actually going to make money, even before they have to settle all the lawsuits for copyright infringement.
dnfree
@jonas: The term for seniors who “lose it” at the end of the day is “sundowning”. It’s unfortunately fairly common. A nap during the day may help. Or, as my aunt’s doctor told her, “Two naps is better”.