…don’t even [DOT 1/8/24]

…while der dummpkoff von trucker hat is still in the race…you might say we’re all living with it…but…do you reckon he’s one of the half of cases of dementia that could have been sidestepped if we knew then what we know now?

Almost half of dementia cases worldwide could be prevented or delayed, a study has found, as experts named 14 risk factors.

The number of people living with dementia globally is forecast to nearly triple to 153 million by 2050, and researchers warn this presents a rapidly growing threat to health and social care systems. Global health and social costs linked to dementia exceed $1tn (£780bn) a year, the research shows.

However, in a seismic report published by the Lancet, 27 of the world’s leading dementia experts concluded that far more cases could be avoided or delayed than previously thought.

Addressing 14 modifiable risk factors, starting in childhood and continuing throughout life, could prevent or delay 45% of dementia cases, even as people live longer, the Lancet commission on dementia said. The findings were presented at the Alzheimer’s Association international conference in the US.

In an interview with the Guardian, the lead author of the research, Prof Gill Livingston, said it was increasingly clear that there was much more that millions of people could and should do to reduce the risk of dementia.

Speaking from the conference in Philadelphia, Livingston said: “Many people around the world believe dementia is inevitable but it’s not. Our report concludes that you can hugely increase the chances of not developing dementia or pushing back its onset.

“It’s also important to stress that while we now have stronger evidence that longer exposure to risk has a greater effect … it’s never too early or too late to take action.”
[…]
But she said the finding that there were several other health and lifestyle factors at play was “good news” because it provided a “huge opportunity” for people and governments to put in place preventive measures to lessen the devastating impact of dementia on society and loved ones in the future.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jul/31/almost-half-of-dementia-cases-could-be-prevented-or-delayed-study-finds

…it’s a serious study…even if I’m being facetious about it…which…is probably not clever

It’s fair to say the shine is coming off the AI boom. Soaring valuations are starting to look unstable next to the sky-high spending required to sustain them. Over the weekend, one report from tech site the Information estimated that OpenAI was on course to spend an astonishing $5bn more than it makes in revenue this year alone:

If we’re right, OpenAI, most recently valued at $80bn, will need to raise more cash in the next 12 months or so. We’ve based our analysis on our informed estimates of what OpenAI spends to run its ChatGPT chatbot and train future large language models, plus “guesstimates” of what OpenAI’s staffing would cost, based on its prior projections and what we know about its hiring. Our conclusion pinpoints why so many investors worry about the profit prospects of conversational artificial intelligence.

The most pessimistic version of the story is that AI – specifically, chatbots, the expensive and competitive segment of the industry that has taken the public’s imagination by storm – is simply not as good as we’d been told.

That argument suggests that, as adoption has grown and iteration has slowed, most people have had the chance to properly use cutting-edge AI, and have started to realise that it’s impressive but perhaps not useful. The first time you use ChatGPT it’s a miracle, but by the 100th time, the flaws remain apparent and the magic has faded into the background. ChatGPT, you decide, is bullshit:

In this paper, we argue against the view that when ChatGPT and the like produce false claims, they are lying or even hallucinating, and in favour of the position that the activity they are engaged in is bullshitting … Because these programs cannot themselves be concerned with truth, and because they are designed to produce text that looks truth-apt without any actual concern for truth, it seems appropriate to call their outputs bullshit.

…I shouldn’t laugh…as commodities go…bullshit always seems to be in high demand…which is some feat when you consider the scale of the supply these days

[…] Google doesn’t need to just train people to use AI, it also needs to run a trial to even work out what, precisely, they should be trained in doing. “This is much more about little everyday hacks, to make your work life a little bit more productive and delightful, than it is about fundamentally overhauling an understanding of technology,” Weinstein said. “There are tools today that can help you get your job done a little bit more easily. It’s the three minutes that you save every single time you write an email.

“Our goal is to make sure that everyone can benefit from the technology, whether it’s Google’s or other people’s. And I think the generalisable idea that you would work alongside tools that can help you do your life more efficiently feels like something that everyone can benefit from..”

Since ChatGPT arrived, there’s been an underlying assumption that the technology speaks for itself – helped by the fact that, in a literal sense, it does. But chat interfaces are opaque. Even if you’re managing an actual human being, it is still a skill to get the most out of them when you need their help, and it’s a much greater skill if your only way of communicating with them is a text chat.

AI chatbots aren’t people – not even close – so it is commensurately more challenging to even work out how they can fit in a typical working pattern. The bear case for the technology isn’t “What if there’s nothing there?” Of course there is, even given all the hallucinations and bullshit. Instead, it’s far simpler: what if most people just don’t bother to learn how to use it?

…at some point…you have to consider the math

Even though computers were made to do maths faster than any human could manage, the top level of formal mathematics remains an exclusively human domain. But a breakthrough by researchers at Google DeepMind has brought AI systems closer than ever to beating the best human mathematicians at their own game.

A pair of new systems, called AlphaProof and AlphaGeometry 2, worked together to tackle questions from the International Mathematical Olympiad, a global maths competition for secondary-school students that has been running since 1959. The Olympiad takes the form of six mind-bogglingly hard questions each year, covering fields including algebra, geometry and number theory. Winning a gold medal places you among the best handful of young mathematicians in the world.

The caveats: the Google DeepMind systems “only” solved four of the six problems, and one of them was solved using a “neurosymbolic” system, which is rather less like AI than you might expect. All of the problems were manually translated into a programming language called Lean, which allows the system to read it as a formal description of a problem rather than have to parse the human-readable text first. (Google DeepMind tried using LLMs to do this part too, but they weren’t very good.)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/30/will-open-ais-5bn-gamble-on-chatbots-pay-off-only-if-you-use-them

…likely as not we’ll muddle through with a lot more people using the stuff than understanding much about it…bit like electricity, that way…though hopefully it won’t wind up to be as likely to kill you if you interact with it directly…but…the “how it’s used” thing has been camping out in my head this morning…so…for a bit of context…there’s shit going on after the god-awful attack on a roomful of kids in the UK…& I’m afraid that’s going to come up…but it’s possible the previous might not have bobbed to the surface of your media landscape…so…back on july 18th

Violence broke out in Leeds on Thursday night with rioters overturning a police car and setting a double-decker bus on fire.

People in the Harehills area were urged to stay at home as officers were called to Luxor Street at about 5pm due to an “ongoing disturbance” involving agency workers and children.

While the children were moved to a safe place, crowds gathered and the situation escalated, with objects thrown at police.

Shocking videos posted on social media showed a police car being toppled – before being attacked by people wielding a scooter, a pram and a bike – and a double-decker bus torched as multiple fires were set along the street.

Home secretary Yvette Cooper condemned the ‘shocking scenes and attacks’ in the Harehills area of Leeds [Independent]

…this isn’t the banliues…flipping a cruiser & lighting up a bus is not normal…& tempers were high since it all kicked off when social services showed up looking to remove at least one child from a family…&…I’m not trying to draw any bad faith or bad taste parallels with the protests after george floyd’s death…& I don’t pretend to know how much of that conflagration was “organic” rather than “instigated” in the manner of the one asshole at one of the floyd inspired marches that was running around with a hammer breaking windows like he was working through the most clichéd edition of the agents provocateurs (not that one – that’s singular) handbook…but…given the demographic makeup of the crowd/residents…well…you’ll never guess who came at the thing how

…so…when it comes to the other thing…well…I’m not saying this is all some well-oiled machinery of manipulation being played by maestros…but…there’s definitely some playing of some systems been going on

A senior judge has issued an arrest warrant for far-right campaigner Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – better known by his alias Tommy Robinson – after learning he has left the country on the eve of a major legal case against him.

Yaxley-Lennon left the UK by a Eurotunnel train on Sunday night, despite having been arrested by Kent Police under counter-terrorism powers.

The 41-year-old had been due in court on Monday for allegedly breaching an order not to repeat lies about a Syrian refugee.

Mr Justice Johnson has ordered the warrant not to be carried out “until early October” to give Yaxley-Lennon time to confirm he would attend the next hearing voluntarily.

His departure from the UK comes after thousands of his followers gathered in central London on Saturday in his support.

In July 2021, Syrian teenager Jamal Hijazi won £100,000 in damages in a major defamation battle against Yaxley-Lennon, who had falsely accused him of being a violent thug, claims that spread across social media.

A judge ordered him never to repeat the lies, but last year he began repeating his claims, including in a film distributed online.

Yaxley-Lennon was ordered six weeks ago to come to the High Court on Monday to answer the allegation that he had ignored the judge’s order – a serious offence known as contempt of court.

Adam Payter, representing the Solicitor General, the government minister who oversees contempt of court allegations, today told Mr Justice Johnson that despite Yaxley-Lennon knowing of this morning’s case, he played the film again to his supporters on Saturday.

The barrister said this public showing had been a “flagrant” and “admitted” breach of the court order not to repeat the false claims.

On Sunday, the founder of the English Defence League went to the Channel Tunnel terminal at Folkestone, where police officers stopped him under counter-terrorism powers.

When he allegedly refused to co-operate, he was arrested and held until 10pm before being released on unconditional bail and leaving the country.
[…]
“The information that we have is that he is not within the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom. He has been spending significant time outside the UK since being served with the contempt application on 13 June.

“He returned for the purpose of publishing the film and sought to immediately leave the jurisdiction.”

The court heard the police officers who had held Yaxley-Lennon had no power to stop him leaving the UK.

…if you never heard of the asshole…congrats & I’m sorry you have now…but…here’s a form guide to the dude they couldn’t manhandle into a courtroom

…safe to say shithead has a bunch of what people like him consider friends &/or fans…which is something to bear in mind when you run into stuff about what’s been going down in southport

Speculation about the identity of the suspect behind the Southport stabbings, in which three children died, has been rampant on social media.

The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has urged the public to avoid “unhelpful” speculation and has said social media companies “need to take some responsibility” for content related to the attack.

Here we answer some questions about how false claims about the incident in Merseyside spread online so rapidly.

…& they need to…because the nightly influx of non-locals tearing the joint up is getting out of hand

More than 100 arrests as Southport protests spread [BBC]

Southport police brace for more violence from far-right ‘hooligans’
Chief constable expects protests from group reportedly linked to English Defence League to last into next week [Guardian]

More than 100 arrested in London as violence flares after Southport stabbings
Hartlepool and Manchester among latest scenes of violent disorder triggered by online disinformation about accused [Guardian]

…so…you’ll never fucking guess what the connection is between the farage embed & the fuckup who flew the coop

Soon after the attack, social media accounts began spreading inflammatory speculation. The platform X played a key role as the events unfolded.

An account called Europe Invasion, known to publish anti-immigrant and Islamophobic content, posted on X at 1.49pm, soon after news of the attack emerged, that the suspect was “alleged to be a Muslim immigrant” – a claim that was false. The post has since been viewed 6.7m times.

Joe Ondrak, a senior analyst at Logically, a UK company that monitors disinformation, said the Muslim immigrant claim was amplified across social media as a result.

“That particular phrase went around all the far-right influencers and channels,” he added.

Dr Marc Owen Jones, an associate professor at Hamad Bin Khalifa university in Qatar, reported there were at least 27m impressions of posts on X that stated or speculated the suspected attacker was Muslim, a migrant, a refugee or a foreigner. He said in a thread on X that there was a “clear” attempt by “rightwing influencers and grifters” to push an anti-immigrant and xenophobic agenda.

Prominent rightwing figures played a role in spreading false claims. Tommy Robinson, a British far-right activist whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, said in a post on X that rioters in Southport were “justified in their anger” while Andrew Tate, a misogynist influencer, claimed the attacker was an “illegal migrant” and told people to “wake up”.

X, which is owned by Elon Musk, reinstated Robinson and Tate’s previously banned accounts after buying the platform in 2022. X has been approached for comment.

…uh huh…how many times you heard a variation on that theme?

The sharing of a false name for the suspect became the catalyst for the most potent disinformation.

It is unclear what the first source was for the fabricated name, which appeared to have been chosen to reflect Islamophobic tropes, but it was amplified by a faux news website calling itself Channel 3 News Now. That site, which does not have any named personnel and features a mix of emotive US and UK news and sport stories, responded to an email from the Guardian about the report to say: “We deeply regret any confusion or inconvenience this may have caused.”

Its post on X and subsequent “coverage” appeared to have amplified the original piece of disinformation, before it was widely shared over 48 hours by far-right activists, conspiracy theorists and self styled “influencers” on platforms such as TikTok. Searches for the fake name, which spiked massively on Monday, have now faded away.

…starts to paint a picture, though…you might say?

That said, Beard and other analysts point out there are definitely poor-quality bots tweeting about the Southport incident, though he also cautions that this is in the main “engagement farming”. Such bots have been around since 2010.

Ava Lee of the campaign group Global Witness said: “Accounts that appear to be bots are using the horrific events in Southport to fuel division at a time when the community is calling for calm.”

…the literally mindless parts are bad enough…but…the minds that provide the intent…what certain cosmologies would call the prime movers?

Experts are divided over whether assets controlled by states such as Russia have been involved in amplifying the claims.

Some point out that the oldest clips on a YouTube account run by Channel 3 are of what appear to show car racing in Russia 12 years ago, complete with Russian captions.

However, Beard said the evidence for any concerted Russian involvement was flimsy, adding: “Russian state tactics tend to be more focused on sowing discord and planting multiple narratives to confuse and divide. This feels a little too one-sided for that.”

Stephanie Lamy, a disinformation strategies analyst, said: “Channel 3 looks like a traffic farming website that monetises content through advertising. Content is probably generated by AI. Data is harvested from social media and tradition media, without citing sources. It is therefore vulnerable to harvesting ‘bad’ data.”

…if the big boys are out then diminuitives like the EDL emetic-on-legs or ol’ fag-&-a-pint-look-a-flat-cap nige & their riff on the roger stone & the oath keepers playbook…seems like they think this is their moment to shine & this is what shining looks like…which is really committing to that saying about turd polishing if nothing else…if only…something could be done?

The UK’s Online Safety Act 2023 contains provisions requiring social media platforms to tackle illegal content such as threats against people of a particular race, religion, sex or sexual orientation and also to protect users from an offence known as “false communications”. Large tech firms such as the major social media companies will also be required to apply their terms of service consistently, including guidelines that prohibit the spread of false information (misinformation is the term for unintentionally false information, while disinformation is deliberately misleading). However, these codes will not start to be implemented until the end of the year.

Under existing law in England and Wales, it is already an offence to send threatening, abusive or offensive messages on social media. However, the immediate taking down of dangerous and misleading content relies on social media companies enforcing their guidelines.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/31/how-false-online-claims-about-southport-knife-attack-spread-so-rapidly

…&…look…I know…bedbugs…but something about how shrill he screeches kind of cuts through to the crux of how some thinking that won’t run on my mental operating system works & it’s that part that seems handy…I don’t necessarily buy that he understands the middle east better than I do…& I’m way more ignorant than informed about that part of the world…brett, though…brett’s got a bead on it…& a count…5 wars

The first war — the war Israel is now waging against Hamas and its allies in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Iran itself — is about security. […]

The second war fuels and explains the first. It’s about existence.

…obviously…don’t expect objectivity in terms of definition of terms…it’s brett, after all

Israel’s most strident critics insist that the current conflict is about Palestinian existence, about Israel’s alleged refusal to grant a Palestinian homeland. But that’s a historically ignorant claim — and a dishonest one.

…if it takes a thief to catch a thief…you’d think brett would be better at spotting dishonest claims…nevermind…brett can get into the very minds of the young folks…so he has no fear of contradiction or reason to believe anyone might pick a rhyming slogan they don’t understand the implications of…I mean…”his people” never do that…right?

When campus protesters at Princeton chanted, “We don’t want no two states, we want ’48,” they weren’t asking for Israel to accept a Palestinian state. They’re demanding Israel’s abolition.

They are also adopting the views of Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah and Iran’s Ali Khamenei — leaders of the so-called Axis of Resistance, which believes that the only solution in the Middle East is a final one: Israel’s annihilation.

…quick question there, b-rhett…that being so…what would the equivalent conclusion be about the pronouncements of the pro-let’s-not-end-this players on team bibi?

The third war is metaphorical. It’s also dangerous and corrosive. It’s Israel’s war for the legitimacy of its actions, a war against the “yes but” thinking that now describes the middle ground of Western opinion on the conflict.

…uh huh…so…two to go, then?

The fourth war is global, ideological — and fundamental. It’s the war against antisemitism. Among the many toxic and defamatory charges leveled against Israel since Oct. 7 is that the war in Gaza has caused a surge in antisemitism, a sly way of charging the Jewish state with being the agent of anti-Jewish hate.

The truth is precisely the opposite: Antisemitism is the cause of Oct. 7, not the consequence of it.

…do you sometimes just marvel at the levels of certainty some folks can adopt while saying shit they can’t conceivably have that kind of logical assurances about…the way you see those pictures of an ibex on the side of some sheer sided rockface & think “how in the hell does anything that looks that top-heavy & has no hands even get there?”

…anyway…to cap off brett’s bout of gravity-defiance

Finally, there’s the war within the state of Israel and among the Jewish people worldwide. It’s a war that has been one of the most enduring, and often fatal, features of Jewish history. Its contours were visible during the fight over Israeli judicial reform before Oct. 7, and now in the lawlessness of right-wing Israeli mobs charging into Israeli army bases. It’s also a war between diaspora Jews who recognize that the assault on Israel is ultimately an assault on them, and the “As a Jew” Jews who provide moral cover and comfort to Israel’s enemies. Addressing these divisions is as central to Israel’s long-term security as confronting any other threat.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/30/opinion/israel.html

…you’d have to go back to july 2nd for bret to enlighten you about what a better israeli prime minister would do…I haven’t had enough coffee to poke that bear…but…nothing happens in a vacuum?

Last week, Netanyahu was back before Congress for the first time since then. It was a bipartisan invitation, organized by Mike Johnson, the House speaker, a Republican, and agreed to by Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader and a Democrat.

“President Biden and I have known each other for over 40 years,” the prime minister said. “I want to thank him for half a century of friendship to Israel and for being, as he says, a proud Zionist.” Netanyahu called on Congress to fast-track military aid. “Give us the tools faster, and we’ll finish the job faster.”

If you were to look out at the House chamber during the speech, you would have seen that around 130 House and Senate Democrats were missing – more than twice as many as who skipped in 2015. And the issue was less partisan than it was moral and ethical: the catastrophic impact of the Gaza war on Palestinian civilians.

Health officials in Gaza say that Israel’s war has killed more than 39,000 people, mostly civilians, and driven a large part of the strip’s 2.3 million residents from their homes. Most of the enclave lies in ruins. Just this weekend, an Israeli airstrike hit a girls’ school sheltering thousands of displaced people in central Gaza, killing at least 30.
[…]
Biden’s “ironclad” support for Israel means that the Democrats who skipped the speech weren’t just boycotting Netanyahu. They were sending a message to the administration as well. It is not too different from the message sent by the hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters who marked their ballots “uncommitted” during the presidential primaries.

The signal political story of the moment is the changing of the guard in the Democratic Party after Biden declined to continue his bid for a second term over concerns about his age and ability to prevent Donald Trump from returning to the White House. But the Democratic reaction to Netanyahu’s address to Congress is emblematic of an equally important – and potentially more significant – story: the rapid transformation of the Democratic Party’s attitude toward Israel, driven by deep grass-roots sympathy for the Palestinians.

It’s obviously hard to separate the two stories. Although Biden’s popularity among Democrats was on the decline before the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack that killed nearly 1,200 people, Israel’s subsequent military response in Gaza, and his initial refusal to publicly question the Israeli government’s conduct as the war took shape, revealed a major shift within the Democratic coalition. Young voters led the way, although this should not have come as a surprise. In 2022, the Pew Research Center found that the youngest adults held the warmest views toward Palestinians. Overall, 61 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds held a favorable view of Palestinians and 55 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds felt the same way.

By December, around half of young Democrats disapproved of the Biden administration’s response to the Israel-Hamas war.

Other Democratic constituencies also mobilized in opposition. A coalition of Black clergy members ran an advertisement in this newspaper calling for a bilateral cease-fire. Labor unions, under pressure from many of their members, began to make similar calls. After Biden became the first sitting president to speak from the pulpit at Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., the national leaders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church called on the president to end U.S. financial aid to Israel, condemning the Israeli government’s campaign in Gaza as a “genocide.” In Michigan, Arab American Democrats warned Biden, and the rest of the party, that the state was at risk of flipping to Trump in the general election if the president didn’t change course.

As protests stepped up, rank-and-file Democrats moved further and further away from the president on this issue. By March, 75 percent of Democrats disapproved of Israel’s military action in Gaza and a plurality of Democrats wanted to provide only humanitarian aid to Israel.
[…]
You can already see that Harris is trying to chart her own course between Biden and the Democratic grass roots. At the same time that she condemned protesters who flew Hamas flags and burned an American flag near the Capitol to protest Netanyahu’s address and affirmed her “unwavering commitment” to Israel, she also told reporters that “Israel has a right to defend itself and how it does so matters,” adding that “what has happened in Gaza over the last nine months is devastating” and that “we cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. And I will not be silent.”

It is a real break from the president for Harris to voice this forthright concern for the lives of Palestinian civilians. But it is still unclear what the difference in language means for actual policy. Will a President Harris refrain from making additional weapons shipments? Will she attach humanitarian conditions to future military aid? Will she direct her U.N. ambassador to veto Palestinian requests for full membership in the global body? It is difficult to say. According to CNN, aides and allies who have talked with Harris say that “substantively there is little daylight between her and the president.”
[…]
Biden’s support for the Gaza war has alienated and isolated him from the youngest cohorts of the Democratic Party, but it hasn’t split the coalition. Far from standing with the president on this issue, many rank-and-file Democrats are opposed to Israel’s conduct, and many Democratic lawmakers have taken note of the shift in public opinion or helped to lead it. Hence the early pushback, from Senate Democrats, on Biden’s request for additional military aid to Israel in the fall, and the notable absences at Netanyahu’s address, which included two of the most senior Democrats in Congress, Pelosi and James Clyburn, as well as Harris herself.

This clear shift in public opinion is a virtual guarantee Harris will face serious pressure to make a decisive break with Biden on Israel. And even if she doesn’t, there is a strong chance that future Democrats running for president will have to take a meaningfully different tack on Israel than their predecessors.

This is the ultimate upshot of the sea change in attitudes toward Israel, and in support of Palestinians, among Democratic voters. In all likelihood, Joe Biden will be the last Democratic president to express the kind of total and unwavering commitment to the Israeli government that was born of a time when Israel could call itself an underdog in the region. Kamala Harris, if she wins the presidency and intends to run for re-election, will have to keep the views of ordinary Democrats in mind — if she isn’t already aligned with their concerns. And in the next real contest for the Democratic nomination, there will almost certainly be Democrats who take a harder and more critical line toward the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

If this is the future of the politics of Israel in the Democratic Party, then while there may not be a strong analogy to make, overall, between 1968 and 2024, there is a decent one to make between Joe Biden and Lyndon Johnson.

Two old Washington hands who reached the pinnacle of their ambitions and then used their considerable political skills to pass major, and in Johnson’s case, epochal, legislation. Two men who, supremely confident of their ability to guide events, then undermined themselves and their presidencies through stubborn commitments to disastrous conflicts abroad.

When we evaluate Johnson, we evaluate him in the context of Vietnam. We evaluate him in the context, that is, of tens of thousands of dead Americans and millions of dead Vietnamese.

When we evaluate Biden, we will rightfully credit him for his legislative accomplishments as well as the display of genuine statesmanship shown in his decision to step aside for the vice president. But we will also need to weigh what’s praiseworthy in the president’s legacy against his ignominious role as chief supplier for a terrible campaign of relentless destruction and incalculable human suffering.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/30/opinion/kamala-harris-netanyahu-israel-gaza.html

…&…I’m out of time but I feel like I was just getting started…be nice if that goes for the rest of my day…be a decent trade off for being a half-hour behind the time…so…here’s this bit…eventually there’ll be tunes…but there might be a bit of something in between?

…ok…so…you know the thing about “putting words in their mouth”? …comes up a bunch…including the selective edit…which can work for or against & a dizzying number of points betwixt & between…&…well…I ran into what seems to be a project of sorts that kind of does the opposite if you look at it as taking the words out of their mouths…they take (at least as far as I could make out just watching a few of the ones I wound up with a playlist of) actual audio tracks from pre-existing video…strip that video & sync it to fairly simple animation…&…well…the results are…I dunno but it was interesting to me?

…as is the part where that beau fella…who has talked about his other half in at least a few of the things of his I’ve seen…would seem to have decided that kamala’s campaign set a handy precedent for introducing her…so she fetched up in front of the camera with a badge on the cap saying “but you have heard of me” a few days ago & has been running with the ones that mention harris in the description since…which means the last one in this little collection covers that dumpster-fire of an appearance orangitasticus made on a stage with actual questions

…I haven’t watched all of them…but I kind of love the lowkey subtitle provided by the ballcap & t-shirt on a hanger in the background to represent the guy you’d expect on the channel…& both seemed like ideas for approaches that might have legs, so to speak?

…anyway…this isn’t (as ever) necessarily the best example to serve as a stand in for the parts that seem interesting…but…one more block-quote-frenzy & I promise I’ll go listen to things until I calm down & put some tunes in to cut myself off

In nearly a decade of contests against women, the former president has long deployed sexist and misogynistic attacks against female rivals — commenting on their appearance and engaging in gendered stereotypes in a way that could alienate many of the voters he hopes to win over.

Now, with Trump expected to face Vice President Harris in the 2024 presidential race — going up not just against a female opponent, but also a Black and Indian American one — strategists and aides from both parties are girding themselves for an election steeped in allegations of sexism and racism, warning that the dynamic holds potential risks and rewards for both Harris and Trump.
[…]
“I’m running against a low I.Q. individual,” Trump said during a speech Saturday at a bitcoin conference.

…that’d be this bitcoin conference

I flew out to Nashville on Saturday for the last day of Bitcoin 2024, when Trump was scheduled to speak, to see the spectacle first hand. I’d spent the previous two days watching the conference live stream, which featured speeches from RFK Jr and Edward Snowden, and talking-head panels opining about bitcoin.

In past years, bitcoiners insisted their enthusiasm for the coin was apolitical. Now, they insist that Joe Biden and Democrats waged a four-year war on cryptocurrency, forcing many to support the policies of RFK Jr and Trump. That said, I didn’t meet a single recent convert from Biden. Those I spoke with at the conference had a very similar style of politics to Trump supporters broadly: they insisted that they were under attack from elites, that the US was on the verge of tyranny or collapse. They’re determined to win the culture war, which they believe they’re losing.

And like Trump himself, they insisted that they’d been falsely branded as criminals.

Maga hats, panties and the carnivore diet: my bizarre day at Trump’s Bitcoin 2024 speech [Guardian]

…it’s a bit of a paradox, really…when your core vote…your most solid & unwavering base…is about equal parts toxic & repellent to women & non-white people…along with a decent share of both the white & male circles on the venn diagram of demographic pies you need a slice of…leaning in to playing to your “strengths”…beginning to think “you’ll be sick of all the winning” was a typo & the autocue meant to serve up “you’ll be sick of all the whining”…I know I am…anyway

“They’ve got to be careful how they’re coming after the first Black female nominee, because they’re already doing badly with women, and abortion is already a huge issue,” said Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director on Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “If they take it too far, that’s going to alienate a lot of voters.”

…imagine it might, at that

And campaigning in Florida less than a month before Election Day in 2020, Trump told the crowd, “Kamala will not be your first female president.”

“Look, we’re not going to be a socialist nation,” he said at the time. “We’re not going to have a socialist president — especially a female socialist president.”

Asked about the Republican leaders’ edict not to attack Harris on her identity, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung — speaking to reporters at a Wednesday rally in North Carolina — offered a response that seemed to underscore both the Republican hope (that Trump will stay focused on the issues) and the more likely reality (that Trump may attack Harris in personal and offensive terms): “I don’t know that it’s off-limits, but it’s not something we’ve done.”

In a statement, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt criticized Harris as “just as weak, failed and incompetent as Joe Biden — and she’s also dangerously liberal.”

…remember when her problem was being too onside with the cops…first time I’ve heard that described as a dangerously liberal stance by the party of law & order & thin blue lines that have a punisher fetish

Trump has a long history of problematic behavior involving women that transcends how he treats female opponents. Since the 1970s, more than two dozen women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, including assault, and during the 2016 campaign, an “Access Hollywood” video emerged of Trump boasting about forcibly grabbing women without their consent. In May of last year, a New York jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, and this May, another New York jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts in a hush-money trial involving payments to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, who claimed she and Trump had sex. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and said all the allegations are false.

…so…that’s definitely a big part of it

A person who worked on Fiorina’s 2016 campaign, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk about private interactions on the campaign, said that while female candidates still encounter bias, there are ways to capitalize on attacks to appeal to female voters.

The person said that while the younger women on Fiorina’s staff were shocked by Trump’s attack on her looks, Fiorina took a different approach.

“She was like, ‘Yeah, ladies, this is what my life has been like since I walked on the engineering floor at AT&T,’” the person said.

Democratic lawmakers agree.

“In many ways, having gone through this with multiple women now on the ticket running for president, I think we’ve built the muscle,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said. “We’ve learned the lessons, we’ve built the muscle. We know that these attacks will be coming, and we’ll be better prepared.”

…&

“With Hillary, he was calling her ‘Crooked Hillary.’ He’s crooked. Me — he’s called me ‘Crazy Nancy.’ He’s crazy. ‘Nervous Nancy.’ He’s nervous,” Pelosi said. “So I think it’s about what we have to offer. He’s bankrupt in terms of ideas, in terms of connecting with America’s working families. So he has to resort to these projections of his own weakness.”

…speaking of “laughing kamala”…& who’s laughing with/at who

“He will do it — he can’t help himself,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said. “He will say terrible things. He will make up things.”

A person familiar with the Trump campaign’s thinking, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share candid views, was blunt: “We hope he doesn’t act like a crazy racist and sexist person, but we can’t control him. There are probably dog whistles and racist and sexist tropes he’ll stumble into. His campaign is going to try to keep him out of that rhetoric, but it’s going to be difficult.”

In the past, Trump has unleashed some of his harshest invective on women of color.

…& we’re a long way yet from finding out who gets the last laugh or if the fat lady will deign to sing after you called her that

Still, Democrats say they are cautiously optimistic that Harris may be able to avoid, or at least overcome, some of the traps that ensnared Trump’s past female opponents.

“We’ve learned a lot, we’ve learned how he operates, how he throws red meat in terms of anti-women rhetoric to his base,” Aimee Allison, founder of “She the People,” said. “Most people have not been able to stand up to the way that Trump has built power, but I think in Kamala Harris, with her unique strengths as a prosecutor and all of her experience and who she brings with her in this campaign, he’s going to have a hard time.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/30/trump-harris-women-sexism/

…I feel like maybe we aren’t making enough hay out of the form guide…the man has teflon’d his way out from under a shit-ton of criminal charges…the way-crazier-than-a-childless-cat-lady “judge” in florida threw out the “clear & present danger” one that should have seen him locked up as a matter of national security until they’d exhausted the necessary enhanced techniques to interrogate how much worse that shit was than we know about…which is already way worse than shit that people who fucked up that way before then are still locked up on account of…but…what’s his record in court-court when he’s up against black ladies representing the law’s side of the case…because it sure seems like so far in the court of public opinion this one is taking the clowns to school…& that’s, like, his favorite court…the one he thinks is home turf?

…anyway…if I were that beau guy this is the part where I’d intone “it’s just a thought”…but…eh…probably more like an impression, really…so…off to scout some tunes while I see if I can do something constructive about the other things I got started with this morning…best of luck with it all out there?