…you know how sometimes they say something “couldn’t have happened to a nicer person”? …well…sometimes they do happen to nicer people…& sometimes they aren’t nice things…but sometimes…it’s the prat that takes the pratfall
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was taken to hospital in Washington DC after he tripped and fell at a hotel, a spokesperson for the senator said.
“This evening, Leader McConnell tripped at a local hotel during a private dinner. He has been admitted to the hospital where he is receiving treatment,” David Popp, communications director for McConnell said in a statement.
…maybe he asked for it…maybe he was drinking…maybe we shouldn’t take his word for how it went…maybe sympathy isn’t the right response…maybe he should have worn a different outfit…who can say?
The Republicans, as the minority party, have had an easier time with intermittent absences. It is unclear if McConnell will be out on Thursday and if that would have an effect on scheduled votes. South Dakota Senator John Thune is the Senate’s No 2 Republican.
McConnell was first elected to the US Senate in 1984. He served as the Senate majority leader from 2015 to 2021, and the Senate minority leader since then.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/09/mitch-mcconnell-in-hospital-after-fall-in-washington-dc
…maybe someone thought he needed a push…I for one am fairly certain he could do with giving it a rest…but…I’m guessing I’m not going to be developing a fondness for that number 2 of his…
…there’s a saying or two about polishing those
…but either way…they tend to stink
…&…well…when you insist there’s some sort of principle involved in protecting your right to euphemistically call a spade a spade…but are mortally offended when something that walks like a duck, looks like a duck & quacks like a duck gets referred to as a goose-stepping duck getting in line behind you
…well…maybe folks can draw their own conclusions…& just maybe that might go a little better than we fear it has
…whatever the deal is…you’ve surely got to be on the willing side of ignorant before you’d be willing to take a director’s cut of the voyage of the titanic that cuts out just before the iceberg hoves into view as “exclusive” proof that it was as unsinkable as advertised
To sustain his false claims that the January 6 Committee released a biased selection of videos, Tucker Carlson has insinuated that only he and the J6C have had access to the video of the attack.
That’s, of course, false. The defense attorneys have had access to most of the same video to which Tucker has claimed exclusive access. In fact, his claims that Jacob Chansley was unfairly treated is an implicit attack on Albert Watkins, Chansley’s defense attorney during the period he pled guilty to facts Tucker ignored, such as that he ignored an officer’s direction to get out of Mike Pence’s seat or that he “considered it a win” that Members of Congress had to “hunker down, put on their gas masks and retreat into their underground bunker.” (Chansley has since retained William Shipley, an even more partisan attorney, one who has sown partisan bullshit about legal cases going at least as far back as the Mike Flynn case.)
[…]In responses to two defendants — Ryan Nichols and Shane Jenkins — attempting to delay their trials so they might review the files Tucker has boasted about accessing, DOJ has laid out the evidence available to defense attorneys (this is the version submitted in the Jenkins case).
The United States has provided voluminous global and case-specific discovery in this case. In addition to the case-specific discovery that has been provided to the defendant (which includes, inter alia, videos of the defendant breaking a window with a metal tomahawk and throwing various objects at officers in the Lower West Terrace tunnel), as of March 6, 2023, over 4.91 million files (7.36 terabytes of information) have been provided to the defense Relativity workspace. These files include (but are not limited to) the results of searches of 759 digital devices and 412 Stored Communications Act accounts; 5,254 FBI FD-302s and related attachments (FD-302s generally consist of memoranda of interviews and other investigative steps); 395 digital recordings of subject interviews; and 149,130 (redacted or anonymous) tips. Over 30,000 files that include body-worn and hand-held camera footage from five law enforcement agencies and surveillance-camera footage from three law enforcement agencies have been shared to the defense evidence.com video repositories. For context, the files provided amount to over nine terabytes of information and would take at least 361 days to view continuously. All of this information is accessible to the defendant, as well as camera maps and additional tools that assist any defense counsel with conducting their own searches for information that they might believe is relevant. With respect to U.S. Capitol Police Closed Circuit Video (“CCV”), subject to some exclusions such as evacuation footage and cameras depicting sensitive areas (that would also not capture relevant moments related to the charges the defendant now faces), the defendant, like all January 6 defendants, has had access to nearly all exterior USCP camera footage as well as nearly all interior Capitol and Capitol Visitor Center footage recorded on January 6, 2021 from noon to 8 p.m.
[…]
https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/03/08/the-759-digital-devices-tucker-carlson-didnt-review/
And thus far, those vigorous advocates for their clients — including Joseph McBride, who represents Nichols, and who famously admitted he “doesn’t give a shit about being wrong” when he spreads conspiracy theories — have been unsuccessful in making the kinds of arguments Tucker is making, though it is not for want of trying.
…sometimes
…it’s easy to know which side you’re on
Confider has learned of a series of prior incidents in which Times staffers within the paper’s LGBTQ-focused employee resource group, TimesOut, repeatedly tried to highlight to management the implications of its coverage of trans people. However, the group often ran into issues with its sponsor Carolyn Ryan, a managing editor at the Times and its highest-ranking LGBTQ employee in the newsroom. The exchanges served as a prelude to last month’s blow-up, which saw open letters by Times contributors, celebrities, and the NewsGuild of New York met with a rebuke from management.
Christopher Reynolds, who worked as an administrative coordinator on the Times’ business side until 2022 and served as the group’s policy and advocacy specialist, said Ryan would frequently try to deter the group from speaking up on the issue, often fearful of how it would make the paper look. “She declined to post anything in writing [to the internal TimesOut Slack channel] because she was so afraid of it becoming public and ‘being used against her,’” they said, which was confirmed by multiple people involved in TimesOut’s efforts.
[…]
Mike Abrams, the director of journalism practice and principles at the Times, told Confider that action plans were developed among Times leadership, but that the paper can’t control how people will respond to or share its coverage.“I think we’re in a sensitive moment in our country. There are clear threats in a number of states, particularly to transgender individuals,” Abrams said. “It heads into an already heightened atmosphere. Some of the reaction we’re seeing would have been inevitable. There’s going to be intense opinions of our coverage, particularly when you see people cherry-picking details from those reports for their own means.”
Reynolds said they left the Times last year after their position was eliminated, though they declined to apply for any other internal role, citing the emotional labor they put in during their time there. When they saw the paper’s continued coverage of trans issues throughout 2022, they felt affirmed in their decision.
“It proved that their goal in having these conversations is to comfort and to quiet people to make them feel heard, but to not make any real action,” they said.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-new-york-times-trans-coverage-debacle-was-years-in-the-making
…sometimes it’s tempting to root for #teamnobody
“Fox News illegitimately called it for the opposition, and not Donald J. Trump,” the Trump adviser-turned-talk show host told the crowd in National Harbor, Maryland, an audience full of diehard MAGA supporters.
[…]
“Murdoch, you’ve deemed Trump’s not going to be president,” Bannon continued as the crowd roared with applause. “But we deem that you’re not going to have a network, because we’re going to fight you every step of the way.”
[…]
The network hasn’t featured the former president on its airwaves since November. The face of CPAC, American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp, himself a close Trump ally, has also not appeared on the channel since allegations emerged in January that he sexually assaulted a campaign staffer. (Schlapp has denied wrongdoing). And in the halls of the CPAC conference, disdain for Fox News wasn’t an uncommon sentiment among those gathered.
[…]
Fox Radio skipped its usual booth on media row at CPAC this year. Fox Nation didn’t livestream or sponsor receptions as it has in years past. There were no primetime Fox News stars like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, or Tucker Carlson scheduled to speak on stage — a contrast to years past, where Fox stars were in heavy rotation on the stage or in the halls.
[…]
The absence of Fox News at CPAC has fed larger questions about the role the Murdoch-owned network is gunning to play in the Republican primary. Trump’s likely 2024 rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has been featured across Murdoch-owned entities as he promotes his recently published memoir. The anti-Woke activist Vivek Ramaswamy launched his presidential campaign with an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. And former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has repeatedly appeared on the network, with her launch announcement covered live on TV.
[…]
For his part, Trump has ramped up his attacks on the longtime conservative television channel, in recent days sharing multiple posts on his Truth Social platform critical of the channel and its owner, Rupert Murdoch. “Too many incompetent RINOS at FoxNews!” Trump posted on Thursday. A day earlier, Trump called Murdoch and other Fox executives a “group of MAGA Hating Globalist RINOS” who should “get out of the News Business as soon as possible.”[…]Fox News remains king of cable news and prime-time ratings. The top ten most-watched cable news shows are all on Fox News, with Tucker Carlson and the Five boasting over 3 million viewers according to AdWeek. And for conservative stars, Fox News’ evening shows are still the #1 spot for attracting attention for their cause.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/03/the-trump-world-fox-news-war-gets-nasty-00085506
…please…please do keep up the the whole fox=RINOs thing…make it a primary plank of your whole pitch, even…who knows…as that echo chamber shrinks maybe a few more of its inhabitants might notice its similarity to a cave & come out & join us in what might be called a modern reality…stranger things have happened
The Austrian-born actor, who began as a bodybuilder and served as governor of California between 2003 and 2011, told viewers “there has never been a successful movement based on hate”.
Schwarzenegger’s rhetoric was couched in terms of a motivational pep-talk for those with prejudice: “Nazis? Losers. The Confederacy? Losers. The apartheid movement? Losers. I don’t want you to be a loser. I don’t want you to be weak … despite all my friends who might say, ‘Arnold, don’t talk to those people. It’s not worth it.’
[…]
“It’s easier to hate than it is to learn … Nobody who has chosen the easy path of hate has gotten to the end of the road and said, ‘What a life.’ No. They die as miserably as they lived.“No matter how far you’ve gone, I want you to know you still have a chance to choose a life of strength. You have to fight the war against yourself … The [hate] path is easier – you don’t have to change anything, everything in your life that you aren’t happy about can be somebody else’s fault … [But] you will end up broken. I don’t want you to go through all that.”
…it’s not a short clip…& he more or less specifies that he isn’t talking to the folks I’m aware read these…but if you’re interested here it is
…he’s not as prolific as that beau & his fifth column
…but it’s far from the first time the governator has tried to take advantage of some overlapping demographics that intersect with his fanbase
a video made last year in which he spoke about the Russian invasion of Ukraine in relation to his own father, who was a Nazi, has been viewed more than a million times.
“[My father] was injured at Leningrad and the Nazi army he was part of did vicious harm to the great city and to its brave people,” he said.
“To the Russian soldiers listening to this broadcast, you already know much of the truth that I’m speaking. You’ve seen it in your own eyes. I don’t want you to be broken like my father.”
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/mar/07/arnold-schwarzenegger-calls-antisemites-losers
…speaking of broken people & speaking the truth
Those who didn’t follow John Durham’s trials closely undoubtedly missed the parade of scarred FBI personnel whose post-Crossfire Hurricane vulnerability Durham attempted to exploit to support his invented claims of a Clinton conspiracy.
Sure, lots of people wrote about Jim Baker’s inability to provide credible answers about the meeting he had with Michael Sussmann in September 2016. Fewer wrote about the credible case that Sussmann’s attorneys made that a prior Durham-led investigation into Baker — for sharing arguably classified information with a reporter in an attempt to forestall publication of a story — made Baker especially quick to cooperate with Durham in 2020. Fewer wrote about Baker’s description of the stress of Jim Jordan’s congressional witch hunts.
It sucked because the experience itself, sitting in the room being questioned the way that I was questioned, was, as a citizen of the United States, upsetting and appalling, to see members of Congress behaving the way that they were behaving. It was very upsetting to me.
[snip]
It sucked because my friends had been pilloried in public, my friends and colleagues had been pilloried in public, improperly in my view; that we were accused of being traitors and coup plotters. All of this was totally false and wrong.
[…]
During his testimony, Curtis Heide (who played a key role in the George Papadopoulos investigation) explained how the FBI Inspection Division investigation into Crossfire Hurricane Agents, including him, remained pending, 6 years after the events in question. He noted that, three years after the DOJ IG Report, he was still being investigated even though he, “didn’t author any of the affidavits or any of the materials related to the applications in question.”The same was true in the Danchenko case. Brian Auten, a key intelligence analyst on Crossfire Hurricane, described how, after having met with agents from DOJ IG four times, having done a long report for FBI’s Internal Affairs Division, and having met with the Senate Judiciary Committee — all with no concerns raised about his own conduct — the first time he met with Durham’s team, he was told he was a subject of the investigation. After Auten gave testimony that confirmed Danchenko’s reliability — seriously damaging his case — Durham himself raised investigations that undermined his own witness’ testimony.
[…]
That line of testimony immediately preceded a hilarious failed attempt from Durham to get Auten to agree that George Papadopoulos was simply a young man with no contact to Trump who was only investigated for his suspect Israeli ties, not for his Russian ties. But it was a palpable example of the way that Trump’s minions used criminalizing FBI investigations into Trump as a way to create a makebelieve world that negates real evidence of Trump’s corruption.About the only two FBI agents who weren’t portrayed as somehow tainted by the events of 2016 in Durham’s two failed prosecutions were two agents who fucked up investigations: Scott Hellman, who correctly told a junior agent that she would face zero repercussions of she botched the Alfa Bank investigation, and Ryan James, an FBI agent who started his career in Connecticut, who nevertheless failed to pull the evidence necessary to test Sergei Millian’s claims.
Durham rewarded the incompetence that served his purpose and attempted to criminalize what he considered the wrong answers or at least to use the threat of adverse consequences to invent a false record exonerating Trump.
And Durham came in after Jim Comey, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, and Bruce Ohr had already been fired, and Lisa Page, with Strzok, deliberately humiliated on a global stage serially. He came in and exploited the uncertain status — the Inspection Division review left pending while Durham worked — of everyone involved. Such efforts didn’t end with the conclusive acquittals debunking Durham’s theories of conspiracy. Since then, Jim Baker has been dragged back through the mud — publicly and in Congress — as part of Twitter Files, Chuck Grassley passed on “whistleblower” complaints about Auten identifying Russian disinformation as such, and Timothy Thibault was publicly berated because some of the same so-called whistleblowers feeding Jim Jordan shit had complained to Chuck Grassley he was discouraging GOP conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden.
It was never just Strzok and McCabe. The entire Republican Party has relentlessly focused on punishing anyone involved in the Trump investigation, using both unofficial and official channels. When Trump promised “retribution” the other day at CPAC, this kind of relentless effort to criminalize any check on Trump’s behavior is what he was talking about.
That kind of background really helps to understand the WaPo story that described Washington Field Office FBI agents quaking at the prospect of searching Donald Trump’s beach resort.
[…]
Since I wrote my piece wondering whether the FBI hesitation gave Trump the chance to steal 47 documents, Strzok himself, Joyce Vance, and Jennifer Rubin have weighed in.
[…]
It is absolutely the case that Wray did far too little to protect FBI agents in the face of Trump’s attacks. Wray created the opportunity for pro-Trump FBI agents and Durham to criminalize investigating Trump. I think Wray attempted to avoid rocking the boat at all times, which led the FBI to fail in other areas (including the investigation of Brett Kavanaugh). Though I’m also cognizant that if Wray had been fired during the Trump administration, he might have been replaced by someone like Kash Patel, and having a Trump appointee in charge right now may provide cover for the ongoing investigations into Trump.But you could fire Wray tomorrow and not eliminate the effects of this bureaucratic discipline, the five year process to teach everyone in the FBI that investigating Trump can only lead to career disaster, if not criminal charges.
[…]
I think the specific failures in advance of January 6 lay elsewhere. Wray has not done enough in the aftermath to understand the FBI’s failures, but FBI has also been overwhelmed with the case load created by the attack.[…]Whatever the merit in blaming Wray for FBI’s failure to prepare for January 6, there’s a bigger problem with Rubin’s attempt to blame him on the MAL search. Strzok sketched out in great detail something I had seen, too. The dispute about searching Trump’s house wasn’t between the FBI and DOJ. It wasn’t just what Vance and Strzok both describe as a fairly normal dispute between the FBI and DOJ with the former pushing the latter to be more aggressive.
It was between the WFO on one side and DOJ and FBI HQ on the other.
[A] careful reading of the Post’s reporting (insofar as the reporting is complete) reveals this was not so much a conflict between DOJ and the FBI as much as a conflict between DOJ and FBI headquarters, on the one hand, and the management of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, on the other.
[…]
Strzok makes a compelling argument that this story may have come from pushback necessitated by people at WFO floating bullshit claims, not dissimilar from — Strzok doesn’t say this, but I will — the leak by right wing agents to Devlin Barrett about the Clinton Foundation investigation in advance of the 2016 election, which led Andrew McCabe to respond in a way that ultimately gave Trump the excuse he wanted to fire him.Indeed, Strzok’s post includes a well-deserved dig on the WaPo’s claim about, “the fact that mistakes in prior probes of Hillary Clinton … had proved damaging to the FBI,” an unsubstantiated claim I also called out.
[E]ven journalists can be imprecise or inaccurate. The Post’s article isn’t, for example, the type of comprehensive accounting you’d get in a report produced by an Inspector General, who can compile the statements of everyone involved and review and compare those statements to the written record in all its various forms.
Strzok right[ly] suggests that DOJ IG’s Report disproved WaPo’s claim about the Hillary investigation, but he seems to have forgotten that the DOJ IG Report into McCabe’s response on the Clinton Foundation didn’t fully air the FBI spox’s exculpatory testimony.
All of which is to say that, in the same way that WFO agents have an understandable visceral concern about getting involved in an investigation targeting Trump, people at HQ might have an equally visceral concern about stories seeded to Devlin Barrett alleging internal conflict that might create some flimsy excuse for firing.
[…]
The timing issue is one of many reasons why I keep thinking about this earlier Devlin Barrett story, one that did bump up against the appointment of a Special Counsel. On November 14, the day before Trump formalized his 2024 run and so four days before the appointment of Jack Smith, Barrett and WaPo’s Mar-a-Lago Trump whisperer, Josh Dawsey, published a story suggesting that maybe Trump shouldn’t be charged because he just stole a bunch of highly classified documents to keep as trophies.
[…]
As I showed, that story, like this one, simply ignored stuff in the public record, including:
- Trump’s efforts, orchestrated in part by investigation witness Kash Patel, to release documents about the Russian investigation specifically to serve a political objective
- The report, from multiple outlets, that Jay Bratt told Trump’s lawyers that DOJ believes Trump still has classified documents
- Details about classified documents interspersed with a Roger Stone grant of clemency and messages — dated after Trump left the White House — from a pollster, a book author, and a religious leader; both sets of interspersed classified documents were found in Trump’s office
- The way Trump’s legal exposure would expand if people like Boris Epshteyn conspired to help him hoard the documents or others like Molly Michael accessed the classified records
Since then, other details have become clear. Not only was that story written after DOJ told Trump they believed he still had some classified documents, but it was written in the period between the time Trump considered letting the FBI do a consensual search and the time he hired people to do the search for him, a debate inside the Trump camp that parallels the earlier investigative fight between WFO and DOJ. Indeed, when DOJ alerted Trump’s lawyers in October that they believed Trump still had classified documents, that may have reflected WFO winning the debate they had lost before the August search: to let Trump voluntarily comply.
That’s important background to where we are now. Trump’s team has misrepresented to the press how cooperative they have been since. First, Trump’s people misleadingly claimed that Beryl Howell had decided not to hold Trump in contempt (rather than just deferred the decision) and Trump lied to the press for several months, hiding the box with documents marked classified and the additional empty classified folder. Those public lies should only make investigators wonder what Trump continues to hide.
[…]
So let’s go back to that earlier Devlin story. As I noted at the time, I don’t dispute that the most classified documents have the appearance of trophies, but that’s because of the Time Magazine covers they were stored with, not because of any halfway serious scrutiny of Trump’s potential financial goals. Particularly given the presence of 43 empty classified folders in the leatherbound box along with the most sensitive documents, no thorough investigator could rule out Trump already monetizing certain documents, particularly given Trump and Jared Kushner’s financial windfalls from the Saudi government, particularly given the way that Trump’s Bedminster departure coincided with Evan Corcoran’s turnover of classified documents, particularly given that the woman who carted a box including some marked classified around various offices had been in Bedminster with Trump during the summer. I don’t dispute that’s still a likely explanation for some — but in no way all — of the documents, but no competent investigator could have made that conclusion by November 14, when Devlin published the story.Unless Devlin’s sources — perhaps the same or similar to the sources who know that WFO agents were cowed by the treatment of Crossfire Hurricane agents — were working hard to avoid investigating those potential financial ties.
Unless the timing of the story reflected an attempt to win that dispute, only to be preempted by the appointment of Jack Smith. The earlier dispute could not have been impacted by the appointment of Jack Smith. If there was a later dispute about how to make sure Trump wasn’t still hoarding classified documents, though, it almost certainly was.
Someone decided to leak a story to Devlin Barrett suggesting that investigators had already reached a conclusion about Trump’s motive, even though as the story acknowledged, “even the nonclassified documents” — better described as documents without classification marks that not only hadn’t been reviewed yet, which could have included unmarked classified information — “taken in the search may include relevant evidence.” (Note, these are the same unclassified documents that, the recent story describes D’Antuono, insanely from an investigative standpoint, scoffing at collecting because, “We are not the presidential records police.”) Devlin’s sources decided to leak that story at a time when DOJ was trying to figure out how to get the remaining documents from Trump, and yet his sources presented a working conclusion that it didn’t matter if DOJ got the remaining documents: it had already been decided, Devlin’s sources told him, that Trump was just a narcissist fighting to keep his trophies from time as President and probably that shouldn’t be prosecuted anyway.
The story of the earlier dispute is alarming because it confirms that WFO agents remain cowed in the face of the prospect of investigating Trump, as some did even six years ago. The later story, though, is alarming because leaks to Devlin have a habit of creating political firestorms that are convenient for Trump. But it is alarming because it suggests even after the August search proved the WFO agents’ efforts to draw premature conclusions wrong, someone still decided to make — and force, by leaking to Devlin Barrett — some premature conclusions in November, an effort that genuinely was thwarted by the appointment of Jack Smith.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/03/06/trophy-documents-the-entire-point-was-to-make-fbi-obedient/
…so…consider your sources & all
House Republicans have spent months promising to use their majority to uncover an insidious bias against conservatives on the part of the federal government, vowing to produce a roster of brave whistle-blowers who would come forward to provide damning evidence of abuses aimed at the right.
But the first three witnesses to testify privately before the new Republican-led House committee investigating the “weaponization” of the federal government have offered little firsthand knowledge of any wrongdoing or violation of the law, according to Democrats on the panel who have listened to their accounts. Instead, the trio appears to be a group of aggrieved former F.B.I. officials who have trafficked in right-wing conspiracy theories, including about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, and received financial support from a top ally of former President Donald J. Trump.
The roster of witnesses, whose interviews and statements are detailed in a 316-page report compiled by Democrats that was obtained by The New York Times, suggests that Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chairman of the panel, has so far relied on people who do not meet the definition of a whistle-blower and who have engaged in partisan conduct that calls into question their credibility. And it raises questions about whether Republicans, who have said that investigating the Biden administration is a top goal, will be able to deliver on their ambitious plans to uncover misdeeds at the highest levels.
“Each endorses an alarming series of conspiracy theories related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, the Covid vaccine, and the validity of the 2020 election,” Democrats wrote in the heavily footnoted report, which cites scores of statements made by the witnesses. “One has called repeatedly for the dismantling of the F.B.I. Another suggested that it would be better for Americans to die than to have any kind of domestic intelligence program.”
The report also notes that the men are tied to far-right Republican operatives and former Trump administration officials who have an interest in promoting false claims about the Jan. 6 attack and the Biden administration while working to defend Mr. Trump, who is seeking [
to avoid prosecution(s)]a second term.
[…]
Other potential witnesses for the new subcommittee are F.B.I. employees who were disciplined for attending protests on Jan. 6, 2021, according to Mr. Jordan.Mr. Friend, who resigned from the F.B.I., is part of a group of former agents who were placed on leave and called themselves “the suspendables.” In a letter sent last year to Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, the group claimed that the bureau had discriminated against conservative-leaning agents.
Mr. Hill has claimed on Twitter that the Jan. 6 attack was a “set up,” and that there was “a larger #Democrat plan using their enforcement arm, the #FBI.” He also described the F.B.I. as “the Brown Shirt enforcers of the @DNC,” making an apparent reference to Nazi storm troopers to describe the federal law enforcement agency and its relationship to the Democratic National Committee.
Mr. O’Boyle and Mr. Friend both testified that they had received financial support from Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist and former high-ranking official in the former president’s administration. Mr. Friend said Mr. Patel sent him $5,000 almost immediately after they connected in November 2022 and that Mr. Patel has helped to promote Mr. Friend’s forthcoming book on social media.
[…]
Democrats said they produced their report after they learned that Republicans on the committee were planning to leak material from the transcribed interviews. It was written by Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, and Delegate Stacey Plaskett of the Virgin Islands, the top Democrat on the weaponization subcommittee.
[…]
The Democratic report includes excerpts from depositions and evidence of conspiratorial social media posts.It also details the ties between Mr. Trump’s inner circle and the witnesses. For instance, Mr. Patel found Mr. Friend his next job, working as a fellow on domestic intelligence and security services with the Center for Renewing America, which is run by Russ Vought. The center is affiliated with the Conservative Partnership Institute, which is run by Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, and former Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina.
“Based on this evidence, committee Democrats conclude that there is a strong likelihood that Kash Patel is encouraging the witnesses to continue pursuing their meritless claims, and in fact is using them to help propel his vendetta against the F.B.I., Justice Department, and Biden administration on behalf of himself and President Trump,” the report says.
[…]
Mr. Friend has said he refused to take part in a S.W.A.T. raid of a Jan. 6 suspect facing misdemeanor charges, which at the time he called an “excessive use of force,” to which he was a “conscientious objector.” The suspect, Tyler Bensch, was accused of being a member of a right-wing militia group connected to the Three Percenter movement. Documents in Mr. Bensch’s case indicate that on Jan. 6, 2021, he posted a video of himself outside the Capitol wearing body armor and a gas mask and carrying an AR-15-style rifle.Under questioning, the committee said that Mr. Friend “confirmed that ownership of a firearm, even without any additional factors, in fact would be enough of a factor on its own to justify deploying a S.W.A.T. team in an arrest.”
Mr. Friend also testified about being asked to surveil a person attending a school board meeting, touching on a claim promoted by Republicans that the government mistreated conservative parents. But according to the report, Mr. Friend conceded during his interview that the man being tracked was a Three Percenter who was under counterterrorism investigation. He was later arrested with Mr. Bensch and three other individuals.
Mr. Friend also engaged with Russian propaganda outlets while he was an F.B.I. employee, the report noted, including being quoted extensively in an article in Sputnik headlined “Under Biden Federal Agencies Turned Into Instrument of Intimidation, F.B.I. Whistleblower Says,” and appearing for an interview with Russia Today.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/02/us/politics/house-weaponization-committee-jan-6.html
[…]
The report cast doubt on the relevance of the witnesses’ accounts. Democrats wrote that nothing in Mr. O’Boyle’s testimony “suggests misconduct at the F.B.I.” and that Mr. Hill had “made multiple claims about the F.B.I.’s handling of criminal investigations into the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, despite having very little personal involvement in those investigations.”
[…]
The witnesses also embraced the language and views of the right wing on other matters. At one point during his testimony, the report said, Mr. O’Boyle compared coronavirus vaccine mandates to a Polish reserve police unit during World War II that began as a group of “just normal people,” but ultimately “were basically engaging in genocide like the rest of the Nazi regime.”
…so when you hear a familiar chorus
…well…even if it’s just another spectator sport for you…when you pick your team…have a care…it’s a miserable business rooting for some people…& not rooting for them can get ugly if you’re not careful
Rishi Sunak joined the Conservative pushback against Gary Lineker after the footballer-turned-TV-presenter took a swipe at the government’s migration bill.
A spokesperson for the U.K. prime minister said it was “disappointing” to see Lineker take aim at the plan, and brought up the fact the star’s salary is funded through the BBC license fee.
…I mean…you might think it was “disappointing” to see the UK prime minister take aim at people who believe that asylum has its place in the modern world…& that aping the rhetoric or policy goals of the reich might be…whatchamacallit…”concerning”…& bring up that rishi’s income dwarfs the part of it contributed by the taxpayers he allegedly represents
It comes after the Match of the Day host said the Illegal Migration Bill — unveiled Tuesday — was “immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people.”
Lineker claimed that the language used announcing the bill was “not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s,” a parallel that prompted an immediate backlash from Tory MPs.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman, chief architect of the new policy, which is aimed at making it easier for British authorities to detain and deport those who enter the country by irregular means, joined the criticism Wednesday.
“I’m disappointed. I think it’s unhelpful to compare our measures, which are lawful, proportionate, and indeed compassionate, to 1930s Germany,” she told BBC Breakfast.
And Sunak’s spokesperson said at lunchtime: “It’s obviously disappointing to see someone whose salary is funded by hardworking British taxpayers using that kind of rhetoric and seemingly dismissing their legitimate concerns that they have about small boats crossings and illegal migration.”
…speaking for myself…not nearly as disappointing as seeing a prime minister at least partially-funded by hardworking taxpayers using the rhetoric in that tweet up there & seemingly dismissing the very legitimate concerns more people than gary lineker had with it…but…it depends who you ask
The Conservative party’s deputy chairman Lee Anderson also piled in on Twitter.
“This is just another example of how out of touch these overpaid stars are with the voting public,” he said. “Instead of lecturing, Mr Lineker should stick to reading out the football scores and flogging crisps.”
…in case that last bit doesn’t make a whole lot of sense…I’ll try to translate in a minute
For his part, Lineker said on Twitter later Wednesday that he would “continue to try and speak up for those poor souls that have no voice.”
It’s not the first time the host has brushed up against rules meant to keep BBC stars’ views in check. The corporation’s complaints unit ruled late last year that a tweet urging the Conservatives to “hand back their donations from Russian donors” did not meet the broadcaster’s impartiality rules.
https://www.politico.eu/article/gary-lineker-gets-bbc-talking-to-after-twitter-attack-on-tory-asylum-plan/
…so…for context…gary lineker used to play football…& now he mostly talks about people playing football…but he also somewhat famously (in certain parts of the world, anyway) was the famous face of a campaign for walkers crisps…or chips if you persist in using the wrong word for those…either way the entire premise of the campaign traded on a punchline that they were so good that even gary lineker specifically as an avatar of a decent person renowned for being honest to a fault in a sport where taking a dive can be to your advantage would stoop to underhanded behavior for the chance to consume more of them
…meanwhile
If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, Rishi Sunak and the Conservative government must need 24-hour psychiatric supervision. There have been dozens of initiatives and six new bills aimed at stopping people entering the UK since 2015. The most recent one, the nationality and borders bill, promised to end small boats crossings once and for all. That went well. Last year saw a record 45,000 arrivals.
But Rish! is nothing if not pig-headed. So he’s now made stopping the small boats an election promise. And to make good on it, he has now introduced yet another bill that to all intents and purposes looks hopelessly flawed and completely pointless. The chances of it achieving its objectives are nil. It’s performative dadaist politics. Something that is designed to con his dimmer backbenchers and a small minority of the country. And if all else fails, Sunak could go begging to voters. “I know I’ve failed. But at least I tried.” Good luck with that.
[…]
So about 100 or so of the Lumpen Conservatariat were crowded down the far end of the Commons as Suella Braverman prepared to share her dreams about barring foreigners. The other end was more sparsely populated. Those Tories with more synaptic engagement and human sensibilities had chosen to stay away. These days, sticking up for refugees in public can get you into an awful lot of trouble in government circles.
…I’m not saying nominative determinism is a thing…but there’s a curious pattern to how many of her statements take the form of something you can imagine even that rees-mogg twit & his historical-reenactment-cosplay lifestyle looking over & saying “it’d take a braver man than I to say something like that out loud in public”
Shortly after 12.30pm, Braverman, flanked by a nervously grinning Rish! – he’s more and more becoming an absence rather than a presence – got up to deliver her statement on the illegal migration bill. Aptly named, because most of it is illegal. “Yesterday’s laws are not fit for purpose,” she began. Er, that’s not what the last home secretary said. Or indeed you, when you gave the French more money to police their coast. But hey, whatever. Let’s just close our eyes and roll with the nonsense. Because this time it really is going to work. I can feel it in my bones.
It was like this. If we continued to do nothing – she wasn’t shy about slagging off both herself and her predecessors – then 100 million asylum seekers would be turning up on our shores next week. Yup, you heard that right. Probably an underestimate. Why not include China? Nothing odd about so many people coming to the UK. Two and a half million small boats with 40 people on each would turn up on Dover beach at the same time. It would be by far the biggest flotilla in history. The UK’s population would almost treble in a day. Suella looked completely serious as she said this. A worry. Perhaps she really is that stupid.
Anyway, to stop the 100 million coming here, she was going to introduce a new law. One that was almost identical to the previous ones. Here was the plan. We’d round up everyone who arrived at Dover and bang them in a detention camp that we hadn’t yet built. Regardless of whether they had a legal right to asylum. The modern slavery law could also do one. Far too woke. We would then fly them all to Rwanda. Only we hadn’t yet dumped anyone in Rwanda. And in any case Rwanda had only said it would take 200. Perhaps we’ll just throw them in the sea. None of them would ever be allowed near the UK again.
But the net result was she had no idea if the bill was compatible with the European convention on human rights and no one would be deported for years as most cases would get held up in the court system for years. So the chances of Rish! stopping the boats before the election were zero. Genius! All this would save the British taxpayer billions by costing billions more. Amazingly, she wasn’t even embarrassed.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/07/the-tories-are-doing-the-same-thing-yet-again-and-nobody-expects-results
…so…if that’s par for the course when it comes to hearing from those impervious to shame or unwilling to admit that aside from their way or the high way there might perhaps be some sort of third way that might be worth considering…I’m about ready to hear from a bashful type or two…after all…nowhere is it written that the softly spoken can’t also carry a big stick…maybe even a torch…or a pitchfork or two…but enough out of me…this is late as it is…here’s a rousing number for you before I get to hunting for a tune or two to go down here
[ETA: …thanks to an abundance of technical difficulties & sundry reminders in keeping with much of how my week has gone that there really are other things I’m expected to get around to doing on any given day…this part took longer than seems reasonable…but…well…I guess that might be par for the course, too…or just a general description of my efforts hereabouts…so…you know…thanks for putting up with all that…& so on & so forth?]
[…I know some of you aren’t much for the hip hop…but…something about “logic – under pressure” made me loathe to pass it up]
ummm…we were all screaming this from the rooftops before the election and for the full two years leading up to the midterms.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/03/09/document-predicted-jan-6-warnings-00086180
Will the GOP claim Mitch is unfit for the Senate like they did when John Fetterman was hospitalized?
Another little bit of good this morning;
https://kstp.com/5-investigates/federal-prosecutors-detail-upcoming-sex-trafficking-case-against-tony-lazzaro/
That poll showing a widespread positive margin for the term “woke” is pretty astonishing, and seems to say something broader to me than just attitudes toward the word itself.
“Woke” is a word nobody, in reality, supports. The word may have once been used unironically, but it long ago became a term that only critics claimed liberals used.
And those critics have been unrelenting. Not only on the right, but in mainstream media trying to prove they are sensible moderates.
I think in part the poll is a sign of people shrugging and saying despite it all they back the underlying sentiment. But I also think it’s a sign of a backlash against the people pushing it. I think it’s a sign that most people are not just tired of the hard right but they don’t take the chin stroking crusaders at the NY Times and CNN seriously either.
https://www.theroot.com/weaponizing-woke-an-brief-history-of-white-definitions-1848031729
Harriot is great, as usual. “Woke” started out as a warning about a certain type of oily pseudo-ally, not as an actual term of approval.
Then the right and their allies in the centrist side picked it up, and it became an attack term before it ever existed (if it ever did) as an actual positive term.
It’s a repeat phenomenon of the fake free speechers. Find a term being used by someone (usually Black and/or academic) in a subtle, limited way, strip out all context and nuance and turn it into a term of attack. Then launch the victimhood cycle with the help of the “I’m a liberal but…” crowd.
And it’s important that they take a fairly obscure term that has little track record in print already, so that the attacks happen in a vacuum. If you go after a word like “discrimination” you have to fight against a lot of evidence that most people already know about. If you make up a fight against “woke” you can define the terms of debate before anyone realizes what is going on.
…when you say “started out as a warning about a certain type of oily pseudo-ally, not as an actual term of approval” I’m not sure if the type of oily pseudo-ally you had in mind would be the likes of “William Melvin Kelley [the then Harlem-based writer], who [in][a 1962 New York Times essay, “If You’re Woke You Dig It,”] was highlighting the phenomenon of Black American slang being appropriated by white people who often missed or altogether distorted the words’ original meanings, until the idioms were taken over, inevitably transformed, and ultimately abandoned by their original Black creators.”…but I would assume very much not…either way the timeline from the thing that quote is from takes it back as far as the 20s & marcus garvey exhorting ethiopia & africa to “wake up”…& that harriot piece from the root makes mention that
…so I’m guessing you meant something a little different when you mentioned “starting out”…but I’m a mite confused as to when you had in mind because I can’t square any of that with “it became an attack term before it ever existed (if it ever did) as an actual positive term.”…particularly the part in brackets?
The 1940 West Virginia labor fight is a key indicator. At the time, there was a growing realization by Black unionists that White union members were using them in many situations — promising benefits for solidarity, but then shutting them out of actual leadership in the union and opportunities at the rank and file level.
It’s not an abstract word for activism, it’s always been a call for awareness of cooption.
…sorry…I’m obviously particularly dense today…when you say “It’s not an abstract word for activism” I’m not clear who you think said it was…but I don’t think it was me…& I don’t think that’s what I took either harriot or that naacpldf post to be doing…or the ’62 essay in the NYT…all of which seem more or less explicitly to say it was initially (& for a lot longer than it’s current “definition” has been doing the rounds) pointing at the antithesis for unconscious acceptance of systemic injustice & its attendant inequalities…particularly when it comes to passively accepting all of that on the word of your self-professed betters?
…that might be what you meant by “it’s always been a call for awareness of co-option” but I’m still no closer to understanding who the “oily pseudo-ally” that had me a little lost the first time would have been…do you mean white union members?
I am reminded of the glory days of Internet commenting, when all the news outlets put up their content for free and allowed comments. This would have been about 2008? I used to read The Economist (for free!) and comment there all the time and had many fruitful interactions with people from all over the world (or at least the Anglosphere.)
In the general free-for-all there were many comments (not in The Economist) that went, “I am a lifelong Democrat but with Obama…” Remember, he was up against John McCain and Sarah Palin. No, you did not vote Democratic all your life. By 2016 the paywalls went up and the comments were abolished, but there were enough. “I am a lifelong Democrat but with Hillary Clinton…” OVER DONALD TRUMP? Ah. The public square. The vox populi. I suppose it is a sign of weakness and shame when so many people won’t say to pollsters that they would/will vote for Donald Trump or his ilk, or feel like they have to justify their faux-apostasy with some hedging remarks.
At any point if someone claims party affiliation but decided to vote for a distinctly unfit candidate because their party’s candidate was unpalatable, that individual is lying.
See also:
Both parties are equally as bad (sure they are, Republican)
I voted for Obama (no you didn’t, Mr. Musk)
I’m not racist but (uh, yes, you’re racist)
I’ve got nothing against women/LBGTQ+/immigrants/insert marginalized group here (yes, you absolutely do)
That’s why I registered as an independent (you realize Florida’s voter rolls are public and I can look to see that you’re Republican, right?)
I’m also a big fan of comments in the local press that start with, “As a lifelong New Yorker…” and then veer off into off-topic subjects (the scourge of sex-trafficking Mexican cartels along the Arizona border, say) or the username is something like MAGAMontana. Honestly, how stupid can people be? We are all George Santos and Rachel Dolezal, apparently. It’s one thing for me to take a username that refers to a fictional minor English aristocrat from a century ago but I do not pretend to be speaking to you all from beyond the (fictional) grave. Or is that a SPOILER ALERT?
Around here it’s “I’m a senior citizen and …” like that confers upon them some special status that the rest of us must recognize. It’s typically followed by something appallingly trivial, like “I object to all the lawyer advertisements during the news.” So we should attribute some special significance to your commentary based on your age? Frankly, if you weren’t a senior citizen you’d be streaming like the rest of us.
“I’m a Democrat but…” has a long history going back at least 70 years. The John Birch society used to mobilize its activists to write those letters, knowing that letters page editors would rarely do any checking except possibly a phone call to verify that someone at that address wrote the letter.
In the Watergate tapes, Nixon is heard in more than one case talking with people like H.R. Haldeman (who spent decades in PR with J. Walter Thompson before connecting with the GOP) about ginning up letters from fake Democrats who were switching.
The whole side-switching theme was a standard of the ad world, of course. They’d constantly get some actor to smile in camera how much they smoked Camels until they found the smooth, easy taste of Winstons.
And recently hacks like Jeremy Peters keep getting caught filling their stories of supposed middle American swing voters turning against Democrats with people who turn out to be longtime GOP activists. The Peters types are obviously getting their sources from GOP consultants and failing to check anything.
The Times just ran an Opinion piece by a Princeton senior claiming that free thinkers like him were being turned off by campus radicals. Except people ran his name through searches and found out in minutes he is a GOP activist and has been for years — he was a Ted Cruz volunteer at 14!
This kind of disingenuous misrepresentation is an ancient tactic on the right, but it’s something the press refuses to notice.
Didn’t Tucker Carlson even claim to be a registered Democrat for some years?
…given that in some circles it was a widely-used & pretty well-understood term…& those circles aren’t the ones making loudest use of it these days…or indeed often to be found among the audience who only came across it post-co-option…I tend to think of it as a sort of linguistic reprisal with some heavy racist overtones
…the black panthers & their peers pretty much took the n-word away from those people…& even after richard pryor came back from a trip to africa with a different perspective
…that word still operates by those rules…more or less…so…when I hear ron desantis saying florida is where woke goes to die…& I think about what gave birth to the term & to whom it may have genuinely been pertaining to an existential threat…quite honestly I hope he chokes on it?
I’d say that “woke” is now a Republican dog whistle for “liberal.” The only people still using the term are rabble-rousing right-wing lunatics like DeSantis. They’re signaling to the MAGAs. The problem is that everybody that’s marginally intelligent has figured that out. So liberals are laughing at them. It’s like watching Grandpa try to be cool.
…I kind of had it in mind when I started out this morning to find a spot for a few more of the profusion of things about the various profusions purportedly bound to ensue from AI becoming not only profuse but ubiquitous
…best laid plans & all that…but if anyone happens to be interested…there’s still plenty more going on with that stuff that meets the eye
…& some of that might have gotten…out of pocket?
…still & all…these are “large language models”…& one noam chomsky knows a thing or two about language…so…if you’re wondering what wishes the putative genies might be granting…perhaps you might appreciate the possibility that they might very possibly be trading in empty promises?
…either way…for someone as quote-prone as I…it’s arguably reassuring that apparently pillaging the internet for material to bundle up for your own purposes without any pre-existing agreement or arrangements regarding potentially-appropriate remuneration is “fair use”…& between the combined litigation power of microsoft, meta & alphabet & the fact that I haven’t actually helped myself to petabytes of the stuff…hopefully I’m on the side of…well…maybe not just the angels…but at least somewhere they wouldn’t fear to tread…but…I’d better quit while I’m ahead…or myo will be by in a minute to point to this as evidence that I could produce more posts than I do…& that might get me into cruel & unusual territory?
The thing these articles are pointing at is wildly dangerous. As that Chomsky piece points out, AI isn’t about actually doing the stuff it’s supposed to do. It’s about getting statistically probable enough.
And from there it’s easy to see how that can go horribly wrong.
AI is going to be very useful for some applications. If you’re looking at a labor intensive job involving low stakes outcomes, then AI automation is potentially very useful as a first cut. Cataloguing giant collections of photos, for example, where you let AI do a first run and then have humans check the work.
But the temptation for owners of AI will be to keep redefining what “low stakes” means, and how much human oversight is needed. Using AI to process medical scans is going to create incredible pressure to use AI in more and more cases and shrink human oversight. As long as the “success” rates can be disguised from audits, a significant margin in possible.
And possibly even worse, you get situations like the 2008 financial crisis where compounded errors of small likelihoods exploded. It’s easy to create systems where this kind of compound crisis happens, and the more systems you run, the greater the likelihood of catastrophe.
AI owners are going to have every incentive to ignore this phenomenon. They are going to pretend 0.0000001 is the same as 0.00001, and they are going to pretend that variables that are independent in their systems are somehow not dependent on variables in other systems.
I think one hope is that AI simply fails enough in noncatastrophic ways to fizzle out. It may, for instance, prove to have too little economic value in a lot of venues to be worthwhile. It also may screw up badly in enough noncritical venues to cause owners to rethink their own assumptions.
But there’s a real risk that we see a rush to develop which leads to a Chernobyl scale event, not specifically in a nuclear sense, but we may well see a critical system handed over to AI which fails spectacularly, and we will have no non-AI alternative to return to.
…machine learning is phenomenal for some tasks…but it’s a tool…it’s a not a mind that can wield that tool…so…when combined with one of those it can be excellent at some things that even that mind might miss on its own
Using A.I. to Detect Breast Cancer That Doctors Miss [NYT]
…but I know you’re not fond of the times so here’s something from the national library of medicine about the other kind of CAD model
…that has a bunch to do with processing a lot of images though the stakes aren’t low…& it’s not immune to some of the problems with baked in bias that have long-predated AI in the disadvantage they place some demographics at when they require care…notably women & people who aren’t white…but it doesn’t suggest to me that the medical side of the field of healthcare is the place where the human oversight is going to be in greatest danger of being phased out by trigger-happy deployment of AI to perform tasks it’s ill-suited for…that would be the administrative/corporate side of things…& the fear that those people would arbitrarily deny care or otherwise condemn people who could have gone on to live healthy lives to death, suffering & potentially bankrupting themselves for the privilege likewise seems to exist independent of the AI component
…I’m not saying pro-actively looking for reasons to be wary of AI or its implementation isn’t a good place to start…but a lot of what that effort of chomsky’s was driving at is the central thesis of the chinese room argument…they can’t (at least the ones we can currently build) genuinely parse the data they chew through…they can’t tell a truth from a lie…they can’t, to put it crudely, think for themselves…much like the software the algorithmic traders of the big short era were relying on to make them profits faster than the human eye could follow…so of all the ways I’m concerned that people might misconstrue their strengths & weaknesses or the potentially catastrophic consequences that might ensue I can at least console myself that worrying about any of the current players accidentally birthing skynet is so far down my list of concerns that I can’t even see it most days…& besides…that trademark is already spoken for…the domain name, too
…don’t know if any of that might make you feel better…but they do say it’s the thought that counts?
Ultimately the problem with AI is going to be the same as it’s been with any technology: It’s great in theory, it probably can do cool things in practice, and it will be owned and operated by people like Elon Musk and thus will be used in the most profitable and least ethical way possible. Is it 90% as good at cancer scans as humans are? Awesome, fire the humans! Can it churn out advertising copy that’s legible? Great, close the marketing department. Can we post videos of it reading textbooks on YouTube? Sweet, let’s put state schools out of business.
And one of the obvious risks is that it encourages opacity, instead of removing it.
90% (or 100% or 110%) as good as reading scans…. according to who? Who is responsible if it isn’t?
A huge difference between AI and traditional programming is lack of task specificity. The envisioned implementations of AI aren’t narrow like reading scans, it’s overall diagnostics — deciding who to scan, where and when, and what to do as a result. And trying to figure out something basic in that context, like whether AI is actually reading scans accurately, will be like trying to keep the face of a toddler clean. More intervention increases the odds of making the overall situation worse.
…can you point me at the stuff that this part is about?
…because I don’t like the sounds of that…but so far I haven’t actually come across anything that suggests anyone’s close to giving these models that kind of task…& at least in the field I know people in who are attempting to apply AI modeling to medical purposes it’s not at all how it works or the direction it’s headed?
It’s funny you ask this because I was at a health care event this morning and AI and radiology was a topic of conversation among some local health care luminaries. At the moment, there are programs used as an extra set of eyes on scans (IMO, good) and the trend could be to use a wider set of data — say genetic scans and med history etc. — to build a health profile for everyone about those facing extra risk factors and the potential to require more scans and other treatments (also, IMO, good) but I couldn’t help but thinking about if some accountant decides the AI is good enough and right enough, well, why not get rid of those pesky and expensive human beings (IMO, a disaster).
…I would for sure agree with that assessment…hence I’d be more than a little interested in anything that might show that disaster part is actually out there in the wild shaping up to be a present concern rather than merely the stuff of nightmares
They didn’t get into specifics but the AI-scan program was described as generally accurate already, which is to say, it’s not there-there but it’s there-adjacent and given the general speed of technological gain, it’s probably not that far away from being a real question put before hospital administrators. And those administrators are people already facing a losing financial proposition and a worker shortage writ large.
The conversation was not that the replacements were coming. In fact, some of it was about that AI replacements should stay as a step not the step … but I dunno if that’s going to be the same take in 10 years when hospitals are in even shittier financial straits and the tech is much better than it is today. I don’t foresee a no-human-involved future; that would be the true nightmare. But instead of 10 radiologists looking over 100 scans a day I could absolutely imagine 2 radiologists looking over 20 scans the AI thinks they should see instead … and I’m not sure how comfortable that makes me feel.
…it’s absolutely in the realm of unpleasant to contemplate…but rightly or wrongly I think I find it helpful to try to leave a little daylight between that stuff & the more-than-enough stuff it’s concerning to see…what with the latter being well-established among the ranks of shit that’s actively happening
…a body can only freak out about so much before there’s some sort of loss-of-function cascade & most days I’m on thin enough ice as it is?
@clevernamehere2
Another thing i (personally!) worry about, regarding this, “…to build a health profile for everyone about those facing extra risk factors and the potential to require more scans and other treatments,”
Is the possibility/likelihood of insurance companies scraping data & then using AI to assess peoples’ likelihood to develop chronic/expensive conditions, and then either declare such folks “uninsurable” or jack up their rates for insurance *so high,* that they may as well be uninsured, because their potential premiums & co-pays would be so expensive as to render the use of said insurance completely impossible.
I don’t knowcwhat i did to mess up the format of that so badly, and I also didn’t get the @ right, sorry!😖😱🥸
i deleted the html that messed it up and fixed the @
…I think it was last week sometime that I was quoting something similar about the fears associated with AI being largely the ones that boil down to (well-placed & copiously-supported) fears about our collectively inability to protect ourselves from the depredations of the forces of capitalism absent the adequate regulation we never quite seem to get around to using to rein them in…certainly that all tracks pretty well with the ted chiang quote they started out with in that piece
…so…I’d be inclined to agree…but I’m…pretty sure…or at least reliably assured…that we’re a ways off the “90% as good” problem…at least per the odd friend that knows a good deal more about AI & its application in medical fields than I do…& the thing about the computer assisted diagnostic stuff & screening for breast cancer, anyway
…which sounds pretty substantially different to me than the way the times piece put it when they link-quoted a piece of their own from 2020
…even if they did then seem to curve back around to something that jibed a bit more with the national library of medicine thing
…I could have sworn that at some point this morning I’d seen a figure quoted for the bump in performance the hybrid approach produced but just at the minute I can’t put my finger on that any more than I can find anything about trials for the AI being the first or only reader…but apparently they estimate as much as 20% of cases are missed by mammogram screenings so the marginal gains are probably worth exploring?
…my suspicion is that much of the potential of “AI” is genuine (for a given value of “advantage”) but the best results are always going to be in the assistive department & the returns are going to diminish the more we try to jump from “help me out” to “do it for me”…not least when we mostly have to admit that we don’t actually know how the things pull off the tricks we think are the neatest?
…mind you…my favorite fictional AI Mind called itself the “sleeper service“…which certainly doesn’t sound very woke…even if it did start out under the sobriquet “quietly confident”…which…I’d like to be about this stuff but in reality I’m not at all sure I am?
The point I keep hammering is that AI won’t actually be Skynet, but it runs a massive risk of being given the keys in a very unformed state regardless.
The owners are going to cut corners. Consciously or unconsciously, they are going to completely screw up the risk analysis and collapse 1% odds into the same category as 0.0001% odds, and they will treat events that hurt 100 people the same as events that kill 10,000.
A critical piece of the 2008 collapse was how credit rating agencies would sort debt into categories with this same kind of thinking, and then aggregate and disaggregate the debt further until risk was impossible to determine.
And that’s the danger of AI. It’s a situation where bias, sorting errors, and tranche making can add up to complete opacity of risk, and the scale at which it can be done is a guarantee of bad outcomes, just as it happened with securities in 2008.
A key lesson of 2008 is trying to control this at the level of individual rules or oversight of specific decisions is wildly insufficient. That’s always been the response of financial institutions, knowing that the sheer volume of the system means that enforcement at that level will never be more than a speed bump.
Specific regulation is fine, but what needs to happen on top of that is parallel measures for AI companies to the financial side’s Sarbanes-Oxley requirement of CEO liability for financial statements and the Volker rule for minimum capitalization. There have to be top down controls on companies and their C suites for overall system failures, not simply controls on individual pieces.
And that’s the approach that “Cognitive Liberty” (the word liberty is a tell) advocates like Nita Farahanty are directly opposing. They are doing exactly what ABA lobbyists have been doing for years in trying to fight off broad limitations in order to endlessly litigate at the narrow individual level. And it’s as ridiculous as libertarian market approaches are. It’s a guarantee of more busts.
…which keys? …& who’s close to solving the engineering requirements that would allow AI to turn them?
…because as far as this part went “how credit rating agencies would sort debt into categories with this same kind of thinking, and then aggregate and disaggregate the debt further until risk was impossible to determine” the only thing the algorithmic stuff did was let them move the shells in their game around faster…the actual problem where they treated that as a feature not a bug until they nearly broke the global economy was all people?
…as for “cognitive liberty” I’m literal-minded enough to consider that as a synonym for the literal sort of freedom of thought where the inside of my head isn’t a place anyone else gets to tell me how to think…& I don’t see me getting less attached to that position on account of the suggestion that “liberty is a tell”…what’s-her-face isn’t the arbiter of that term or what it can/could/should mean…any more than I am…& unlike any of these AIs I’m generally capable of keeping myself straight about what might be facts to assert & what opinions to offer?
Oh yeah, all of my AI fears are 100% capitalism-based!
In some ways, I think real, true AI — which is probably not that close to existing — might actually have considerably more consistent moral and ethical standards than most people do. But when it comes to programmed AI, which we have now, it’ll hew to whomever made it, and again, that’s way more likely to be the Musk-Thiel axis of evil and not a noble philosopher who’s thinking about the ramifications of what they’re doing.
Yippeee we’re #30!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#List_by_country
and this is another reason why…
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/two-big-big-upcoming-performances?utm_source=substack&utm_medium
Can’t we get rid of this idiot before he destroys the economy & Biden’s presidency?
https://crooksandliars.com/2023/03/sen-warren-shreds-fed-chair-over-those-who
Sorry, I love Liz, but she and Ayana are both very, very, very fucking wrong on this. Yes, interest rate hikes will (eventually) slow the economy down, which will (eventually) mean job losses. That’s…you know…the point. So, if we stop hiking interest rates, and inflation continues to beat the living shit out of the people who can afford it least–those that Liz and Ayana think they’re supporting here–then what, precisely, do they think will resolve the inflation problem? The answer is nothing. Hell, as it is, sending up interest rates at the clip they’ve been going (except for the last one, which even I thought was too cautious) still hasn’t put a big enough dent in inflation. Plus, the employment numbers are still way stronger than anyone would expect at this point. So, maybe–just maybe–the Fed can pull it off without tanking the economy. At this rate, I’m content to let Powell do his job.
My problem with him is that during the entire Trump presidency he used quantitative easing to keep the stock market artificially high. As soon as Biden came into office he started quantitative tightening to fuck the stock market and make Biden look bad. If you think that he did that only for the good of the country & not because he is a Trump loving republican, I have a bridge to sell you. Inflation is already easing & would go away if we didn’t have price gouging by greedy corporations seeing this as an opportunity to also fuck the Biden administration and democrats. Powell is a banker, not an economist & a partner at the Carlyle Group. We need someone like Paul Krugman running the Fed, not this asshole.
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2180107843625
Exactly!!!
The answer, according to right wingers, is “nothing is too much profit.”
over here the supermarkets are pretty much driving inflation
the prices of pretty much everything are normalizing again….or at least lowering back to not insanity if not as low as we had before
but the supermarkets expect prices to keep rising till at least summer
now…i get how the long life stuff might be affected that long….as it may well have been made during peak spensive time..and suppliers will not eat the loss…neither will a supermarket
you’re going to have to explain to me how my fresh baked bread keeps getting more expensive now that grain and gas and whatever are back to being cheap ish…
Some of it, I totally understand. Doesn’t matter what flour costs now to the company that made the bread from flour bought 6 months ago.
But yeah you’d think some things would start to wiggle down to lower prices.
I’m of two minds on this. “Inflation” is real and it is a problem. The Fed is equipped to deal with it, albeit in ways that can be painful. “Corporations using inflation to jack up prices and cut into post-Covid gains of worker wages and power” is also a problem and not something the Fed is equipped to deal with (let alone if it would think that was even a problem; I suspect the answer is no).
Does that mean we should ditch the Fed? Absolutely not; I’ve both read history and also it’s a classic John Birch Society argument, which means it’s coming from Planet Wack-A-Doo. But I do think it’s worth raising the question of “Does dealing with inflation actually fix what’s going on here?” Because I’m not entirely convinced that what we’re seeing is all market-driven or even that all companies are being rational actors, especially in this era of short term gain over all other things.
Exactly. And, as you and @loveshaq pointed out, a big part of the inflation problem is corporate price gouging, which is outside the Fed’s wheelhouse. But, they can’t deal with corporate price gouging–that’s either on the Biden administration or on Congress, and neither of them are even remotely interested in dealing with it. So–as has been the case for the past 20 years or so–it’s on the Fed to deal with keeping our economy in good shape even though it’s not really their job, which is supposed to be stable prices and maximum employment. Both of which are addressed using their primary tool of interest rates. So, even if Yellin were still in charge, she’d very likely be doing the same thing with interest rates because she can’t go after companies to get them to stop gouging consumers, and doing nothing is not an option.
Is Powell a Republican? Yes. Is he a Trump loyalist hack who has absolutely zero business in his current role? Surprisingly, no. He may not care about regulating the banks that way I’d like him to, but at least he’s not spewing nonsensical bullshit. Actually, that’s one of the things I would like future Fed chairs do emulate: he makes it a point to speak clearly about what he’s thinking and what he thinks the Fed needs to do. That’s a far cry from previous chairs who tended to speak in tongues.
Bottom line is: if Liz and Ayana want to really deal with the price gouging part of inflation, then it’s going to be on their branch of government to do it–but there ain’t no way that’s going to happen with a Republican House and and more-or-less Republican Senate. In the meantime, they’re barking up the wrong tree with Powell.
@butcherbakertoiletrymaker this isn’t an argument to anything you’re saying because in my neck of the woods you would be making 2 separate arguments…bank of canada vs. federal reserve & canada/us congress’ ability to control #greedflation…but with the us administration’s support, the dems did try to pass a bill in the house to hinder the oil & gas corporation’s ability to price gouge…which, of course, all gop members voted against for the sake of what @clevernamehere2 mentioned somewhere up above…so it’s more of a question (please forgive my ignorance as i am not by any means a scholar of how the us gov functions)…when you say:
what is the differentiation between “feds” and “biden administration”? and is the bill i mentioned above not at least a sign that both the admin & congress are interested in dealing with it?
Sorry, “the Fed” is shorthand for “the Federal Reserve.” So not the “feds” but the “Fed’s”.
As far as the price gouging bill…well…it didn’t get passed because of Republican opposition (and I include Manchin in this because he’s an actual Republican). So when I say that Congress isn’t interested I say that because Congress has to function as a unit, and between the Republican House and enough useless fake Democrats in the Senate, it’s not going to happen.
Case in point:
https://www.marketplace.org/2023/03/09/federal-reserve-monetary-policy-enough-lower-inflation/
I’m not even surprised Walgreens is being fucking cowards and caving to the GOP on medication abortions. Of course they are. They make a lot more money off pregnant women and families than they do off women who just need tampons. Especially when you figure in government subsidies to Walgreens and other retailers in the form of WIC and Medicaid.
What I am surprised is that now they’re trying to backpedal about it.
This is your friendly reminder to support local drugstores and that CVS delivers.
JFC. Good for the family.
California jury awards more than $8m to Black family detained at Starbucks
Fuuuuuuuck youuuuuuuuu.
One of the reasons I slam my forehead into the wall on the regular when regarding the Democratic Party is that — again, eternally — they are on the side of the majority on nearly every political issue currently going.
I’m not surprised that “woke” isn’t horrifically unpopular because when you strip away both the faux-context of the right’s shrieking and its original uses in the Black community, most people understand it now as being polite. To just be nice. And the thing is: Most people actually want to be nice! Most people do not want to be aggressively impolite in public spaces!
The internet is different, which is a separate discussion, and part of why it seems like such a hellhole.”Pronouns in bio” is a classic right-wing internet attack, but in person, most people will very happily not make a big deal of it, and those who do are likely less interested in not being nice than being committed to their team, which again, is a minority position!
And this carries over in exactly the same way with the abortion pills thing by Walgreens (those cowardly fuckers; I’ll never be back.) Abortion early in pregnancy is a majority position even in the deepest of red states, as we’ve seen in post-Roe votes across the country. Whatever Walgreens thinks it’s doing because the minority is VERY loud about it, it is not.
Biden actually (shockingly, I should say) kinda talks about this stuff in a straightforward way, which I’m honestly not sure I’ve heard from a Democratic president in my lifetime. But the party, broadly, is too timid to cash in on being on the right AND popular side of most issues.
I read a phrase the other day (maybe here): The tyranny of the anecdote. You see it all the time — people making decisions because one individual (or a small group) complained. Nobody bothers to check to see if the majority share that concern. The Walgreens bullshit is the tyranny of the anecdote writ large.
It’s also the right-wing media model — uh oh, we heard this one story that worries us so we should probably hire 1,000 cops/stop the transgender menace/end Social Security etc. etc. ad infinitum.
In my experience, the loudest/meanest/most aggressive comments get upwardly delegated for resolution (pass that buck). So eventually, all that the final decision makers are hearing is complaints. I’ve worked places where, after being burned before, one bad comment will cause management to jump or enforce a new rule based on outlier experience.
100%! I always think about how many places ask you to fill out a survey about your service and most of the time if you don’t give them a perfect score, it’s considered a mark against the employees who were on at the time. Like, what? If I had a 9/10 experience, that’s good, not bad, but apparently not good enough most of the time.
I truly hate how much retailers put into the importance of surveys. Especially like to your point, the issue usually isn’t even in the employee’s control.
one of my co workers just lost out on a lifers contract because of that logic
shes having some personal life issues that require therapy
HR axed her coz they had bad hires that spent months off sick before once they got a proper contract
…..
the downside to unlimited sick time based mostly on the honour sytem is HR
Heh. When I worked for a software company doing marketing, my boss calls me in. A product manager is sitting there and my boss says, “Tammy’s customer says he’s never heard of our new product.” The implication being I’m not doing my job.
“That’s impossible.” I’d been hyping it in every email, newsletter, user group, and tradeshow, along with our website and magazine ads. “No, he says he’s never heard of it. You need to fix this now. NOBODY KNOWS ABOUT OUR NEW PRODUCT.”
I went back to my desk, pulled up our email system, looked him up, and looked at his history. He’d gotten four emails about the product, opened every single one, and forwarded them to other people. One was forwarded seven times. I printed it out and took it back.
“Your customer is lying. Don’t know why, but he’s lying. You need to figure out why he’s lying about this.” GASPS! “CUSTOMERS DON’T LIE.” The fuck they don’t. They lie all the time. Don’t tell me I’m not doing my job.
“WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING! NOBODY KNOWS ABOUT OUR NEW PRODUCT!”
That is the tyranny of the anecdote. Never did find out why he was lying. Probably was planning to buy another software system.
…so…you know when something is unintentionally funny?
…well…sometimes that’s the universe deciding to throw you a freebie
…like…I dunno…voight kampf memes about turtles or something