Stupid News and Commentary Fit For a Tuesday

Cross-posted at Really? Seriously?

Good morning. It is a Tuesday in the Realm, and I am here in my office perched between two stadiums in Seattle at 0530. The Rolling Stones will be across the street tomorrow, and their road crews have been here setting up for the past two days. I got to take a tour of the stage yesterday, which brought back a lot of memories from when I was doing that kind of work. Great times, but I can never do it again.

I’ve got some work to do, so I need to crank this out quickly…

Headlines That Caught My Eye This Morning

Item 1: Artificial Intelligence Trained To Deceive Humans, Lie

“I can’t do that, Dave…”

Item 2: ChatGPT may be about to make your job way easier

ChatGPT has already made my job way easier. I’ve been using both the Gemini and Openai models for months now. It’s great for coding. But it is constantly making mistakes, and will often take three or four tries before it gets a code routine correct.

Item 3: Psychologists make frightening prediction about Trump’s cognitive decline and the personality trait that will only get WORSE

“I always say to people: Look at Donald Trump right now, because that’s the best Donald Trump you’re ever going to see because dementia is a deteriorating illness and his rate of deterioration is accelerating”

That’s the thing about cognitive decline: it always gets worse, never better. Oh, and guess what: we are all going through it right now. But like the frog in the boiling water, it is gradual enough that we just don’t notice is all that much, or if we do, we are in denial about it.

I didn’t bother to read this particular article, but I’m guessing that the personality trait they are talking about is Trump’s ‘need’ to denigrate people in dehumanizing ways.

Yeah, that’s pretty typical.

Item 4: Tennessee woman denied abortion after fetus’ ‘brain not attached’ slams state ban

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

Have we all collectively lost our fucking minds?

Item 5: ‘Wealth can be pretty isolating’: Problems that rich people face, according to therapists

Gee, that sounds … rough.

Item 6: Suddenly There Aren’t Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed.

Our parents fucked like rabbits after the end of WWII and the Korean war. Then we got the pill, and women’s lib, and the American economy changed to the point where it took both adults in a relationship working just to make ends meet. Babies were no longer the priority for sustaining life on the planet, because we could live longer and healthier without the need to constantly churn out kids to keep the human stock going.

Item 7: Israeli protesters block aid trucks destined for Gaza

Item 8: A history of U.S. presidents drawing red lines with Israel

Israeli hands are NOT clean when it comes to the conflict between Israel and Palestinians. Much of the reason for Hamas going off like it did in October 2023 was perpetrated by the actions of Jewish settlers.

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