Hallucinations

I’m not going to tell you that AI doesn’t have hallucinations. I know it does.

Not just midje, which sometimes decides everyone walks backwards every time, but even when writing ONLY blurbs with AI (look, if I didn’t do that, I’d put up book blurbs that say “yeah, this certainly is a book” so I either bother my first readers to write them, or run them by AI) you have to tell it not to cite imaginary reviews in imaginary publications.

So, yes, AI hallucinates. But frankly, that only makes it appear to be more human than it is or could be. (It’s not human, it’s not sentient, it’s not out to get you.) because humans hallucinate too.

So, to begin with, the TPUSA event? Well…. it’s a private organization started by a man whose motto was “I’ll talk to anyone”.

Of course they let Tucker come and talk. That’s their thing. I mean, look, they’d probably let Occasional Cortex come and talk if she asked. Because there’s nothing that exposes crazy cakes and evil as letting them talk. In that sense, I have nothing against it. There is no use getting riled up about it.

Treat Tucker as you’d treat any crazy on the left. It’s just crazy. And he’s obviously — paid? Possessed? Who knows? — become a shill for islamofacism, which is at least as bad as communism and worse in places. (And his other ardent love, paid or not is super Stronk! So.)

Point and laugh, people, point and laugh.

What it isn’t: A sign of schism on the right.

Sure, that’s what the left is selling, but I’ve told you this before, you are not OBLIGATED to buy what they sell. “But Fox News.” Yes, like Tucker, Fox News is not on your side. (I realized this as they reported Trump’s address to the nation as “trying to shore up his splintering coalition.”

There is no splintering coalition. There never was. for one, we’re not so much a coalition as a bunch of people who found a life raft to get away from the sea of crazy that was drowning us. We were never one. We don’t need to be one. We’re not leftists. We’ll row together as long as we’re going the same way, and pitch people overboard when they’re being crazy. (It’s easier to point and laugh if they’re not on the raft.)

This is not cancelling. I never said “don’t let Tucker talk.” I said, answer his speech vigorously. even if the vigor goes into quack quack quack giggle.

The problem I’m having is that people on our side are buying the bullshit, and thinking there is a huge groyper contingent, and that we absolutely need to worry about splintering the movement in two and…

And that psyops wasn’t even aimed at US. Sure, the left thought we might all jump on the groyper bandwagon because they project and think we’re all REALLY secretly racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-semitic. However the psy ops is because they’ve revealed themselves as major anti-semites and they want to convince Jews the right is worse. That’s it. It’s not even Jews who are on the right. They’re just trying to keep the lefty Jews in the plantation.

We’re not the target. Stop ringing your hands. The “falling apart” is an hallucination. We were never together, except in trying to get the crazy away from us. And while Tucker at least appeared to be OF us at one time, now he isn’t.

Here I must interject that a lot of bloggers and pundits on the right go crazy eventually. (Yes, I did have a big advantage, starting out as an SF/F writer. I’m more used to managing the crazy since sanity is a negotiated thing.) I am sure although I’m not going to mention it we all remember one very prominent case who lost his mind in the blog wars.

Look, the job doesn’t pay much, is stressful as heck, and you have to work under a CONTINUOUS barrage of slander and hate. It’s amazing more of us don’t crack wide.

BUT the whole “rising antisemitism” on the right is an hallucination worthy of an AI. There is a small group of the same ol’ pundits and their groupies. And it’s been proven (the Nick Fuentes thing) most of it is being bolstered paid for and given the appearance of support by our adversaries abroad. Which is why gnashing your teeth about it now is stupid.

As is the “falling apart.”

It’s curious to note these hallucinations are achieved the same way as AI hallucinations: by planting a lot of false information everywhere, via bots and the fifty cent (or kopek) army so that the people not paying attention catch it in the air and get the “there’s no smoke without fire” syndrome and start imagining vast hordes of anti-Semites out in the hinterlands. (I mean, there are some. We’re a continent sized nation. There’s some of EVERYTHING.)

Yeah, there will be some anti-Israel sentiment planted, because they pile on on the back of USAID without realizing that what Israel does is test weapons for us. (And also they pay for those.)

Vance? Well, he’s a little taken up with the hallucination and calling for unity. You have to forgive him. Remember he came from the ivy leagues. He might not be a leftist, but he was around them a lot. So he’s afraid we’ll start witch hunts and cannibal fests like the left does.

And we ABSOLUTELY SHOULDN’T DO THAT.

The crazies are the crazies, and they’re obvious. And we shouldn’t silence them. Just point and laugh, people. Point and laugh.

Meanwhile back at the ranch does any of you ever wonder about these “outrages” being ginned up when something bad just came out about the left? Like photos of Bill Clinton in the Epstein trove? Because you should.

When the media force feeds you “The right is in trouble” look at what was just revealed about the left, and point at that.

I’m running for doctors’ appointments, but please, please, please, take the word of the chronic depressive who reality checks ALL THE TIME. There is no big falling apart. There is no big anti-Semitic push on the right. Yes, there is that on the left, but it was always there. They just let the mask slip.

Be not afraid. Go bake some cookies. You’ll feel better.

155 thoughts on “Hallucinations

  1. Not only does AI have hallucinations, they have persistent hallucinations. There’s apparently at least one image that one or more AI engines keep rendering up in various selections of a rather angry, somewhat evil looking woman in searches/requests for several types of images, not necessarily for that description. Users being described as saying anything from “That’s odd, not what I was looking for” to “WTF is THAT doing there???”

    It’s apparently an inherit bias in the programming, and according to ‘experts’, something in the fundamental coding of the AI’s themselves, and not necessarily from the data sets used to feed the AI.

    Which also means that non-image AI results are also probably biased in their responses. (Already been experienced by AI use in legal case research.) Meaning the results can’t be trusted without an outside reference/audit source. There are a bunch of healthcare organizations who are trying to leverage AI for risk management, diagnostic and treatment recommendations, and for financial purposes. I would not be surprised if they’re running Institutional Review Board experiments through them too.

    AI is currently a useful adjunct, but it’s not ready for prime time, yet.

    I’m rather right of center, a conservative of the “leave me alone or I’ll have to do something about you” variety. Don’t see how I could possibly be antisemitic since I’m practically turning cartwheels over my oldest son being engaged to a nice Jewish lady. However, the more I hear and read, the more anti-Islamic I’m becoming. And the more the totalitarian Left kisses up to CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, Hezbollah, Hamas, et. al., the more I keep checking my go bag and ammo boxes.

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    1. Any questions about the possibility of AI being biased should have gone out the window after the Gemini image generator fiasco. Gemini’s programmers were so “pro-diversity” that the image generator quite literally was not capable of creating images with white people. The people who trained Gemini hadn’t intended for that to happen. But the diet of data that they fed Gemini with resulted in the infamous anti-white racism.

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      1. Oh man, I remember that. Seven different images from something like “show me a picture of a family” and not a single one of them was of a White nuclear family. Two dads, two moms, Indian, blended, mixed-race, but never a simple White nuclear family. Actually, I don’t think there was a black nuclear family either.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Yeah. The two I remember are

          1.) Someone asking Gemini to draw some Nazis, and getting a picture of a purely non-white group wearing WW2 German military uniforms.

          2.) Musk asked it to create an image of him. The result looked like Musk as a black man.

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        2. Don’t forget the black Vikings, and the Nazi-sort-of uniforms on Asian women and blacks.

          Yep, that was epic; giving requesters what the generators thought people SHOULD want … but not actually what they asked for.

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    2. There’s apparently at least one image that one or more AI engines keep rendering up in various selections of a rather angry, somewhat evil looking woman in searches/requests for several types of images, not necessarily for that description. 

      That sounds like it would need to be measured to be sure it exists as a pattern.

      Because the description rings a bell– that is a known way to grab attention. It’s like booth babes, but the sample is going to mostly be for pretty ladies.

      But female and angry tends to get attention, like misspelling words in a creative manner, or stating something wrong on the internet vs asking for the correct information.

      This is also why having a female speaker who is angry is used to get folks to act, not think– and it’s used in creepypasta photo ads, too.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. It sounds like a rumor I heard a few years ago, when the image models were just starting to get good, about an old lady and demonic imagery that the models would persistently spit out under some circumstances. (There was a name associated with it that I can’t remember and I’m not planning to look up.) I never got the full story, and it’s probably just creepypasta, but there’s a specific thread to pull here if anyone feels like investigating it.

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  2. Yeah, if you’re terminally online it looks awful. It’s also worth remembering that a pundit isn’t doing his job if he’s not giving an opinion. On everything.

    Meanwhile, fwiw, I made a late shopping trip and B&N looks mildly picked over….but not on the, “here’s the latest what we think you should read,” tables. Calendars, yes. Their last copy of David Weber’s latest Honorverse anthology, yes. Hobby Lobby is, of course, packed and Home Depot’s displays are a bit ragged, too. I think people may wind up getting late gifts from the ‘zon. Or when I get up the energy to drive across town to shop some more.

    Also meanwhile, the restaurant has its Christmas party tomorrow. I need to bake cookies. Lots of cookies.

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    1. “Yeah, if you’re terminally online it looks awful. It’s also worth remembering that a pundit isn’t doing his job if he’s not giving an opinion. On everything.”

      It occurs to me that the prediction markets might be a way for pundits to finally put their money where their mouth is. I’ve seen two (controversial) bloggers make yearly predictions and hold themselves accountable the next year, but most pundits/influencers fire off shots and never stop to see if they land. Of course, you can’t force them to make predictions, but I can see a niche for someone confident enough to announce his trades publicly.

      (I’m ambivalent about the prediction markets; they just might be a way to solve the problem of pundits not being graded for their predictions.)

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        1. One of the big reasons I’ve stuck around. I was mostly thinking of the “Boots on the ground in Iran!” predictions from several months ago that failed to materialize. Or Candace Owens’ “as bad as 9/11” terror attack that didn’t happen last week. Or…

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        2. I don’t think of you as a pundit. Not that sort of pundit. A lot of them run through ideology. You’re running ideology heavily seasoned with personal experience and history.

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  3. I never knew anything about Tucker except as the name of a program I never watched until he started going big time with his stupidity.

    I don’t bake, so I will just have to go eat some cookies from the holiday platter the neighbor gave us.

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    1. Same here … I knew of him, sort of, but didn’t watch and didn’t care.

      We made cookies last week and distributed them over the weekend – neighbors, businesses we interact with regularly, the local fire department and police substation.

      I finally got around to making lebkuchen from the family that Neo Necocon has posted often around this time of year. Basically, a soft bar cookie with raisins and dates, and a soft frosting flavored with almond extract. Mmmmm, good!

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      1. I didn’t watch Tucker, or Fox for that matter. But I knew who he was. And what I saw when he was at Fox was that he was useful to the conservative cause. I watched a special he put together on the mess caused by LA County’s policies toward criminals (fortunately our new DA has done what he can to roll that back) and the homeless. When Dominion sued a bunch of the Fox hosts for libel and slander regarding statements made about their voting equipment, Tucker was conspicuously *not* named because Tucker had been fairly careful about what he did and did not say, and making sure that he had evidence to back up everything that he said on air. And when Speaker Johnson released the surveillance footage of the January 6 stuff, he gave it to Tucker, who immediately announced he was going to start airing it on his show.

        And then the day after Tucker aired the first segment, which included Bear Shaman guy being escorted around the building by Capitol Police, he was suspended at Fox.

        That guy seems lightyears away from the guy I’m hearing about now.

        Liked by 3 people

        1. This. I only ever saw what other people passed around, so that may have been a quality filter, but it seemed like he was doing good work. Now…yikes. If this is the real Tucker Carlson, we owe whoever produced his show at Fox a debt of gratitude for getting something useful out of that guy.

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      2. Have the second batch of chocolate chip cookies started. The party is this afternoon, so you can say either I’m running late or they’ll be fresh-baked.

        Chocolate chip is pretty much the only cookie I make, but I’ve been told I’m very good making the shatteringly crunchy variety of cookie.

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  4. They want us to believe SOOOO badly. As the “pundits” on the right start bleating, the podcasters start bleating too, and then the little people. I see no schism, but one might come out of all the hype. Self fulfilling prophecy.

    What gets me is that this all started with Candace Owens. Because SHE ™ is being an idiot, there MUST be a huge gigantic grand-canyon-sized split in the Trump faction (as if we were a faction in the first place) and it’s metastasizing! Help! Oh, no! The Right is doooooommmeeeed.

    Uh, huh. You keep thinking that.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Tucker Carlson gets paid by Qatar, which is one of the primary backers, aside from Iran, of Hamas, and actively supports the Muslim Brotherhood. There is a reason other Arab-Gulf states and Egypt spent so many years shunning Qatar. Tucker is repeating the party line of those who are his primary source of financial backing, like any other paid shill. It takes a special kind of depravity to spread the kind of BS he is spreading, for a paycheck, although it may very well be that he has believed this stuff all along, and moving from Fox to what he does now simply allows him to be himself.

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        1. According to the Jerusalem Post he is buying a home in Qatar. Carlson claims that he ‘has taken nothing from Qatar” and is in fact “giving to Qatar” but his fawning interview of Qatar’s p.m. and subsequent decision to buy a home there, certainly gives the appearance.

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    2. Does any serious person really listen to Candace Owens? That woman has Crazy Eye. Not to mention, the two things she’s pushing these days are simply unimportant.

      It’s a psyop for clicks. And so is Ben Shapiro, and so are a few more of them.

      Honestly, I hardly watch any of it anymore. They’ve departed from the meat of the conversation and are obsessing about the frilly napkins and tableware.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. The problem is that Candace Owens, not too long ago, was a well spoken young black lady who could reach a demographic that conservatives have often struggled with. A far cry from the “I have proof that Erika Kirk arranged the murder of her own husband” kook that she has become. It was a swift transition and I have no idea where it came from.

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        1. I suspect that it’s because of the current income model for “independents”: clicks = dollars. Anything that inspires people to click for any reason is revenue.

          I’m not sure how long that business model is sustainable, but it’s what it is now.

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          1. FWIW, there was speculation that she went off the deep end when she had a child. But I think the breach with the Daily Wire was before that, so I’m not sure it tracks.

            It’s also worth noting that she launched Social Autopsy (?), a short-lived social credit/doxxing site, back during GamerGate. She’s moved around the political map a lot, which would fit with her following the clicks.

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      2. She allegedly has a near-fanatic base of “conservative,” women. I hope not.

        I used to follow her and Posobiec, but when Posobiec started doing, “Russis is the true guardian of orthodoxy!” And Owen just went bat-guano I dropped them both.

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        1. It all feels like “click-hunting” to me. Seriously, all those guys talk about some of the most pointless crap half the time, I just can’t be bothered.

          Let’s face it, gamer dude Asmongold is more consistently conservative than most of these “Professional Conservative SpokesDude” types are.

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  5. “Treat Tucker as you’d treat any crazy on the left.”

    Well that’s the thing, isn’t it? The guy talks on television for a living. He has to be -interesting- doesn’t he? He doesn’t have to be truthful, or correct, or even sane.

    Frankly he lost me at UFOs. Some of the crazy stuff coming out of that guy’s mouth about spirits and space/time ghosts? Dude.

    So, do I care if he blathers on at TPUSA? I do not even know what was said, I did not watch. I profoundly don’t care.

    The other thing that’s not being talked about enough is that viewership is no longer regulated by the dial on the TV. (That’s how old I am. I remember the dial, you whippersnappers.) It’s regulated by algorithms designed by people who are not our friends.

    That’s all I need to know. A black box made by some schmuck with an agenda controls what’s on my YouTube feed. It doesn’t matter to me if his agenda is money, fame, socialism, or promoting funny cat videos. He isn’t serving -MY- agenda, which is finding out what the f- is going on in the world. Nor is internet search, nor is social media.

    So what do I do? I pick a side, the least insane one I can, and I wait. Truth will eventually win over fiction, because lies cost time, money and effort. Time and money are not infinite. Time and money spent lying is gone, it can’t be used in service of a different lie.

    The Truth, capital T, by contrast, costs NOTHING. It merely -is-. If a thing is true, you can lie about it but you can’t make it be untrue. Truth wins, and that’s why.

    Right now the least-insane side is Conservatives. I am not filled with joy to be picking Conservatives as my side. They are -whacko- on an awful lot of subjects, they tend to be extremely coercive, and their moral character generally does not inspire.

    But, they’re not trying to sell me that a man can turn into a woman by declaration alone, they’re not trying to pretend that the world will end if I drive my truck to the store twice a week, and they’re not buying battery powered electric buses to use in the snow at -30F, supposedly charged up by the windmills that are sitting idle because it’s -30F. The wind don’t blow when it’s cold.

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    1. Tucker’s not on television anymore. Hasn’t been for a couple(?) of years now. He does a streaming show on the internet. And he did fairly well at first, with high viewership numbers. But then (right around the same time he made the trip to Russia) his viewership started to drop.

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  6. The reason the left and the establishment media (also leftist) treat every person and statement that shows differing views and opinions as being “proof” of a schism, etc., is simply because the left’s own ideology cannot comprehend or accept anything which does not toe the party line of the day.

    They also give lip service to free speech but don’t actually believe in it, and thus believe dissent must be silenced. They can’t simply comprehend that others actually believe in genuine free speech, even when that free speech is the idiocy coming from the likes of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, and that letting such people speak, and prove themselves fools, is far more effective in convincing people as to one’s views as compared to silencing all who don’t adhere to the party line.

    Ironic that the BLM supporting crowd utterly misses one of Malcolm X’s statements about speech wherein he declared that he wanted the bigots to speak out, so who would know who they are, rather than silencing them and letting them remain hidden. He also was adamantly against government handouts precisely because they created dependence on a government that he viewed as wanting to oppress, enslave, and destroy black people, and that political power came from economic power, which had to be built up in the community, and that thus black people needed to own, operate and support businesses in their own community. But that doesn’t fit the leftist narrative, so therefore must never be spoken or written.

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    1. “…every person and statement that shows differing views and opinions as being “proof” of a schism…”

      The Left is the enemy. No stone is too small for them to throw. Currently we have the rain of tiny pebbles because they’re completely out of ammunition. Literally throwing sand into a stiff breeze.

      Don’t forget, the Lefties -also- have to compete for eyeballs on the same platforms the Righties. They’re out there throwing gravel because they have to be seen Doing Something, even if it’s something utterly pointless and transparently stupid.

      When Jordan Peterson debated Cathy Newman on the BBC, who won? Cathy Newman did. Because now an entire world of people who never heard of her have seen her getting demolished by Peterson and looking an utter fool. (A compleat fool, dare I say. ~:)

      Because it doesn’t matter if she looks like a fool. It matters if she’s getting views. And she is. She’s still got that job.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. And the left killed Malcom X.

      All they choose to remember of him is the photo of him holding an AK, with the caption, “By any means necessary.” They quietly ignore all of the contra-narrative stuff that he said.

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      1. They also erase the fact that he was a very strong proponent of the right to self defense and the necessarily related right to bear arms. He was adamant, especially later in his life, that he was simply insisting that black people be able to enjoy and exercise the same rights that others had, but that had been denied to black people, i.e. the same rights to speech, religion, bear arms, protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, etc.

        He considered the deprivation of the right of self-defense/right to bear arms as one of the greatest evils that had been done.

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        1. Yeah.

          He gets played up as a black supremacist (and given the Nation of Islam theology, it’s kind of hard to avoid that charge…). But a big part of his thing seems to have been encouraging black self-sufficiency. I’ve heard that his views changed over time away from the radical narratives. And in particular, a trip to Africa soured his attitude on anything to do with that continent.

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  7. Every time I hear “the coalition right is fracturing!!!!!!” Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeee I think “Um? Wait? What?” We agree on:

    1. Harris was an idiot worse than Biden, needed to prevent 2020 steal.
    2. Biden was a brain dead idiot. See item #1.
    3. Clinton #2 would have been a disaster.
    4. Voter Id, in person voting, count visibility. To limit ability to steal election.
    5. Leave me alone.
    6. Taxes are theft. How to get rid of taxes and what to replace them with to pay for needed government activities varies.
    7. The other side are idiots. Idiot savants, maybe, but idiots.

    Etc.

    Items #1 – #3 will be repeated in the future with different names. The rest? How to achieve have as many fractured ideas as there are individuals.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Karl Marx was wrong about so many things. The truth of the matter is that “All property TAX is theft.” All other taxes, which includes property tax are, as you point out in #6 are theft as well.

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  8. When the media force feeds you “The right is in trouble” look at what was just revealed about the left, and point at that.

    This directive cannot be stressed enough. For whatever reason, I equate it with the tendency on the right to equate misbehavior on the their own side with malevolence on the left. It’s another form of buying into the psyop that isn’t even meant for us, I suppose.

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      1. The left hates us regardless. They hate everything that does not conform exactly to their ideology, which is why anyone on the left who dares to step out of line is viciously attacked.

        The left is made up of people who read 1984, Animal Farm, and Brave New World, and think “what wonderful instruction manuals”.

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  9. I had a related essaylet elsewhere. (context, I don’t know romance and have heard of this enemies-to-lovers subgenre. I do not define enemy in a way that only includes the for real, at most one of us leaves this event alive, degree of difference of opinion. I count myself as an enemy at times, for being too nuanced, and insufficiently fanatic. Do I have conflicting goals? Do I feel drawn to positions that cannot be reconciled? Well, sure, lots of the time, so “ree, I am such a traitor to whatever cause of Bobness”. Allies and enemies both can have shades of gray, and temporary or situational alliances. So, without reading a bunch more of these romances than I am likely to self dose upon in the near future, I don’t make assumptions about what each novel establishes.)

    My basic question on this is ‘who gets to be the conservative police?’

    Related, is maps of languages to ideas, in ways that can be evaluated deterministically by some sort of machine.

    If we have the official list of rules, and a machine that can sort people by matching to rules, then analysis would be straightforward. But, if we can show that one element cannot exist, then we have to have some sort of situation where we have to make peace with imperfections. (How the frustrate do I show conclusively that such a thing cannot exist? For all audience? Well, it turns out to be hard, and my stupid perfectionism is what keeps me wasting so much time trying.)

    I suspect that I am basically in agreement with you that a lot of this talk is either downstream of a significant modeling error, or outright information warfare.

    Historically, Dinesh D’souza is not one of my dudes. I heard about him back in the day, but mostly didn’t bother learning about, reading, or listening. Saw an interview on youtubde that somedood linked, and found he had things to say that I agreed with, or found worth bouncing upon and off of.

    Anyway, was talking Buckley, and policing conservativism against the Jew haters. I have gotten extremely skeptical of Buckley curating official intellectual conservatism, from the second, third, and fourth hand sources. I’m basically super skeptical of current day intellectual flavors of conservatism.

    David FRench, et alia, created the opportunity for dudes like Feuntes, who did not want to just finish an LGBT studies PhD and fight conventionally for tenure and grants.

    I could be misjudging Minaj, but Wolf to Minaj is a bunch of people who are not inherently aligned to certain ‘right’ sub-factions deciding that the right was the strong horse to bet on in the disputes. (Wolf thinks she should tell people about the PhD, /and/ apparently got one in weird feminist ideas. So she probably thinks some of those are real and worthwhile.)

    Expecting lockstep on ‘right’, particularly this right, is a sign of not understanding how we reached the current place, and also an estimator for not having left enough of the left’s modeling habits behind.

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    1. “My basic question on this is ‘who gets to be the conservative police?’”

      Yes. Exactly this.

      My feeling on the matter is that the whole point of conservatism, small C, is that we don’t have, want or need The Conservative Police to keep us all on the Party Line. There is no Party. There is no line.

      There is a herd of cats, all going roughly the same direction because they feel like it, and woe unto he who tries to make them march in step.

      Party policing is what Lefties do. Personal freedom and personal responsibility is what we do.

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    2. We don’t have ‘Teh Rules!!’ we have principles. We adapt temporary, ad hoc rules to implement those principles under whatever conditions we face. Our enemies require elaborate, ever-changing rule structures because they don’t have principles.

      We judge people not by how they were born, but by what they do. The choices they make. Do they help others, or at least leave them alone? Or do they violate people’s rights, appropriate their property, spread propaganda and implement censorship?
      ———————————
      For those who never grow up, there will always be only the rules, imposed by authority without explanation, enforced by power without appeal, and obeyed by rote, without understanding.

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    3. “My basic question on this is ‘who gets to be the conservative police?’”

      Everyone you ask will give you the same answer: “Me, of course.” There’s a real dilemma here in that Big Tent and Gatekeeping both have weaknesses. Big Tent is good for building coalitions, but it’s prone to fracture, it invites people to co-opt the movement, and it opens itself up to guilt by association. Gatekeeping is better for message discipline, but it’s prone to infighting and is straight up unviable if you don’t have the numbers.

      There’s a way to ameliorate these problems: Focus on low-hanging fruit, and dismiss rather than excommunicate. The former keeps the coalition happy and on-target, rather than arguing over hypotheticals/irrelevancies, while the latter provides some distance from the crazies without inviting a turf war. (Sarah’s doing a good job of this by dismissing Tucker without denying his right to speak.)

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  10. One more time guys, repeat after me, we don’t do collectives, we just talk about individuals we can identify. Talking in the abstract leads to filthy, crazy, beyond weird rabbit holes and not very many individuals really want to head down there.

    Relationships are one to one mappings, not into, or over. They are not bundles, or multiplicities, or manifolds, they are individual. The are not countable infinities, the are strictly bounded. Bounded to a single individual. Quit using slop think!

    Talking to individuals is why Charlie Kirk was successful. Enough said.

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  11. The problem I’m having is that people on our side are buying the bullshit, and thinking there is a huge groyper contingent, and that we absolutely need to worry about splintering the movement in two and…

    But the Dems have this problem– they ditched a pretty decent VP option because he’s Jewish!– so the Reps must have it!

    Liked by 4 people

  12. Was at AmericaFest. Wasn’t on the phone for “news” much, but checking weather and some websites brought stuff up anyway. Yeah, I pointed and laughed at my PHONE, because, hey, I was THERE. The delusions were mighty. Delusional protesting was a thing (just outside the security fence) but it wasn’t rampant. One persistent guy had a big sign (bout one side of a ‘sandwich board’ size) listing a number of CLEARLY delusional things. And he would regularly announce ‘go on in, and get your brainwashing!’ If I was near. I would point, laugh, and announce (louder, of course) ‘This gentleman clearly has ALL the brainwashing you need!’ Got a smile or two from the rest of the crowd. The guy with the sign clearly had a limited script, since the brainwashing statement was all he had..

    Auugh; just lost a paragraph; maybe more tomorrow.

    Like

    1. Second paragraph was about an article from a ‘local’ newspaper’, about how ‘liberal’ forces had organized a ‘counter convention’ at a nearby bar, because they knew young people didn’t like the low-class crappy venue (The Phoenix Convention Center?) and being ‘forced to go by their parents’. Uh, again, sorry, I was THERE, and MANY of the young people were there because their parents were lunatic lefties who had become PAINFULLY obvious. So, if the left is ADMITTING that they have made many parental units SO crazy their offspring don’t want to be around them, and would rather listen to lots of Christians and conservative leader ‘influencers’ talk about a hopeful future full of responsibility; well, OK!

      Liked by 1 person

        1. *SNRK*

          Sorry, was just hit with the image of, if he had declared belief in the fae, then actual peaceful protestors (you know, the ones not setting things on fire) could tweak him by refusing to give their names on the grounds of “you’re obviously an agent of the Neighbors, you cannot have my name.”

          *Bemused*

          Liked by 1 person

    1. I’d recommend reading Jacques Vallée’s “Passport to Magonia.” Vallée made a convincing case that the Fae and the supposed aliens behind much of the UFO phenomenon and all of the abduction phenomenon are one and the same; a supernatural phenomenon wearing different masks over the millennia, always with the goal of deceiving humanity. There are uncanny parallels, such as the similarity between fairy circles and crop circles, and centuries-old Celtic elf and fairy folklore of people being hit by a blinding light, disappearing for days, and coming back with missing memories.

      Liked by 2 people

    2. At some point Tucker is going to claim that the aliens are going to invade Earth and destroy it because of Jews. You just know that’s coming from him at some point.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. When he does, I’ll recommend Dean Koontz’s novel The Taking. The aliens in that book? They were NOT aliens. At all. They were something…much older. And much, much worse.

        The only thing that held them off was hope.

        Like

  13. I am going to listen to that baking song every day!

    I think a lot of Trump’s activities that elicit outrage from the left are intended to get the crazies to reveal themselves. Once you know who they are just keep track in the back of your mind; they will show up again and you’ll know how much weight to give them. About 1 finger’s worth, I should think.

    Liked by 2 people

      1. Which is why the left/establishment hate him so much, and why they spent so much time and effort to try to prevent him from being President and destroying his presidency once he won anyway.

        Like

    1. Lets see. What are the dems for these days?:

      1. Child molesters.
      2. Cocaine and other drug importers and dealers.
      3. Sex Slavery.
      4. Slavery of anyone.
      5. Murder protectors
      6. Thief protectors
      7. Tyrants

      “Trump’s activities that elicit outrage from the left are intended to get the crazies to reveal themselves

      About sums it up.

      Liked by 2 people

  14. What? I can’t hear you over the concert I went to last weekend.

    I first saw the “split in Conservatives” et al on PJMedia/RedState/Hotair, then Fox. I suspect part of it is the various pundits and columnists who are not happy that the government hasn’t done Their Thing yet, and might not even know about Their Thing. “But it will save the consensus/fix everything/is vital to saving the Republic.”

    Real people not on the internet are happy the price of gas is coming down, understand that even Donald Trump can’t make beef suddenly rain down from heaven (beware of plummeting livestock!), don’t miss the criminal illegals, and get that it takes time to clean the Augean Stable. Depending on where they are, they also want rain, or don’t want rain, and really want the bad guys to get shut down HARD and leave the rest of us alone. Forever. Or Else.

    I am off duty, so to speak, so I glance at the political headlines, yawn, and go back to more important things, like trying to save some of the plants now that we can water them again, and cleaning up after the cat.

    Liked by 2 people

      1. Since when is anyone on the right upset with the “indiscriminate migrant deportations?” (I know. Sarcasm.)

        All I’ve heard is “Yes! This is what I voted for!”

        Can you send my eyes back? The rolled so hard they’ve joined yours under your sofa, I think. I’ll keep looking here under our couch amongst the cat and dog hair (although hers hair is lesser, grooming day).

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Since when is anyone on the right upset with the “indiscriminate migrant deportations?”

          The thing about questions like “Are you upset about the indiscriminate deportations?” is that the answer “yes” with no further elaboration can easily cover everything from “I wish it weren’t happening at all” to “It’s not happening fast enough”.

          So yes, people on the right could be upset about the deportations – because there haven’t been enough of them.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Right can be a very wide tent.

            I can absolutely imagine someone voting for Trump, without having a shrewd idea that this could happen and also being in favor of it happening.

            It has kinda been a wild year, and I’m not 100% automatically in favor of every stunt that this administration has done.

            I’m mostly irritated at slowness, pushback, and delays, but frankly it would also be bad if anyone was trying to do this level of change and had an entirely free hand.

            What I have seen or heard of clear evidence for seems very discriminate, and measured, and I am not seeing the stuff I could expect from indiscriminate behavior.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Agreed. Despite the administration’s public bombast, the actual actions they take are quite measured and carefully legal and Constitutional.

              Which is something that we observed during Trump 1. This time they’re just being more aggressive about weaponizing the legal and Constitutional actions they take.

              Like

          2. The problem with the “upset about the deportations – because there haven’t been enough of them“, fast enough. Interpretation is that no one right of the left, who is sane and not an idiot, is going to presume when asked “Are you upset about the indiscriminate deportations?” that the question is meant anything other than to be a jab at the deportation policy. The not an idiot and sane know that a “Yes, because not fast enough” is a “yes”. Anything after “because” gets dropped. The correct answer is “Not upset about indiscriminate deportations (question answered … very long pause separation …) I am they aren’t deporting enough fast enough.” Last part gets dropped too, but at least question answered is still “No” (ignored, it will not meet the narrative). Or “No. Deport faster.” Economical.

            Like

          3. “What indiscriminate deportations? I haven’t heard of any. They’re deporting illegal aliens that were never supposed to be in this country, starting with the ones that have committed violent crimes in addition to breaking in.”

            And when they start in with the “They’re deporting U.S. citizens!” schtick: “Name one. Identify one citizen I.C.E. has wrongly arrested. Tell us where it happened. Tell us when. What? You can’t? All that hysteria and you can’t provide one case? Then shut the f&*42;k up!”

            Like

        2. Make sure you each get the right pair of eyes.

          I’m reminded of something a former King of the East said: that when they place the crown on your head at Coronation it sucks out your brain. Then, at the end of your reign, it drops a brain back in…but it’s not necessarily the same brain.

          Like

  15. “Split in the Republican Party” is like the lack of gravitas, Russian collusion, and the uncle that keeps asking you to pull their finger. Falling for it once is understandable, but it doesn’t take long to not pull your uncle’s finger.

    Liked by 2 people

  16. Trump just announced a new “Trump Class Battleship” to be called USS Defiant.

    It’s going to be 10 to 20 thousand tons (I would expect high on that) so it’s really a “Heavy Cruiser” by tonnage. All steel build. No VLS. Lots of firepower. Highly upgradeable. And lead ship to be delivered by a -very- ambitious 2028.

    Overall concept called “Golden Fleet”.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Longer reply eaten by WP(DE). See : https://www.goldenfleet.navy.mil – New BBG design has 28 Mk 41 VLS plus more launchers forward behind the railgun that are vertical for the larger Conventional Prompt Strike missiles that don’t fit in a Mk 41. We should buy the Japanese railgun since it already works.

      The new frigate design has no VLS.

      Like

      1. If it’s going to power the frikkin lasers and the railgun while running the radars and the coffee machines on board all at once, I would have preferred a nuclear powerplant.

        Like

        1. Might not want that due to concerns about the ship taking hits. While surface combatants do try and stay away from enemy ships these days (preferably without the enemy even knowing where they are), it’s possible that this ship is seen as a bit more vulnerable than a carrier. It’s also almost certainly significantly smaller than a carrier, which might mean that there’s less ship to put between the plant and any incoming strikes on it.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. If it were anything like the reactor designs I worked on during my service, the vulnerability isn’t so much the reactor itself, but all the associated systems that keep it happy and safely being a very hot ‘rock’. Battle conditions allow for somewhat less ‘stability’, but FORCING that baby to ‘meltdown’ would take QUITE a concerted effort by the engineering crew (who would also need to be very suicidal to try for it, because you will have to stay on station to KEEP fooling the reactor into thinking it is still ‘OK’). Wiping out the safety control systems would only mean an immediate, safe shutdown and inability to bring it back up. Hitting main turbines (of any type) on a conventional ship has the same effect, plus there are then large fuel tanks to breach and create fires.

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            1. The fire thing is a real argument for a nuclear surface Navy. A nuke surface ship only has to carry a relatively small amount of Jet-A for the vertical lift that can land on the helo pad, so not having huge bunkers full of marine diesel is a major safety gain in the event of taking a hit. Plus it majorly reduces the UNREP needed for fuel when the ship needs to move fast.

              The only real arguments against ships like CGN-9 Long Beach are financial, in greater upfront construction costs, and superstitious, because newkewler bad magic.

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            2. I wasn’t concerned with a meltdown so much as I was with a hit that managed to breach the reactor shielding, and cause a radiation leak, which could endanger the crew before they abandon ship. I don’t know how hard of a hit the reactor would have to take for that to happen, though.

              For that matter, even if a meltdown did happen, how big of a problem would it be at sea (in port is another matter)? The material would presumably get super hot, melt through the hull of the ship, and then drop to the bottom of the ocean. Maybe not so good for the sea life immediately around wherever the material settled. But otherwise, not really an issue so long as it wasn’t in shallow water.

              Like

      2. If Trump wants the first of these undergoing shakedown by 2028, the Navy’s almost certainly going to have to use the Japanese design (which is good from an “interoperability with one of our closest allies” standpoint). In fact, the short turn around time suggests to me that much of the design work on this class has already been done. It will probably also incorporate the new Israeli-designed laser version of Iron Dome.

        The question I saw posed elsewhere today was, “Where are you going to build it?” US construction slipways are a little scarce these days, unfortunately. And you can’t build them overnight. But if Trump’s serious about the 2028 launch, he must already have that part figured out.

        Unfortunately, the Dems being the Dems and infected with massive amounts of TDS means that if they ever get the chance, they’ll kill this. With a sledgehammer. Dropped from orbit.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Saw an interesting article that the filibuster is behind House retirements.

          https://open.substack.com/pub/amuseonx/p/the-filibuster-is-hollowing-out-the?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

          The Senate filibuster is the central fact. It is fashionable to treat the filibuster as a mere rule, a background constraint that everyone must live with. That understates its force. In its current form, it is a choke point that nullifies the House. When 60 votes are required to end debate on most legislation, the House becomes a staging area for symbolic votes. Bills pass the House and then evaporate. Members take difficult votes that never become law. They absorb the political cost while receiving none of the governing credit.

          Our Senators should nuke the thing and move. I don’t see that happening. It also means that we can count on shutdowns and having none of President Trump’s proposals codified into laws.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Great writeup. I’d never considered that aspect of it. It also suggests how to sell the change: “The argument is not that debate should end. It is that debate should be real.”

            I’m curious what’s going on behind the scenes. For all that the filibuster and the blue slip process are stalling out Trump’s agenda, the Senate is apparently cranking through the backlog of Trump appointees at an impressive rate. I can see holding off on the filibuster fight until the appointments are largely in place.

            That said, I’m not sure what kind of leverage Trump has to get the GOP to nuke the filibuster, or if it’s even possible. I guess time will tell.

            Liked by 2 people

            1. I drafted something yesterday, then deleted, in response to a financial advisor magazine thing on forecast unreliability.

              The attempt was to take it to pieces, and then take the pieces to pieces. And basically talk briefly about six elements of ‘time will tell’.

              Economic stuff is a lot about what conclusions that the future people will wind up coming to.

              Like

  17. I had to go and google it, because I wasn’t around when the term was first coined. But it strikes me as a nothing burger. And who edits these entries, anyway? “Far right” is as meaningless a term as “fascist” — due to indiscriminate use by the Far Left. And. I suspect, “groyper” is headed that way, if not already there. I finally have learned Nick Fuentes is not the guy I like on Facebook. That’s Nick Freitas. So Fuentes is the anti-Freitas, because HE doesn’t make any sense. You have my permission to ignore his nonsense

    That is all.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. “I finally have learned Nick Fuentes is not the guy I like on Facebook. That’s Nick Freitas. So Fuentes is the anti-Freitas, because HE doesn’t make any sense.

      Join the club. I ran into this wall a week, or more, ago. I was relieved. Could not reconcile with what I was reading and hearing with the guy everyone was talking about. Crowd here made sure to point out my errors. FYI Thank you, again.

      Like

      1. Heh.

        The one that always used to get me was confusing Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch with a particular individual with a very similar name whom I won’t name, but was (still is?) heavily involved in the Neo-Nazi movement.

        Liked by 1 person

  18. LDMs (because LLM only covers chat bots, Large Data Model covers everything) are the product of their programming and the data shoveled into them. Bias can be introduced via either avenue.

    Which is why saying text that contains semicolons and M dashes are proof that it’s LDM generated is stupid. LDMs had to get their punctuation from the source data, which was presumably composed by humans. We used the semicolons and M dashes first.

    Like

    1. Yeah, there are a lot of those. Some of them make me roll my eyes, like the “Warhammer 40,000 reimagined as an 80s movie” video that I used to see pop up in my YouTube feed. Warhammer 40,000 is literally a product of the ’80s.

      Like

      1. Personally, I like to put it as follows:

        “I don’t hate Jews. Or Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Shintoists, Jains, animists or pagans. I don’t hate blacks, whites, reds, browns, or yellows. (a beat, then at the top of my voice) “To me, you MAGGOTS are all EQUALLY WORTHLESS!”

        Like

      1. Why did they Photoshop two copies of the Freedom Tower into that image? There are plenty of images of the real World Trade Center towers they could have used for their nefarious purpose.

        Like

        1. Exactly.

          It’s the same activist nonsense as always– find someone who CANNOT POSSIBLY HURT YOU, and attack them.

          Spitting on soldiers in uniform, throwing paint at little old ladies in fur rather than biker gangs… it tells you who they think is safe, not who they think is wrong.

          Like

            1. They did that several years ago, and were escorted out of the area under police guard for their continued survival.

              I seem to remember there were mysterious fires associated with that, but not worht it to see if they noticed attacks or not.

              Like

  19. instead of baking cookies, I’ve been making Christmas ornaments shaped like little books with the covers of things I’ve been published in. Less fattening, and they make nice gifts to your friends who don’t duck and run when you tell them you’ve got another story sold.

    Liked by 2 people

  20. “split in the right.”

    …There’s a uniformity in the right? News to me. I rather thought that it was all naught but individualists all the way down. More the fool me, then.

    Or it could well be that there are just some collectivist symps on the titular right. The Deep State squirrels in their bureaus and the cractic crocodiles what dwell in the swamp, oh yes, I could indeed believe them of being such. Or, it could be that Conservative, Inc., has a few screws loose. Okay, more than a few.

    Bogs, people, we on the right have been quarreling with each other since there WASN’T a “Right” to the split and we really wanted one.

    A tiff on the right is not new, if true. But this? This sad sack of limp weeds? These dim bulbs and dull knives? Please. I feel more threat from Othercat when he’s demanding brush time. And Othercat is the biggest softie of the whole fuzzy bunch.

    There are the Quislings, the RINOs, the aforementioned squirrels and crocs of the swamp, the paid shills and opportunists, the agents provocateur, and the crazies. And, in the other corner, we have the “Right.”

    That’s you and me, bub. The vets, the truck drivers, the entrepreneurs, the moms, the mailmen, the corporate drones, the engineers and coders, the insurance salesmen and the writers. The folks what just want to be left alone, not taxed too much, and the government to STOP WASTING OUR MONEY AND TIME so much.

    We’re not a monolith of many manuscripts. We’re no uniformed legion marching in lockstep and in perfect time with each stamping jackboot (that’s more a leftist wet dream). We’re the gaggle of geese, only together very loosely and apt to fracture into individuals at any moments, because that’s where we live,. In those individualistic moments.

    There is no “fracture” in the right. There’s a fracture in their craniums, those what think such rot. Unless, nope, that’s just their @sscrack. False alarm. That head up the rear thing they always do always confuses me.

    Some psyop glowie puddinheads thought it’d be a good idea to riff on this, it’s a pretty dumb tell that they don’t want you paying attention to something else. Oh, I know, His Trumpiness the Defeater of DEI does it too, but he’s a lot better at it. More entertaining, sneakier and whatnot. They really, really don’t want you to be paying attention to Certain Things. Gee willikers, what could those be?

    Pfah. This was a lame attempt, folks. I’ve seen better psyops in advertising. I’ve seen more sophisticated sophists in actual squirrels. I’ve seen more believable bullsheep from prepubescent punks.

    Is it going to work on some people? Yep. Sucker’s born every minute. Should any sane, rational adult? Oh heavens no. We’ve much better things to be doing with our time. Like writing. Which I should be doing more of. Like, now.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Next you’re going to try to convince us that individualists can organize, and that libertarians support strict zoning laws in both urban and rural areas, along with lots and lots of taxes. And that cats can be obedience trained.

      /sarc, just in case someone has not had enough caffeine yet

      Liked by 2 people

  21. “What it isn’t: A sign of schism on the right.”

    I’m sensitive to infighting, and some of the fights in the last year have made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Fortunately, they seem to blow over in a few weeks, but there have been a few issues that threatened to split the base.

    I didn’t get that feeling this time. I can’t put my finger on why, but the claims of “infighting” and “schism” didn’t pass the sniff test. It’s all internet drama that doesn’t really touch on the core of the movement. Even the denouncements of infighting, which are usually a sign that the situation is spiraling, don’t seem that important this time around. Just my intuition.

    (This segues into some stuff that’s been on my mind, so if you’ll indulge me, I’m going to rant a bit in the replies.)

    Like

    1. There’s something going on that I’m calling The Great Tasting. In a nutshell, MAGA shattered the old conservatism, and now the Right is taste-testing new ideas to fill the ideological void.

      MAGA is conservative ideals mixed with populism, patriotism, and pragmatic politics of the kind the GOP tastemakers never allowed before. And it’s working. But it also means there’s no conventional wisdom in effect.

      Everyone’s trying to disentangle the aspects of “conservatism” that failed—principled defeat, neoconservatism, crony capitalist immigration policies, unfettered trade—from the ones that are worth salvaging. And we’re seeing a ton of wild ideas as people try to make sense of it.

      Hence the flirtations with monarchy, white and/or “Heritage American” identity politics, and various definitions of Christian nationalism (some sane, some not). Ignoring the psyops, the bots, and the racist trolls, the people talking about these ideas are taste-testing them. They are trying to cobble together a new ideology to fix/explain the failures of the old one.

      Which says a lot about how to address these ideas. They are new, untested, ad hoc, and often inconsistent. They are fancies, daydreams, hypotheses, and occasionally tantrums. The virulent extremes are driven by psyops and grifters, but there are a lot of disaffected but sane people trying to find something to replace the old conservatism.

      It’s a category error to treat these ideas as part of a mature, rival ideology. They are usually just proposals, even if the speaker doesn’t realize it. For example, America didn’t sprout a bunch of principled monarchists overnight; people are just taste-testing it in response to a corrupt government and dehumanizing policies. The appropriate response is less “Gasp! A Royalist!” and more “You’d think so, but no.” (For the honest ones, at least.)

      Liked by 3 people

      1. Put another way, “It’s just a phase.” The Right graduated high school, left Papa (GOPe) and Mama (conservative think tanks) behind, and is off at college finding itself. There are real issues to address and mistakes to avoid, but the proposals being tossed around are basically just hair dye, tattoos, and piercings. Shocking, but superficial.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. So, core new thing with Trump seems to have been the deliberate speech thing of not flattering the academics. There still do not seem to be any credible 100% inheritors of this.

        Other than that, is him not being doctrinaire, and the professional managerial class discrediting a lot of the old assumed wisdom. Forex, the 2020 arsons are one element of disproving the ideological vanguard of the proletariat. Because the communists hate the ‘uneducated’, and want them to suffer, and so have less credibility as advocates for the poor.

        Vance is not there yet, as a replacement. However, if the communists can scare up more than one new competent shooter, Vance should work as a bullet sponge long enough to ensure continuity of leadership in whatever fight.

        Lots of politics is not a prize right now. Ugly possibilities, and messy fights, and no clear path to easy wins and straightforward answers.

        Politics some indeterminate time in the future is likely to have more easy plaudits, and less chance of holding the bag for something stupid.

        Lots of optimists now, thinking that it is already time to be a great man doing the big historic thing.

        The old patterns are still broken, and we still have not hit upon a reliable recipe that we know that others can use, and that we know works with a lot of people.

        (Short term, the economic stuff is also freaking weird.)

        I would say we are five congressional cycles out from knowing what stuff sticks with people, and the politics-as-entertainment performers are not in a good space for staying sane.

        Like

        1. Hm. Sounds like an experimentation phase. (I’m sure there’s a proper term for this, but I don’t know what it is.) Someone (ESR?) was recently talking about bubbles as a sort of experimentation process for new tech. Investors make different bets on what the tech is going to be useful for until the bubble collapses and reveals the winners.

          Likewise, in evolutionary biology, you end up with a proliferation of species that are winnowed down to a smaller number of winners. And in design, you end up trying a ton of different things (flip phones, slide phones, etc.) before converging on a small number of form factors (modern smartphones).

          Politics right now is, apart from the core things MAGA is doing, a scrabble to find out what works and what doesn’t. You’re right that it’s going to take some time to settle.

          Like

      3. An additional consideration is that we’re Reagan-era deep in the other mainstream viewpoint going into a purity spiral after their grip on media was loosened.

        A lot of the “right wing” want-to-be-thought-leaders are the right wing of the Democrats, and have a the philosophical issues associated with that.

        One big warning sign is if they use Democratic rhetoric styles– such as the “Heritage Americans”, etc.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. That’s a good point. The Left has been convulsing just as much due to shifting political priorities (e.g., the Dems ditching the working class in favor of millionaires), purity spirals, and a weakening grip on media.

          The upshot is that there’s a lot of room for sanity under the MAGA tent. You can watch sane liberals-until-a-minute-ago groping their way towards the light on X in real time. But it does mean there’s both a lot of deliberate grifting and unconscious parroting of the Left going on.

          Liked by 2 people

    2. The Right needs to learn to focus on the easy questions. There’s a ton of low-hanging fruit right now (80-20 issues, easy wins), but people keep getting distracted by tough issues and hypotheticals. Quick examples:

      • “What is an American?” is a thorny question that invites argument. But “Who isn’t an American?” has some obvious answers. Deport the illegals, clean up visa abuse, and reassess immigration policy. Easy, popular, straightforward.
      • “How can we balance the budget?” is a question with a huge political and economic cost. But “How can we eliminate fraud?” is easy to sell, easy to enact, and could change the debt calculus drastically. Start with that.
      • “Is Tucker a plant?” is hard to prove, and his proponents have made up their minds. But “Is Tucker unreliable?” is easy to show and hard to counter. He says useful things sometimes, but he’s too flaky to be a leader. Marginalize him.
      • “Is Candace Owens right about Charlie Kirk?” is tough because debating the facts gives the conspiracy theorists a springboard. “Is Candace Owens credible?” is easy. She has changed her story multiple times, discrediting the conspiracy theorists and jeopardizing their purported investigation. Make them disavow her.
      • “Is Nick Fuentes on the Right?” is a tough question because you have to define “Right” and establish who gets to define it. “Is Nick Fuentes MAGA?” is trivial: He said he was voting for Kamala. He’s irrelevant.

      Okay, I’ve said my piece. Sorry for threadjacking. I just needed to get it down on the page.

      Liked by 3 people

    1. Had a boss that would say “running this team is like herding Cats” for a good year before that came out.

      Said the commercial looked way easier than real life in an IT organization.

      Like

  22. MomRed almost fell off the sofa last night laughing at an article in the Wall Street Journal about what happened when new room was turned loose on Claude (Claudius), and programmed it to run a vending machine. Short version is they drove it crazy, it busted the budget, and even dispensed a gaming rig as well as snacks.

    Now, given that they were reporters tossed a challenge, it shouldn’t be a surprise, but it tracks with the security related articles about Claude and other LLMs/LDMs.

    Like

  23. Cookies mixed up! And made into balls and shoved into the Freezer! And now I have a month or more of fresh cookies, 1 sheet at a time!

    So I get fresh home made cookies every week! Portion control, via laziness. Making 1 sheet is easy, making the next one takes work.

    Like

  24. Had a thought about Tucker. What his current attitude tells me is that he was NEVER genuine. He was just another conservative grifter – come take my cruise and hear from us, etc.

    Liked by 2 people

  25. Had a thought about Tucker. What his current attitude tells me is that he was NEVER genuine. He was just another conservative grifter – come take my cruise and hear from us, etc.

    Like

  26. That’s a good analogy, Sarah – the similarities between artificial intelligence and fake news are startling, particularly the “garbage in, garbage out” aspects being raised exponentially from the old days of merely bad data to bad dataⁿ (where ⁿ is a large positive integer, often random). As you said, there is no coalition – just all of non-leftist America with a plethora of individual goals, but the desire to restore our country shared in common.

    Liked by 1 person

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