[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.

Who are we kidding? DeSantis will either get away with the law not applying to him or he will sign a bill stating he is exempt...

Trump definitely an expert on campaign violations

fangblackbone wrote:

Who are we kidding? DeSantis will either get away with the law not applying to him or he will sign a bill stating he is exempt...

Oh, absolutely. DeSantis controls the Florida Statehouse and very like has a huge influence over the state courts.

I'm just here for the intra-party political fighting between two petty and narcissistic assholes, especially when both are campaigning on being so-called 'alpha males' who can't ever back down or show any sign of weakness. Doubly so when at least one of them doesn't give a f*ck about the Republican Party and would be perfectly OK with razing it to the ground nationally if it meant he still had a chance to regain power.

I don't think either of them give a f*ck about the GOP.
In fact, Cheney and Kinzinger were the last 2 who gave a f*ck about the GOP.
Everyone else is money, power, control or all of the above.

farley3k wrote:

I wonder if DeSantis would resign to run. He probably feels he might win (rightly) which would give him the power he craves but he might lose and would lose the power he currently has in Florida. So does the megalomaniac risk known power for even greater power?

I think it's far more likely he changes the law.

Chinese business tycoon and Bannon ally Guo Wengui arrested in $1bn fraud conspiracy

Guo Wengui, a self-exiled Chinese tycoon with close links to prominent Trumpist Republicans including Steve Bannon, has been indicted on 12 counts relating to an alleged $1bn fraud.

The charges announced by the US attorney for the southern district of New York on Wednesday include wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud and money laundering.

Kin Ming Je, a Hong Kong and UK dual citizen also known as William Je and described as Guo’s financier, was also named in the charges and faced a further count of obstruction of justice.

he US attorney for the SDNY, Damian Williams, said Guo “led a complex conspiracy to defraud thousands of his online followers out of over $1bn.

“[Guo] is charged with lining his pockets with the money he stole, including buying himself, and his close relatives, a 50,000 sq ft mansion, a $3.5m Ferrari, and even two $36,000 mattresses, and financing a $37m luxury yacht.”

Guo’s contacts in influential circles have been widely reported.

In October 2022, the New Yorker described how his application to buy the penthouse at an exclusive building on Fifth Avenue included “a personal recommendation from Tony Blair, Britain’s former prime minister, [who] said, ‘Miles is honest, forthright and has impeccable taste.’”

The same report, however, said that in China, Guo was “at the center of a burgeoning scandal involving corruption and espionage”.

Guo was also reported to have “paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump advisers, including Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani and the attorney L Lin Wood, who joined efforts to overturn the 2020 election”.

Bannon, who was Trump’s campaign chair when he was introduced to Kwok during the 2016 election, came to call Guo “the Donald Trump of Beijing”.

Totally not weird or suspicious at all that a fire broke out in Guo's apartment a few hours after he was arrested. The FBI actually called the NYFD because the fire started while they were still searching Guo's apartment. The fire apparently burned for two hours and caused "significant damage."

That scene in Conspiracy Theory (97) where Mel Gibson ignites his apartment?

Why the GOP is obsessed with "woke" — but can't define it: MAGA can't explain what "woke" is, but that's the point — it's a "choose your own bigotry" term for Republicans

But make no mistake: The inability to define "woke" is a feature, not a bug. "Woke" is very much meant to be a word that cannot be pinned to a definition. Its emptiness is what gives it so much power as a propaganda term. "Woke" is both everything and nothing. It can mean whatever you need it to mean, and you can deny that it means what it obviously means. The ephemerality of "woke" is what makes it so valuable. "Woke" morphs into being when a right-winger needs to feel outrage and evaporates into thin air should anyone try to ask a rational question about it.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FrWZ0PiakAA55H7?format=png&name=small)

It's not like it ever had much of a meaning before the batsh*t-crazy right co-opted it. Just a simple slang term for "aware of things as they are; awake to the reality of the world." Not that different from how misogynists were using the term "red pill" for a while; the only difference is what "truth" the speaker was claiming to be uniquely able to perceive.

But now, the very meaninglessness of the word itself conveys meaning: that the speaker is a batsh*t-crazy idealogue who cannot be reasoned with and is not engaging in good faith. That's useful information to convey.

Jonman wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:

Maybe internet-connected door locks actually aren't a good idea?

Jonman's Rules of Life #258: Avoid anything that needs an app to work, including but not limited to boardgames, videogames, home automation and financial services.

I would extend that to 'requires internet connectivity to work' without it being extremely critical to its functionality
(Internet of sh*t is worth a follow for egregious examples)

hbi2k wrote:

It's not like it ever had much of a meaning before the batsh*t-crazy right co-opted it.

Stay woke: How a Black activist watchword got co-opted in the culture war.

The idea behind it was common within Black communities at that point — the notion that staying “woke” and alert to the deceptions of other people was a basic survival tactic.

Will AI Actually Mean We’ll Be Able to Work Less?
*Haven't read it all yet but I can't think of any technological innovation that has done this. The greed of humanity can't be overcome with anything except regulation and government.
**And just got to that point in the article and i feel like duh

HISTORY HAS SHOWN US that gains in efficiency or productivity as a result of new technologies rarely liberate those already overburdened in society. Instead, new tech often creates new expectations and norms, heightening standards and the amount of work required to attain them. Known as Parkinson’s law, it’s the idea that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” We have all experienced how meetings scheduled to last an hour will stretch to fill the time allotted.
Not only does new tech often result in more work for people but it also introduces additional kinds of work. Ian Bogost anticipates that AI-powered chatbots such as ChatGPT “will impose new regimes of labor and management atop the labor required to carry out the supposedly labor-saving effort.” Just as computers and software advances have “allowed, and even required, workers to take on tasks that might otherwise have been carried out by specialists as their full-time job,” citing procurement and accounting software as examples, Bogst predicts the “inevitable bureaucratization” of AI.
Simply put, the AI productivity narrative is a lie. It holds that by automating tasks, AI will make them more efficient and make us, in turn, more productive. This will free us for more meaningful tasks or for leisurely pursuits such as yoga, painting, or volunteerism, promoting human flourishing and well-being. But if history is any guide, this outcome is highly unlikely, save for a privileged elite. More likely, the rich will only get richer.

Because it’s not technology that can liberate us. To preserve and promote meaningful autonomy in the face of these AI advancements, we must look to our social, political, and economic systems and policies. As Derek Thompson observes in The Atlantic, “Technology only frees people from work if the boss—or the government, or the economic system—allows it.” To allege otherwise is technosolutionism, plain and simple.

I think there's some nuance with AI solutions. It's certainly not going to allow us all to do nothing all day, and I think there are opportunities that it could help with around simplification and automation.

Case in point:
The business that I support has a lot of manual processes and hand-offs between groups. Automating those tasks would absolutely reduce a ton of overhead on the teams and allow them to focus on more important things.

Exactly, JC. But the killer app isn't AI, even though it appears to be. The killer app will be the method that lets you have confidence in the correctness of the work product of the AI, and know when it has screwed up so you can intervene before disaster occurs.

The interesting thing, though, is that the military is working with AI already, and it's working well. I need to dig more into that.

Robear wrote:

The interesting thing, though, is that the military is working with AI already, and it's working well. I need to dig more into that.

They have documentaries about it.

IMAGE(https://e1.pxfuel.com/desktop-wallpaper/239/390/desktop-wallpaper-more-man-and-machine-action-transformers-movie-william-lennox.jpg)

JC wrote:

Case in point:
The business that I support has a lot of manual processes and hand-offs between groups. Automating those tasks would absolutely reduce a ton of overhead on the teams and allow them to focus on more important things.

But that requires management to invest time and money in the automation when it's way easier for them to fire workers or announce a pointless acquisition that will never add value when they want to boost stock price and get their bonuses.

Guess his T-shirt is armored?

OG_slinger wrote:
JC wrote:

Case in point:
The business that I support has a lot of manual processes and hand-offs between groups. Automating those tasks would absolutely reduce a ton of overhead on the teams and allow them to focus on more important things.

But that requires management to invest time and money in the automation when it's way easier for them to fire workers or announce a pointless acquisition that will never add value when they want to boost stock price and get their bonuses.

For some companies- But the company and line of business that I support isn't able to go that route for a multitude of reasons. Automating tasks and allowing employees to focus on more important things is critical for their continued success.

When I go to the gas station to buy my morning coffee, there is a self-checkout station. You have to sign up for a little smartphone app to use it. There is a person there at all times whose only job is to try to entice people to sign up for it and help them through the process of downloading the app. This person is not a regular employee of the gas station; they have been sent by Circle K's corporate office for this purpose.

This person has learned not to try to entice me to sign up for the app, because they might get The Speech. Every so often they're replaced by a new person who has to learn this lesson. The Speech goes something like this:

"So you want to offload that person's job," and here I point to the regular employee who is operating the non-self checkout, "onto me. I will be doing their job, and in exchange you will give me a small discount." At this point the corporate person typically nods or otherwise indicates in the affirmative.

"Okay, cool," I say. "That sounds fair enough. Once everyone has signed up for your app and is using the self checkout station, that person will no longer have to check us out. You will have automated the checkout process, and Circle K will be able to operate this store with fewer man-hours than before." This is when the corporate person starts to look worried.

"So maybe before that person spent an hour out of their 8-hour shift manning the checkout, and now they don't need to do that any more. Will they get a 12.5% raise and get to go home an hour early, so they're making the same amount for less work?" The corporate person makes a non-committal noise.

"That sounds like a no. So you've automated that person's job, and the Circle K's owners get the benefits. But here's the thing: I don't know Circle K's owners. I don't like Circle K's owners. I like that guy. That's guy's nice. I see him every morning and he asks how my day's going. So if it's all the same to you, I'm going to keep using that guy's line. Automation under capitalism is unethical. Do better."

No one voluntarily signs up for The Speech a second time.

JC wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:
JC wrote:

Case in point:
The business that I support has a lot of manual processes and hand-offs between groups. Automating those tasks would absolutely reduce a ton of overhead on the teams and allow them to focus on more important things.

But that requires management to invest time and money in the automation when it's way easier for them to fire workers or announce a pointless acquisition that will never add value when they want to boost stock price and get their bonuses.

For some companies- But the company and line of business that I support isn't able to go that route for a multitude of reasons. Automating tasks and allowing employees to focus on more important things is critical for their continued success.

Also, although "investing in the automation" leads to "employees can focus on more important things", that could also be interpreted as "employees have less work so we can get rid of some now!"

Keldar wrote:

Also, although "investing in the automation" leads to "employees can focus on more important things", that could also be interpreted as "employees have less work so we can get rid of some now!"

And those "more important things" can easily mean more work hours.

We've had AI for decades now.
It just changes the narrative of work. GPS systems don't shrink our commutes but make it easier for us to commute longer and trade time for complexity.

Robots help us do more complex surgeries and quicker surgeries. AI will more than likely open up opportunities for even more intricate surgeries.

Sure. And we had digital computers since the 1940's. But it was not until the 1980's that they really exploded in complexity, utility, speed of improvement, and thus new uses.

Limited functions have been available for the last 30 years or so. Route-finding systems (done on servers at first), AI for remote and microscopic surgery, mainly in the control realm. AI for medical diagnosis came up in the 2000's, from Watson, but actually failed in its first deployments, and has not yet caught up.

The difference now, in my opinion, is that the complexity of the models coupled with the new learning capabilities of the last few years is beginning to cause a Cambrian explosion in the uses of AI. And this is not just based on new algorithms and things like digital twins. Much of this work would not have been possible even 2 or 3 years ago; the advances in general-purpose and specialized hardware, fast and wide networking, and mass storage have been critical enablers. It took us from the early 50's into the late 80's to get off the "big AI" track, after all - failure after failure. And then 30-odd years to get to the current systems (not just ChatGPT, but hundreds of other ML/DL applications capable of iterating their models within shorter and shorter time horizons).

What is going to happen between now and late 2025 will be astounding, much like the effects of rural electrification or indeed the development of small, powerful computers coupled with the Internet. But it will be vastly more impactful. It will require us to to change the way we think about how work gets done in most fields, as well as education, logistics, statistics, data analysis, demographics, even politics and the arts. There will be very few areas untouched. We are beginning a time of change that will make the Industrial Revolution look like graduating from grade school to middle school.

This goes way beyond narratives of work and will strike at the core of our understanding of how societies, business and government should work. And right while we need to be concentrating on fixing climate issues and dealing with imminent authoritarian takeovers, as well as what will hopefully be the last gasps of Christian literalism.

In other words, we are in for a ride like none of us has ever experienced before in our lives. Just watch.

Robear wrote:

In other words, we are in for a ride like none of us has ever experienced before in our lives. Just watch.

Yup, it's been building up for a while, and AI/automation revolution in particular has been the Big Thing just over the horizon that has had me most fearful of the nearest-term future for several years now. Moreso than any prior technological revolution, I fear that it will lead to the disenfranchisement and poverty of greater swathes of people in the "developed world" than we've ever seen before, and I expect it to get very ugly before there is a chance things will get better.

In most regards, I am simply a realist, not a pessimist. But when it comes to those who have the economic and political power to dictate the course of events, I am absolutely a pessimist.

I think there is a huge chance for grassroots adoption and advantages, just like with home computers, tablets and phones. It's not something that can just be held by the big corporations; anyone can implement the algorithms and build models. If iphones and home computers did not break society, this probably won't either. It will change it, but not break it or turn us into slaves.

I'm thinking more along the lines of AI and automation creating a new version of the slave economy from the US South. One thing that does tend to get overlooked in discussions about that era is that while the bulk of the upper and middle class obviously benefitted greatly in economic terms from slavery, the lower class simply couldn't compete with slave labor.

Obviously in that scenario, slavery was flat out evil and wrong. But in an economy dominated by techbros utilizing cutting-edge automation, I expect the initial impact to be unemployment and impoverishing the bulk of the US's working class (and I expect there will be similar issues in other nations, but we are uniquely vulnerable due to our employment-driven healthcare and lack of general social safety nets). With the simultaneous conversion of our population to a status of "you will rent everything and like it" -- i.e. most of us don't own land to farm or raise livestock, nor even our own home to try to produce goods -- this means that even if the average person has access to the tech and materials to set up their own AI automation, they will not be able to utilize it for self-sufficiency or community-based self-sufficiency.

Will there be some communities that can pull this off? Certainly! But there will be many more that can't, and will be subject to the whims of the oligarchy.

At this point it seems pretty certain an indictment is coming, no? When there are stories about the city trying to figure out how to handle this it seems like the cat is out of the bag.

Fat orange guy is just going to use this as another fund raising spectacle.