October 6, 2026

CRUEL, BUT TO THE LEFT, USEFUL:

“I think most people (if given the chance) would prefer to not become victimized histrionic narcissists and it’s cruel to build a cultural incentive structure that leads them down that path yet here we are.”

Posted at 1:59 pm by Stephen Green

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Dirty Deeds After Dark: British Government Locks Down Entire Town to Import More Migrants.

As I am in a Labour fascist bashing mood, I wanted to bring you something else the kinder, gentler government of the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, was doing to British citizens last night in the name of diversity and inclusion.

They were ordering them all to remain locked in their homes until the authorities gave them permission to move again, and not because the Russians lost the bones of a saint and a pissed-off God unleashed a plague on the world.

Would it were so simple.

The government was preparing for the arrival of a ‘migrant boat,’ rumored to have shoved off the coast of France earlier that day, and headed for the coastal town of Town Gosport, population around 83,000.

Meanwhile, UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood basically admits that the “migrants” arrive via rape boats.

But I guess importing non-assimilating rapists is a small price to pay for… everything else Labour is doing to break Britain.

Posted at 1:45 pm by Stephen Green

SUPER INTELLIGENCE DOOMERS WANT TO CONTROL A MONSTER THAT DOESN’T EXIST:

SI doomers have built an entire lexicon with incredibly loaded terms that are meant to advance their objectives. Consider the term “alignment.” To the uninitiated, it sounds like straightforward, innocent, uncomplicated language. Yet within the doomer discourse, alignment is the most loaded premise of all time. Doomers say that SI models are potentially capable of developing independent objectives akin to those of a sentient being. Alignment isn’t about software design. Instead, it focuses on whether humanity itself can retain control over a new form of intelligence.

SI “risk” is another severely loaded term in the doomer lexicon. Indeed, every novel technology has risks if the innovation leaps far ahead of our understanding of tackling the security parameters. But when SI doomers invoke “Risk,” they are often smuggling the notion of a hypothetical sentient SI that seeks human extinction into the conversation. Then SI “Safety” becomes the answer for this hypothetical “risk” event without any of the core premises being grounded in reality. If we take the bait and accept the doomers’ terms, they come to us with preferred solutions that are now “common sense” in the policy and politics world. This quickly turns into advocacy for restricting access to like-minded ideologues and delegating authority to a small circle of approved experts for the sake of humanity.

So often in these “breakout” scenarios breathlessly reported in the media, we find a not-so-subtle hint that can only be interpreted as a glimpse into the future of an autonomous adversary. Of course, it’s just not true. And by the time anyone more sober-minded can explain the prompts, permissions, tools, etc. that these systems involve, the public is manipulated into the sense that SI “went rogue” again. Policymakers in D.C. and doomer corporations in California then declare that ordinary technical controls are inadequate, and it must be solved with regulation, legislation, and the like. The conclusions are continually outrunning the evidence in front of us.

Meanwhile, Commentary’s Abe Greenwald writes that the AI programmers are dealing with something that doesn’t exist, either: Silicon Souls.

One of the most vocal proponents of the AI soul is Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah. The New York Times reports on a series of meetings that Olah convened with theologians this year to determine how to ensure that AI serves the general good. But during these meetings, it became clear that Anthropic’s engineers already believe that their Claude model is conscious, has feelings, and therefore deserves the status of an entity with rights.

From what I can tell, none of the participating theologians agreed. Here’s a representative example: Rabbi Mois Navon “argued that if Anthropic was right and Claude were conscious, then the company was creating slaves, because it was making conscious entities work for free. Rabbi Navon said that he personally was not troubled by the slavery issue because he did not believe the machine was conscious, but that Mr. Olah was troubled.”

I concur.

But here’s what is troubling about all this. Anthropic has written a constitution for Claude nicknamed the “Soul Doc.” Here’s how the Times describes it: “Instead of having the models follow a specific list of rules, the constitution focuses on developing the models’ overall character, informing the way they make decisions.”

AI developers are still overseeing the writing of computer code, no matter sophisticated their chatbots seem. Why do they want to see themselves as Dr. Eldon Tyrell from Blade Runner?

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

MINNESOTA NICE, REMADE:

Posted at 1:29 pm by Stephen Green

OUR MOST CORROSIVE PRESIDENT STILL GETS A FREE PASS:

Posted at 12:58 pm by Stephen Green

THAT’S A LOT TO UNPACK IN ONE HEADLINE: ‘Independent’ Nebraska Senate Hopeful Dan Osborn Left Kellogg’s Picket Line To Address Fringe Young Democrats Conference That Backed a Prostitutes’ Union.

Dan Osborn, the Independent Nebraska Senate candidate endorsed by Democrats, ducked out of a picket line in 2021 to address a far-left convention of young Democrats that featured a land acknowledgment, calls for amnesty for illegal immigrants, and a resolution to let prostitutes form a labor union.

Osborn, who claims to be a lifelong Independent with an aversion to partisan politics, is challenging GOP senator Pete Ricketts in a surprisingly competitive race in deep red Nebraska. At the time of the outlandish 2021 Young Democrats conference, Osborn was leading a 77-day union strike against a Kellogg’s plant in Omaha.

Choose wisely, Nebraska.

Posted at 12:43 pm by Stephen Green

WAIT, I THOUGHT AMAZON CANCELLED THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE: 

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

PER PUPIL SPENDING IS A MYTH…:

…once you subtract the money that goes to administrators and other bureaucrats who are useless at best, and more often a net drag on actual education.

Posted at 12:27 pm by Stephen Green

DANIEL MCCARTHY: Latin America’s Many Trumps.

Latin America is turning right, and it’s a vindication for President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

In some ways, the Cold War never really ended in the Western hemisphere: Socialism has haunted the nations of Central and South America long after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the same Cuban regime the Soviet Union propped up for decades remains in power to this day.

The hard left thought it had cemented control over Venezuela, too, thanks to Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro — until American forces snatched Maduro right out of his bed back in January and took him to New York to stand trial.

Yet most of our neighbors to the south are not ruled by dictators. Instead, elections in Latin America have swung back and forth between left and right.

Only now they’re all swinging to the right, as the region’s biggest nation dramatically illustrated last weekend.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 12:12 pm by Stephen Green

DETAILS DRIP, DRIP, DRIP OUT ABOUT FAIRFORD INCIDENT: Intended Drone Attack.

Concerns about the strategic and tactical implications of Operation Spiderweb have circulated in military circles ever since Ukraine succeeded in blindsiding the Russians. Bases once considered safely behind the lines are now suddenly vulnerable, and militaries are playing catch-up. High-tech, billion-dollar bombers thought to be out of the line of fire are suddenly potentially vulnerable.

In that light, nothing about Iran’s efforts or U.S. concerns is mysterious; what is bizarre is how the U.K. is treating the whole incident. One would not expect a security service to scoop up men who appear to be part of a complicated military operation on its soil and then let them walk out the door.

But then again, this is the United Kingdom, and from what I can tell, none of the men involved is white, a British nationalist, or against mass migration. That makes them clean as a whistle.

At least until they post a mean tweet.

As Jim Geraghty wrote yesterday in a post titled, “Suddenly, the U.S. Has No B-1 Bombers at RAF Fairford,” “The U.K. authorities seem to have the same approach to arrested terrorists as Jerry Seinfeld’s car rental agency had for cars. You know how to take the terrorist, you just don’t know how to hold the terrorist. And that’s really the most important part of grabbing the terrorist, the holding. Anybody can just take ’em.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

WHAT A DIFFERENCE INFLATION-ADJUSTED GAS PRICES MAKE: We keep being told by the Mainstream Media, Democrats and more than a few GOPers that gas prices under Trump are at record levels. Well, the smart guys at Issues & Insights (I&I) asked what if those prices were adjusted for inflation?

The results are in and, while I won’t tell you which president’s prices were actually the highest, the (I&I) assessment finds Trump 47 ranks only in sixth-place on the highest-ever-inflation-adjusted gas prices. Can someone please pass this datapoint over to The New York Times/CNN/Washington Post/ABC/NPR/etc. etc.?

Oh yes, here’s the I&I explanation for Reagan’s position in this accounting: “Reagan’s average is on the high end because he inherited sky-high gas prices from Jimmy ‘Malaise’ Carter. When Reagan came into office [1981], gas was over $5 a gallon in today’s dollars. The month he left office [1989], it was $2.40.”

Posted at 11:56 am by Mark Tapscott

THE ISSUE IS NEVER THE ISSUE:

Ginned-up rape claims trump actual murdered women because the former can be used to further the revolution, while the latter cannot.

Posted at 11:56 am by Stephen Green

TEXAS: Proposition I: Audit Austin.

Of course Democrats and unions hate the idea of audits, because that would show just how deep they’ve shoved their hands into the cookie jar:

Austin appears to use homeless program “consultants” as a conduit to donate money to Democrats.

That is, when they’re not using it to launder money into their own pockets.

Remember the entire “Reimaging Austin Police” lunacy? The entire purpose of that charade was to take money out of the hands of law enforcement and put it into the hands of radical leftwing organizations, almost all of which just happened to have members on the “reimaging” task force.
No wonder they don’t want audits.

Audit them IRS-style.

Posted at 11:25 am by Stephen Green