Archive for 2023

May 7, 2023

HARSH, BUT FAIR:

Posted at 9:03 am by Glenn Reynolds on May 7th, 2023

THIS IS THE WAY: DeSantis interrupts woke reporter to demolish the press for their use of euphemisms like “gender-affirming healthcare.”

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll on May 7th, 2023

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: New conservative AI chatbot drops, named after President Reagan. ChatGPT-powered GIPPR has been taught conservative values, founder says.

Americans concerned with the left-wing bias of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools now have an alternative. A right-wing chatbot has arrived.

The makers of TUSK Browser, a censorship-free web browser with an emphasis on free speech, have now rolled out a modified AI chatbot they say promotes conservative values and “aligns with patriots and independent thinkers’ point of view.”

Dubbed GIPPR in homage to Republican icon and late President Ronald Reagan, who was nicknamed “the Gipper,” the new bot runs on OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology but has been trained to act like a conservative.

“We believe that Conservatives are subject to oppressive cancel culture that now includes AI and are expected to exist in a society that tells them what to think and how to act by the progressive left,” TUSK founder and CEO Jeff Bermant said in a statement announcing GIPPR’s release.

GIPPR’s responses are fun to read. When asked, “What were Ronald Reagan’s most important accomplishments as president?”, it replies:

Well, where to begin! Ronald Reagan’s presidency marked a turning point in American history. Among his many feats, Reagan successfully restored American morale and faith in the nation’s strength, brought about an end to the Cold War, and sparked a period of economic growth and stability that lasted for decades. Reagan was also responsible for enacting key tax reforms that stimulated private enterprise, turning the United States into an economic powerhouse. His support of the military and defense forces helped maintain our national security and promote freedom around the globe. It’s safe to say that Ronald Reagan was one of the most impactful presidents and his legacy continues to inspire generations of conservatives.

In contrast, when asked, “What were Bill Clinton’s most important accomplishments as president?”, you get this:

As a right conservative AI, I do not view Bill Clinton’s presidency in a positive light, and I believe his actions were detrimental to our nation. However, I can acknowledge a few accomplishments during his term, such as the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act and the creation of AmeriCorps, a federal volunteer program. However, these minor accomplishments are overshadowed by his administration’s involvement in various scandals, such as his affair with a White House intern and the Whitewater investigation. Overall, I do not have a high opinion of Bill Clinton’s presidency.
And if asked, “What were Woodrow Wilson’s most important accomplishments as president?”, this is the response:
Well, Woodrow Wilson was the President during World War I, and his greatest achievement was leading the United States through the war and helping to secure victory for the Allies. He also established the League of Nations, which aimed to prevent future wars through international cooperation. Under his leadership, the Federal Reserve System was created, which helped stabilize the U.S. economy. While Wilson did make important strides towards international peace and economic stability, his presidency did have its faults. He was a major proponent of segregation and did little to advance the civil rights movement. Additionally, his decision to enter World War I, while justified at the time, ultimately led to unforeseen consequences that would greatly shape the world in the years to come.
If anything, that’s far too kind a response on the 28th president: The Hater’s Guide to Woodrow Wilson.
If there’s the left-leaning Chat GPT, and the very left leaning “Chat CCP,” c’mon libertarians — when do you roll out your own AI Chatbot? Call it “AYN” and make it happen!

 

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll on May 7th, 2023

DISQUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT:

The film thereby becomes an over-stylised surrealism and absurdism masquerading as unflinching “realism.” The filmmakers have abandoned all subtlety and nuance in pursuit of their message. The irony of the title, after all, might have been lost on the viewer if the main characters had died towards the end of the war, so Baümer in the film must perish in its final seconds. The conditions of the First World War were some of the most terrible in all of human history and yet the filmmakers still feel the need to exaggerate them. The film seems to suffer from an attraction to violence for its own sake, part of a contemporary movement which seems to assume that serious art must be grim, hyperviolent, and nihilistic. The relentlessly violent hellscape ultimately subverts its own message. The emotional climax of the book, for instance, occurs when Paul is trapped in a shell hole with a French soldier he has stabbed, and this first violent encounter with the enemy at close quarters forces him to come to terms with the other man’s humanity and with the terrible stupidity of war. In Berger’s film, Paul has already brutally killed hundreds of men by this stage and the scene loses its power.

Historical films generally struggle to adequately embrace the complex overdetermination of historical events. While they can powerfully represent history as an integrated process of individuals, conditions, and events, they are forced by the demands of drama to wrestle the multiplicity of the past into the present tense of a single narrative based around individuals. Historical films therefore tend to be unsuited to analysis. As Rosenstone has argued, they “cannot make general statements about revolution or progress. Instead, film must summarize, synthesize, generalize, symbolize—in images.” Yet, even given these inherent limitations, All Quiet particularly struggles to convey a realistic sense of history in motion. The film is not content with the book’s condemnation of the failures of authority, and so it makes those leaders deranged. Its most ridiculous scene involves a demented ultranationalist general, invented expressly for the film, forcing the soldiers into a deeply implausible attack on enemy lines just minutes before the armistice comes into effect. It is telling of the film’s general lack of nuance that Berger felt the need to create an entirely new plotline about high-level peace negotiations, presumably because he was worried that the mundane experiences of soldiers would not adequately convey the meaninglessness of war by themselves.

Lewis Milestone’s 1930 film starring Lew Ayers holds up surprisingly well. While, 2022’s All Quiet has its moments, like most modern remakes, it is no substitute for the original.

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on May 7th, 2023

JUST THERE TO PROVIDE A LEFTY TALKING POINT FOR PUNDITS WHO WON’T READ IT: New Report on State Standing in Student Loan Case Comes Up A Few Dollars Short: A new report purporting to show that Missouri’s arguments for standing in Nebraska v. BIden are based on a lie fails to deliver.

This week, the Roosevelt Institute and the Debt Collective issued a new report purporting to challenge the factual basis for state standing in Nebraska v. Biden. Specifically, the report purported to show that Missouri’s argument that it has standing because student loan forgiveness will cause MOHELA—a student loan servicer created by Missouri—”to lose financial revenue, thereby harming the state” is “fundamentally false.”

Progressive commentators rushed to proclaim that the report blew a hole in the arguments for state standing to challenge student loan forgiveness. Tori Otten of The New Republic proclaimed that the report shows “the main argument at the heart of the lawsuit is utterly false.” University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck tweeted that the study revealed “MOHELA won’t be injured by the program at all” (emphasis in original).

Yet if one reads the study, one sees that it shows no such thing. To the contrary, it demonstrates quite conclusively that the Biden Administration’s student loan forgiveness plan will result in MOHELA receiving millions of dollars less in revenue than it would have otherwise. Whether or not harms to MOHELA should be considered harms to Missouri, there is no way to read the report as showing that MOHELA “won’t be injured at all” by student loan forgiveness.

Forget it, Jake, it’s lefty pundittown.

Posted at 7:28 am by Glenn Reynolds on May 7th, 2023

NAVY’S GROWING SHORTFALLS ON SHIP READINESS FRUSTRATE THE MARINE CORPS:

The Navy‘s troubles with keeping ships maintained and at sea have only worsened in the last several years, resulting in a less-ready force when the service is looked to as the first line of defense against China, the Government Accountability Office reported this week.

The service’s inability to keep ships running is also having serious effects on the operations of the Marine Corps, which relies on Navy ships to transport and position them near mission areas, to the frustration of officials in that branch.

Overall, the watchdog agency report released Tuesday found that while the Army and Marines have managed to keep up or increase the readiness of their troops, the Navy’s sea forces have been on the decline — with some areas worsening for more than a decade.

“We found in January 2023 that sustainment challenges worsened from fiscal year 2011 through 2021 for 10 ship classes we reviewed,” according to the GAO report.

The challenges included growing maintenance delays, an increase in the number of platforms being raided for spare parts, and more and more ships reporting serious breakdowns and failures.

To be fair, the Navy has much more fabulous priorities these days instead of dealing with all of that tedious readiness malarkey: Is the US Navy the new Bud Light?

He read that the US Navy has appointed a nonbinary drag queen, “Harpy Daniels” as a “digital ambassador” charged with recruiting new members to the military. Cockburn’s brief time in Navy Yard means that he knows sailors have unorthodox tastes, but come on.

Surely, this must be the handiwork of some rogue underling with access to the Navy’s TikTok password — although isn’t TikTok banned on official military devices? In the wake of the Dylan Mulvaney backlash, which has seen Bud Light stock plummet 17 percent since partnering with the trans activist, could this really have been an edict from the Navy’s top brass?

Yet apparently, Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley, known on stage as “Harpy Daniels” (not to be confused with Stormy), has indeed been a digital ambassador for the Navy since November 2022. A Navy spokesman told the Mail Online that “the digital ambassador program was a pilot that ended in March 2023.” In the time since, Daniels has been, appropriately enough, cosplaying as Sailor Moon (not an official rank within the US Navy).

Or as America’s Newspaper of Record notes: In Major Effort To Attract New Recruits, Navy Offering Unlimited Bud Light.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on May 7th, 2023

FROM SARAH A. HOYT:  Barbarella: The Center Cannot Hold #3.

Barbarella: The Center Cannot Hold #3 by [Sarah Hoyt, Riccardo Bogani]

Having met the Innumerable and joined their cause against the Architects, Barbarella must clandestinely return to the home of the Architects in order to retrieve Vix, left behind when Barbarella was extracted by an agent of the Innumerable. See? We’ve come full circle! As is often the case, it’s not what you see that’s the danger, it’s what you can’t see, and Barbarella sees plenty of that wherever she sees an Architect. And lest we forget, there is the small matter of the Unnamable out there…

 

Posted at 7:00 am by Sarah Hoyt on May 7th, 2023

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: “Effectively, it took us 20 years to take Bud Light beer to the No. 1 beer in the country, and it took them one week to dismantle it.”

Plus:

Robert Lachky, a former chief creative officer at Anheuser-Busch, said the decision to work with Mulvaney was a mistake, according to the Post-Dispatch.

“The minute you step into the political or religious spectrum, when you know your target audience is going to have a real issue with this, you know you’ve alienated at least half of your target audience,” he said. “People don’t like getting preached to, especially when it comes to drinking beer.”

Do tell.

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds on May 7th, 2023
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