SKYNET DRIVES: Why Mercedes, General Motors, and Google Are Pushing AI For Cars.

AGAINST THE CORPORATE MEDIA: Michael Walsh’s New Anthology Explores How Badly the MSM Has Fallen.

My latest, over at EdDriscoll.com.

DON’T GET COCKY: Mark Halperin Drops Some Damning News on Harris’ Chances in Critical Swing States.

LIKE HOLLYWOOD, NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING: Political pros no better than public in predicting which messages persuade, researchers find.

SUBCONTRACTING OUR MINDS:

Our paltry diet of screen-based entertainment helps us realize that the acceptance of AI has been coming for a while. Long ago, we expected our national officeholders to be men and women who had read deeply and reflected more than most on our lives together and what might enhance them. Some time ago we got used to our office holders paying speechwriters, press secretaries, and ghostwriters. More recently, we got used to their reading off of teleprompters. And soon we will accept their wearing earphones and glasses with text written into them. Gazing toward the day after tomorrow, we espy the transhumanist dream of fusing human and machine, which would have us listening to a speaker’s “neural upload.”

It’s all part of automation, and of automation we have become grateful. When shown a platoon of workers with shovels digging a canal by a man who was proud of the high employment this provided, Milton Friedman famously asked why the men weren’t instead equipped with only spoons. It was a memorable quip; automation, be it with the “earth-moving machines” for which Hobbes pleaded, or with printers and QR readers, has indeed produced great efficiencies. These things deliver the goods and services that free up our time and resources.

But to what end? Back-breaking and lung-blackening tasks were taken up under the lash of necessity, and so were gladly given over to machines when they could be, thanks to human ingenuity and modern science. Those who performed them often did so with the hope that their children wouldn’t have to. But what of activities that cultivate the mind and enrich the soul? Can we, should we, not pause before we give these, too, over to machines? What of what we still call the “fine arts”—painting, sculpture, architecture, design, music composition and performance, poetry—arts that are distinctively human and that ennoble or beautify our lives? Was the leisure to engage in these arts not the very reason we sought, through technology, to overcome material necessities?

And what of those fine arts that go beyond this and offer us compelling insights into the human condition: storytelling, novel writing, play writing, short story writing, essay writing? What, finally, of philosophizing? Do we want machines doing for us what is distinctively human, reducing us, by their alleged convenience, to puppets, hollowed-out shells of human beings, mannequins of mediocrity, ersatz versions of a once exalted form of being? Do we really want to farm out to machines our capacity to think, to invent, to discover and rediscover? Are we prepared to allow the organs of our intellectual and spiritual lives to waste away while we drink the dreck that calls itself the product of intelligence?

We are crossing a threshold. Should we not pause to consider whether the house is habitable?

It’s thought-provoking and rather scary stuff; tell your iPhone 16 to read the whole thing:

HMM: Sixth Circuit Will Rehear En Banc Case Involving High School’s Pronoun Policy.

OCEANIA HAS NEVER BEEN AT WAR WITH EAST DUBYA: Liz Cheney urges George W. Bush to make presidential endorsement.

WOEING: What is happening with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft?

READER FAVORITE: Doctor-Developed Gym Wrist Wraps, Lifting Wrist Wraps for Weightlifting. #CommissionEarned

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Biden invokes wartime powers to address IV fluids shortage.

WHY IS THE KAMALA-WALZ CAMPAIGN SUCH A CESSPIT OF HOMOPHOBIA? Progressive Privilege: Walz Calls Elon Musk ‘That Gay Guy.’

I ALREADY VOTED FOR HIM, YOU CAN STOP SELLING ME:

I already voted for him on Monday. I can’t vote for him again.

Oh, and you left out the possibility of replacing Alito and Thomas (and maybe Sotomayor) with 40-year-old originalists who don’t consider the 2A to be a second class civil right.

— Shooting News Weekly (@SN_Weekly_) November 1, 2024

BRENDAN O’NEILL: The liberal media’s distortion of Trump’s Liz Cheney comments exposes how panicked they are.

So now Donald Trump wants to kill Liz Cheney? Worse, he wants to drag her before a firing squad. Is there no end to this man’s wickedness?

The Lefty web and progressive media are awash with anguished commentary on Trump’s latest dream of violence. “Trump fantasises about guns pointed at Liz Cheney’s face”, pants an irate Rolling Stone. Trump has “told a crowd” that “Liz Cheney should have guns ‘trained on her face’”, yelps Vanity Fair. He wants “nine barrels shooting” at her, cries Politico.

There’s only one problem with this vision of Trump as such a lunatic liability that he fancies hauling poor Liz Cheney off for execution – it is completely untrue. It is undiluted poppycock.

What Trump actually did was criticise Cheney’s pro-militarist streak. In a sit-down chat with Tucker Carlson in Arizona, he laid into her “war hawk” tendencies. And he wondered out loud – in his usual, unfiltered language – how she would feel about war if she was in the thick of one herself.

John Nolte adds: Bill Maher Rips Media for Liz Cheney Firing Squad Hoax: ‘Just Don’t Lie to Me.’

Left-wing comedian Bill Maher tore into the corporate media during his Real Time Overtime segment for lying about Donald Trump calling for Liz Cheney to be executed.

“I woke up to the headline ‘Donald Trump had called for a firing squad for Liz Cheney,’ said Maher, adding, “and this is what I really don’t like about the media — No, he didn’t.”

Maher goes on to explain what Trump clearly said. “He’s criticizing her for being a war hawk. I mean she is Dick Cheney’s daughter.” Maher then read Trump’s full and unambiguous quote. Here it is:

Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it, you know when the guns are trained on her face. You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington, in a nice building saying, “Oh, gee, well, let’s send — let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.”

“Just to be clear,” Maher continued, “this is exactly what hippies always said. This is exactly what peaceniks always said. [Trump is saying], ‘You know what, it’s very easy to sit in your building and send young men to die.’”

He then said to the media, “Just don’t lie to me. I don’t like Donald Trump. Don’t lie to me and tell me he wants her in front of a firing squad. He was saying something that … again, sounds like what hippies used to say.”

Dan McLaughlin flashes back to his blog writing from 20 years ago to note that that sort of hippy talk dominated the Democrats’ presidential bids during 2004 campaign season:

When you hear Democrats hit the fainting couch over Trump making a dumb chickenhawk argument, recall that their party RAN AN ENTIRE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN on that theme in 2004 https://t.co/JaLIOmeyrO

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) November 2, 2024

UPDATE: Here’s A List Of Every Garbage Journalist Who Lied About Trump’s Liz Cheney Chickenhawk Comments.

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Garbage Time Edition.

DIVERSITY PROBLEM: Democrat professors outnumber Republicans 28 to 1 at U. Arizona.

WORDS ≠ VIOLENCE: Anyone who’s ever been punched in the face knows this all-too-well, but unfortunately, according to new data, 8 in 10 Americans have confused the two.

LIGHTNING DEAL: LE 1000LM Battery Powered LED Camping Lantern. #CommissionEarned

FOREIGN INTERFERENCE: Chinese University of Michigan student illegally voted in presidential election.

REPORT FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Bombshell Revelations in Daniel Penny Trial Turn Entire Prosecution on Its Head. “At the time, the facts of the case were already called into question after a video taken on the scene showed Neely still breathing for a significant period after the altercation. Further, Penny put Neely in the “recovery position,” suggesting he had no intent to cause permanent harm. At the time, I asked whether Neely was still breathing when first responders arrived. That question has now been answered thanks to newly released bodycam footage. Not only was Neely breathing when the police arrived, but they refused to give him mouth-to-mouth, instead sticking him with Narcan assuming a drug overdose was involved. . . . Would Neely be alive today if the police had taken immediate action to save his life? Did the shot of Narcan contribute to his death? Questions like those are going to complicate the prosecution’s attempt to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Penny was directly responsible for Neely’s death.”

Related: In Daniel Penny Case, NYC Has Put Batman on Trial.

NOT A BAD APPROACH: Read the Opponent, Not the Polls.

GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: Why Los Angeles Is Becoming a Production Graveyard.

The production downturn has forced some industry insiders to reconcile with the impact of the most recent WGA and SAG-AFTRA deals, which structure yearly minimum raises to match inflation.

Preston Garrett, managing director of production company Rakish, is advocating for a moratorium on increases to crews and the temporary lowering of minimums until more work returns. “What matters more, keeping pace with what’s deemed to be fair inflation or sustainable crew rates that keep people working?” Garrett asks. “If we make the market more competitive, more work will come.”

On Monday, Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Tony Vinciquerra warned that the deals made with major labor unions are suppressing domestic production. “The contract terms are forcing productions out of the U.S. now,” he said at MIPCOM in Cannes.

“There’s a very significant difference in California, which has been the hardest hit [and] just hasn’t responded to what’s going on in the world of incentives,” Vinciquerra noted. “The cost of doing business in California is so high that it’s very difficult to price out a film.”

In a statement, SAG-AFTRA national executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said Vinciquerra is peddling a “false narrative.” He added, “Threatening the offshoring of American jobs is a cynical attempt to manipulate workers while masking the industry’s own business failures.”

Other Hollywood vets lament that L.A. is simply no longer a film-friendly hub. It’s not any one thing, it’s death by a thousand cuts. Another example: The rising cost of shooting permits. Last year, FilmLA rolled out rate hikes on a slew of fees. While some of the increases were tied to inflation, others represented markups of roughly 8 to 17 percent. Among the service pricing changes were additional limitations imposed by the guidelines that have aggravated location budgets. A permit that used to accommodate up to 10 locations over 14 consecutive days now allows for only five locations over seven days.

Jason McCauley, a location manager for Joker: Folie à Deux, which was partially filmed in L.A., says he’s seen permitting fees double in some cases. “It’s not the deciding factor, but those costs on top of what it otherwise costs to film here become expensive,” he adds. “It’s not just the permits; it’s labor, fuel, parking.”

As P.J. O’Rourke famously wrote, “You can’t get good Chinese takeout in China and Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba. That’s all you need to know about communism.” And you can’t make movies and TV shows in 2024 Los Angeles, which is all you need to know about the state’s continuing descent into socialism.

Incidentally, note how libertarian all of the Kamala voters in Hollywood sound when it’s time to jumpstart their industry. But then as Conquest’s First Law of Politics states, “Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.”

LIFE IN THE BLUE ZONES: Police brace for election violence, DC being boarded up.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Harris would be as much a figurehead as Biden — and we’d be ruled by the swamp.

AS A LEGENDARY COMMUNITY ORGANIZER ADVISES, GET IN THEIR FACES AND PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD:

HOLY SHT! @kleavittnh absolutely destroyed this ABC host to oblivion 🔥🔥🔥

She will crying herself to sleep later 😂

Best clip of the day 👏🏼pic.twitter.com/hKZ6oqC4b6

— Sara Rose 🇺🇸🌹 (@saras76) November 1, 2024

ELECTION INTERFERENCE: ‘Something That the Feds Really Need To Look At’: Liberal Dark Money Network Sends Inaccurate Election Texts to Voters Across US: One New Mexico official said the misleading texts are ‘something that the feds really need to look at and crack down on.’