WHEN CHATGPT argues against itself.

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

OVER AT MY NEW SUBSTACK, I talk with David Bernstein about America’s idiotic racial classification system, “We have already reached a point where a majority of the population can qualify as owners of ‘minority business enterprise’ eligible for preferences in federal and state contracts. . . . Within a generation, something like eighty percent of the population will be eligible.”

As we discuss,this is particularly relevant as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on affirmative action in higher education. I hope they’re reading Bernstein’s book.

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FROM BAUHAUS TO OUR HOUSE: The Progressive Stranglehold on Art and Architecture.

The left today completely controls high art, architecture, and pop culture in America. Leftists run the selection board at the Grammys and the appointment committee at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. They dominate the board rooms at Burning Man and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They run blockbuster movie sets in Hollywood and critically acclaimed productions in Sundance. They control the Rolling Stone editorial board and the Pulitzer Prize selection committee. They have complete control of the Smithsonian, the National Endowment for the Arts, and most state and local public art agencies. Every architecture school in America, even in conservative areas, is dominated by liberal professors and administration.

Design studio is the most important part of any architecture school curriculum, and there is no better course than studio to include leftist propaganda along with course material. Most studio projects have both a social and design component, and each semester in studio focuses on a different theme—environmental, socioeconomic, religious, and racial issues, for example. Just about any topic you might hear discussed at an elite San Francisco dinner party will find its way to the hypothetical building program, in studio, at any architecture school in the country. Liberals are educating young artists and architects, and for years, the right has just watched it happen.

If conservative America has any chance of bringing the arts and architecture back to neutral ground, they have to understand the origin of the left’s century-long grip on the arts and architecture. In the 1920s, most prominent creatives, including many American expatriates who complained about the lagging art scene in the United States, were living and working in Paris. Like the U.S., France had given this decade a nickname, “Les Annes Folles,” or “the crazy years.” Signals rang out over the streets of Paris on November 11, 1918, announcing the end of World War I. A British journalist, Helen Adam, wrote of the occasion, “It would have been strange if Paris had kept her head about her when the Armistice was signaled, and accordingly, she did not.” There was a party in the streets for the next four days; some, including many artists, would keep that party going for the next ten years. It lasted until the stock market collapse in America in 1929 brought the entire world economy to its knees.

Modernism was the new and prominent art movement at the time. Most art today, including architecture, visual art, music, theater, dance, and literature, was birthed by the modernist movement that dominated art innovation in Paris in the 1920s.

Modernism wasn’t a specific style, but was more of an idea. Part of the idea was to reject everything that came before. Modernists believed the world’s systems, styles, and traditions needed to be completely reimagined and reinvented, in hopes that the human condition would be radically transformed to make the world a fairer and more equitable place. The modernist vision in art was closely related to socialist beliefs of how business and industry should operate. Creatives believed art, especially architecture and urban planning, could fulfill the promise of equity among different socio-economic classes.

And yesterday, we all saw the dead-end of a century of modern art:

SPACE: Virgin Galactic restructures leadership as it prepares to resume flights.

BUTTIGIEG CAN’T FAIL; HE CAN ONLY BE FAILED: Bloomberg: Buttigieg’s post-Biden ambitions dented by travel meltdown.

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: 90% of online content could be ‘generated by AI by 2025,’ expert says.

Generative AI, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, could completely revamp how digital content is developed, said Nina Schick, adviser, speaker, and A.I. thought leader told Yahoo Finance Live (video above).

“I think we might reach 90% of online content generated by AI by 2025, so this technology is exponential,” she said. “I believe that the majority of digital content is going to start to be produced by AI. You see ChatGPT… but there are a whole plethora of other platforms and applications that are coming up.”

The surge of interest in OpenAI’s DALL-E and ChatGPT has facilitated a wide-ranging public discussion about AI and its expanding role in our world, particularly generative AI.

“ChatGPT has really captured the public imagination in an extremely compelling way, but I think in a few months’ time, ChatGPT is just going to be seen as another tool powered by this new form of AI, known as generative AI,” she said.

In September of 2021, the Atlantic ran piece headlined: Maybe You Missed It, but the Internet ‘Died’ Five Years Ago.

Let me explain. Dead-internet theory suggests that the internet has been almost entirely taken over by artificial intelligence. Like lots of other online conspiracy theories, the audience for this one is growing because of discussion led by a mix of true believers, sarcastic trolls, and idly curious lovers of chitchat. One might, for example, point to @_capr1corn, a Twitter account with what looks like a blue orb with a pink spot in the middle as a profile picture. In the spring, the account tweeted “i hate texting come over and cuddle me,” and then “i hate texting i just wanna hug you,” and then “i hate texting just come live with me,” and then “i hate texting i just wanna kiss u,” which got 1,300 likes but didn’t perform as well as it did for @itspureluv. But unlike lots of other online conspiracy theories, this one has a morsel of truth to it. Person or bot: Does it really matter?

Dead-internet theory. It’s terrifying, but I love it. I read about it on Agora Road’s Macintosh Cafe, an online forum with a pixelated-Margaritaville vibe and the self-awarded honor “Best Kept Secret of the Internet!” Right now, the background is a repeated image of palm trees, a hot-pink sunset, and some kind of liquor pouring into a rocks glass. The site is largely for discussing lo-fi hip-hop, which I don’t listen to, but it is also for discussing conspiracy theories, which I do.

In January, I stumbled across a new thread there titled “Dead Internet Theory: Most of the Internet is Fake,” shared by a user named IlluminatiPirate. Over the next few months, this would become the ur-text for those interested in the theory. The post is very long, and some of it is too confusing to bother with; the author claims to have pieced together the theory from ideas shared by anonymous users of 4chan’s paranormal section and another forum called Wizardchan, an online community premised on earning wisdom and magic through celibacy. (In an email, IlluminatiPirate, who is an operations supervisor for a logistics company in California, told me that he “truly believes” in the theory. I agreed not to identify him by name because he said he fears harassment.)

Peppered with casually offensive language, the post suggests that the internet died in 2016 or early 2017, and that now it is “empty and devoid of people,” as well as “entirely sterile.” Much of the “supposedly human-produced content” you see online was actually created using AI, IlluminatiPirate claims, and was propagated by bots, possibly aided by a group of “influencers” on the payroll of various corporations that are in cahoots with the government. The conspiring group’s intention is, of course, to control our thoughts and get us to purchase stuff.

To be fair, the Internet was killed when Net Neutrality was repealed; apparently it will be especially killed off as AI becomes even more ubiquitous.

Related: Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ‘Dune’ Was Never Made, but With A.I., We Get a Glimpse of His ‘Tron.’

I was recently shown some frames from a film that I had never heard of: Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1976 version of “Tron.” The sets were incredible. The actors, unfamiliar to me, looked fantastic in their roles. The costumes and lighting worked together perfectly. The images glowed with an extravagant and psychedelic sensibility that felt distinctly Jodorowskian.

However, Mr. Jodorowsky, the visionary Chilean filmmaker, never tried to make “Tron.” I’m not even sure he knows what “Tron” is. And Disney’s original “Tron” was released in 1982. So what 1970s film were these gorgeous stills from? Who were these neon-suited actors? And how did I — the director of the documentary “Jodorowsky’s Dune,” having spent two and a half years interviewing and working with Alejandro to tell the story of his famously unfinished film — not know about this?

The truth is that these weren’t stills from a long-lost movie. They weren’t photos at all. These evocative, well-composed and tonally immaculate images were generated in seconds with the magic of artificial intelligence.

* * * * * * * *

What will it mean when directors, concept artists and film students can see with their imaginations, when they can paint using all the digitally archived visual material of human civilization? When our culture starts to be influenced by scenes, sets and images from old films that never existed or that haven’t yet even been imagined?

I have a feeling we’re all about to find out.

This isn’t the Jetsons*-style 21st century I was promised, but I’m willing to explore the possibilities.

* Which might be a good thing: Stop with the Jetsons Nostalgia!

TRUST THE EXPERTS! ChatGPT fools scientists more than 1/3 of the time.

BYRON YORK: The big problem with the Joe Biden documents story.

Those White House remarks, by the way, were the ones in which Biden defended the storage of classified material in a garage close to his beloved 1967 Corvette sports car. “My Corvette is in a locked garage, OK?” Biden said in response to a question from Fox News’s Peter Doocy. “So it’s not like they’re sitting out in the street.” With that, Biden seemed to suggest that security for a really cool vintage car is certainly sufficient for classified documents, too.

The documents in the Wilmington house could present another problem for Biden, which is that Biden’s son Hunter, when he was addicted to crack and in a downward spiral, was living in the house when the documents were in the garage. That could be a problem in two senses. One, Hunter Biden, always trying to make some money off his father’s names and connections, had a lot of shady foreign associates. And two, Hunter had what you might call a lax attitude toward information security. After all, he left a laptop filled with all sorts of information at a repair shop and never returned to claim it, leading to more problems than anyone could have imagined.

Speaking of Hunter, Jonathan Turley explores: The liberal media’s cynical gaslighting on House probes into Hunter Biden.

Even in a city where influence-peddling is a virtual cottage industry, the Bidens took the corrupt practice to a truly Olympian level. The direct references to Joe Biden receiving money and benefits from these contracts should concern any citizen, let alone any journalist. Yet House Democrats blocked efforts to investigate any Biden influence-peddling.

This obstruction was only possible with an enabling and protective media downplaying the scandal. The press continued the effective blackout even as emails showed Biden repeatedly lied about having no knowledge of his son’s foreign business.

Such denials, however, are getting more difficult. The Associated Press had to withdrawits absurd recent claim there’s no evidence of Biden ever discussing his son’s dealings. There’s even audio of him leaving a message for Hunter specifically about coverage of those dealings.

Dozens of emails, pictures and witness accounts prove the president was not just aware but a possible beneficiary of this corruption. His personal interactions with his son’s business associates include at least 19 visits to the White House by Hunter’s partner, Eric Schwerin, alone from 2009 to 2015, when Biden was vice president.

Emails on Hunter’s laptop make repeated reference to not only Joe’s knowledge but efforts to hide his involvement. In one email, Biden associate James Gilliar instructed Tony Bobulinski, then Hunter’s business partner: “Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u [sic] are face to face, I know u [sic] know that but they are paranoid.” Bobulinski has given sworn statements that he personally met with Joe Biden to discuss these dealings.

Emails used code names for Joe Biden such as “Celtic” or “the big guy.” In one, “the big guy” is mentioned as possibly receiving a 10% cut on a deal with a Chinese energy firm. There are also references to Hunter paying off his father’s bills from shared accounts.

Code names, cuts for “the big guy” and millions in mysterious foreign transactions would ordinarily send the media into a frenzy. But the Bidens adeptly enlisted the press into suppressing the story. Many in the media became “made men” and women who proved their loyalty. If this is a corruption scandal, there’s little the media can do to spin their own role in concealing it from the public.

No wonder Chuck Todd was especially crabby today: NBC’s Todd Claims He’s a ‘Journalist’ & ‘Deals in Facts’, Ron Johnson [R-WI] Schools Him.

“I take it at your word that you’re ethically bothered by Hunter Biden,” Todd said to Johnson to which he shot back “are you not?”

“I’m a journalist. I have to deal in facts. Senator my question to you is, I have skepticism of both parties. I sit here with skepticism of a lot of people’s work,” Todd said with a straight face.

Was it “deal[ing] in facts” when Todd claimed that bringing in more migrants will solve our nation’s inflation problem?

What about when Todd dredged up a conspiracy theory that Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis flew migrants to Martha’s Vineyard to distract from an attempt to distract from Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) proposing a vote on pro-life legislation if Republicans take control of the Senate in the 2022 midterms?

There are plenty of examples of Todd being a fact-free leftist hack. Check out our Todd archive for all the lowlights here.

Just think of Todd as a former and current Democratic Party operative with a byline, and ongoing freakouts over the GOP investigating the Bidens makes perfect sense.

VEGAN DIETS AREN’T EVEN GOOD FOR PEOPLE, AND WE’RE OMNIVORES: Vegan Diets For Pets Pose Plenty of Questions, Study Finds.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Four More Virginia Schools Admit To Withholding National Merit Awards From Students.

With four more school principals confessing they withheld National Merit awards from students, bringing the total to seven schools so far, the Fairfax County Parents Association sent the school district, state and local leaders a scathing letter, calling them out for saying that the awards “don’t matter.”

“You should hang your heads in shame,” the parents’ group, a nonpartisan volunteer grassroots organization, wrote in a letter published late Saturday morning…

In its letter, the parents’ group asked state and local leaders, “How dare you tell students that their hard work doesn’t matter? How dare you pretend that students who manage to be in the top 3% academically among seniors nationwide have not achieved an accomplishment of which they should be enormously proud? How dare you tell these students – most of whom do not come from wealth – that it doesn’t matter whether they are able to note this achievement on college applications, or applications for academic scholarships that could help pay for college?”

There should be civil rights lawsuits and a criminal investigation.

JEFF GOLDSTEIN: Green Eggs and Hamfisted: Public intellectualism once involved a degree of humility. Now it is too often hubris all the way down. “If you haven’t yet encountered it, here’s the new orthodoxy on vaccine hesitancy from self-styled public intellectuals Sam Harris and Scott Adams (paraphrased): the science as it unfolded suggested that the vaccine hesitant had no valid rational basis for that hesitancy; while those who promoted mandates were wrong only accidentally, given that they were basing their position on the science as it had been reported to them by those most credentialed to do so.”

WELL: New MIT Research Indicates That Automation Is Responsible for Income Inequality.

WELL, THAT’S A MARK IN FAVOR OF HYDROGEN CARS FOR SURE: Feds Prefer EVs over Hydrogen for Future Cars in New ‘Decarbonization’ Blueprint.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Yet Again, George Washington University Permits Antisemitism From Faculty.

Last week, the pro-Israel organization, StandWithUs, filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights on behalf of Jewish and Israeli students enrolled in GW’s professional psychology program.

The complaint elucidates persistent anti-Semitic actions by a vile creature called Lara Sheehi, who also specializes in “anti-oppressive theories” and calls herself “anti-fascist.” She facilitates the program’s mandatory course, and last semester, Sheehi regularly singled out Jewish students solely for their identity.

Sheehi also invited a guest speaker who used anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jews being deceitful and power-hungry. A rabid Palestinian activist, Sheehi endorsed using violence against Israeli civilians and called all Israelis “fucking racist.” When some students complained about the open bigotry they encountered in the classroom, Sheehi predictably denied the allegations and, like any dishonest gaslighting goon, claimed the students were guilty of targeting other “identity groups.”

So much for safe spaces on campus when it comes to Jew-bashing.

Read the whole thing.

OUT ON A LIMB: Climate Activism Isn’t About the Planet. It’s About the Boredom of the Bourgeoisie.

The downfall of capitalism will not come from the uprising of an impoverished working class but from the sabotage of a bored upper class. This was the view of the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1942. Schumpeter believed that at some point in the future, an educated elite would have nothing left to struggle for and will instead start to struggle against the very system that they themselves live in.

Nothing makes me think Schumpeter was right like the contemporary climate movement and its acolytes. The Green movement is not a reflection of planetary crisis as so many in media and culture like to depict it, but rather, a crisis of meaning for the affluent.

* * * * * * * *

Even supposed grass-roots movements like “Just Stop Oil” or “Last Generation” (of “tomato soup on paintings” fame) are in fact funded by millionaires, like Aileen Getty, the granddaughter of legendary oil-tycoon Jean Paul Getty, and the Climate Emergency Fund.

Just like Kerry, Ehrlich, and these other groups are not really interested in solving the problem of climate change—for example, promoting research in technologies like nuclear energy, carbon capture technologies, and means of adaptation. Instead, they with to elevate their struggle to an ersatz-religion that allows them to simultaneously enjoy their wealth and lecture the rest of the world from a position of moral superiority.

In contrast, here is an extremely well-reasoned and explained pushback to the woke disease: Konstantin Kisin absolutely positively OWNS ‘woke’ youth fighting #climatechange and BOOYAH (watch).

This is the first time we’ve come across Konstantin Kisin who is a Russian/British comedian/podcaster/speaker, etc. and wow … he really did a fantastic job of putting the woke youth in their place when it comes to climate change.

And it’s not just what he says, but how he says it.

Watch:

Brilliant speech addressed to our ‘woke’ youth fighting #climatechange by Konstantine Kisin. pic.twitter.com/mFS8w0t2ip

— Brandon Taylor Moore (@LetsGoBrando45) January 14, 2023

UPDATE: What is this “British” being referenced above? So Wrong So Long. CBS rings in the new year with serial doomsayer Paul Ehrlich. “Ehrlich also thought it was even money that England would no longer exist in the year 2000, but at the dawn of 2023, England is still there. ‘Perhaps Ehrlich’s biggest mistake,’ according to Harsanyi, ‘was living long enough to be proven wrong dozens of times.’ That is good to know, but there’s more going on here than Ehrlich’s failures and media malpractice.”

OUT: MUSCLE CARS. IN: MUSCLE TRUCKS. 2023 Ford F-150 Raptor R vs. 2022 Ram 1500 TRX: The 700-HP Brawl!

WORST BOSSES ON CAPITOL HILL: Just in case anybody here on Instapundit is thinking about seeking a position as a congressional aide, or knows somebody who is, here are the 10 Senate and 10 House offices you may want to think twice about before accepting an offer, as compiled by Legistorm and reported by HillFaith.

I DUNNO; IT’S BEEN A HELL OF A WEEK: Miss Universe Is the Weirdest Thing You’ll See All Week.

None of us actually watch the Miss Universe pageant, do we? I don’t. But I opened Twitter this morning, and the videos that greeted me had me scratching my head wondering: what is this bizarre display of weirdness and why is it part of a beauty contest? Is it a prank? A hoax? A troll? A joke?

But it’s real!

The Miss Universe pageant–which proclaims to find the most beautiful woman every year in the entire universe, but only has contestants from planet Earth (disappointing)–has incorporated some kind of “dress like your country took a hit of acid and hired RuPaul to make your outfit” event. Maybe it’s because it’s being held in New Orleans. Is it “dress like a parade float”? I don’t know.

Click over to see the freak show.

GERRY ANDERSON ASSURED ME THROUGHOUT THE 1960s AND ‘70s THAT ENGLAND WOULD HAVE A THRIVING SPACE PROGRAM OF THEIR OWN BY NOW. Instead, they’re only just now orbiting a satellite via a booster air-launched off the wing of a Virgin 747:  U.K. set to make history with first-ever orbital space launch on Monday.

SENECA SCOTT: A Masturbatory ‘Homage’ to My Family.

By now, I’m sure you’ve seen it. The new Boston sculpture “honoring” Dr. Martin Luther King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, looks more like a pair of hands hugging a beefy penis than a special moment shared by the iconic couple. Created by the organization Embrace Boston, the sculpture has inspired mad jokes on Twitter, and rightly so. But for my family, it’s rather insulting. You see, Coretta was my first cousin, my grandfather’s niece, and the daughter of my great uncle Obediah Scott.

Martin married up. Coretta came from a distinguished family, with a significant legacy in her own right. There is a reason she kept the Scott name. We were a black family that owned land, lots of it. Martin knew what he was doing when he pursued her, signaling intentions to marry from the outset. After his assassination, Coretta created a legacy of her own, fighting for health-care workers and against Apartheid in South Africa.

“The Boston debacle … exposes the insidiousness of astroturfed woke movements.”

In his 2002 review of C.P. Snow’s 1959 book, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, Orrin Judd of the Brothers Judd blog wrote:

As Snow notes, as late as say the 1850s, any reasonably well-educated, well-read, inquisitive man could speak knowledgeably about both science and the arts.  Man knew little enough that it was still possible for one to know nearly everything that was known and to have been exposed to all the religion, art, history–culture in general–that mattered.  But then with the pure science revolution of which Snow spoke–in biology and chemistry, but most of all in physics–suddenly a great deal of specialized training and education was necessary before one could be knowledgeable in each field.  Like priests of some ancient cult, scientists were separated out from the mass of men, elevated above them by their access to secret knowledge.  Even more annoying was the fact that even though they had moved beyond what the rest of us could readily understand, they could still listen to Bach or read Shakespeare and discuss it intelligently.  The reaction of their peers in the arts, or those who had been their peers, was to make their own fields of expertise as obscure as possible.  If Picasso couldn’t understand particle physics, he sure as hell wasn’t going to paint anything comprehensible, and if Joyce couldn’t pick up a scientific journal and read it, then no one was going to be able to read his books either.  And so grew the two cultures, the one real, the other manufactured, but both with elaborate and often counterintuitive theories, requiring years of study.

And thus we we end up with the formulation of Tom Wolfe’s 1975 book, The Painted Word, where modern art exists almost solely to justify the theory behind it, and as Wolfe wrote, “In short: frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can’t see a painting.”

Or a modernist sculpture — although sadly, there’s no unseeing “the Boston debacle:”

CAN MR. MUSK PLEASE BUY LINKEDIN NEXT? Here’s headline on my latest column over on PJ Media: “Censorious Cowards at Linkedin Refuse to Explain Their Trashing of First Amendment, Free Speech.” This time it’s personal.

A GOOD WOMAN WITH A GUN: ‘Let Go Of My Kid’: Gun-Packin’ Mom Thwarts Attempted Child Abduction in Downtown Des Moines.

DEAL OF THE DAY: Alimens Button Down Regular Fit Long Sleeve Plaid Flannel Casual Shirts. #CommissionEarned (Bumped)

READER FAVORITE: Levi’s Men’s 501 Original Fit Jeans. #CommissionEarned