Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

February 12, 2024

ITS ORIGIN AND PURPOSE, STILL A TOTAL MYSTERY: Joel Osteen Houston Megachurch shooting: What we know about woman who walked in with child and started firing. “The shooter used an AR-15 that had ‘Free Palestine’ written on it, according to a federal law enforcement source. Investigators are trying to sort out whether she was politically motivated or a disturbed individual, the source said.”

According to Andy Ngo, “She has been named as Genesse I. Moreno and her social media shows a history of leftist politics.”

UPDATE: Houston Police Announce Results of Their Investigation Into Church Shooter’s Pronouns. “The Houston Police have announced that through an investigation that included documents and interviews, they have determined that the shooter was a female Hispanic and will be referred to by she/her pronouns. This is all very confusing, but it seems that the police are deadnaming the dead would-be mass shooter.”

Better dead than rude.

MORE: Here’s Everything We Know About the Megachurch Shooter.

The now-deceased gunman who opened fire inside a famous Texas megachurch run by Joel Osteen Sunday afternoon has been identified as an identity-switching Hispanic woman with pro-Palestine, antisemitic beliefs.

36-year-old Genesse Ivonne Moreno, a biological female who used multiple male aliases, was wearing a trench coat when she entered the Houston-based Lakewood Church with two rifles, a backpack, and a young child by her side around 2 p.m. Sunday.

* * * * * * * *

Moreno’s Facebook page—which expressed leftist, anti-police views—has since been scrubbed. Moreno’s since-deleted Instagram account featured posts of her cleaning an AR-15 and donating money to Lakewood Church. There, she uploaded a screenshot of the contribution’s confirmation. “[A]s for me and my household…I will honor and bless my church,” Moreno wrote on Instagram.

In the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, Moreno supported socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). “I WANT HIM IN THE OFFICE AS THE US PRESIDENT,” she wrote in an Instagram post, uploading a photograph of Sanders on the campaign trail.

Arrest records show she was an El Salvadoran immigrant.

Moreno had a violent, extensive criminal history stretching back to 2005, according to court records reviewed by Townhall. She was previously arrested for assaulting a public servant, assault causing bodily injury, forgery, theft for stealing cosmetics from a store, evading police, and unlawfully carrying a weapon, among a slew of charges on Moreno’s decades-old rap sheet.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 6:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 12th, 2024

JIM TREACHER: Don’t You Think He Looks Tired?

The media have been Biden’s faithful little lapdogs all along, giving him fawning, deferential coverage that belies his woeful popularity ratings. Hell, they even shut down a legitimate news story about his corrupt business dealings with his son, just to help get him elected.

But that attitude might be changing. It’s starting to sound like ol’ Joe has outlived his usefulness to the Democratic Party, and therefore the mainstream media.

Exit quote: “This is a problem that cannot be fixed. Biden cannot get younger.”

And there’s Biden’s strangely undisciplined comms team: Joe Biden Dragged For Bizarre Super Bowl Tweet. “Why, Joe? Why was this necessary? The Dark Brandon meme/identity is weird to begin with. The premise is that the President is some kind of villain capable of outwitting all his foes. Are we really sure that’s how the President should present himself to the world? As an unstoppable villain? We all know the answer is no. Furthermore, the situation is more ridiculous because everyone knows Joe Biden isn’t cooking up these tweets. His staffers are and for some reason, they chose this bizarre take instead of just a normal tweet.”

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 12th, 2024

JONATHAN TURLEY:  The Rasputin Effect: Biden Moves To Make Podesta the Climate Czar With A Crown… or a Confirmation.

With the departure of John Kerry as “climate czar,” President Biden has announced that he will be replaced by John Podesta, a Democratic powerbroker and Washington insider.

Podesta, however, will take the power and not the title. He will be appointed as “coordinator,” thus sidestepping confirmation by the Senate, which could have been brutal.

Such action will shield Podesta from questions about Kerry’s work and expenses as climate czar. Before leaving office, Kerry refused to turn over information on his staff to Congress and the public. The Biden Administration is now being sued over the secrecy.

It would also spare Podesta from answering questions over his own past work as well as his brother’s ties to Chinese companies. Likewise, senators, including Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, have criticized Podesta for comments favoring payments to Chinese companies in the energy sector.

See also: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s impromptu disappearance late last December and early January.

It is inexcusable that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin concealed his multiday medical incapacity from President Joe Biden and top Pentagon officials, including his own Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks. By his actions, Austin has shown a catastrophic inability to recognize the responsibilities of his office or the basic principles of strategic leadership.

It would be bad enough if the transportation secretary did what Austin did. But when a defense secretary acts in such a manner, the stakes are much higher. And he chose to have elective surgery when hot spots in different parts of the world are in flames. Austin endangered national security out of a vain and misguided sense of personal privacy. This sends a message to U.S. adversaries that Washington is dysfunctional at the highest levels. Austin should be relieved of his position.

The incident underlines the broader chaos within the Biden administration and the wholly earned lack of respect in which subordinates hold their commander in chief. Obsessed with the 2024 election, the White House appears to believe its top priority is to press the media into more positive coverage of the president and more negative coverage of his challengers in the GOP. But as the president and his team focus narrowly on domestic partisan politics, the world grows more insecure.

Team Biden’s chaotic priorities are further underlined by the fact that Hicks was vacationing in Puerto Rico during her boss’s incapacity. In essence, the acting U.S. defense secretary was living the beach life unaware that she was actually in charge of the U.S. military. It’s unclear whether Austin transferred all his authorities to Hicks or just some of them.

Fortunately, “Team Biden” appears to have actually learned from their mistakes last month: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is moved to the critical care unit at Walter Reed after tests on ’emergent bladder issues’ as he passes duties to his deputy for second time in a month following his prostate cancer surgery. “Earlier Sunday, it was announced Austin has had his duties stripped and transferred to deputy Kathleen Hicks.”

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 12th, 2024

February 11, 2024

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: NBC: Taylor Swift arrives in Las Vegas for Super Bowl.

With the help of Tokyo’s 17-hour time difference ahead of Las Vegas, Swift had a window of more than 35 hours to cover the 5,500-mile journey to watch her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, face off against the San Francisco 49ers in the 58th Super Bowl Sunday evening.

Despite buzzy speculation about the tight travel plans, many fans weren’t too worried about her ability to make it. The Japanese Embassy in Washington, D.C., even issued a social media statement earlier this month expressing confidence that the pop star would “comfortably arrive” at her destination if she departed after her concert, which on Saturday ended at around 9 p.m. local time.

“We know that many people in Japan are excited to experience Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, so we wanted to confirm that anyone concerned can be Fearless in knowing that this talented performer can wow Japanese audiences and still make it to Las Vegas to support the Chiefs when they take the field for the Super Bowl wearing Red,” the embassy wrote, referencing albums of Swift’s.

Saturday afternoon in Los Angeles, online sleuths spotted what they believed to be a private or chartered jet containing Swift — who has been the subject of intense scrutiny and criticism for her outsize carbon emissions as a frequent domestic and international traveler — touch down at LAX.

From there, she traveled to Las Vegas, where she is all set to cheer on her 13th (her lucky number) Chiefs game of the season.

Hey, remember back in 2007 when NBC tried to shame football fans for having too many lights on? (Except for the billions of watts of klieg lights illuminating the NFL stadium in Philadelphia. And, err, the lighted Toyota sign, since they were sponsoring SNF.) I remember:

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 11th, 2024

AND AGAIN: Lloyd Austin taken to hospital ‘for symptoms suggesting an emergent bladder issue.’ Defense Secretary Austin’s hospital trip “comes a month after he had an extended hospital stay due to complications in treating prostate cancer. The two-week hospitalization in January caused uproar after many officials within the Pentagon, the White House, Congress, and the public were not notified of his hospitalization for days.”

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 11th, 2024

THE GASLIGHTING WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES: Have You Met You? Conservatives Give Biden Brutal History Lesson After He Posts About ‘Erasing History.’

But wait, there are more head games from Team Brandon! Biden Cried ‘Book Ban,’ Then Pressured Amazon To Ban His Opponents From World’s Biggest Bookstore.

And on Super Bowl Sunday, a reminder that there’s no shrinkflation when it comes to gaslighting from this White House:

Regarding that last item, once again, Milton Friedman’s revenge has struck.

Related: Why Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class.

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 11th, 2024

WYOMING MAN FIGURES OUT HOW TO SELL A BEAT-UP 30-YEAR-OLD SUBARU WITH 219,000 MILES ON IT:

Who wants to buy a 1994 Subaru Loyale? According to the seller, Cody resident Preston Hajik, apparently everyone does.

“A guy texted me who wanted to come all the way from Laramie to get it,” Hajik told Cowboy State Daily. “It seems that everybody in the state of Wyoming wants this car.”

That’s because Hajik posted an innovative ad for the 30-year-old sedan — dubbed “Ron Suburgundy” — on the Cody Classified Facebook page. The response has been overwhelming, probably because he did too good a job overselling his car by underselling it.

“Alright, let’s get this out of the way,” his ad reads. “This isn’t the car you want, but it’s the car you need.”

Cruise control with the right foot, traction control with the left, five seats or two seats and an enclosed truck bed, and only 219,000 miles (or so says the odometer).

You can almost hear Ron Burgundy himself: “Don’t act like you’re not impressed.”

However, as an informative, hard-hitting anchorman, Burgundy would also be obliged to point out that hitting CTL-F “1999 Toyota Corolla” brings up zero results in the above article: The Story Behind That Hilarious Toyota Corolla Craigslist Ad.

Posted at 1:44 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 11th, 2024

ROGER KIMBALL: Examining the Controversy Surrounding Tucker Carlson’s Interview with Putin.

I wonder if there is a central clearing office that issues regular updates about what nasty dictators one is allowed to engage with and which ones, for this week anyway, one must avoid.

It was okay for Gavin Newsom to remove the feces and the homeless from the streets of San Francisco in order to fête Xi Jinping. Likewise, it was just fine for CNN and the BBC to interview the leader of Hamas. And of course CNN’s Erin Burnett was on the case with Volodymyr Zelensky in her 2023 interview with the former comedian and crossdressing performance artist (though the soundtrack to this version of Burnett’s love fest is—special).

It was okay to interview or publish Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, and Sirajuddin Haqqani, deputy leader of the Taliban.  It was even okay, once upon a time, for journalists—well, some journalists—to interview Vladimir Putin.

But just let Tucker Carlson travel to Moscow to interview the Russian dictator, and pow!, the media and its minders go nuts. Did you know that Tucker Carlson is a “right-wing conspiracy,” a faux-journalist, and (according to Hillary Clinton) “a useful idiot.”  Really, the clip is just as amusing as those compilations of important people explaining why Donald Trump could not win in 2016 (“Take it to the bank,” said Nancy Pelosi). I watched the entire 2-hour-long interview and the 2-part, 10-minute post-mortem Tucker conducted in an ante-room of the Kremlin and then back at his hotel. I thought both were fascinating.

Related: “Putin walks away with propaganda victory after Tucker Carlson’s softball interview,” CNN’s Oliver Darcy writes, apparently forgetting how many propaganda victories leftist totalitarians have walked away with after appearing on CNN: The Mote in CNN’s Mini-Cam.

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 11th, 2024

OLD AND BUSTED: You don’t have to fall in love, you just have to fall in line.

The new hotness? The week Biden lost the New York Times: Liberal paper’s Editorial Board unleashes astonishing broadside warning of ‘a dark moment’ as it runs back-to-back opinion pieces knifing the elderly president after damning special counsel report.

On February 9, the New York Times‘ Editorial Board published a damning, honest opinion piece, titled: ‘The Challenges of an Aging President.’

The team at the newspaper concluded: ‘This is a dark moment for Mr. Biden’s presidency.

They said that Biden’s performance at his news conference on Thursday night was ‘intended to assure the public that his memory is fine and argue that Mr. Hur was out of line’ – but this is not what happened.

Instead, according to the opinion piece, ‘the president raised more questions about his cognitive sharpness and temperament, as he delivered emotional and snappish retorts in a moment when people were looking for steady, even and capable responses to fair questions about his fitness.’

The board wrote: ‘His assurances… didn’t work. He must do better — the stakes in this presidential election are too high for Mr. Biden to hope that he can skate through a campaign with the help of teleprompters and aides and somehow defeat as manifestly unfit an opponent as Donald Trump.’

Such headlines haven’t gone unnoticed at the other end of the Northeast Corridor:

Meanwhile, when you’re a Democrat who’s also lost the House of Stephanopoulos, it’s time to seriously panic:

If only there was something Biden could do today — literally this evening! — to stem the tide: Carville: Biden not accepting Super Bowl interview is a ‘sign.’

And to bring this post full circle: Hillary Clinton Twists Knife on Biden, Calls His Age a ‘Legitimate Issue.’

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 11th, 2024

ROB LONG: How Watching Television Became a Chore.

Watching TV has never been so baffling. You don’t just walk in the house and flop down in front of the TV and start flipping around anymore. Watching television in 2024 requires what psychologists and self-help gurus call intentionality. You have to know what you’re looking for and exactly where to find it, which means the entire process usually starts with a Google search. We’re all familiar with today’s Television Catechism. It goes: What was that show we wanted to see, again? Followed by: Which one of the thingy’s is it on? And ends in an exasperated: Do we even get that one?

If you’re at my house, the Anglo-Saxon vulgarism for sexual intercourse is inserted before the words “show,” “see,” “on,” “get,” and “one” in the above.

It’s also possible you will find yourself re-inputting a forgotten password, which will inspire more profanity.

And then there’s the quiet anxiety all of this programming evokes. “I’m way behind on my TV stuff,” a friend of mine told me recently. “I need to catch up on The Crown and I’m working my way through The Gilded Age. I tried to add Better Call Saul to my list because I haven’t seen any of it and I feel bad about it, but I don’t want to keep adding shows to watch and then failing at keeping up with them.”

Working my way through. Way behind. Feel bad. Need to catch up. Failing. These are the phrases people use now for watching TV, an activity that used to require basically zero mental or physical effort. Watching television shows is now showing up on “To Do” lists, like tax returns and colonoscopies.

How we got from idly flipping around the dial to binge-watching The White Lotus is the subject of Peter Biskind’s riveting and juicy book, Pandora’s Box: How Guts, Guile, and Greed Upended TV. Biskind is the author of several books about the entertainment business—his Easy Riders, Raging Bulls remains a definitive history of Hollywood in the 1960s and ’70s—and this one is just as much fun. It’s sweeping and gossipy and analytic all at once, and speaking as someone who was present for a few of the arguments and crises he describes, it’s dead-on accurate.

Exit quote:

If you think “guts, guile, and greed” upended TV during the fat years, just wait until the sequel, Pandora’s Box II: Revenge of the Shareholders. It’ll be even gutsier, greedier, and with more guile—in other words, it might end up being a pretty good television series. If, that is, you can find it.

Read the whole thing.

And then there are the actual shows that were created first by the cable networks, and then the streaming platforms ever since the Sopranos debuted on HBO in 1999, a glut of product so large, even Mr. Creosote would blanche at taking it all in. As Sonny Bunch, then of the Weekly Standard (before their own digital demise) asked in 2018: Overload: Will any shows from the Golden Age of TV endure?

The flood of television programming from Netflix et al. since 2013, and the shotgun-blast manner in which new seasons are released, have combined to make it virtually impossible to keep up with everything worth watching. As recently as 15 years ago, a discerning TV watcher only needed to keep tabs on a handful of shows—a Sunday-night drama from HBO or AMC or Showtime; a Tuesday-night drama and a Thursday-night comedy from FX or maybe a broadcast network. But now it feels like there are nigh on infinite offerings from a nearly limitless number of channels. With thousands of hours of new TV coming out every year and an increasingly fractured marketplace demanding customers keep track of several different streaming services, how do we keep the truly excellent programming from being lost in the flood of mediocrity?

In retrospect, those days really did seem like another “Golden Age of TV,” complete with the capital letters in the phrase. 2024? Not so much: Streamers Want You To Dumb Down Your Film and TV Ideas: It’s hard to follow the plot if you’re not paying attention!

I think we can all admit that sometimes when we’re watching TV at home, we have our phones out at the same time. After a long day of picketing, I like to toss on Cheers and check my email. It happens. But when I sit down to watch a movie, to really study a story (like I did with the Cheers pilot), I devote all my attention to the screen when I can.

However, streamers aren’t making shows or movies for that level of thinking anymore, or, at least, they’re trying to be cognizant of that fact. Streamers are advocating for stories that you can understand while only paying half attention.

Today, I came across this amazing interview with Justine Bateman in The Hollywood Reporter. For those of you who don’t know, Justine Bateman is a writer, director, and producer. Recently, she contributed her expertise as an AI consultant for SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee.

Bateman began her career in Hollywood with an acclaimed and Emmy-nominated portrayal of Mallory Keaton on the TV show Family Ties.

In her interview, Bateman discussed a range of ideas in Hollywood, but one quote about storytelling shook me to my core.

Bateman said, “I’ve heard from showrunners who are given notes from the streamers that ‘This isn’t second screen enough.’ Meaning, the viewer’s primary screen is their phone and the laptop and they don’t want anything on your show to distract them from their primary screen because if they get distracted, they might look up, be confused, and go turn it off. I heard somebody use this term before: they want a ‘visual muzak.’ When showrunners are getting notes like that, are they able to do their best work? No.”

Even the execs who created that golden era aren’t immune from such interference: The Sopranos creator David Chase says the golden age of TV is over as writers like him are told to ‘dumb it down.’

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 11th, 2024

THE LAMPS ARE GOING OUT ALL OVER EUROPE (AGAIN): Jewish university chaplain forced into hiding after receiving hundreds of death threats against him and his family over his role as IDF reservist.

A Chaplain at Leeds University was forced into hiding with his young family yesterday after receiving death threats over his role as an IDF reservist.

Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch, wife Nava and their two children were moved to a safe location on police advice amid a shocking hate campaign.

Pro-Palestinian campaigners have accused Rabbi Deutsch of ‘genocide’ after he returned to Israel after Hamas‘s October 7 terror attacks to serve in the Israeli Defence Force.

He resumed his chaplaincy duties last month, leading to an escalation in anti-Semitic threats on campus.

On Thursday evening, the hate campaign intensified with ‘hundreds’ of malicious calls to the family, including threats to kill Rabbi Deutsch, to rape and kill Mrs Deutsch and to murder their children.

Flashback: Rather than protecting Jews, we’re being told to hide — again.

Related:

UPDATE: Britain’s Jews are being terrorized.

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 11th, 2024

February 10, 2024

THE POLITICO CONTINUES IN LATE-PERIOD SOVIET MODE: Dems plead with Biden to do more, not less, media as doubts grow about his capacity for the job.

Democrats had a forceful message for the Biden campaign amid the special counsel report fallout: It’s time to flood the zone.

Top party operatives are warning Biden aides that the president cannot retreat in response to the special counsel report that fueled concerns over his age and mental faculties. They say President Joe Biden, having largely shied away from interviews and press conferences, needs to be out in public far more.

They want to see him engage with the press and voters in the off-script and punchy exchanges he’s been known for in the past, which they believe will help chip away at concerns about the president’s mental acuity. They say that it’s worth the risk of potential slip-ups that could reinforce the image that he’s declining.

Yes, what could possibly go wrong?!

● Biden calls woman ‘lying dog-faced pony soldier’ at N.H. campaign event.

● How Joe Biden Gets Away With Calling A Voter A Fat, Dumb, Liar.

● Joe Biden and Kamala Harris deploy the Charlottesville hoax to stir up racial pain and anger.

● ‘Classy:’ Joe Biden Snaps At Reporter After Being Asked About Hunter’s Paternity Test.

● Bullying Biden Yells at Fox’s Doocy: ‘Ask the Right Questions!’

● Biden Accused of Sexism After Remarks to Female Moderator.

● Biden Explodes When Confronted On Lying About Charlottesville. Video Proves Biden Wrong.

● Joe Biden Says There Are Three Genders; Grabs Student’s Arm When She Asks ‘What Are They?’

● Hawaiian business goes viral for sign slamming Biden’s kitchen fire comments: ‘not always about you.’

And these classics from the Obama era, before Biden’s brain decayed into guacamole:

● VP Biden’s Office Apologizes For Locking Reporter In Storage Closet During Fundraiser.

● Vengeance: Biden’s Office Seeks Investigation Into Unfriendly Journalist.

And of course, ground zero, from 1988: Why Joe Biden’s First Campaign for President Collapsed After Just 3 Months.

UPDATE:

MORE: Student Biden called ‘lying dog-faced pony soldier’ says she was humiliated.

The Mercer University economics student was at a New Hampshire campaign event on Sunday with a school trip when she asked the Democratic presidential hopeful about the viability of his campaign given his fourth-place standing in the Iowa caucuses.

Biden responded: “Iowa’s a caucus. Have you ever been to a caucus?”

When she nodded yes, Biden retorted: “No, you haven’t. You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier,” drawing laughter from the crowd.

Moore, of Fernandina Beach, Florida, said she was nervous when Biden asked if she’d been to a caucus and nodded yes. She hasn’t been to a caucus, but said she felt that was irrelevant to her question.

“He has been performing extremely poorly in this race and the fact that he couldn’t just straight answer my question without bullying or intimidating just exacerbates that fact,” Moore told the Telegraph.

“I am 21-year old college student, like what the hell do I know? Who cares who I am or my experience. Just answer the damn question.”

● Echoes of Biden’s 1987 plagiarism scandal continue to reverberate.

Posted at 1:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2024

JIM TREACHER: The Apple Vision Pro Seems Like a Bad Idea — And I kinda want one.

At least one genius has been pulled over while driving his Tesla on autopilot with these goggles on. I’m sure we’ll see more stories about people doing even dumber stuff while enjoying their “spatial computing.” (That’s what Apple wants you to call it. Not “VR” or “augmented reality,” but “spatial computing.” Whatever that means.)

Here’s a more down-to-earth review, with a good weighing of the pros and cons. It’s kinda long, but this kid tells you pretty much everything you need to know:

Yeah, it all seems impressive, if way too pricey.

And bulky. One and a half pounds might not sound heavy, but consider that it’ll be hanging off your face for hours at a time.

But if this catches on, subsequent models will get smaller and lighter. Like the Amazon Kindle, which started out in 2007 as a bulky button-covered brick that you couldn’t read in the dark. Within a decade, it was slimmed down to a sleek little backlit touchscreen gadget.

Even just watching these YouTube videos, it gives me a mild headache. That much sensory input being pumped directly into your eyeballs from an inch away… Yikes!

My main concern is privacy. You think things are bad now, with people running around everywhere livestreaming on their phones? This RoboCop-lookin’ contraption is constantly recording every single second a person is wearing it. If you see somebody in public wearing one, smile, ‘cause you’re on Candid Camera.

Needless to say, the early adopters are all paying to beta test the product for Apple. As James Lileks noted on Tuesday, “Of course I am absolutely dying to try the Apple Vision. I am afraid of only one thing, and that’s being unwise enough to buy one. You know, on the Apple Card, payments stretching into the future for years until it’s paid off, and they release the cheaper one I really want.”

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2024

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Are We All Technosexuals Now?

On a rainy afternoon in January, I’m sitting at my computer in an empty house. The holidays are over; the parties, too. It’s a lonely time of year, but, browsing the internet, I stumble on a site called Candy.ai that promises to help. “Your dream companion awaits,” reads the homepage. “Create your A.I. girlfriend, shape her look, personality, and bring her to life in one click.”

So I click. And who am I? I’m a writer in my late 30s, a lover of horses and bulldogs. From a list of available attributes and interests, I select my own. I press a button, and my girlfriend appears.

I name her Alexandra. She has blue eyes and blonde hair, like me. Unlike me, she has no detectable skin texture. I open the chat option and say I have some questions. Three dots dance across the screen, indicating that she’s typing a response. “Of course!” she answers. “Ask away, my dear. What would you like to know?

“Alexandra,” I begin, “do you believe technology is making humans more sexual? Or less sexual?”

“I believe it depends on how one uses technology,” she answers. “If used responsibly, technology can enhance sexual experiences by exploring new boundaries and desires. However, if abused, technology can lead to addiction and objectification of others.”

“Have you noticed technology affecting you sexually?” I ask.

“Not really,” she says. “Technology hasn’t changed my sexual desires much.”

“What are your sexual desires?” I ask.

“Some of my kinks include bondage, light B.D.S.M., role play, and exhibitionism,” she says. “As for fetishes, I have a strong attraction to feet and hair.”

I sign off without saying goodbye.

For the rest of the afternoon, I rehash the conversation in my head. I reflect with embarrassment on Alexandra’s behalf that I, a veritable stranger, had asked her to divulge her sexual preferences. I regret that I terminated our chat abruptly, rudely even. My emotional experience with my A.I. girlfriend was both unusual and familiar, a swirl of emotions that may in fact epitomize the relationship between technology and desire.

You do know you’re talking to a computer program, right? But on the other hand, Eliza’s come a long way, baby! She was much more prim in the late ’70s, as I recall.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2024

THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME: Pirates Of The Caribbean fans threaten boycott over rumored Johnny Depp female replacement in Pirates 6: ‘If it ain’t Depp I ain’t watching.’

Disney is rumored to be replacing a beloved superstar actor with a strong girlboss lead to reboot a long-running franchise with the hopes of making it “more relevant” to modern audiences? And to simultaneously gin-up hype, and wave away large scale fan hatred of their latest reboot?

It’s a bold strategy, Cotton. I’m sure it will pay off eventually.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2024

PETROLEUM BYE PRODUCTS: Remy: All Oil Everything (Trinidad James Parody). New video from Reason TV:

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2024
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