PROFESSOR CARRINGTON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: The Solar Storm Was So Intense We Felt It Even at The Bottom of The Ocean.

RAT FLEAS HARDEST HIT: How Body Lice Could Rewrite the History of the Black Death.

I USED TO THINK NY SUBWAY CARS TOOK A BEATING:

ALL THIS AND WORLD WAR II WITH JAMES LILEKS:

Been on a bit of a Hitler binge lately. A nice break from the Roman binge. For this I can thank my absolutely favorite podcast, “The Rest is History,” which matches Dominick Sandbrook and Tom Holland to discuss absolutely everything. Perfect chemistry, very British, wry, droll, laugh-out-loud as well.

Eh? Laugh out loud? And Hitler? Yes, because there are absurdities and banalities that are darkly comic. They’ll do four hours on the rise of Hitler, then four more on the consolidation of power, which seems to involve an inordinate number of conferences at German spas – old-world faded charm, elderly waiters, ticking clocks in the lobby, musty smells, and it becomes a running joke referred to in passing, giving the faithful listener a recognizable callback in the next ep. All unplanned and chatty – as I said, the chemistry is great, two like-minded people who have an impressively substantial storehouse of knowledge and a sense of the breadth and scope of history, but are still continuously curious.

When I say “Binge” I mean that I’d finished the rise-to-power series and was offered up a new documentary on one of the streamers about HITLER’S MARCH TO WAR, or something — new footage! Recently uncovered documents! The hook was a countdown to WW2, and hence they had a chronological splash screen at regular intervals. MUNICH. 362 DAYS TO WAR. These words appear as if slapped on the screen, then vibrate out with a great whoosh.

Because the thing about the run-up to WW2 is this: it needs goosing to make it compelling. Jump cuts and sound effects and ADHD Ken Brown pans.

It got me thinking about the inevitable AI upscaling and enhancing of WW2 footage, particularly of Hitler. Right now he’s mostly the grainy guy shouting in newsreels, or the very grainy guy gliding in a limo as he heils the cheering throngs in Vienna. Color footage is rare. When it’s all made 4K, what sort of impact will it have?

In his 1964 book Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan wrote:

TV is a cool medium. It rejects hot figures and hot issues and people from the hot press media…Had TV occurred on a large scale during Hitler’s reign he would have vanished quickly. Had TV come first there would have been no Hitler at all. When Khrushchev appeared on American TV he was more acceptable than Nixon, as a clown and a lovable sort of old boy.  His appearance is rendered by TV as a comic cartoon. Radio, however, is a hot medium and takes cartoon characters seriously. Mr. K. on radio would be a different proposition.

Or as Lileks concluded, “I don’t think he’ll earn many new converts. I think some might be mystified by his appeal, because his speeches are like, you know, cringe. Like dude. I don’t know, I guess you had to be there.”

And for more “I don’t know, I guess you had to be there” moments, keep reading Lileks for America veering into its own creepy fascist aesthetics as well during the 1930s, before teasing, “There’s a bigger piece here, and I think I will write it for Discourse.”

Definitely looking forward to it.

REWARDING FASCISM: “So now we know what it takes to become a state: the murder of Jews. Rape, kill and kidnap Jews and seven months later, the leaders of Ireland, Spain and Norway will recognise your statehood. That’s the lesson of today’s coordinated spectacle of virtue-signalling in Dublin, Madrid and Oslo: pogroms work. The butchery of civilians gets results. Fascism has its rewards. This is ‘diplomacy’ at its most dangerous.”

GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE: One in 5 adults in Canada without access to primary care.

BREAKING: Nikki Haley Says She Will Vote for Trump. “‘I put my priorities on a president who’s going to have the backs of our allies and hold our enemies to account who would secure the border,’ Haley said during a discussion on foreign policy at the Hudson Institute, her first public appearance since ending her presidential bid in March. ‘Trump has not been perfect on these policies. I’ve made that clear many, many times,’ she added. ‘But Biden has been a catastrophe. So I will be voting for Trump.’”

ABOUT THE CYRUS CYLINDER: King Cyrus was a VIP dude in the ancient world and Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet, had a lot to say about him. Kyle Butt explains on HillFaith why King Cyrus is still a VIP dude 2,500 years later.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Iran Confirms They Are Interviewing Several New Turban-Wearing Bearded Genocidal Psychopaths To Replace Deceased President.

UNEXPECTEDLY! The Torricelli Option Is On the Table: Leftwing Bloomberg Begins Polling Trump v. Kamala Harris, Anticipating a Biden Departure.

As Michael Graham sagely cautioned in 2004 (the year Torricelli was swapped out and replaced by a fossilized Frank Lautenberg on the NJ ballot), “Don’t assume you know who’s on the Democratic ticket until Election Day.”

Related: “Jill Biden and his other advisers come up with ways to obscure signs of senescence — from shorter news conferences to almost zero print interviews to TV interviews mainly with fawning MSNBC anchors…. [T]he Biden crew clearly has no plan for how to deal with the president’s age except to shield him and hide him and browbeat reporters who point out that his mental state… is a genuine issue.”

As Glenn noted in February, “But it is, and they can’t hide it anymore. It was an issue in 2020 too, but they could hide it.”

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

THE 21^st CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: It Would Be Easier to Stop Worrying about AI If Its Apostles Weren’t So Creepy.

First of all, I want to salute [Scarlett] Johansson for saying no to Sam Altman and Open AI. I am certain that, given how flush with cash they are, they offered her more money for the use of her voice than most actresses will make in an entire career. She said no despite how buzzy and glamorous an emergent technology AI is among movers and shakers. This would have been the easiest paycheck to earn in the world: Sit down in a booth and let someone sample your voice for a few days.

Why did she decline? (Leave aside for a moment just how sleazy it was that Open AI tried to use Johansson’s voice, or its style, even after being rejected — for those suspicious of Silicon Valley business ethics, this was fine vindication.) This brings us to what most unnerves me about Silicon Valley’s proselytization for AI: Its most vociferous apostles seem for all the world to be driven by psychologically bizarre, socially damaged desires. In Johansson’s statement, she says she declined the offer to recreate her character from Her “after much consideration and for personal reasons.” That strikes me as a polite way of saying, “Did you actually watch this film? Did you understand the point of this film?”

For Her is not a love story — it is a cautionary tale. Set in the near future (really just an excuse to dress everyone in awkward ties), it stars Joaquin Phoenix as a lonely and embittered soon-to-be divorcé. As part of his unfulfilling job, he gets a “virtual assistant” with his newest operating-system upgrade: “Samantha,” a learning AI voiced by Johansson that exhibits such naïvely ingenuous lovability as an algorithm new to the world that the alienated and unhappy Phoenix begins to fall in love with it. And, seemingly, “she” with him as well.

It is a marvelous and memorable film — Spike Jonze’s best work by far as both director and writer, with a truly humane, beating heart at its core — so I will not spoil the plot for you from there. But, as those who have seen it know, the film is designed to make you uncomfortable with AI, not more welcoming of it — for AI is incapable of loving you, or even truly befriending you, at least not in the way that people crave and require. Her makes a direct appeal to its viewers to take their heads out of the clouds (and, by analogy, drop the smartphone from their hands) and re-engage with the human reality of the world around them, rather than getting lost in a world of artificial intelligence and pleasures both ultimately illusory and inevitably heartbreaking.

So how the hell could Sam Altman have gotten all of this so wrong? Go back to the “Torment Nexus” joke I opened with. What kind of an utterly dense brick of a person could watch Her and think, “Yeah, I definitely want my AI to remind me of the algorithmic plague that seduced society away from everything except their earbuds before cruelly ghosting planet Earth.” One presumes Open AI has already moved on to option No. 2: getting Hugo Weaving to reprise his role as “Agent Smith” from The Matrix.

To be fair, Weaving portrayed Agent Smith 11 years ago in ad for GE to promote their hospital networking technology. As I wrote in a post back then headlined, “No, That’s Not Creepy At All,” “GE takes the notion of human capital seriously.”

IT’S AN EASY GUESS: Guess Which State Is Exploring Replacing Gas Taxes With Surveillance.

Flashback: Don’t Track Me, Bro!

JIM TREACHER: Ireland Is a Cesspool of Antisemitism.

I’m allowed to say the following because I’m Irish. We get to say it about each other. Except this time, the N-word is “Nazi.”

Ireland, Norway, and Spain are now recognizing a country that does not exist and never has.

So: Hamas butchers and rapes a bunch of innocent people, diligently documents it all on livestream video, and now the world is supposed to hand them a state? Please take that idea and stuff it up your bottom with a broom handle till your tonsils ache.

It’s official: Antisemitism is mainstream, and nobody cares because none of these guys are wearing MAGA hats.

The left and the right both have a big antisemitism problem. They’ve both got a bunch of weirdos who hate Jews and are always finding reasons to blame them for everything. The difference is that the right shuns and belittles their loathsome antisemites, while the left sends theirs out in a suit and tie to address the entire world.

It ain’t just Ireland, of course. Biden is currently coddling the Jew-haters in his own party because he desperately needs their votes.

And yet he’s still moaning about Charlottesville in 2017. “Oh, can you believe those Nazis? Look how much they hate the Jews!”

Which is true. What’s also true is that you never saw any of those idiots again.

Seriously, who even are those dumb hillbillies? What are they doing now? It’s been seven years. Who are they influencing? Why should I care?

In sharp contrast, the Corbynization of the Democratic Party goes all the way to the (p)resident’s handlers: Of Course: Biden Was Plotting With Iran Against Israel.

WHAT THE PRO-PALESTINIAN PROTESTS ARE REALLY ABOUT: In the third and final installment of his essential-reading series on Saul Alinsky and the current wave of Radical Left-led pro-Palestinian protests, Richard Pollock explains why “it’s not about Israel, it’s about political power, Stupid.” Here. In America. Instead of the Constitution.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

“I mean look, [Trump is] almost the same age as Biden. But Biden presents as old. Ancient. That does not look old. He does not present as old,” Maher said. “He’s like [the rock band] KISS. He puts on the wig and the face paint, and it’s 1976 all over again.”

—Bill Maher talking with Greg Gutfeld, Monday.

In contrast, yesterday, Maher dropped by the View: Joy Behar Scolds Bill Maher for Not Doing Enough to Protect the ‘Cadaver-Like’ Joe Biden.

The difference between Maher and Behar – right here. One admits not being honest with her audience while the other calls it his brand. https://t.co/s78UyEJ4Or

— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) May 21, 2024

How cadaver-like? This cadaver-like:

Hahahahahaha

Margaret Brennan thought this video of Biden was AI-created because he never blinked.

No, that’s just what the drugs do to him.
pic.twitter.com/MSFhgqebeV

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) May 21, 2024

KEEP DIGGING! WaPo Has a Plan to Get Out of the Hole It’s in, and It Involves More Digging. “What happens when a company’s brand is Orange Man Bad at a time when voters are deciding maybe Orange Man wasn’t so bad after all? If you’re the Washington Post, it means losing half of your readership in just four years — and a whopping $77 million just last year.”

LOOK BACK IN ANGER: Nellie Bowles’ Morning After The Revolution Documents the Insanity that was 2020.

My latest, over at Ed Driscoll.com.