You know things have gotten — well, weird — when the Prince of Darkness announces he'll be voting for a Democrat because the guy nominated by his own party is too evil. Ms Harris, I recommend politely RSVPing "no" to any invitations to go duck hunting; any implications that target selection (and downrange clearance) may be equally off now are entirely intentional.
Meanwhile, early next week things will get even weirder with yet another non-debate debate.
- Across the Pond they're proposing to eliminate more feudal lords with inherited titles from the House of Lords. Although I think Charles III's head is safe (or at least safer than his namesake's), the future William V just might want to look into opportunities for making a living (like his little brother has) — but he'll have a hard time getting legacy/donor preference to attend Stanford (or USC) business school. Schade.
- Meanwhile, the (ex-)commies over in Ukraine are demonstrating that they've learned the right lessons from prior atrocities in their region. Yes, war is a contact sport — but at least throw a penalty flag on late hits out of bounds, ok? (And definitely no running into the stands to demonstrate one's martial arts "prowess," guys.)
- The world of internet piracy has taken a couple of hits. First, a major anime/manga node (source for a number of sites) went dark. Then Brewster Kahle's arrogant selfrighteousness, his reductionism of all "original expression" to "mere information," got far more credibility than it deserved at the Second Circuit and still got trashed (large PDF). And his little dog, too!
I'll have far more to say about this at another time. Of course, my position shouldn't surprise anyone at all… why yes, the choice of repository source was entirely intentional, with malice aforethought, and really does concern "fact" and not "original expression"; did you really need to ask?
- It appears that artificially-stupid large-language-model "AI" programs aren't hallucinating. Neither are they lying. They're just… bullshitting. I suspect that The Blues Brothers (1980) was an essential source work for all of the major large language models — that's why they can spew forth about that Picasso.