Hard Pass

Guy Venables | Bluesky

Autocrats don’t have to be delusional, of course, but by the very nature of autocracy, they tend to staff themselves with aides who affirm and aggrandize their autocrats’ power and fail to challenge their bosses’ worldview. Putin surrounded himself with staffers committed to his project of restoring Russia to the role of supreme Orthodox counterweight to the louche West, in control once again of all the territory where the tsars once reigned supreme. He believed that retaking Ukraine would be a matter of weeks, or even days, and no one in his inner circle would or could say that he might be wrong. If the generals not in his inner circle had misgivings about the probability of a cakewalk to Kiev, they weren’t going to be general for very much longer.

As to Trump, none of his lackeys dared tell him that Iran might not crumble if we joined Israel in going to war on the regime, and while our top generals did issue some muted demurrals, none dared say, “No way.”

As a result, Russia appears stuck in a bloody stalemate from which its forces have made virtually no advances for the better part of a year, while Trump appears stuck in a war that he cannot end. Israel keeps attacking Lebanon, and Iran still blocks the Strait of Hormuz. A report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies at the beginning of the year estimated that the number of Russian soldiers killed, wounded, or missing since the war began was 1.2 million. The number of U.S. casualties in our war on Iran is relatively tiny so far—just 13 fatalities according to the Pentagon—but that will rise if Trump concludes that getting a deal with Iran requires boots on the ground (as Republican war hawks keep arguing).

Mirror

I didn't find any English articles about this, so here's a summary what happened:

• Mario Voigt, the minster-president (head of a German state government) of Thuringia, published an op-ed in the German conservative newspaper "Welt", that sounded suspiciously like AI slop, so journalists started investigating
• They found out that the Welt op-ed, another op-ed in "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" (FAZ) and several speeches he gave (including a speech for a Holocaust memorial) were completely AI generated
• The FAZ op-ed contained quotes of three scientists that were completely made up. After Voigt was confronted by the newspaper, his office just replied with "AI is the future" bullshit instead of answering the questions, so the newspaper withdrew the op-ed and published a statement (also only in German: https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien-und-film/medienpolitik/zum-ki-verdacht-bei-gastbeitrag-von-mario-voigt-200917046.html)

In the aftermath, some people looked closer at the speeches and texts of other politicians and journalists:

• Karsten Wildberger, federal minister for digital affairs, was also caught using AI for speeches and op-eds (https://www.br.de/nachrichten/deutschland-welt/texte-von-digitalminister-wildberger-mit-hilfe-von-ki-erstellt,VMSAk1S)
• Stephan-Andreas Casdorff, editor-at-large at the newspaper "Tagesspiegel", was barred from publishing texts in the paper after he was caught using AI (https://www.tagesspiegel.de/in-eigener-sache-editor-at-large-muss-publizistische-aufgaben-vorerst-ruhen-lassen-15708436.html)

James Talarico has been found guilty of quoting Jesus. The sentence he uttered, according to right-wing media, was “demonic” and “blasphemous,” exposing him as a “fake Christian.” Talarico is running for the U.S. Senate in Texas on a platform The New Yorker recently described as basically the New Testament. One Newsmax host accused him of using fake Bible passages.

The passages in question are familiar ones, found in Matthew 22 and Matthew 25. Love God and love your neighbor. Feed the hungry, heal the sick, welcome the stranger. They are, in fact, in the Bible.

The right’s attacks on Talarico aren’t about him, or at least not entirely. They’re about a much older argument — one progressive Christianity has been losing in public for 50 years — about whose version of the faith gets to count as real. The answer to that question has consequences far beyond any Senate race. When Christianity becomes a tool of power rather than a challenge to it, it doesn’t just damage the church. It destabilizes democracy. We are watching that happen in real time.

I don't know, it's speaking mandarin.....🍊

Mirror

As the midterms get closer, President Donald Trump and his allies are kicking their efforts to suppress voting into high gear.

California was the epicenter this week. Vice President JD Vance, as Matt Cohen reported, became the latest top Republican to try to sow doubts about the state’s primary. The veep, echoing his boss, said it was “pretty shady” that a GOP candidate was in the top two early in the count — in the state’s jungle primary, the top two finishers advance to the general election — then fell away as more mail ballots were counted.

Of course, the attack on California’s election system, as Jim Saksa explained, is about laying the groundwork to subvert the midterms. Indeed, Jacob Knutson noted that Trump tapped the federal prosecutor Jay Clayton as the next director of national intelligence just days after Clayton went on cable news and spread baseless conspiracy theories about California’s vote counting. And a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney has already said he’s investigating the primary vote and expects to bring (bogus) charges in connection with it.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/shermanposting/p/1881058/lights-molotov-with-sherman-esque-intent

I've made a couple of disgusting posts with no explanation because they were funny, but I gotta come clean with this one - I live like a bit of a pig, yes, but I also work as a maintenance man for a local housing authority, and regularly encounter some fairly rank situations. Some of them are due to regular poor housekeeping, some mental illness, and some because of addiction. All of them are interesting, I think.

I have a couple others that I think I can share without breaking any laws.

It should be noted that the worst of these date from just after COVID-19; there was an eviction moratorium, and people literally stopped caring about housekeeping notices and warnings. The typical apartment looks NOTHING like this nowadays.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.blahaj.zone/c/NiceMemes/p/806252/it-really-will