hairofadog

I don't know why you're being downvoted. Here is his exact quote:

"The use of the word 'artificial' makes intelligence fake. It makes it sound fake and it is not fake. It’s actually amazing, but we have to be careful. In fact, it is exactly the opposite of what it purports."

A peek inside:

https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2026/09/advance-tour-of...

The question isn't whether they've been successful in hiding information. It's whether their goal is to hide information (or I would say, to control the narrative), which it clearly is.

This is why the administration has gone out of its way to try to get Kimmel and Colbert off the air, why it has commandeered CBS and tried to kill 60 minutes pieces critical of the administration, why it violated the law in order to keep TikTok (already fervently pro-Trump) up and running, and why allies of the administration have been put in charge of TikTok after the transition. It's why Bezos is slowly strangling the Washington Post, why Patrick Soon-Shiong is doing the same to the LA Times, and why the administration is putting their thumb on the scale for Paramount, rather than Netflix, to buy Warner Brothers Discovery (which owns CNN). It's why Musk bought Twitter. It's why they blatantly lie in their press conferences and statements to the media about how the ICE killings happened.

If you walked into a Turning-Point USA meeting in a high school, do you think the kids attending that meeting could accurately tell you what ICE has been doing? I don't.

TikTok is hugely influential, and the younger people they're trying to influence don't read newspapers and don't hang out on X or Instagram (both of which also censor certain political content).

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/26/1240737627/meta-limit-politic...

https://www.reddit.com/r/OptimistsUnite/comments/1i9zf5u/rco...

https://arxiv.org/html/2508.13375v1

Amazing to me how many of the issues that influenced swing voters in the past three presidential elections were nothing more than right-wing fever dreams.

No doubt the distraction from the Epstein files is a contributing factor, but it’s a mistake to think he won’t do incredibly harmful things simply because they seem insane and without purpose to us, who grew up post World War II.

His decision tree is like

Does it make me feel like a tough guy? -> Is there some way I can leverage it for grift and personal gain? -> Does it make my political enemies and undesirables feel angry and helpless? -> Is it a decision I can make unilaterally? -> Then YES

It really is. We’ve put children with emotional problems in charge of the U.S. military and economy. Shameful and heartbreaking. I hope we can recover and rebuild alliances but I think that will be a multigenerational task.

They’re violating the U.S. constitution and committing crimes daily.

Thanks. I appreciate your comments in this thread.

I'm hopeful that'll be the case. But can SECDEF (it's still called the Department of Defense, regardless of stationery changes) hand-pick the unit commanders and military officers?

The Secretary of Defense is a loyalist and will likely put people in charge of the operation who are on board with the mission to suppress protest.

There's also just the chaos angle. From the same New Yorker article I linked elsewhere in this thread, I thought this anecdote was nuts:

> In Los Angeles, for example, [in 1992] there was a situation where marines were accompanying police to a house where there was a domestic disturbance and the police officers said to “cover me” as they went into the house. “Cover” means something very different in the Marines, and they opened fire on the house. It was only by good fortune that no one was killed.

Two interesting bits I've read/seen on this recently:

Can Trump Really Use the Insurrection Act?

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/can-trump-really-use-...

> The other point that I want to make is that if the military were being deployed to try to bring ice under control, that would be one thing. That’s not the purpose. The purpose of deploying the military here would be to enable the violence and lawlessness that we’re seeing from ice. And so even if the military itself is not engaging in these kinds of destructive actions, it is there to insure that ice is able to do so. It would serve in that way as a force amplifier for ice.

And then a more optimistic take in which Jamelle Bouie talks about how difficult it would be for Trump to disrupt upcoming elections in any meaningful way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRV-9vO4Grs

I've been amazed that US CEOs haven't pushed back harder on the administration due to the threat of the rest of the world leaving US services like these.

I know the goverment has a lot of power over even the largest companies, but these companies also have power, and moving into a world in which AWS, Apple, Microsoft, and Google can only operate in the US, and maybe with the Saudis, isn't going to be good for shareholders.

They bent a knee to this administration so fast. I'm curious to see if there will be an equally fast pivot in the other direction when Trump starts showing holes in his armor. There will come a time when corporate greed no longer points in the direction of Trumpism.

I'm asking this in good faith, but what can they do? The Trump administration is absolutely salivating for armed pushback. I think the best they can logistically do is refuse to help ICE (as local police are doing in some cities).

There's no evidence of noncitizens voting in meaningful numbers, but I'm aware that's a popular right-wing talking point.

Really can't tell if you're joking or not

I think it's going to have to get very very much worse before it gets better. Too many people have no idea what's happening, and too many of the people who do know what's happening (including quite a few in Democratic leadership) seem to think it'll all just snap back into place in 2026 and 2028. I'm afraid they won't wake up to it until we see a 1930's style depression in which Americans are literally going hungry. Really does feel like we're doing the 20th century all over again.

> the left thinks that the right wants a power grab to stop left from coming back

It would probably help if Trump didn't fantasize about this publicly all the time

> the right thinks that if they don't keep their power now, the left will take it and keep it using immigrants

The left will "take it" by being elected, if they are in fact elected. That's the extremist threat the right is worried about?

What does "keep it using immigrants" mean?

It's both the fact that they're going after people here legally and even U.S. citizens, and the brutality and unconstitutional nature of their tactics. They are literally going house to house kicking in doors without a warrant. They're racial profiling. The ICE agents are completely out of control as their recruitment standards are nonexistent and higher-ups are signaling that they can do literally whatever they want, including killing people, and they'll face no consequences. I don't understand how any sane person can support it, much less the "don't tread on me" crowd.

Detaining and/or deporting people here illegally to their home countries with due process: OK

Detaining, deporting, and/or killing people here illegally, legally, and U.S. citizens, without due process, to private detention camps or third countries: NOT OK

The "interal bleeding" thing is so unbelievably ludicrous. He got a bruise because he was lurching for the car while juggling his phone in one hand and a gun in the other. She was clearly neither trying to, nor succeeding in "ramming" him.

Let's say a third party was elected and started implementing certain policies. What would they have to do for you to call them fascist? Fascism is an actual thing, after all, so there must be some line that would separate fascism from not-fascism.

That's not what's happening. There wouldn't be the backlash if they were primarily deporting "the worst of the worst", as they promised, using due process. Instead they're targeting everyone, including people here legally and in many cases U.S. citizens, without due process, in the cruelest and most over-the-top way possible.

They didn't attract the same publicity because

* They didn't jack up the budget to a size larger than most countries' militaries

* They didn't target primarily Republican cities and states out of vengeance for how those cities and states voted

* They didn't explicitly target people here legally

* They didn't send bands of masked men house to house to kick in doors without warrants

* They didn't implement Kavanaugh Stops, which makes racial profiling legal

* They didn't implement a "Papers, please" policy

* They didn't crow about their cruelty on social media or make funny memes about immigrant families being destroyed

* They didn't broadcast that agents had "absolute immunity" even if their agents killed people

* They didn't use fascist iconography and phrasing in their press releases and design systems

* They didn't create a situation in which businesses and schools had to shut down because their employees and students were afraid to leave their houses because even though they were U.S. citizens, they had darker colored skin or spoke with an accent

* They didn't try to end birthright citizenship

I mean the list goes on and on. It's not the same at all. That's why they didn't attract the same publicity.

Right, that seems to me like an important distinction. Other people in this thread have said things like "Well you can draw people in a bikini with a pencil without their permission! Should we ban pencils, too!?" Honestly if someone wants to be weird and draw bikini pictures of journalists they don't like AND KEEP IT TO THEMSELVES, then whatever I guess. That's not what this is. Grok is creating the images. Grok is publishing the images. Grok is harrassing the subjects of the images by posting it in their replies. Neither ChatGPT, Gemini, nor pencils are doing that. (And that doesn't even get into the CSAM aspect.)

One of the many reasons I prefer Claude is that it doesn't even generate images.

Real question as I don't use ChatGPT or Gemini: They publish images of women in bikinis or underwear in response to user prompts? Where do they publish them? I'm looking at Gemini and I don't see any sort of social aspect to it. I just tried the prompt "picture of a dog" and I don't see any way that another person could see it unless I decided to publish it myself.

As you migth expect, their position is contradictory, working in their favor either way. They have passed bills making it legal to run over people as long as those people aren't members of the tribe:

G.O.P. Bills Target Protesters (and Absolve Motorists Who Hit Them) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/us/politics/republican-an...

"Stand your ground" laws often work the same way: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/is-there-racial-b...

The fourth amendment of the constitution says

> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

However, our Supreme Court is out of control, and Justice Kavanaugh recently issued a ruling allowing racial profiling, meaning people can be detained for looking a certain way. These sorts of racially motivated detentions are now known as "Kavanaugh Stops": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavanaugh_stop

So ICE agents don't have to suspect them of any crime; if they "look illegal", they can be detained and deported without due process.

They have released a version of the masked agent's bodycam. Seems to be another Rorschach test: they released it because they think it's exculpatory, but to my eyes it's even worse. He's engaged in a petty argument with the driver, tries to block her car with his body as she drives away, shoots her, then says "fuckin' bitch!" after he's killed her.

https://bsky.app/profile/thetnholler.bsky.social/post/3mbz3v...

I saw your comment, vouched for the comment you're referring to, and it reappeared. I don't have a full understanding of how vouching works; it could be that I was one of several, or that it was only coincidental that it reappeared just after I vouched for it.