Morning Update: 08/01/24
Here it is, August 1, 97 days until the election. IPS starts today, but apparently, the number of little ones we have in the neighborhood has gone down. Previous years, we’d see over a dozen buses running through the neighborhood. This morning has been pretty quiet. I’m not saying there haven’t been any buses, but the number is considerably less than what we’ve seen before.
G and Tipper got off to a good start this morning. G is trying to endure despite the pain of sitting in class and doing nothing as all direction is focused on new students. Tipper, on the other hand, is thrilled with her new furry friend and left this morning armed with her tail, her fox mask, and two favorite plushies to show her friend. She’s delighted to be in an environment where she’s free to express who she is without retribution. Let’s hope that enthusiasm continues once they get into more detailed instruction next week.
I was an idiot yesterday. Okay, there’s an argument to be made that I’m an idiot every day, but yesterday was especially stupid. Looking for a respite from the quiet of the house, I decided to walk to the store. I didn’t really need anything, I just wanted to get out. I wasn’t halfway there before I knew I’d made a mistake. I should have turned around, but didn’t. Mind you, the full trip there and back is only 1.06 miles, not exactly a major trek. I’ve gone a lot further. But this hasn’t been the best week for side effects and by the time I got back home, even leaning on my cane, I could hardly stand. That was it for the rest of the day. I normally don’t use my cane inside or out in the yard with the dogs, but I couldn’t get out of my chair without it. Fortunately, Kat and G took care of dinner. I stayed in/near the bed and was asleep by 8:30. I’ll be careful to not make that mistake again any time soon.
We’re looking at rain most of the afternoon/evening, so I’m not risking anything today. Groceries will be delivered later this morning. Once that’s done, I’m crawling under the covers and hiding between the dogs… and Solaris. So help me, Sol thinks he’s one of the dogs. I could probably put him in a kitty harness and take him outside when I let the dogs out, but something tells me if I put him in a harness, the dogs would want their harnesses, and then I’d have to take everyone for a walk. I don’t have that kind of energy.
What has my attention this morning is the headline that the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, along with two others, has agreed to a plea deal. While some are praising the deal and others are criticizing it, my larger concern is the degree to which justice has been screwed sideways for the past 23 years. Former President George W. Bush established the prison at Guantanamo, Cuba, in 2002, and with it came a severe miscarriage of justice as almost every member of the Taliban with a passport and no small number of Iraqis were rounded up and tossed in the jail. The special circumstances of Guantanamo allowed the government to label the prisoners as “enemy combatants” and hold them endlessly without trial, or even access to representation. They have been tortured endlessly. Alleged mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was waterboarded over 180 times before that particular method of torture was outlawed. At one time, the population at the prison was over 800 thanks to the mass roundup. Now, only 30 prisoners remain.
The fact that the prison is still running is a disgrace. If, after 23 years, the government doesn’t have enough evidence to convict without torturing them into a plea-deal confession, then they simply do not have the evidence to charge any of these men. Period. At this point, whether they are guilty or not is irrelevant. They have been held without legal representation and tortured endlessly for over twenty years! THIS IS NOT JUSTICE! Holding anyone this long under these circumstances is a violation of human rights no matter how one turns the issue. While details of the plea deal haven’t been released, the assumption is that they’re trading the death penalty for life in prison if they’re convicted. The government is assuming that their confessions, which would automatically be thrown out under any other circumstances as being obtained under conditions of duress, will be enough for the special court to convict. What happens, though, if it doesn’t? Will we let them go? Somehow, I doubt it because, again, the intention here is not justice but retribution.
Mind you, I certainly think that the people responsible for the tragic events of 9/11 deserve punishment, and possibly even the death penalty, though I’m no longer convinced that such an exchange of life-for-life is ever justified. However, what our government has done to these men over the past twenty-three years is inhuman. That the special circumstances around the prison at Guantanamo were ever established in the first place is inhuman. This is not the United States at its best. This is evil at its worst. Give them a fair trial. Either convict them on the evidence or let them go. That’s the way justice works. Anything else is simply evil.
Of course, one could make the argument that we are fully engaged with evil. That’s why evil is running for president in the form of the Orange Felon. I’m sure that by now everyone’s aware of the grotesque and racist remarks the fool made to a group of black journalists yesterday. Vice President Harris correctly responded that this is the same tactic of divisiveness and disrespect that he’s always used. That this felon has the support of roughly 46% of the people in the US demonstrates how comfortable we’ve become lying in bed with evil. We cannot claim to care about justice, we cannot hold any claim to fairness, and we cannot even begin to claim any grasp on freedom, as long as this FELON is running for the highest office in the country. His previous election and his current campaign are both a permanent stain upon the ideal of democracy. To not defeat him soundly, with an overwhelming majority in both the electoral college and popular votes, is to embrace the exact same type of evil that planned and carried out the 9/11 terrors. There’s no difference in the mindset, only the methods of their actions. You wouldn’t vote for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, would you? The Orange Felon is the same type of person only dressed in a suit and painted orange.
Why am I feeling tired already? I’ve been sitting here guzzling coffee and yet my body is feeling pain and exhaustion as if I’d put in a full day’s work. I can’t go to sleep yet, though. Groceries are being delivered between 10-11. I hate feeling like this.
I’m going to get more coffee. I hope you have a good day.
Morning Update: 08/03/24
The AI Edition
Having finished the first week of school, everyone is exhausted this morning. I’m the only one awake at 8:00 and even I slept until 7:00, The cats have been fed, the dogs taken outside and fed, and it occurs to me that, to a limited extent, taking care of them isn’t that much different than working with a small herd of cattle and a couple of horses. The biggest difference is that I don’t have to trudge all the way out to the barn and shovel shit. The kids are still adapting to going back on their meds for school. Kat never gets enough sleep. I know she was up in the middle of the night, around 4:00. We’ll let them rest as I focus on other things.
I don’t know what to do about the lawn. It’s still too wet this morning, thanks to last night’s rains. The East side is growing so thick it’s going to be tough to get the lawnmower through it. I’m not much help, either. If I get much weaker, I’m going to have trouble sitting upright. As it is now, I’m leaning on the armrest to help keep me steady as I sit here and type. I thought we were getting better, but this past week has been a major setback. I’m wanting to go to the fair next week but I’m not sure I should risk it. Even if someone goes with me, I can’t be sure that I’ll make it past the first row of buildings. Knowing that Travis Little has a new art piece on display requires that I at least make an attempt to go see it.
I don’t know if it was an act of collusion or what, but AI seems to be on everyone’s mind this morning. Reuters is leading with a story about how lawsuits filed by major recording labels to stop AI platforms from stealing opens up some severe holes in Copyright Law. Reuters starts the story by telling how easy it was to create a song “in the style of (country star) Tift Merritt) on the Udio platform. You can hear the song here. While Merritt said the AI-generated song would “never make the cut” on one of her albums, it underlines the danger of a world of AI-generated sound as the technology continues to grow. We’ve long known that there’s a strong relationship between math and music. That relationship makes it pretty much just a matter of time before AI can generate music faster and better than any human. I gotta tell you, that hurts my feelings.
This new story comes as video game actors have been on strike all week saying that AI endangers their jobs. “The models that they’re using have been trained on our voices without our consent at all, with no compensation,” “Persona 5 Tactica” voice actor and video game strike captain, Leeanna Albanese, told Reuters on the picket line. This is just the latest AI-related work stoppage. You’ll remember that union actors and writers went on strike last fall for similar reasons. Anyone in any creative field is concerned about the degree to which AI is going to endanger their jobs.
The NY Times is asking if AI is going to take over “meaningless” jobs and, if so, is that really a bad thing. They’re looking specifically at jobs in areas where rote copy/paste bores workers to tears, or software development that’s ultimately never used. One might see an argument for letting AI take the pain away, but where, then, do those workers look for more substantial employment? We’ve been talking on Facebook about a WRTV story romanticizing the days when local teens spent their summers detasseling corn. The general assumption is that modern equipment, most likely AI-based, would do that job now. After hearing one friend talk about how he sprained both wrists in that job, it’s difficult to see any AI development there as a negative.
But at the same time, there’s the story of Sabrina Javellana, a young Florida woman whose political career has been upended by deep fake AI-generated porn that uses her face. Trolls and political enemies have made her life a living nightmare. After talking with attorneys that specialize in revenge porn cases, she was told that there was little she could do that would stop anyone from continuing to produce material that was ruining her career. It’s impossible to defend AI producers in situations such as this.
Good solutions? They don’t exist. Music AI startups Suno and Udio slammed record label lawsuits in court filings and it seems likely that courts could find some merit in their arguments. AI is popping up everywhere. Even as I sit here typing, there is a prompt on the right-hand side of the page offering to “help” me write. Or re-write. I don’t use it primarily because AI doesn’t tend to curse about really bad situations and I like having the ability to say “fuck” whenever it feels appropriate. But does that mean that one day in the future AI could save me a couple of hours’ worth of time? Probably so. We’re going to have to keep working out the kinks and finding some common ground on this issue. AI is not going away, so we have to find ways to work with it.
Moving on, I want to wade into the international argument about Olympic boxers Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-Ting of Taiwan. A lot of people are upset because the Russian-led International Boxing Association, which has been banished from the Olympics by the IOC in a yearslong dispute, banned the two boxers claiming that their unproven and unspecified gender-based tests disqualified both women. Allegations have been flying around social media claiming that Khelif is trans and that her short-lived fight yesterday against Italian competitor Angela Carini was unfair. Some of the most ridiculous comments have come from known transphobes such as J.K. Rowling and the Orange Felon, neither of which should ever be taken seriously ever again. IOC President Thomas Bach came to the girls’ defense last night, saying that the comments were unacceptable, but then the IBA announced that it was awarding the promised $100,000 prize to Carini. This Olympics has really brought out the worst in conservatives worldwide and friends, we’ve gotta call them out on it. Both Khelif and Lin were born women. End of story. To suggest otherwise is nothing short of ignorance and stupidity that doesn’t deserve an audience.
Okay, it’s after 9:00. Here are some other things worth noting. Children of freed sleeper agents learned they were Russians on the flight to Moscow. Seriously. They thought they were Argentinian. Imagine the culture shock the poor kids have coming to them, and the conversations around the dinner table now that they know their parents were Russian spies. Aerosmith retires from touring, citing permanent damage to Steven Tyler’s voice last year. Are we surprised? No, but there’s still this nostalgic feeling of loss as we deal with the fact that the musicians we love are … old. Some Yankee Stadium bleachers fans chant `U-S-A!’ during `O Canada’ before the game against the Blue Jays. This is just stupid. The Jays have been a part of MLB for over 50 years. Such distasteful displays of nationalism need to stop. A Florida attorney has pleaded guilty to using a rifle to try to detonate explosives outside the Chinese embassy last year in Washington, D.C. Why? Because Florida breeds insanity. That’s the only logical reason. I think it’s something in the water down there.
Lastly, you may remember the fuss I made a couple of days ago about the three inmates at Guantanamo getting a plea deal. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday revoked plea deals agreed to earlier this week. Susan Escallier, who oversees the Pentagon’s Guantanamo war court, was relieved of her authority to enter into plea deals. Austin says he’s handling the matter personally now. Goddammit, we finally do something sane and this fool gives in to conservative backlash and cancels it. At the same time, President Biden is reiterating his intention to close the facility at Guantanamo before he leaves office. Something’s going to have to give somewhere.
Okay, we both need to move on with our days, you and I. There’s still other news, but perhaps we’ll cover that tomorrow.
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