Using an LLM to offer concise summaries of the major platforms and ideas of candidates would be an ideal use of the technology …if there was any way to know that the LLM is being factual and accurate and relatively free of bias in what it produces. But we have no guarantees on this.

Those 1950s glory days that Republicans keep harkening back to involved Ike, a Republican president, taxing the [very] wealthy like 52% (fake viral posts say 90%). at a rate of around 90%.

EDIT: Corrected based off of comments. The 52% rates seem to be more common among the “wealthy” at the time, but in comparison to billionaires today, the 90% rate would be more accurate. The “fake viral posts” is in reference to memes that make it sound like every person who counted as “wealthy” were taxed at 90%. I realize I could have written all of that more clearly.

In 1993 Michael Crichton introduces us to the wonders of de-extinction and we all dreamed of dinosaurs in zoos. 33 years later and all we get is rebooted viruses.

I know that this is all Trump’s blowhard bullshit, but the logic (and we know there isn’t any) could easily be: If we have the money, and it’s not his money, but money made from tariffs, then there’s nothing to stop the Democrats from also giving everyone a $5000 check…

Palm Beach Atlantic University. President at the time was David Clark.

Story time! When I was in college I was the Opinion Editor of our paper and also had a weekly column. Without getting into the specifics and making this post longer than it needs to be (but am happy to share the full story if folks want), I wrote a piece straight up calling out a blatantly racist stance that my university took. It got some back-and-forth from students, but surprisingly I didn’t get any notable reaction from the administration. I was a senior that year and graduated a few months later.

Found out that, at the start of the next academic year, the university president deigned to darken the door of the newspaper office to meet with all the staff. He slapped my article onto the table and told everyone present “this will not happen again. From here on out, every article you publish will be both factual and pro-university.” He later reconfigured the entire paper into a “magazine” that was effectively a PR rag.

Anyway, this quote and the university president’s are basically the same. They’re oxymoronic. Conservatives LOVE doublethink.

He got BIG PISSED when they called, was it Arizona?, for Biden in 2022.

“Dis buk reel thicc. Mus bee smart buk. Much words on post. Liek thicc buk, must bee smart.”

Women have an amazing capacity for multi-tasking that is truly, truly inspiring. Don’t denigrate that.

/s just in case it’s needed

I remember in the days following 9/11 my then-girlfriend going on about how so many people were going to get lung cancer and other diseases because of all the chemicals in the buildings. We were 18 at the time. That government officials knowingly lied in such an obviously provable way is… I want to say astounding, but not really. That we US folks live with the understanding that our government kills us for the lulz is such a messed up thing.

Stewart’s rage over this is fully justified and palpable.

Me too! Specifically clicked on this link looking for him

This. I served as the Opinion Editor of my college newspaper. I hung around students who saw themselves as “real” journalists and they saw it as their duty to annoy the living hell out of administrators and others, often in defiance of the faculty representative in the paper office. I knew guys who would just walk into board meetings uninvited. They’d corner the university president. They’d go to meetings and ask questions that the administrators clearly did not want to answer and then push on them to give an answer. Freedom of the Press is not something that is comfortable. It will have push-back, the laws designed to protect it have to be activated from time-to-time. What’s been the most successful tool of curtailing the “Fourth Estate” in modern politics is not silencing so much as fostering a space where the press never use their freedoms.