Watch- he’ll say it was one of his many “hilarious” jokes and his sycophants with circle the wagons and the press will be worried about their Twitter accounts and then this will be forgotten until the next time.
The Koch brother’s plan was to invest in state races to win enough legislatures and governors to call a new constitutional convention, and have enough anarcho-capitalist stooges to formally reshape the country as their libertarian oligarchy utopia where the rest of us are just indentured serfs.
It’s been going on for a while, I believe they were big in funding Tea Party candidates, for example. One the two brothers has since died, though. I just did a google search for “koch brothers constitutional convention” and here are some of the links
A bunch of small to midsized private company owners want to destabilize the federal government so that they only have to deal with state level regulations. These are the types of companies that you have never heard of or didn’t realize they weren’t publicly traded.
She began on a progressive platform with a side of identity politics. She sold out her progressive platform during the campaign to position herself for, then secure the VP nomination.
But, we don’t need specifics to be certain any given US federal politician is absolute trash. They’re all elected on corporate money.
Ideologically, she’s a corporate shill that incarcerated thousands of people for minor posessions and then claimed to be against such policies while never offering any amnesty or apology. Politically I have major disagreeances with both parties platforms. Socially, I think Harris leads to some Republican bullshit scheme.
Also, to everyone that keeps trying to gaslight America. EVERYONE HATES HARRIS, SHE WILL DRIVE AWAY ON THE FENCE VOTERS AND YOUNGER APATHETIC VOTERS.
She did her job and applied the law as it was, she wasn’t the one who had the power to change those laws, the people chose to elect people who didn’t change them.
Ideologically, she’s a corporate shill that incarcerated thousands of people for minor posessions and then claimed to be against such policies while never offering any amnesty or apology. Politically I have major disagreeances with both parties platforms. Socially, I think Harris leads to some Republican bullshit scheme.
Also, to everyone that keeps trying to gaslight America. EVERYONE HATES HARRIS, SHE WILL DRIVE AWAY ON THE FENCE VOTERS AND YOUNGER APATHETIC VOTERS.
Ah, so you sorta tried to answer this question. But it boils down to “because things”, mainly. Or rather ONE thing exactly. I’d bet that is the sum total of your actual knowledge of Harris’ history.
Like take this sentence: “Socially, I think Harris leads to some Republican bullshit scheme.”
Y’all so far are just repeating the same thing assuming nobody will notice that “reasons” is so far only one “reason” and not a great one at that. Somebody remind me the name of this cognitive error…
I’ve said it in ither comments on this thread I thought this was part of those.
Bad polling, handling of the border, how she ran the bay area when it came to marijuana charges and cases, perceived foreign policy goals especially in relation to Israel, bad public image towards young people (pokemon go to the polls energy) and a subpar debate record. From what I remeber she was solidly losing until the fly landed on Pence and he got memed to death.
In the end she will just be women trump or women biden, I.e more of the exact same.
“perceived foreign policy goals” “how she ran the bay area” “bad public image” “subpar debate record”
So basically you don’t have specifics but just gross generalizations. So far that’s all anyone has come up with and it just gets repeated as though somehow saying it with more words makes it more than “because reasons”. It doesn’t.
How about some context and maybe even a few specifics?
Harris on Israel: She’s criticized Israel and made it clear Israel’s behavior would not be without consequences. Example.
“ran the bay area”: Honestly this is just kind of nonsense. Did you mean her reputation around drug crimes? What about all the other stuff like the Back on Track initiative? She helped pass legislation banning the gay panic defense. And efforts to change state policies around transgender medical treatment for prisoners (this is nuanced because she argued in line with the law but didn’t agree and worked to change it). Harris pushed hard agains the family separation policy under Trump, and was the first to demand Nielsen’s resignation. Just a tiny random sample of achievements, which are a lot more than you might think.
“bad public image”: What does this even mean given that the same could be argued for Trump and Biden? Or the “bad public image” of politicians in general? I’d argue that a lot of this “bad public image” has to do with people like you generalizing in vague ways and, to be blunt, remaining ignorant of the facts.
subpar debate record: What, like one? I know other people who flubbed debates. Obama, for example. It happens and while you could sort of argue that degrades her electability slightly you cannot argue that it points to an inability to be president.
My entire point here is that there is a LOT more to Harris than vague half-remembered generalizations that too often seem to be all people put forward. It’s really worth looking at her record in more detail. Wikipedia actually has a pretty good rundown. And of course On The Issues has the usual handy summary.
I think she’s an awful choice tactically and have little hope for what her administration would do - but I’ll still vote for her if her name is on the ticket.
I mean, we Americans are certainly well-known for our quick critical-thinking skills, our ability to be reasonable and of course our willingness to compromise for the greater good.
Hell, the day before the election is just as good - especially if you don’t actually care about winning and/or enacting critical policies/legislation we need
India is roughly a billion people; The largest democracy in the world. I think they get it all done in 3 months. They also just had an election this year.
The US is kinda unique, having years long presedental campaigns. It’s crazy, and complety, unnecessarily, excessive.
There’s no reason for it, beyond driving donations for parties, and ratings for news networks.
But it’s the insanity we have. The insanity we’ve gotten used to.
There are millions of voters who, for reasons I will never understand, are still undecided. At some point, fighting over your candidate doesn’t inspire outsiders as to your party’s vision for governance. You’ll never sell a message of “We’re the party that will defeat fascism!” if half your efforts are spent essentially rehashing the primary. Seriously, the Dems right now look like a low budget version of Spartacus.
Biden, whether through serious belief or the obstinance that comes from advanced age, is not going to step aside. Continuing to publicly fight that, rather than unite behind a single party-wide message, only makes the Dems look weak.
And no, I’m not saying Biden shouldn’t step aside or that he is the best candidate. But party unity is the key to defeating the GOP and if Biden won’t withdraw, we work with that.
They’re all pieces of shit, you don’t come to lead a political party without being one. But we’ve still got to pick which is the least smelly piece of shit of the bunch.
Gods I cannot wait for her to lose, she’s a POS through and through
I find that in general when people say shit like this, without elaborating, they generally don’t have a solid idea why they think that. Is that the case for you or do you have actual reasons for saying this?
Not OP here and I’ll vote for her in the election 100% but the concerns I’ve seen raised most often are:
She was a cop and her history reflects the history of being a cop. Being a prosecutor means that you’re pressuring innocent people into jail time plea deals and using cops to back up your arguments all the time. She’s the epitome of back the blue.
That makes her a great choice against the “Law and Order” fascist felon at least.
… but the concerns I’ve seen raised most often are:
Concern, singular. It’s the same issue over and over again, and especially in Harris’ case… I mean both Clintons were once opposed to gay marriage, which is a real deal breaker for me. I didn’t hold that one single issue against Hillary, I looked at the totality of her neo-liberal/con background before deciding I couldn’t support her.
And… Joe Biden and just about every other congress critter has a terrible history of police support too. You know what? That’s the price they pay for getting votes. I don’t agree with it, I think it stinks as much as pigs in general, but it’s a price I’m willing to accept to get everything else and not get a Republican administration.
I’m looking for reasons that make Harris unelectable. TBH, her background throwing people in jail for minor drug offenses ups her appeal with a lot of voters.
The unfortunate truth is that that’s not an option. We get either a Republican, or a slightly better Republican. We need to put in a lot of groundwork to open the doors for any other options, and we’re just not there yet.
The fact that you’re both-sides-ing this is enough for me to bow out. Biden and Harris are nowhere near the level of evil that Trump is. Enjoy wasting your vote. I’m out.
I think you’re right. They must see this as something indefensible and seek to separate themselves as quickly as possible. Or, maybe we’re actually seeing a shift in the culture of policing and they’re less likely to defend at all costs. I would much prefer that to be the real reason, though I won’t get my hopes up.
Prosecutors said Grayson discouraged the other deputy from getting a medical kit from their vehicle.
Releasing that detail does not bode well for what’s on the recordings.
An Illinois sheriff’s deputy charged with murder in the death of a Black woman shot her in the face during a tense moment over a pot of water in her home, authorities said Thursday.
Prosecutors said Grayson “aggressively yelled” at Massey to put a pot down. They said she put her hands in the air and ducked for cover before she was shot in the face.
And then right after that is the part about the medical kit. So you kill someone who asked for help because they were holding a pot of water.
They can convict on 2nd degree murder in Illinois. It’s the same basic points to find them guilty but they can consider mitigating factors to lower it from 1 to 2.
He shot a woman for no good reason. That’s enough. People care more when bad things happen to women.
It’s why black folks being a larger share of people shot by police than their share of population is definitely racist but no one bats an eye at more than 95% of folks shot by police being men.
It’s worse than a lot of people are imagining. They were responding to her call about someone that was lurking around her house/neighborhood. The police arrived when she was making dinner and she wasn’t in the kitchen. She stood and talked to the two officers with a calm demeanor then they allowed her to/told her to move the pot off the stove to reduce a fire risk. Then the officer charged in her murder shot her from a considerable distance after telling her he was going to shoot her in the face if she didn’t put the pot down.
When the other officer said he was going to retrieve the first aid kit, the demented POS that shot her in the face told him not to bother due to the extent of her injuries. Fortunately he went and got it anyway because it seems that he’s at least somewhat competent at his job. He also was the only one of the two to have his body cam footage rolling during the whole interaction. The officer charged didn’t attempt to turn his cam on until after he fired his weapon.
There’s protests scheduled to be taking place today and the vocal minority in and around town are screaming about how there’s going to be riot violence and looting of businesses downtown.
Don’t follow much US politics because yous cunts shoehorn it into every fuckin thread about squirrels, dog food or whatever, but why is that lassie not your president? Instead of the two pish-reeking geriatric cunts you’ve got at the moment
It’s pretty consistent. Black men got the right to vote long before women too. The US has more deep rooted misogyny than racism, and it’s got plenty of racism.
According to the SCOTUS, being ineligible for the Presidency isn’t a barrier, to running or winning. So I say bring on AOC as the nominee instead of Biden!
I’ve always wondered why this is? In our country a previous prime minister remains highly relevant and politically active until they retire, even if that is long after they were in the position. The leader of the current largest opposition party was prime minister for eight years before losing the previous election, and is set to be the opposition’s front runner for PM in the next election in not too long.
Like, why didn’t e.g. Obama run for a position on the senate after finishing his second term as president? He’s definitely still young enough, even in countries where you don’t need to be a fossil to have political power.
Technically, she wasn’t old enough to run until this year.
More practically, we have a center-right party and a fascist party in this country. The center-right party has a few actual leftists in it, but they tend not to gain much power.
Tamara Taylor and her daughter, identified in pleadings as “N.B.”, sued the City of Honolulu and the Hawaii Department of Education for false arrest, use of excessive force, and racial and disability discrimination after police handcuffed and arrested a 10-year-old Black girl who drew an offensive picture.
But also what is “offensive”? Offensive to pedo christo fascists?
Edit:
drew a picture of a figure holding a gun. The picture also included phrases including, “Stand down B—-,” “Yo F—– days are over NOW,” and “Fake to me and DED!”
Thats not very nice, but also not offensive or illegal. I mean sure a teacher might wanna ask her what made her draw this, but damn bro, calling the cops??
I drew people shooting each other and far worse all the time when I was 10. But then I’m a white male, so I suppose “boys will be boys” in my case, unlike her.
Right, we drew entire armies on the desks with all sorts of phrases coming from the soldiers. Context matters. But I get that a teacher may not want to make that call in this day and age. But they should have a counselor or something on staff to handle this.
Please, weaponize this! I know the last place you want to go is a Fox News comment section or FB posts but these people need to see how they will be personally affected too.
Weaponize the cuts to social security and medicare as much as you can. Yes, lots of conservatives are a lot cause. But I’m not asking you to reach them on the moral issues, I’m asking to get them rightfully scared of losing social security and medicare/medicaid. Make it personal.
They also need to know they don’t need to vote for anyone. It’s perfectly valid to leave the space blank if they are not comfortable voting for Biden.
The option exists to not vote straight R, and no one will ever know. They can vote Biden and vote R for everything else, and still pretend they voted for Trump.
Better to try to get them not to vote at all I think. Push that and it might convince them to go vote when they might possibly have been willing not to. And other offices are also very important.
We can all pretend to have so much outrage over Biden and his debate. Clearly the last four years in office of him doing a great job mean nothing, only that debate mattered. No way we can vote anymore, my fragile liberal heart couldn’t take it!
Article says some states may refuse to participate. Well since it’s a program that helps people and provides a free option instead of using a corporate tax preparer, then I assume all GOP states will hate it and call it liberal socialism somehow. Betcha we hear the same argument we get with healthcare … " The libs want to force you to use this and take away your ability to choose"
GOP rule #1: oppose anything and everything that’s provided at no cost to the end-user if someone somewhere can charge too much money for the same product. and no, instatwitbooksnaptok isn’t included because the end-user IS the product
Texas was one of the states that could participate in the trial. But it is Texas, so I’m not holding my breath that they will continue being cool with it. Fingers crossed though.
It’s hard for me to choose the more likely theory:
(1) That these judges are so deluded that they think this is reasonable; or (2) That these judges are making the argument that it’s possible to get an abortion in bad faith because that means justifies the end of keeping a law on the books that prevents effectively all abortions.
The Ministry of Health in Riyadh referred the two medical professionals to the public prosecutor, and they face imprisonment for up to six months and a fine of up to $26,000 (100,000 riyals).
That’s kinda the point - Texas permits a life-saving abortion, but is super vague as to what counts as “life-saving” and if it’s not life-saving **enough ** then comes the extreme punishment.
I was born after Watergate, but I’ve read enough about the era to know that when it was revealed that Nixon has an ‘enemies list,’ it was a massive scandal. There seemed to be a general consensus that was not something a president should have.
Fast forward to 2024 and Trump.
I guess when your enemies list isn’t a secret one, it’s fine?
Honestly with the internet, we might be able to live in the first technologically viable direct democracy. I’d be curious to see a proposal for how that could be implemented.
Direct democracy sounds like a horrible system for national governance, though. The average person has nowhere near the capacity to be informed enough on a wide range of issues to make good decisions. You need specialists with deep domain knowledge to guide policy decisions, not lots of laypersons.
Our elected representatives aren’t specialists with deep domain knowledge either. Ideally you have specialists in a specific role as drafters of legislation, administrative people appointed to filter through the bills, but the final vote goes to the people instead of Congress. That way you don’t get fiascos like abortion rights where you have a small group of people controlling us despite overwhelming support.
No they don’t, but at least they’ll typically be working with and advised by people who do have that domain knowledge. And yeah, I could see a system working where there’s basically a veto vote for the people.
Yeah I’m not pretending I’ve thought deeply about my proposed system. But the people at very least deserve the ability to have a direct hand in legislation. Politicians are not scared enough of their electorate.
I used to agree that people should be able to vote directly on issues. Not sure where I land anymore. We seem way more vulnerable to propaganda than one would have expected.
If the status quo somehow carries on for another decade I wouldn’t be surprised if the 20% to 30% of extremist nuts becomes 50% or higher.
I don’t know if I would trust an internet where a guy played a long con with xz Utils development to engineer a back door into Linux systems with accurately tabulating votes.
If the voice actor actually made an obvious parody of the HER voice (as an example giving it an over the top southern drawl to subvert expectations about southern ludditism) but parodies can’t just be “like that thing but we hired a cheaper voice actor”.
I strongly feel she has a case. Altman may not have violated criminal law, but he has used backdoor marketing, climbing on her shoulders to sell a product.
The circumstantial evidence is very high as well. This voice actor saying she doesn’t sound like Scarlett Johanson is absolutely meaningless. Sucks she got pulled into this I guess?
Yeah, that she wasn't given direction is meaningless when you have editing software. Not to mention that there are a ton of videos showing how easy it is to train LLMs to reproduce a voice given samples.
The issue is Altman made it murky. If my name is Joe McDonald, I’m allowed to open a hamburger shop. What I can’t do is purposefully confuse customers for my personal gain.
This isn’t parody, it’s image and likeness. It is much less murky when they are promoting it as “Her” as in the movie starring Johansson as the voice of a sentient AI assistant.
It is not allowed. See Tom Waits vs. Frito Lay. Vocal timbre is considered to part of a celebrities’ “likeness” and reproducing it to imply endorsement will get you landed in court. ScarJo is a huge Tom Waits fan so she knows the story.
Lol. You should read the reviews of the album. They are decidedly …mixed. Everyone seems to agree that it wasn’t your typical Hollywood vanity project - she took it seriously as an artistic endeavour.
That having been said her singing voice is freakishly low and the mixing is muddy and obscuring. It shows something that can’t be immediately dismissed, but the poor execution doesn’t allow you to grasp exactly what that spark might be.
Nah I’m good, I don’t give Zionists and illegal settlers my time. Fuck OpenAI, and fuck ScarJo, couldn’t happen to a better person, except maybe Gal Gadot or McShit Rapoport.
That’s not the same thing, they hired an impersonator and copied something really distinct about how he talked. Johansen’s deep mid western accent is not distinct, and Sky was not doing an impression.
Lots of women speak like Scarlet. The first person to become famous cannot copyright a way millions of people speak and act.
The point is they said “we want Scarlett” and when she said no, they went ahead with someone similar and implied a connection. That’s definitely unethical, and arguably illegal.
That said, while she definitely has a case, I fully expect it to be settled fairly quickly, because I don’t think she’d win.
I’m going to say this because it bothers the crap out of me.
Sam Altman has admitted to being a huge Her fan. He says it’s his favorite movie. IIRC, he even said he was ‘obsessed’ with the movie and that it inspired him.
Two days before they announced GPT-4o, which they apparently gave the hard sell to Johansson to try to get her join up on, Sam Altman was on Reddit and said OpenAI was exploring how to allow their service for erotica.
Giiiiiirrll.
So like, can you a record label sue another band for ‘sounding like’ the band that they are promoting?
It was more of a thing in the 90s, but there were always competing follow up bands (Sublime being followed by 311) that chased the sound of another artist.
Like should NSync be sued for being a boy band following in Backstreet Boys wake?
Not parody, but mimicry is fundamental to art.
I suppose my rather extreme views on copyright and up leaves me the outlier here, but I think the whole thing is rather absurdist.
Chat GPT is not art, it is an LLM sold by a business that courted Scarlett Johansson to endorse and/or voice their LLM.
She refused and they released an LLM named Sky with a similar voice and personality to the Sam (Samantha) character she played, while also openly referencing the Her movie with their social media.
If I created an “AI” ska band that sounded like Sublime and trained it on Bradley Nowell’s singing voice, with a similar-sounding vocalist to fill in the gaps, I’m pretty sure Sub Lime featuring Badly Novell would get fucked so hard by copyright attorneys that all I would have left is my dog and some weed.
Yeah this was the case right from the start. I’m not sure why people are just coming around now, I guess it helps that the actual voice actor has spoken out so it’s concrete proof that she at least exists.
It was murky from the getgo. Open AI immediately came out and stated it was the voice of a hired voice actor and that all four or five voice options were, and that it was the voice actor using her own natural voice. The media has just chose to mostly completely ignore that and instead wanted to run with rumors that they stole ScarJos voice from the movie or by sampling a bunch of her work, because that sounds way more gossipy.
To your 2nd point though. The trump voicing stuff is a clear and apparent “parody” which is protected to be legally used. Even when Weird AL does his music, he doesn’t actually have to get the artists permission. He just always has because he’s a world treasure.
Very true right there. It could just as easily be described as him flaunting technology like what was in the movie, though. I posted a side by side a bit ago and the voices are pretty different.
What would be neat is if ScarJo sues and wins, could the Jane Doe voice actor then hit ScarJo with an antitrust lawsuit? I mean, if the poor lady can’t get work because the market for “that voice” is dominated by one actor: then what?
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