Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, April 25, 2024
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68 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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From the WaPo:
(There is a gift link over at LGM):
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/04/voting-fraudsters-indicted-in-arizona
ETA:
“Just Security”
Detailed discussion at link above.
As far as I could tell from reading and the local news, the protest was a peaceful, legal public protest on public grounds and the escalation was generated by the police, administrators and political hacks like the Governor.
Why do I feel like I’m living the 60s again?
Police arrest more than two dozen pro-Palestine protesters on UT-Austin campus amid tense standoff
This is the most sensible statement. But that does not generate anger and division.
@charontwo:
I am actually glad TFG is unindicted, that would just slow things down, he already has enough indictments. I want Kelli Ward and the other AZ people and the Turning Point guy locked up, matters more here in AZ.
@Scott: This guy must have been born in 1979:
Senior Democrat calls for arrests of ‘leftwing fascists’ urging Gaza ceasefire
Congressman Adam Smith says ‘totalitarian’ protesters are ‘trying to silence anyone who dares to disagree with them’
Huh. I had no idea the cops were working for the protestors.
What is particularly galling here in Texas is the Republicans calling everyone anti semitic when their own party is riddled with outright Christian nationalists and anti semitic leaders. Their pro-Israel stance is pro-Christian, anti-Jewish. And the press and casual public can’t get their head around that.
I’ve written before about Tim Dunn: The Billionaire Bully Who Wants to Turn Texas Into a Christian Theocracy. He told Joe Straus, the Texas House Speaker that only Christians should be in leadership positions. To his face.
Here is my congressman, Chip Roy: Chip Roy raises alarms about George Soros’ purchase of radio giant Audacy going after George Soros. He’s a Jew, ya know.
He then posted this in his official Press Office Facebook account: https://www.facebook.com/RepChipRoyPress
If you want to get really depressed you should read the comments of his followers.
Then there’s the leaders in the Texas Republican Party.
Far-right activist Jonathan Stickland starts new group, months after white supremacist scandal
It is quite the antisemitic stew. But let’s beat up some students to distract everyone.
Adventures in home maintenance.
We’ve a drain pipe that regularly clogs, due to the rearrangement of waste water plumbing that moved from the back of the house when it had a septic system to the front when town sewage became available. At least once a year I need to snake that pipe and have your typical drain snake, but the reality is that, this only poked a hole in the clog. So I decided to rent a powered drain snake, that worked great and the sinks on that line have never emptied so quickly.
But there was a problem… A leak… When this house was built, it was common that waste plumbing was cast iron and/or copper, when the move to town sewage was made, all that was removed and replaced by PCV, except a 10′ section that encompassed my problem area. Now why that copper wasn’t tossed, who knows, but it was worse than that.
The copper was connected to the PCV on either side by rubber, clamped connectors, standard practice. One of those was where the leak was and I figured the snaking and jarred the junction and hoped that simply tightening the flange would solve the problem, ah no. Looking at the connection I noticed something odd, felt the leak area area and yes, something wasn’t right. Went for a flash light to get a better view and discovered that to fit the copper into the rubber flange, someone split the copper tube several inches till it reduced the diameter and soldered it so it wouldn’t leak, then installed the copper with the seam down rather than up. AHHHH.
It was off to Home Depot for some PCV , new flanges and pipe hangers, an hour or so later with the liberal use of a few magic works, it was done in the manner it should have been done 30 years ago.
The rental fee for the electric ell was effectively wasted.
“I like to think of the United States of America as Britain’s greatest invention.”
– Liz Truss
@OzarkHillbilly: Don’t think much of Truss, but’s it a good line. I wonder if it is an original by her?
A bizarre and sad story out of a Baltimore area high scho0l. A “recording” of the Principle making racist and anti-semitic statements quickly made the rounds, and his life was threatened and he was removed from the school pending an investigation. The recording was sent to different experts who unanimously agreed they were AI generated. And just today, the Athletic Director was arrested, with evidence showing it came form his computer and sock puppet email account. I doubt the Principle will get back his reputation considering the amount of outrage in the community against him when the story broke. And in the meantime the school administration has been thrown into chaos, which can’t be of any good for the students there.
Sad all around.
Harvey Weinstein’s New York conviction has been overturned.
edit: I see the news gets to Florida first…
@MarkedMan: I think this is only the beginning. AI produced products used to destroy someone’s reputation. It is going to happen again alot I’m afraid.
@Bill Jempty: Wait — a rich white guy who was unquestionably guilty of multiple hideous crimes is allowed to skate free by a court for bullshit technical reasons? In America?
It’s time for the New York Supreme Court to put out T-shirts — “You think the US Supreme Court has lost legitimacy? Hold our beer!”
Flip the Weinstein case around and it’s a poor guy accused of murder with a bunch of questionable informants saying he did this or that uncharged, and I think (as a layman) the court’s decision is solid.
Harvey Weinstein was a serial predator because the system thought it was great. It was on his side. I remember reading blather about a lawyer who took heat for offering up his services as an attorney. The guy had an aura of being a powerful bully, and that’s why he got the heat. He was on Weinstein’s side! But the whole thing was framed as an attack on the legal system and the rights of the accused. Weinstein has his rights, but nothing in his case is applicable to anything else.
In the State of New York the Court of Appeals is the highest court in the State Judicial system. The New Your State Supreme Court is the trial level venue a step down the ladder from the Appeals Court. I learned this in the 7th grade in the 1950’s when I was attending public school in Webster NY. I remember the teacher saying “Nobody knows why.”
This bit of knowledge did help several decades later when I became a Law and Order junkie.
This guy had a lot to do with my addiction.
@MarkedMan:
AI is clumsy and easily disprovable. Framing someone by AI is not like smearing someone with innuendo which is designed to be unprovable. But the logic of a society of closed doors and closets points to guilt not just going away on command. If you are distrustful of your spouse you can find evidence of infidelity regardless of proof. Same goes with saying a person is not the unprejudiced human they seem to be.
@OzarkHillbilly:
So the overbearing sense of superiority was put in on purpose?
@MarkedMan: I have learned elsewhere that it was originally a joke by Colbert. Coming from her? She has no sense of humor. She is idiotic enough to believe it, as though the Declaration of Independence was not a wholesale rejection of Britain.
@MarkedMan: Very sad indeed. I suppose it was inevitable tho.
@Bill Jempty: Happy am I that I will soon be dead.
Rightwing US website that spreads election conspiracies declares bankruptcy
Gateway Pundit, run by Jim Hoft, is being sued for defamation by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss and others
Taking a page from the Alex Jones playbook no doubt.
@Modulo Myself: When the news came out about the calls being AI generated one expert mentioned that unlike AI generated video, today’s AI audio can be virtually indistinguishable from the original. My impression wasn’t the voice that caused them to declare it a fake but rather that while it appeared to be a phone call (or at least one side of it) it lacked the signatures of a phone call. For instance, there was absolutely no background noise or external sounds. I think there was also something about the voice showing no signs of breathing but that could have been added by a more sophisticated user using a paid rather than freely available tool.
@Modulo Myself: When the news came out about the calls being AI generated one expert mentioned that unlike AI generated video, today’s AI audio can be virtually indistinguishable from the original. My impression wasn’t the voice that caused them to declare it a fake but rather that while it appeared to be a phone call (or at least one side of it) it lacked the signatures of a phone call. For instance, there was absolutely no background noise or external sounds. I think there was also something about the voice showing no signs of breathing but that could have been added by a more sophisticated user using a paid rather than freely available tool.
@MarkedMan:
I think the AI would work if you know what you are doing. I get so many emails now that begin with Chatbot GPT telling me ‘I hope this find you well’. People can barely write in this country and they leave the evidence of AI in because they have no idea. I know how to begin a stupid email, but I certainly don’t know anything about the acoustics of a phone call. I’m guessing it’s very hard to make AI do things convincingly to experts and it’s probably not something you can teach yourself over a weekend as you plot against your enemy. But maybe I’m wrong.
@Modulo Myself:
I heard something on NPR like a week or two ago. The gist was basically that the costs of AI vocal reproduction have plummeted with the quality of it has skyrocketed recently. Something like it went from taking 45 minutes to render a short voice statement down to like a minute. Don’t quote me on the exact times, but it was a holy shit level of increase. They were worried that the over all quality was rapidly becoming indistinguishable. It was WILD.
You mean drug companies are inflating their costs? Say it ain’t so!
@OzarkHillbilly: I went to Gateway Pundit yesterday (first time ever–only time probably, too) to get the whole story. The bankruptcy is a Chapter 11 reorganization so he’s not going away (and may be allowed to find someone to loan him more money). The Georgia election workers are in the wrong place at the wrong time and will probably be left out in the cold even if they win. On the other hand, if being vindicated is all that matters to them, they should be okay.
@Beth:
I guess I want to believe it’s not so easy overall. With hindsight, the story is not believable. If I were a high school kid, I might believe it, but as an adult, oh yeah, it’s time for the racist tirade on the phone with a person recording me as I go through all the racist hits and then slam the Jews. Also, cell-phone coverage is so bad now that most conversations are like the Nixon tapes.
Some people are great at gossip and rumor-spreading and other people aren’t. The same goes with forgeries and plausibility.
@Modulo Myself: From what I read, it depends on the context. This guy got tripped up because he was trying to duplicate a phone call, and only using the free version of the tool. But from what I read they had done experiments where they took actual recordings done in a recording studio (so no background noise or echos) and then presented them to experts alongside AI generated ones, and their success rate was only somewhat better than chance. I have to caveat this by saying that I don’t remember where I read this, and I’m too lazy to go searching now, so I could have something wrong.
@MarkedMan:
It would seem to me that if his reputation is going to stay sullied after the fakery is revealed, that might be a comment on his general character and reputation. Then again, that wouldn’t surprise me to any degree given that many school administrators I worked with over the years I taught were pretty thoroughgoing [fill in insult of your choice here].
@Beth: Thanks! I think I’m unintentionally combining what I read in the Banner story about the principle and what I heard shortly after on NPR.
@Modulo Myself:
I’ve been playing around with the Aria AI chat in the Opera browser. It seems more chill and receptive than other generative AIs. But it also shares many of the same habits as the others.
For instance, if you ask “How can I get started on becoming the best lawyer in the world,” It will give you an answer, but use the phrase “the best lawyer in the world” more than once in its reply. It doesn’t, like a person would, say things like “Well, if you want that, it’s going to be nearly impossible,” knowing both understand what the “that” refers to.
When I asked Copilot to draft an email, it did a reasonable first approximation. I tried to edit on the app by telling it “mention it was due to a delay by the client.” It literally added “it was due to a delay by the client” at some point i the text, not necessarily the best point.
Maybe I’ll play with audio capable AI next.
@MarkedMan:
Well, that’s not great. But I want to believe that there are obvious amateurish signs which will make AI-based forgeries stand out.
@Kathy:
But you can write. I’m sure you could play with AI text and make it yours. That’s different than not knowing how to write.
@Beth: This type of thing freaks me out. It’s worse for people who have recordings of their voices available online (so, think not just people who are on the news, but people who have hosted or been a guest on a podcast, etc.).
We’re about to enter a whole new realm of fraud.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
In a more just world this would be true, but I don’t think it works that way in the one we live in. It’s why the variants of “So have you stopped beating your wife yet?” work so well.
@Jen: You don’t need podcasts! How many people have posted videos with voice to Tik Tok or Facebook?
@MarkedMan: Well, I wonder about “experts” who are asked to distinguish between an AI generated voice and a recording of an actual human. I mean, I can believe that they are experts in … something. Also, I can accept that telling these two things apart is difficult.
However, I find it hard to imagine that anybody on the planet is an expert at distinguishing AI generated voice from human recordings. This is a brand new field, and nobody knows anything about it.
@Modulo Myself:
You realize this means the Nigerien Prince letters are not about to get any better any time soon. Not even to qualify for consideration for the Noble Price in Scams and Phishing.
About that email, I decided the draft, while good, didn’t sound like me at all. I took one sentence Copilot wrote, and did the rest myself.
I wonder if I should work on a hierarchy of kitchen gadgets/appliances equivalency to AI.
For example, one that is useful for many things and does most of them well, would be equivalent to my Ninja Foodi multi function pot, an A+. One that does what it claims, but requires additional work to be useful, or is only useful for very specific things you don’t do often, would be more like the manual mini-chopper to chop onions*, a solid F.
*Not worth the trouble. It’s only a little faster than a knife and cutting board, and you still need the knife and board anyway. Plus now you have one more thing to wash, and one that takes longer to wash than a knife and board, which really negates any time savings.
@Modulo Myself:
The Nixon Tapes also go through all the racist hits and then slam the Jews.
@MarkedMan:
Welcome to the ever evolving world of fraud, powered by evolving technology.
@Modulo Myself:
The word “questionable” is doing all of the heavy lifting in your argument. The witnesses against Weinstein were not “a bunch of questionable informants”.
@Modulo Myself:
I wouldn’t bet on that, if I were you.
@Jay L Gischer: From the NPR article, which was actually testing so called Audio AI detection tools used these named experts:
And I thought this was interesting:
The rise of AI should, in a rational world, renew the power of legacy media, as social media becomes (even more) flooded with fakes. We need gatekeepers. We need actual reporters.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
How many people still believe that vaccines cause autism, even after the research that established that link was proven to have been faked? “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” is a terrible proverb.
@DrDaveT:
Not betting. I’m choosing to be naive. Also, I’m hoping there’s a difference between the long con and the short con. Using AI for scam emergency calls to relatives versus fabricating a convincing alternate reality of a person’s life. The first seems easy whereas the second might be harder to do well. If you read the accounts, this scam seemed to fall apart on delivery. If I were going to do the long con, I would pull back and make it ambiguous and not too good to be true.
@Michael Reynolds:
I don’t know if its AI or just poor reporting but I’ve seen a trend.
It involves the Street which is a business related news service. When going to my AOL mail I sometimes get links to their articles.
Three times this year there was a company ready to go out of business. Two time I was curious who the article. Each article opened with generic descriptions of why this type of business is not doing very well of late.
https://www.thestreet.com/restaurants/bankrupt-fast-food-chain-closer-to-death-as-more-locations-close
It wasn’t till the 4th paragraph you find out what company the article is about and I’ve seen two articles written in a similar fashion by something at The Street
I know there is click bait but you don’t usually have to wade through three paragraphs.
@DrDaveT: Better put than my effort
@Michael Reynolds:
That isn’t all we need. Atrios links to a POLITICO story on the strained relationship between the Biden administration and the NYT. Apparently Kid Sulzberger doesn’t think Biden is respecting Sulzberger’s authority.
One, he might be more amenable to an interview if you hadn’t said “81” and “inflation” at every possible opportunity. Two, you might try looking at what he’s gotten done. WAPO, for instance, has a detailed article today on how Biden and his team patiently helped Johnson do right thing on Ukraine aid.
@MarkedMan: Agreed, but the issue with podcasts is that it’s (usually) pretty clean audio, and there are (usually) multiple episodes that have a wide range of words, phrases, verbal tics, etc.–in other words, really clean audio with a lot to “train” AI with to make things far more believable. Sure, there’s tik-tok and reels and such, but most of that is short-form and has background noise that’s harder to clean up and can leave “fingerprints” on the AI generated version.
@Jen: Good points
This morning on NPR, I heard both the anchor and the SCOTUS beat reporter say that SCOTUS was set to decide whether a president has immunity for “official acts.” I sorta assume a president has immunity for “official acts.” The question is whether everything a president does is an “official” act – i.e., an act in furtherance of the appropriate duties of his office. That immunity does not extend to his campaign acts or his acts to extend his grasp of the office or his random criming.
Of course Trump claims he was protecting the election and it remains for the Special Prosecutor to establish Trump had no such good faith belief or that it is not an appropriate duty of his office to police state elections. But it frosts me to hear what I like to think of as a reliable media outlet so flagrantly misstate the question.
In my experience, vindication doesn’t make the death threats go away. In fact, they become even more vehement. (of course, that was my ex’s husband and his friends. MAGAs may lose heart or interest)
@gVOR10: I think before Biden gives them an interview, they should have to prove they are still fit to take one. The success of the NYTPitchbot tells a different tale. (I read reports that DougJ really gets under Sulzberger’s skin)
@Modulo Myself:..If I were going to do the long con, I would pull back and make it ambiguous and not too good to be true.
Seems like folks have been falling for the “too good to be true” con since the story of two naked people in a garden with an apple tree and a snake.
Today’s chumps worship a two-bit gas bag.
@MarkedMan: I’ve lived in places where the population rallied around a teacher who was a confessed child abuser and and police officers who violated the civil rights of a crime victim of the wrong color, so I can see it to going either way. I don’t know how adversarial the school climate is in your area though, so you may well be correct about the character of the administrator being unimportant. If so, that’s sad.
@Kathy: I’d give “does most of them well” a “B+” at best, but my students always complained about my grading. 🙁
@DrDaveT: I agree, “where there’s smoke there’s fire” is a terrible proverb. That’s why I’d hope that I’m right but allow for MarkedMan’s community having toxic school politics. It really can go either way, as anti-vaxxers have shown.
From an NPR story today Trump’s lawyer addressed the United States Supreme Court with this:
Donald Trump’s alleged election fraud investigation included these remarks in a phone call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R):
Justice Bluster asks, glaring down from the bench: “Mister Scharf how can Trump’s begging for votes be construed in any way as investigating election fraud?”
@OzarkHillbilly: I didn’t say vindication does anything; I said that if all they’re looking for is vindication, they’ll probably be okay. I think if they’re looking for anything other than vindication, they’re probably wasting their time taking him to court. [Comment about what they need struck on reconsideration of blog policy.]
ETA: Who’s DougJ and how does he relate to FTFNYT interviewing Biden?
@just nutha:
I’m an easy grader.
Ok, I’ve never been responsible for grading a class. One time, though, I helped my high school chemistry teacher grade some tests*. I argued that a correct but incomplete answer to a question should get half a point rather than none. And also that an electron configuration that failed to name the orbitals, but had them in the right order and with the right numbers, should get the whole point. The teacher agreed.
*At this school, El Tec de Monterrey, teachers were assigned a scholarship student to help with such tasks and/or with paperwork. For some reason he hadn’t been assigned one. During a visit to clear up some points of the latest labs, I offered help after he mentioned it.
Mike Pinder, a founding member of The Moody Blues and their keyboardist, died yesterday at 82. RIP.
@just nutha:
“NYT Pitchbot”
It is a parody Twitter feed, DougJ satirizing the NYT.
I suppose you need twitter to see it.
ETA:
New York Times Pitchbot
@DougJBalloon
Parody. The really well-trained dog is the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip. merch: http://stores.inksoft.com/nytpitchbot
ETA:
“Balloon” is a reference to Balloon Juice.
“Politico”
The piece BJ referenced above.
https://balloon-juice.com/2024/04/25/two-things-5/
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1783556416751448415/photo/1
@CSK:..Mike Pinder…
It’ a good thing there’s not a hit of acid tucked away in a corner the freezer like there used to be 50 years ago or I just might have to drop it and put on the headphones, lie on the couch, hug the cat and listen to this over and over again all night long.
You know, it occurs to me we should send Johnson a thank you note for passing the Ukraine aid bill.
Six months from now.
Just to give the flavor:
https://twitter.com/DougJBalloon/status/1783515249984856288
https://twitter.com/DougJBalloon/status/1783513422392365095
@charontwo: Twitter explains why I didn’t understand but maybe not why Ozark did.
American cops are out of their minds:
https://twitter.com/UICProfWatch/status/1783625176887799938
Watching these fearful lunatics as they encounter people standing peacefully on lawns…we are a step away from one of these goons mistaking a gun for a taser and executing someone in cold blood while equally terrified people cheer it on and pretend it was justified.
@Modulo Myself: That is horrifying and amoral on the part of those subhuman creatures with badges and I hope they pay dearly for that outright assault… I have to restrain myself from saying more, but what monsters!!!