Uh oh: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been accepting very expensive vacations almost annually from a single Republican donor, without disclosing a one, meaning he’s apparently broken the law and, not incidentally, failed to adhere to considerably looser ethics standards than other federal judges. Right-wingers will say “there’s no quid pro quo,” but a) that seems unlikely, given how people with money are so interconnected with each other, and b) in a civilized society we also avoid the appearance of corruption, particularly if we’re leaders, as Supreme Court Justices surely are.
I’d love to celebrate the discovery that injecting a heart failure patient’s own stem cells back into their heart reduces their risk of stroke and heart attack by almost 60%, but I’m also reminded that right-wing hysteria held stem cell research back all through Tha Bush Mobb years, has held us all back generally going back many centuries, and continues to hold us back to this very day. It’d be nice if our “liberal” media would stop covering right-wing hysterics like they’re jes’ folks; right-wing hysterics should have to fight for coverage, like they did in the old days. At least it’d build character.
Mike Ludwig at TruthOut reminds us that while our FDA did us a solid by making the overdose-reversal drug Naloxone an over-the-counter drug, the drug is still fairly expensive, which will limit the number of good Americans who can get it. You’re looking at between $42 and $100 per dose without insurance – health insurance corporations should really cover it, since dead people can’t buy any more health care – and a lot of folks (what right-wingers call “those people”) don’t have that amount of cash lying around after paying bills and buying food and raising kids. No use retorting well, don’t do drugs, then, since that’s not how addiction works. (Assuming Naloxone will “encourage” drug use is also not how addiction works.)
See if you can follow this Moebius strip of a story: three-fifths of a very, very right-wing school board resign after the other two-fifths won’t STFU about critical race theory and “grooming” – this, after said very, very right-wing school board had long eradicated any trace of anti-racist or pro-gay teaching in their classrooms. On second thought, this isn’t that hard to understand: right-wingers constantly cannibalize their kind, because what else can they do? Right-wing ideology still dominates American discourse, and still limits the options our political leaders will consider, so right-wingers must find ever-more fantastic enemies, lest the rageheads snap out of their wage. They sure got lucky back in the day when they hunted a President who was an actual serial adulterer.
Finally, a pair of researchers explain AI’s critical shortfall: because “it takes a body” to understand the world. We don’t analyze trillions of words to figure out how to smooth out wrinkles in a shirt or keep a fire going; we do it through seeing and manipulating objects with our hands. This maps on to what I’ve been saying: that AI is, at present, little more than a good bullshit artist. The problem, of course, will be when humans won’t see that because they can make good money not seeing it. I’m pretty sure that’s the dystopian future toward which we’re headed at present, not the one where “there’s so much AI no one can tell what’s real anymore.”
Comments