Oddly, to me, all of this blather comes in the context of the US basically telling Europe to fuck off. Which seems… inconsistent with an emphasis on “preserving our Western identity”.
Yes, and regarding nous's comment in the other thread about the standing ovation Rubio got, it just shows how pathetically (and I really mean that) grateful they all were that, unlike Vance, Rubio was taking the trouble to put it in more flattering, quasi-ingratiating diplomatic-style language. FFS.
(Glib is pretty good, but as an adjective "facile" might be as or even more pejoritive, whereas as a noun "facility" seems to me to lose that somewhat insulting implication.)
The writer knew that Shambaugh hadn’t spoken to him and stuck them in anyway.
The writer's explanation.
"The piece was retracted the same day after Shambaugh revealed that quotes attributed to him were fabricated using AI, violating Ars Technica's policy against unlabeled AI-generated content. Edwards apologized publicly, attributing the error to rushing while ill with COVID and accidentally using ChatGPT-paraphrased text from Shambaugh's blog as quotes; he emphasized it was his sole responsibility and not representative of Ars' standards."
I'd say glib is sufficiently perjorative, and captures the idea you are describing here.
My question about all of this is "what is this Western civilization you speak of?".
Did "the West" begin with the Romans? Or the Greeks? Would they have thought of themselves as being "the West"?
Does it begin with Europe's early and growing awareness of itself as an entity that *wasn't* Rome, or some descendant of Rome? Like, maybe 11th and 12th C. Europe?
Are we meant to preserve the concept of nation states that emerged from the centuries of non-stop warfare over religious issues and competing wanna-be empires?
Do we get to include the Enlightenment in all of this, or do we need to, a la Rod Dreher, throw all of that away?
Is it capitalism? Christianity? If Christianity, is it just the Western traditions - Roman Catholicism and the Protestant movements that emerged from that? Do the various Eastern traditions get included? African Christianity? South American evangelicalism?
Is it just being white? Who gets to be white?
Oddly, to me, all of this blather comes in the context of the US basically telling Europe to fuck off. Which seems... inconsistent with an emphasis on "preserving our Western identity".
I think this is different from some dumb-ass lawyer believing that an LLM is giving him the correct precedents and not hallucinating them. The writer knew that Shambaugh hadn't spoken to him and stuck them in anyway.
I know I sound not only like an old man who yells at the clouds, but also all those people who shouted to burn someone at the stake, but why doesn't the writer get named and shamed? I get that we don't want a mob, but it seems like a journalist has to maintain some level of truthfulness. The sad things is that Ars just withdraws the article and it misses out on all of the issues that this event raises.
Dropping by in-between belts of rain here that have been coming down so hard (accompanied by a high wind warning) that I have seen waves of water blowing down my street like snow drifting on a highway during a blizzard.
Two things, loosely linked in my overly-lateral mind...:
That Rubio speech in Munich was really alarming to me.
It's a full-throated apologia for explicitly euro-centric Christian colonialism. It's delusional in its sense of history. And Rubio is working so hard to name-check all of the European colonial powers on his way to rewriting himself as a proud Spanish-American:
Our [US] story began with an Italian explorer whose adventure into the great unknown to discover a new world brought Christianity to the Americas – and became the legend that defined the imagination of a our pioneer nation.
Our first colonies were built by English settlers, to whom we owe not just the language we speak but the whole of our political and legal system. Our frontiers were shaped by Scots-Irish – that proud, hearty clan from the hills of Ulster that gave us Davy Crockett and Mark Twain and Teddy Roosevelt and Neil Armstrong.
Our great midwestern heartland was built by German farmers and craftsmen who transformed empty plains into a global agricultural powerhouse – and by the way, dramatically upgraded the quality of American beer. (Laughter.)
Our expansion into the interior followed the footsteps of French fur traders and explorers whose names, by the way, still adorn the street signs and towns’ names all across the Mississippi Valley. Our horses, our ranches, our rodeos – the entire romance of the cowboy archetype that became synonymous with the American West – these were born in Spain. And our largest and most iconic city was named New Amsterdam before it was named New York.
And do you know that in the year that my country was founded, Lorenzo and Catalina Geroldi lived in Casale Monferrato in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. And Jose and Manuela Reina lived in Sevilla, Spain. I don’t know what, if anything, they knew about the 13 colonies which had gained their independence from the British empire, but here’s what I am certain of: They could have never imagined that 250 years later, one of their direct descendants would be back here today on this continent as the chief diplomat of that infant nation. And yet here I am, reminded by my own story that both our histories and our fates will always be linked.
The part of that which jumped out at me was his reference to the "Scots-Irish – that proud, hearty clan from the hills of Ulster that gave us Davy Crockett and Mark Twain and Teddy Roosevelt and Neil Armstrong." I've read enough American lit to be sensitive to invocations of the Scots-Irish as a clan to hear the rhetoric that built the resurgence of the KKK at the turn of the 20th C.. Nothing here is out of place with that Klan rhetoric except for Rubio's ethnic heritage.
The second thread that runs through Rubio's speech is the Climate Rejectionism. Rubio is so very fucking cocksure that the "climate cult" is using fear to suffocate capitalism and weaken nations.
I'm making a sideways leap here that is outside of the explicit context of Rubio's speech, but so very in line with the ethno-religious calvinism of his mytho-historical conception of civilization belonging to the West...
Fast Company has highlighted the ecofascistic streak running through the Epstein files:
“Maybe climate change is a good way of dealing with overpopulation,” Epstein writes. “the earths forest fire. potentially a good thing for the species.”
[screenshot of the email]
Linking the conversation back to the earlier topic of how brains function, Epstein adds: “too many people . . . [it] is the fundamental fact that everyone dies at some time. make it [impossible] to ask so why not earlier. if the brain discards unused neurons, why [should] society keep their equivalent.”
What Fast Company does not explicitly note in their analysis is how this conversation between Epstein and Joscha Bach is that it starts with Epstein musing over the genetic inferiority of blacks and the need to improve human genetics.
That whole line of thinking is right at home with the view of history that undergirds Rubio's speech, and it highlights the importance to Rubio of his being able to link his family back to Spain, and not to the indigenous population of the New World.
The whole philosophical underpinnings of these western chauvinist christian nationalists are morally repulsive.
Open thread, so I will take this moment to provide an update on the GA-11 district that my friend is running in the Democratic primary. I believe there are now four in that primary, but more importantly, the incumbent Barry Loudermilk announced last month he is not running for re-election, I have not seen who/how many have declared for the Republican primary. But the open election should help the margin in November, even if winning the district outright is unlikely.
Some people are claiming they’ve gotten calls from agents acting on their own.
Unsurprising, given the possibility of programs like this
https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2025-08-06/ice-offers-then-quickly-withdraws-cash-bonuses-for-swiftly-deporting-immigrants
I wouldn't be surprised that these bonuses are happening in other places, it is just that they haven't gotten anyone to blow the whistle.
Wait until you start getting phone calls from them. Not from call centers, but because an agent found your phone number and decided to give you a ring. Some people are claiming they've gotten calls from agents acting on their own.
* Warehouses for human beings: “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement expects to spend $38.3 billion on its plan to acquire warehouses across the country and retrofit them into immigrant detention centers that can hold tens of thousands of immigrants, according to agency documents provided to New Hampshire’s governor and published on the state’s website Thursday.”
Well, all those lazy detainment center alien inmates need to do something for their upkeep before their deportation (which can then be postponed indefinitely). Send them into the fields (in chains wherever possible). That will keep labor costs low (let's not kid ourselves, that has always been the #1 priority) and be the closest thing currently achievable to the reintroduction of slavery. The inevitable (and desirable) culling effect can be compensated for years by tapping into the reservoir of millions of deportation candidates. When that is used up, enough progress will have been made into establishing a proper US gulag system (and finding a proper merkin name for it).
Don't tell me that this isn't the wet dream of some of those involved in the current mess.
In November the administration announced changes that are expected to allow more than half a million seasonal workers to enter the country each year — an increase of more than 25%. In a regulatory filing, the Department of Agriculture said the expansion was necessary because “qualified and eligible U.S. workers will not make themselves available in sufficient numbers.”
Apparently Agriculture isn't talking to ICE. If they are, ICE isn't listening. Quelle surprise.
Or, I suppose, Agriculture had the wit to carefully avoid talking to Miller. Miller, after all, would probably be dumb enough to see it as a challenge. And focus ICE on agricultural workers for a while.
Thanks to Michael for posting the open thread and GftNC for requesting it.
Writing this immediately after writing that can lead to some unwanted inferences, but I'm wondering if anyone would like a spare set of keys to the blog in order to post a regular open thread (and no, I'm not going to get an AI agent to do that) I'll still be posting, but every bit of cognitive offloading helps at my age. Send a message to libjpn at gmail if you are interested.
Mightbe more accurate to say "the Mountain West." Because, the total lack of rain the last 6+ weeks notwithstanding, in California the reservoirs are all full. Not as much snow pack as we'd like, but we're not looking at drought conditions.
Having several days in a row (in February!) with highs above 75° was weird. But considering the weather east of the Mississippi, I'm definitely not complaining.
wonkie - High Country News has a series they call "Deep Time in the West" that sounds like it's the sort of thing you would love. Here's a shorter sample of the sort of things in the series:
I'm going to Escalante/Staircase Nat; monument in May. Flying into St George and driving the most beautiful road in America through Zion, past Cedar Breaks, past Red Canyon and Bryce to the holy land around Boulder. It is a pilgrimage.
I think it's the rocks that I love. Geology gives such a since of time and perspective. I am very sorry for this poor fucked up world. My escape is to go where geology is so prominent that acts of mankind seem like blips in the timeline.
Looks like Brett Adcock is taking advantage of the low-key finance panic around a potential AI winter to introduce a new shiny with the promise of unrealized exponential growth. I'm betting he's hoping to secure some venture capital now before one of the big AI firms goes public and sucks up all the potential investment ahead of the inevitable sobering up period that will follow.
Humanoid robots with AI brains - it's the next big thing. It's bigger than AI. It's bigger than self-driving cars. It's bigger than Segways. It's bigger than virtual reality.
[It hasn't yet run out of low hanging fruit to discover its own intractable problems.]
Robots in dorms? We're already forcing students to take on unsustainable levels of debts to pay for their university education and they are barely able to keep their old smartphone and cheap laptop functioning. Now they are going to bring a robobutler to campus with them? Maybe they can use it to cook them instant ramen and write their papers while they work their two part-time jobs to pay for it and all their other expenses.
At least the part time jobs that haven't already been taken by robots. (We've already got little self-guided robots delivering food for students in the dorms here, so don't even think of starting a bike delivery service as a side hustle.)
Seriously, though, how does any of this entrepreneurial hype make any sense?
I'm already sick of having to replace my phone every five years and they want me to invest in a robobutler?
Elsewhere, I was in a discussion about the power requirements for an AGI that can handle all the things a humanoid robot will be asked to do. Current estimates are the human brain is roughly the equivalent of an exaflop processor. Germany recently fired up their new exaflop supercomputer, which is the most power efficient in the world. It draws 18.2 megaWatts (and the hardware takes up ~120 racks). I anticipate that a humanoid robot that can properly execute an order like "Go through the house, collect all the dirty dishes, load them into the dishwasher, and run it" will be a fancy peripheral for a closet full of computer gear drawing more power than the entire rest of the house.
On Wednesday this week, Trump signed an executive order that requires the Dept of Defense -- excuse me, Dept of War -- to sign long-term power purchase agreements with coal-fired power plants to provide power for military bases to keep those plants running. Separately, that the Dept of Energy will provide at least $175M for maintaining and upgrading coal-fired power plants in Appalachia. The EO includes a provision that the PPAs cannot infringe on the authority of other executive branch agencies. I have SO many questions about how they're going to make this work within the constraints set by FERC.
My in-laws in Colorado on the other side of the divide are freaking out about the lack of water and snowpack, too.
The problems west of the Divide make the ones to the east look fairly moderate. Snow timing has changed just in the almost 40 years I've lived here now. Having April snow bail us out has become a fairly regular occurrence. Not so much on the west side.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Take your’n and beat his’n”
Oddly, to me, all of this blather comes in the context of the US basically telling Europe to fuck off. Which seems… inconsistent with an emphasis on “preserving our Western identity”.
Yes, and regarding nous's comment in the other thread about the standing ovation Rubio got, it just shows how pathetically (and I really mean that) grateful they all were that, unlike Vance, Rubio was taking the trouble to put it in more flattering, quasi-ingratiating diplomatic-style language. FFS.
(Glib is pretty good, but as an adjective "facile" might be as or even more pejoritive, whereas as a noun "facility" seems to me to lose that somewhat insulting implication.)
On “Open Thread”
The writer knew that Shambaugh hadn’t spoken to him and stuck them in anyway.
The writer's explanation.
"The piece was retracted the same day after Shambaugh revealed that quotes attributed to him were fabricated using AI, violating Ars Technica's policy against unlabeled AI-generated content. Edwards apologized publicly, attributing the error to rushing while ill with COVID and accidentally using ChatGPT-paraphrased text from Shambaugh's blog as quotes; he emphasized it was his sole responsibility and not representative of Ars' standards."
Ars Technica Writers' Reputation After Retraction
On “Take your’n and beat his’n”
I'd say glib is sufficiently perjorative, and captures the idea you are describing here.
My question about all of this is "what is this Western civilization you speak of?".
Did "the West" begin with the Romans? Or the Greeks? Would they have thought of themselves as being "the West"?
Does it begin with Europe's early and growing awareness of itself as an entity that *wasn't* Rome, or some descendant of Rome? Like, maybe 11th and 12th C. Europe?
Are we meant to preserve the concept of nation states that emerged from the centuries of non-stop warfare over religious issues and competing wanna-be empires?
Do we get to include the Enlightenment in all of this, or do we need to, a la Rod Dreher, throw all of that away?
Is it capitalism? Christianity? If Christianity, is it just the Western traditions - Roman Catholicism and the Protestant movements that emerged from that? Do the various Eastern traditions get included? African Christianity? South American evangelicalism?
Is it just being white? Who gets to be white?
Oddly, to me, all of this blather comes in the context of the US basically telling Europe to fuck off. Which seems... inconsistent with an emphasis on "preserving our Western identity".
On “Open Thread”
and nous, I was working on something that links to your comment, so I hope the conversation about that will continue over there.
"
The ars technica thing is interesting to me because the writer had to have known that AI was creating fake quotes
https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me-part-2/
I think this is different from some dumb-ass lawyer believing that an LLM is giving him the correct precedents and not hallucinating them. The writer knew that Shambaugh hadn't spoken to him and stuck them in anyway.
https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me-part-2/
I know I sound not only like an old man who yells at the clouds, but also all those people who shouted to burn someone at the stake, but why doesn't the writer get named and shamed? I get that we don't want a mob, but it seems like a journalist has to maintain some level of truthfulness. The sad things is that Ars just withdraws the article and it misses out on all of the issues that this event raises.
"
Dropping by in-between belts of rain here that have been coming down so hard (accompanied by a high wind warning) that I have seen waves of water blowing down my street like snow drifting on a highway during a blizzard.
Two things, loosely linked in my overly-lateral mind...:
That Rubio speech in Munich was really alarming to me.
https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/02/secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-at-the-munich-security-conference
It's a full-throated apologia for explicitly euro-centric Christian colonialism. It's delusional in its sense of history. And Rubio is working so hard to name-check all of the European colonial powers on his way to rewriting himself as a proud Spanish-American:
The part of that which jumped out at me was his reference to the "Scots-Irish – that proud, hearty clan from the hills of Ulster that gave us Davy Crockett and Mark Twain and Teddy Roosevelt and Neil Armstrong." I've read enough American lit to be sensitive to invocations of the Scots-Irish as a clan to hear the rhetoric that built the resurgence of the KKK at the turn of the 20th C.. Nothing here is out of place with that Klan rhetoric except for Rubio's ethnic heritage.
The second thread that runs through Rubio's speech is the Climate Rejectionism. Rubio is so very fucking cocksure that the "climate cult" is using fear to suffocate capitalism and weaken nations.
I'm making a sideways leap here that is outside of the explicit context of Rubio's speech, but so very in line with the ethno-religious calvinism of his mytho-historical conception of civilization belonging to the West...
Fast Company has highlighted the ecofascistic streak running through the Epstein files:
https://www.fastcompany.com/91490280/epstein-files-how-ultra-wealthy-peddle-climate-denialism
What Fast Company does not explicitly note in their analysis is how this conversation between Epstein and Joscha Bach is that it starts with Epstein musing over the genetic inferiority of blacks and the need to improve human genetics.
That whole line of thinking is right at home with the view of history that undergirds Rubio's speech, and it highlights the importance to Rubio of his being able to link his family back to Spain, and not to the indigenous population of the New World.
The whole philosophical underpinnings of these western chauvinist christian nationalists are morally repulsive.
"
re: the AI agents publishing hit pieces story.
Ars Technica got burned. that story was apparently full of fake, AI-generated quotes that were attributed to real people. Ars has retracted it.
https://arstechnica.com/staff/2026/02/editors-note-retraction-of-article-containing-fabricated-quotations/?comments-page=1#comments
we're doomed.
"
Different kinds of agents, I think.
"
Open thread, so I will take this moment to provide an update on the GA-11 district that my friend is running in the Democratic primary. I believe there are now four in that primary, but more importantly, the incumbent Barry Loudermilk announced last month he is not running for re-election, I have not seen who/how many have declared for the Republican primary. But the open election should help the margin in November, even if winning the district outright is unlikely.
"
Some people are claiming they’ve gotten calls from agents acting on their own.
Unsurprising, given the possibility of programs like this
https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2025-08-06/ice-offers-then-quickly-withdraws-cash-bonuses-for-swiftly-deporting-immigrants
I wouldn't be surprised that these bonuses are happening in other places, it is just that they haven't gotten anyone to blow the whistle.
"
>an agent found your phone number and decided to give you a ring
let them try.
not in my contacts => straight to voicemail, silently
"
Thank you for the article, Nous. I might use it in a novel I just started. I love the idea of finding deep time in an urban area.
"
what a wonderful use of technology!
Wait until you start getting phone calls from them. Not from call centers, but because an agent found your phone number and decided to give you a ring. Some people are claiming they've gotten calls from agents acting on their own.
"
LLM agents can also launch smear campaigns against you if you don't let them contribute code to open source projects.
what a wonderful use of technology!
"
From maddowblog:
"
Well, all those lazy detainment center alien inmates need to do something for their upkeep before their deportation (which can then be postponed indefinitely). Send them into the fields (in chains wherever possible). That will keep labor costs low (let's not kid ourselves, that has always been the #1 priority) and be the closest thing currently achievable to the reintroduction of slavery. The inevitable (and desirable) culling effect can be compensated for years by tapping into the reservoir of millions of deportation candidates. When that is used up, enough progress will have been made into establishing a proper US gulag system (and finding a proper merkin name for it).
Don't tell me that this isn't the wet dream of some of those involved in the current mess.
"
In case you missed it:
Apparently Agriculture isn't talking to ICE. If they are, ICE isn't listening. Quelle surprise.
Or, I suppose, Agriculture had the wit to carefully avoid talking to Miller. Miller, after all, would probably be dumb enough to see it as a challenge. And focus ICE on agricultural workers for a while.
"
Thanks to Michael for posting the open thread and GftNC for requesting it.
Writing this immediately after writing that can lead to some unwanted inferences, but I'm wondering if anyone would like a spare set of keys to the blog in order to post a regular open thread (and no, I'm not going to get an AI agent to do that) I'll still be posting, but every bit of cognitive offloading helps at my age. Send a message to libjpn at gmail if you are interested.
"
Mightbe more accurate to say "the Mountain West." Because, the total lack of rain the last 6+ weeks notwithstanding, in California the reservoirs are all full. Not as much snow pack as we'd like, but we're not looking at drought conditions.
Having several days in a row (in February!) with highs above 75° was weird. But considering the weather east of the Mississippi, I'm definitely not complaining.
"
wonkie - High Country News has a series they call "Deep Time in the West" that sounds like it's the sort of thing you would love. Here's a shorter sample of the sort of things in the series:
https://www.hcn.org/issues/58-1/how-to-find-deep-time-in-seattle/
...and it's talking about things in your back yard.
It's a great series.
"
I'm going to Escalante/Staircase Nat; monument in May. Flying into St George and driving the most beautiful road in America through Zion, past Cedar Breaks, past Red Canyon and Bryce to the holy land around Boulder. It is a pilgrimage.
I think it's the rocks that I love. Geology gives such a since of time and perspective. I am very sorry for this poor fucked up world. My escape is to go where geology is so prominent that acts of mankind seem like blips in the timeline.
"
Looks like Brett Adcock is taking advantage of the low-key finance panic around a potential AI winter to introduce a new shiny with the promise of unrealized exponential growth. I'm betting he's hoping to secure some venture capital now before one of the big AI firms goes public and sucks up all the potential investment ahead of the inevitable sobering up period that will follow.
Humanoid robots with AI brains - it's the next big thing. It's bigger than AI. It's bigger than self-driving cars. It's bigger than Segways. It's bigger than virtual reality.
[It hasn't yet run out of low hanging fruit to discover its own intractable problems.]
Robots in dorms? We're already forcing students to take on unsustainable levels of debts to pay for their university education and they are barely able to keep their old smartphone and cheap laptop functioning. Now they are going to bring a robobutler to campus with them? Maybe they can use it to cook them instant ramen and write their papers while they work their two part-time jobs to pay for it and all their other expenses.
At least the part time jobs that haven't already been taken by robots. (We've already got little self-guided robots delivering food for students in the dorms here, so don't even think of starting a bike delivery service as a side hustle.)
Seriously, though, how does any of this entrepreneurial hype make any sense?
I'm already sick of having to replace my phone every five years and they want me to invest in a robobutler?
GTFO.
These jokers and their investors are all high AF.
"
The robots are coming.
Elsewhere, I was in a discussion about the power requirements for an AGI that can handle all the things a humanoid robot will be asked to do. Current estimates are the human brain is roughly the equivalent of an exaflop processor. Germany recently fired up their new exaflop supercomputer, which is the most power efficient in the world. It draws 18.2 megaWatts (and the hardware takes up ~120 racks). I anticipate that a humanoid robot that can properly execute an order like "Go through the house, collect all the dirty dishes, load them into the dishwasher, and run it" will be a fancy peripheral for a closet full of computer gear drawing more power than the entire rest of the house.
"
On Wednesday this week, Trump signed an executive order that requires the Dept of Defense -- excuse me, Dept of War -- to sign long-term power purchase agreements with coal-fired power plants to provide power for military bases to keep those plants running. Separately, that the Dept of Energy will provide at least $175M for maintaining and upgrading coal-fired power plants in Appalachia. The EO includes a provision that the PPAs cannot infringe on the authority of other executive branch agencies. I have SO many questions about how they're going to make this work within the constraints set by FERC.
"
My in-laws in Colorado on the other side of the divide are freaking out about the lack of water and snowpack, too.
The problems west of the Divide make the ones to the east look fairly moderate. Snow timing has changed just in the almost 40 years I've lived here now. Having April snow bail us out has become a fairly regular occurrence. Not so much on the west side.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.