There were about 100,000 more total votes in the D US Senate primary than there were in the R US Senate primary. Texas is still very red, but even with some election ratfucking going on, the Dems managed to turn out in competitive numbers.
Crockett has come out already for Talarico, trying to use her own momentum to boost him for the general election. Talarico still needs to go to the districts where Crockett won big and make sure to do some listening and show that he'll fight for them as well, but I'm sure he will be on that soon. The big difference between those two is more one of tone and emphasis than of any substantive policy difference.
Talarico did especially well in latinx border districts, which could be a promising sign for how latinx Trump voters might break now that it's clear that the R economic promises were bunk and their communities are a target.
Harris, who had endorsed Crockett, is already starting to reach out to her supporters to rally their support for Talarico.
...I hope Cornyn and Paxton go after each other like bantam roosters, and that both leave indelible marks on each other in the process.
2 weeks ago
But if Hegseth is upset, that strongly suggests that Anthropic is on the side of the angels, at least on this one.
Leaving aside that they built and trained their LLM using texts that they knew were taken without permission...
They owe my wife and a lot of other authors a whole lot of money for that one and are busy trying to wriggle out of that, or to get a big enough deal that paying for the settlement won't put them under.
I don't think anyone with an LLM is on the side of the angels. They were all built on theft and built to steal more jobs. And now they are trying to bury us in carbon on top of that by consuming as much energy as a small city.
But hey, at least Anthropic has found a few scruples...
Come AI winter I'm gonna open a bottle of the good stuff and drink to their demise. It will be an economic blow like the pandemic, but an environmental boon like the pandemic as well. I won't celebrate the suffering it causes, but I will celebrate the suffering that their fall will prevent.
2 weeks ago
cleek - I agree with what you are saying. It's a problem. The one thing I want to make sure doesn't get lost in the great evening out of "none ouf us are main characters" is that the beltway media people, donors, and political analysts are the gatekeepers between those politicians and the precariat, and they are going to pass on the voices of the resistance liberals and explain away the voices of the precariat as having no beliefs because the gatekeepers work for the billionaires.
I'd love for the resistance liberals and the bonesmashers to start talking to, and listening to, each other. The reports I am getting from places like Minnesota are that they are - mostly as they end up in the same place at the same time engaged in active resistance.
I'm not sure that Frum and Miller are aware, though, because their own participation is much more mediated.
They sure aren't listening to the precariat, or they'd know better than to decide that those people have no beliefs.
3 weeks ago
Never let Frum and Miller be your translators for what the cool leftist kids are saying.
But the other thing that seems to be going on, to the extent that this is a real phenomenon I’m describing, is a feeling that simply having beliefs is, in itself, a sign of lameness and that the cool thing is not to have any.
It's not that The Activist Kids (which, again, seems to include Millennials who are in their 40s) have no beliefs and think that Resistance Liberals are cringe. What they really feel is that they are not being seen or listened to by the politicians, the donors, and the media. They have plenty of beliefs, they just don't see that a return to the politics of the Clinton, or Obama, or Reagan years (since this is Frum trying to square the kid's circle) is going to fix any of the specifics of their lives that keep them trapped in the precariat.
The "bonesmashers" are not nihilists or deluded Marxist idealists; what the "bonesmashers" are actually feeling and thinking is something more like what Spanish Civil War anarchist Buenaventura Durruti was talking about when he told The Toronto Daily Star:
We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a while. For you must not forget that we can also build. It is we who built these palaces and cities, here in Spain and America and everywhere. We, the workers. We can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute.
The heart of this clash of worldviews is not so much about whether or not the status quo should be obliterated, but about whether or not the institutions who are trying to guide the resistance are willing to give up their own privilege and comfort in order to build a more just future for those who have been harmed by the institutions that the resistance liberals are trying to preserve.
The resistance liberals 401(k)'s are built on the bones that keep the bonesmashers paying off predatory student loans, and that keep a runaway carbon cycle heading for collapse within the bonebreakers' lifetimes.
The sort of institutional reform they need is going to take more than just making ICE go through more training. Real reform is going to feel dangerous to the resistance liberals because they profit from many of the structures that are harming the precariat.
Other hopeful signs (from TX):
There were about 100,000 more total votes in the D US Senate primary than there were in the R US Senate primary. Texas is still very red, but even with some election ratfucking going on, the Dems managed to turn out in competitive numbers.
Crockett has come out already for Talarico, trying to use her own momentum to boost him for the general election. Talarico still needs to go to the districts where Crockett won big and make sure to do some listening and show that he'll fight for them as well, but I'm sure he will be on that soon. The big difference between those two is more one of tone and emphasis than of any substantive policy difference.
Talarico did especially well in latinx border districts, which could be a promising sign for how latinx Trump voters might break now that it's clear that the R economic promises were bunk and their communities are a target.
Harris, who had endorsed Crockett, is already starting to reach out to her supporters to rally their support for Talarico.
...I hope Cornyn and Paxton go after each other like bantam roosters, and that both leave indelible marks on each other in the process.
But if Hegseth is upset, that strongly suggests that Anthropic is on the side of the angels, at least on this one.
Leaving aside that they built and trained their LLM using texts that they knew were taken without permission...
They owe my wife and a lot of other authors a whole lot of money for that one and are busy trying to wriggle out of that, or to get a big enough deal that paying for the settlement won't put them under.
I don't think anyone with an LLM is on the side of the angels. They were all built on theft and built to steal more jobs. And now they are trying to bury us in carbon on top of that by consuming as much energy as a small city.
But hey, at least Anthropic has found a few scruples...
Come AI winter I'm gonna open a bottle of the good stuff and drink to their demise. It will be an economic blow like the pandemic, but an environmental boon like the pandemic as well. I won't celebrate the suffering it causes, but I will celebrate the suffering that their fall will prevent.
cleek - I agree with what you are saying. It's a problem. The one thing I want to make sure doesn't get lost in the great evening out of "none ouf us are main characters" is that the beltway media people, donors, and political analysts are the gatekeepers between those politicians and the precariat, and they are going to pass on the voices of the resistance liberals and explain away the voices of the precariat as having no beliefs because the gatekeepers work for the billionaires.
I'd love for the resistance liberals and the bonesmashers to start talking to, and listening to, each other. The reports I am getting from places like Minnesota are that they are - mostly as they end up in the same place at the same time engaged in active resistance.
I'm not sure that Frum and Miller are aware, though, because their own participation is much more mediated.
They sure aren't listening to the precariat, or they'd know better than to decide that those people have no beliefs.
Never let Frum and Miller be your translators for what the cool leftist kids are saying.
But the other thing that seems to be going on, to the extent that this is a real phenomenon I’m describing, is a feeling that simply having beliefs is, in itself, a sign of lameness and that the cool thing is not to have any.
It's not that The Activist Kids (which, again, seems to include Millennials who are in their 40s) have no beliefs and think that Resistance Liberals are cringe. What they really feel is that they are not being seen or listened to by the politicians, the donors, and the media. They have plenty of beliefs, they just don't see that a return to the politics of the Clinton, or Obama, or Reagan years (since this is Frum trying to square the kid's circle) is going to fix any of the specifics of their lives that keep them trapped in the precariat.
The "bonesmashers" are not nihilists or deluded Marxist idealists; what the "bonesmashers" are actually feeling and thinking is something more like what Spanish Civil War anarchist Buenaventura Durruti was talking about when he told The Toronto Daily Star:
The heart of this clash of worldviews is not so much about whether or not the status quo should be obliterated, but about whether or not the institutions who are trying to guide the resistance are willing to give up their own privilege and comfort in order to build a more just future for those who have been harmed by the institutions that the resistance liberals are trying to preserve.
The resistance liberals 401(k)'s are built on the bones that keep the bonesmashers paying off predatory student loans, and that keep a runaway carbon cycle heading for collapse within the bonebreakers' lifetimes.
The sort of institutional reform they need is going to take more than just making ICE go through more training. Real reform is going to feel dangerous to the resistance liberals because they profit from many of the structures that are harming the precariat.