[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

"Bleach blonde bad built butch body"... Not a bad description.

REMIX!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TVgPw9kU50

[The Soup Nazi]

Why do so many Americans support a neofascist? | The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

REMIX!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TVgPw9kU50

that was quite enjoyable

bbbbbb

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

Why do so many Americans support a neofascist? | The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

anyway thanks for this one, it was good, he repeats some talking points from his movie, and he's right about biden, but he didn't really explain why people would support a fraud and a scumbag

however the issue with biden's policies is that they are "investments" that will pay off "in the future", which might be never at this rate, while inflation is felt in the wallet today

part of what reich explains about the division of america since the 70s etc is also in how people are experiencing inflation. and it's the bottom bracket that is feeling it the most right now. the cost of this fiscal investment in the future is paid by those price increases

the homeowner who locked the 2% mortgage is sitting pretty, while renters are having to sell their plasma to keep up with increases. the reason it's "hard to explain" is because the benefit of having green union jobs 5 years from now is a cost today, and people who are living hand to mouth can't wait

of course the fraud and scumbag will give a tax cut which only reintroduces the problem at a future date, but with interest

there are also cultural issues that are not mentioned where the left is scoring many own-goals: censorship and cancel culture (mccarthyism of the left i guess) are diving adults who grew up speaking their minds into the hands of the scumbag, the stupidity of defund the police and the rise of crime moves the center closer to the right, etc etc.

eta: notice it's "disorder" not crime rising https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-c...fbi-rcna144100

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

[...] and the rise of crime moves the center closer to the right, etc etc.

eta: notice it's "disorder" not crime rising https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-c...fbi-rcna144100

It's not semantics. Unless everybody who calculates these statistics is wrong and/or we're living in a parallel dimension, crime in the US is down. Of course, if people turn on the TV and the first thing they see is cops dragging students across the dirt and "Just like 1968!" and bullcrap, and they cannot make fine distinctions, well...

As for "cancel culture", I... can't have this discussion again. I'm tired.

I like what Bernie Sanders said. Paraphrasing: We have differences with President Biden, he's accomplished things he should indeed be proud of, while his response in other matters has been either inadequate or completely fucked up, but this November vote Biden, NO EXCUSES.

[!@#$%!]

just a reminder that censorship and cancellation used to be the right's game

 

they're still doing it in "don't say gay" florida and various book-burning states across the south

but the side that was supposed to be in favor of the open exchange of ideas and the light of reason isn't for those things anymore

now the left has its own word police. speaking banned words carries severe sentences! liberalism has been taken over by cultural revolution

and if you're offended, you can shut down any discussion on any subject

okay, maybe people got tired of right wing propaganda and decided to fight fire with fire

but-- it's not working, it undermines the principles of liberalism that sustained our era (liberalism broadly understood as inalienable individual rights). and because of polarization there's a serious backlash now... which will doom us, because in war the fascists are tougher and more disciplined, while the left bickers over purity issues and it eats its own

https://youtu.be/a0BpfwazhUA

classic

bernie is an old geezer and knows better from experience, but it's the children that are deserting biden. "not pure enough!" good luck with the alternative...

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

that was quite enjoyable

If you think that was good, hold on to your bell-bottoms:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwCcHxbAakw

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

at this point i feel biden is toast.

Glass half full (or "reasons to be cheerful", as David Byrne would say):

10 Reasons I'm Cautiously Optimistic About the Election
The polls are not predictive but these ten fundamentals of the race just might be.

[The Soup Nazi]

New Big Lie! Good, I was pretty tired of the old one oh wait it's about the same shit bummer.

[The Soup Nazi]

Then there's this fucking guy:

Another Provocative Flag Was Flown at Another Alito Home

The justice’s beach house displayed an “Appeal to Heaven” flag, a symbol carried on Jan. 6 and associated with a push for a more Christian-minded government.

[The Soup Nazi]

SCOTUS fucked the US again today.

What the fuck is wrong with this guy.

At least Elena Kagan got to troll Alito el Maldito.

[The Soup Nazi]

We should have a tech thread, but this is politics too. From Futurism:

Google’s AI Is Churning Out a Deluge of Completely Inaccurate, Totally Confident Garbage
This sucks.

Google's AI search, which swallows up web results and delivers them to users in a regurgitated package, delivers each of its AI-paraphrased answers to user queries in a concise, coolly confident tone. Just one tiny problem: it's wrong. A lot.

Over the past week, X-formerly-Twitter has lit ablaze with screenshots of Google's "AI Overview" spewing a seemingly unending torrent of inaccurate, though confidently stated, answers to user queries. They range from hilarious to bizarre to even downright harmful, rewriting history and offering extremely bad pizza advice along the way. Reading through the AI-spun results, it's enough to make you wonder: what, exactly, is Google spending billions of dollars for here?

One absolute banger of a Google AI-promoted health tip is the recommendation that "eating ass can boost your immune system" — this was in response to the query "health benefits of eating ass" — a claim that Google's AI says is supported by a 2018 study by the University of California, Santa Barbara.

A healthy sex life is known to contribute to an individual's overall immune health, so for those who frequently partake in anilingus, it could possibly be argued that the sex act contributes in part to their overall well-being. Google's source, however, isn't a science-backed analysis of sex and its relationship to immune health; instead, it's a clearly satirical article published by writers at UC Santa Barbara's student paper The Daily Nexus, in a comedic section of the paper titled "The Daily Stench."

There's no research to back up the Google AI's added claim that "people who eat ass are 33 percent less likely to catch airborne illnesses," although the line that really gives away the robot's lack of judgment is the note that "people with higher levels of truffle butter" — sexual slang that you may look up yourself, if you absolutely must — "in their saliva have stronger immunity" to common airborne ailments.

In sum? This is all gross comedic nonsense, but Google's AI didn't get the joke.

 

Other more humorous Overview mistakes include various ill-advised cooking claims, like the suggestion that gasoline can be used to make a "spicy spaghetti dish," or the widely-shared proposition that pizza chefs might consider mixing glue — yes, glue — into their sauce to ensure that the pizza cheese doesn't slip off.

As netizens quickly pointed out, the latter claim appears to be sourced from an 11-year-old Reddit comment posted by a user named "Fucksmith." So far, Google's AI is getting a negative score for media literacy.

 

Elsewhere, the AI was seen spouting nonsensical math equations designed to help users figure out exactly how many sisters they already have (the AI's final answer: 680 sisters, because this person must be the child of Genghis Khan.) It was also telling users to eat "at least one small rock a day," and still doesn't think that any countries in Africa start with the letter "K."

Many of the responses weren't quite so funny. Take this AI Overview, flagged by Nieman Lab's Sarah Scire. When asked how many Muslim presidents have led the US, Google's AI told Scire, falsely, that "Barack Obama is the first Muslim President." The AI also went on to say that current President Joe Biden has "no formal religious affiliation." Neither of these statements are true. Obama is a self-described Christian and attended Protestant churches; Biden is Catholic.

The AI's bungling of Obama's religion goes beyond incorrect, though. The statement reflects the beliefs of the "Birtherism" movement, or the baseless and racism-driven conspiracy theory that Obama wasn't born in the US (he was) and that he's secretly a Muslim (he isn't.) Google's AI, then, is not only spitting out wrong information, but feeding damaging fringe conspiracy beliefs at the same time.

 

A Google spokesperson told The Verge that the AI errors being shared were made in "generally very uncommon queries, and aren't representative of most people's experiences." We'd argue, though, that a search being "uncommon" isn't an excuse for an AI tool to give bad advice, especially in cases where a bad answer could cause real damage.

To that end, it could also be argued that AI Overview makes Google liable for possible harms in ways that it may not have been liable in the past. By introducing its text-regurgitating tool, it's no longer just a content aggregator or host, but is also a content creator. Spouting conspiracy theories, or offering glue-laced recipes, has a different set of consequences when you're presenting it as paraphrased fact, and not just as a blue link to a bad source on a results page.

It's incredible, really. Google controls over 80 percent of total search marketshare, making it the go-to gateway to the internet for the vast majority of global internet users. Search is also an incredibly lucrative product, printing the billions that Google is now pouring into its AI endeavors. And now, because of those costly AI efforts, Google's golden goose is imploding.

Now Google finds itself between a rock and a hard place. Halting its AI search experiment would be a terrible look for management; at the same time, it's unclear if Google can even fix the problems that clearly plague what's an objectively bad product. In the meantime, the internet continues to crumble.

Dumpster fires everywhere. Anyway! Anyone in the mood for pizza?

[The Soup Nazi]

This is fucking awful. I'm sorry, Antagon. From Politico:


Putin hijacked Austria’s spy service. Now he's going after its government

Intelligence officials suspect Wirecard COO Jan Marsalek of colluding with the far-right Freedom Party on Moscow’s behalf.

[The Soup Nazi]

1/2

On the dangers of inflation brain
You can’t blame inflation for everything. Especially now.

By Paul Krugman

Surging prices in 2021-22, after decades of low inflation, came as a shock to many. So it was in a way understandable that many observers more or less freaked out, seeing a return to the 1970s lurking under every bed and behind every closet door.

What’s less understandable, or at any rate less forgivable, is how many commentators continue to blame the inflation boogeyman for every economic problem — a condition I’ve come to think of as “inflation brain.” And I worry that this condition may even be affecting the Federal Reserve, leading it to keep interest rates too high for too long.

Let me give you two recent examples of inflation brain in action.

This month, a preliminary release by the widely followed University of Michigan survey of consumers reported a significant fall in consumer sentiment. Consumers gave a number of reasons for reduced optimism, but every news article I saw about it attributed their pessimism to a jump in expected inflation, both over the next year and over the next five years.

Then the final version of the May report was released, and the initially reported jump in inflation expectations more or less disappeared. Consumer sentiment was still significantly down, but the survey’s news release attributed this decline largely to concerns about labor markets and interest rates, not inflation fears.

Another example: Target, Walmart and other big retail chains have recently announced a number of price cuts, both temporary and permanent. They are presumably doing this because they are seeing worrisome softness in demand. But many of the reports I saw managed to frame falling prices as somehow a symptom of inflation — simply assuming that inflation must be sapping consumers’ purchasing power, when the reality is that wages have consistently outpaced inflation since the summer of 2022. Maybe demand is weakening for other reasons?

In both cases, then, commentators seemed determined to frame everything — even falling prices! — as an inflation problem, while ignoring other possible concerns and risks.

Which brings me to the Federal Reserve. The Fed is the world’s most important central bank; the European Central Bank is second. Both faced an inflation surge in the aftermath of Covid and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Both hiked interest rates to fight inflation.

But the E.C.B. seems set to begin cutting rates on June 6, while almost nobody expects the Fed to cut at its next policy meeting a few days later. Why the difference?

As best we can tell, the United States and the euro area have made similar progress against inflation. Europe measures inflation with the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices, which is up just 2.4 percent over the past year. This number can’t be directly compared with our own Consumer Price Index, mainly because the C.P.I. includes a price nobody pays: Owners’ Equivalent Rent, an estimate of what homeowners would be paying if they were renters, makes up more than a quarter of our measure.

However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases an estimate of the H.I.C.P. for America; for some reason the release for April data has been delayed, but rolling my own estimate from consumer price data, I come up with 2.5 percent, almost the same as Europe’s.

The Fed knows this, and it’s aware that shelter costs in general are a lagging indicator of inflation pressures. In particular, average rents paid by tenants are still catching up to a surge in rents for new tenants that ended more than a year ago:

 

Why, then, is the Fed less willing to cut than the E.C.B.? A lot has to do with the fact that we had several months of “hot” inflation reports at the beginning of 2024. But there are serious doubts about whether inflation truly accelerated.

This is a really technical subject, involving both questions about whether the official data fully adjust for seasonal effects — like the tendency of many businesses to raise prices at the beginning of the year — and quirky issues involving things like the price of financial services.

I don’t fancy myself an expert on these details, but I would note that if inflation really did accelerate, you should find clear signs of that acceleration in other places besides official price data. But you don’t. To take one example, mentions of “inflation” in corporate earnings calls have plunged. To take another, surveys of purchasing managers, which often prefigure official inflation data, are signaling continuing disinflation:

 

Am I sure that the bump in inflation early this year was a statistical illusion? No, of course not. But the Fed has to steer between two risks, that of cutting rates too soon and feeding a reacceleration of inflation and that of waiting too long while the economy starts to crack under the stress of high rates — a possibility hinted at in consumer surveys and in those big-store price cuts, as well as indications of a softening job market. And I worry that the Fed is too focused on the first risk and not enough on the second — that it’s suffering from at least a mild case of inflation brain.

[The Soup Nazi]

2/2

And at this point we have to talk about politics. If and when the Fed finally does cut, you know that it will be fiercely attacked by Donald Trump and his allies for conspiring to re-elect President Biden; after all, that’s what they wanted the Fed to do on their behalf before the last election. I don’t think that’s weighing on the Fed yet, but as the election approaches I fear that it will.

So let’s be clear: This would be a really bad time for the Fed to give in to political pressure from the right. It shouldn’t do so in any case, but especially not now, when it’s clear that any attempt to appease MAGA types would be futile. If Trump’s forces are victorious, the Fed (along with many other U.S. institutions) will quickly lose its independence; a former Trump aide, Peter Navarro, interviewed in prison, recently declared that if Trump wins, Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, will be gone within 100 days.

I understand that Fed officials can’t talk about these political considerations. But I hope they’re aware of them.

If it were up to me, I’d make a small rate cut next month. The Fed, spooked by those probably misleading inflation numbers, seems likely to wait at least until July, while more numbers come in. But I really, really hope that it doesn’t wait any longer. We cannot afford a case of Fed inflation brain.


Quick Hits

Does inflation just mean high prices? I have doubts.

Wage growth may be down to prepandemic levels.

Would Trump make inflation great again?

People aren’t talking enough about the disastrous implications of Trump’s plan for mass deportations.

[Toilet & Bowels]

I know only about 6 people post here but how come nobody is talking about Gaza?

[!@#$%!]

guilty of 34 felonies

.

Originally Posted by Toilet & Bowels

I know only about 6 people post here but how come nobody is talking about Gaza?

in my case, because there is nothing i can do with words

ok i'll try anyway

i think netanyahu is an evil criminal motherfucker using a war whose warning signs he purposefully ignored to perpetuate his hold on power

he's gone way overboard with his retaliation and he doesn't care how many civilians he kills

the israeli public who was ready to chuck him now has to stay their hand due to the war and who knows how things will end

it reminds me a lot of bush using 911 to occupy afghanistan, destroy iraq, and ride his popularity into a second term, no matter the cost

the american support of israel is by law, and i think biden is in a tough spot as a result because netanyahu takes advantage of this and hides his brutality under american support. but it's not the president-- it's the law. and american law supports israel but netanyahu abuses this support

hamas is a bunch of motherfuckers too, murdering civilians and using their own civilians as human shields. but at the same time, what sort of ideology do you expect to emerge out of a population with no hope being progressively strangled?

as christopher hitchens stated when he was alive, the problem here is that warmongers are in charge of both sides and they believe that god is on their side (or something like that)

and anyway, notice that when a leader from either side moves toward peace, someone from their own side kills them. like sadat and rabin

the deaths of sharon and arafat were highly suspicious too. a bit "too convenient"

please note that as soon as israel vacated gaza under sharon, sharon went into a coma, hamas won the elections and refused to cease hostilities with israel, and killed fatah in gaza. so sharon's peace move backfired

israel has also been moving further and further to the right over the last decades. in no small part due to war fatigue but also because they have become so dominant they don't need to have peace, they just need security. so they get security by surrounding the palestinians and isolating them in bantustans.

the modern settlers are not holocaust refugees looking for a homeland, they are religious fanatics appointed by god to restore the kingdom of israel or something. in alliance with the other right wings. and they keep colonizing

and then another generation of palestinians gets radicalized. because what else can they do? build something, it gets bulldozed. why even try

so: hamas attacks, hostages get massacred, israel retaliates, civilians get massacred. warmongers win internal struggles, then engage in war with their neighbor, the cycle does not end. i don't think it will end as long as "god" is involved. honestly i don't know what would be a solution. the warmongers are winning. and we talk and talk

oh, and dont forget iran! how can we forget iran?

listen: forget the holocaust or lord balfour or theodor herzl or the ottomans or the cossacks or the crusades or the rise of islam or the roman or persia or greece. this shit goes all the way back to the bronze age, maybe earlier even. i'm not joking. here is the word of the sky wizard:

20 So the people shouted when the priests blew the trumpets. And it happened when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat. Then the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. 21 And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword.

i don't see an end to this as long as the religious are in charge on both sides

eh, what am i saying, THREE sides, because american evangelicals are huge players in this cosmic tragedy of monotheism against itself. i've been to jerusalem--it scared the shit out of me. been to tell aviv, loved it, could live there. jaffa, loved it. been to the west bank too, heartbreaking. it's just... i don't know what to say anymore

i didn't want to write about this. too many horrible endless predicaments. it's too fucking much

[The Soup Nazi]

Jamie Raskin: How to Force Justices Alito and Thomas to Recuse Themselves in the Jan. 6 Cases

Not gonna happen. But it is a good read. Sample:

At his Senate confirmation hearing, Chief Justice Roberts assured America that “Judges are like umpires.”

But professional baseball would never allow an umpire to continue to officiate the World Series after learning that the pennant of one of the two teams competing was flying in the front yard of the umpire’s home. Nor would an umpire be allowed to call balls and strikes in a World Series game after the umpire’s wife tried to get the official score of a prior game in the series overthrown and canceled out to benefit the losing team. If judges are like umpires, then they should be treated like umpires, not team owners, team fans or players.

[Toilet & Bowels]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

the american support of israel is by law, and i think biden is in a tough spot as a result because netanyahu takes advantage of this and hides his brutality under american support. but it's not the president-- it's the law. and american law supports israel but netanyahu abuses this support

What law is this?

[Toilet & Bowels]

On the subject for guilty of 34 counts I saw a funny clothing advert on instagram today, it read "Trump was just convicted on 34 felony charges. Use coupon code "GUILTY" to get 34% off your order today"

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Toilet & Bowels

What law is this?

it's a memorandum of understanding from 2018 which assigns bazillions in military aid through 2029 and guarantees qualitative military edge for israel. so the usa can sell advanced airplanes to israel but if it sells to say jordan or egypt they will have to be more primitive planes

these memoranda are renewed every 10 years and began with ronnie raygun at the height of the cold war. but before that the israel usa alliance had been growing over the decades at least since world war 2. it was a progressively deepening relationship too long to tell, but back in those days the jews fought for the allies and there was a leader among the palestinias (was it the mufti or jerusalem?) helping the nazis and asking hitler to please bomb tel aviv

you guys (lol) held the area after world war 1 when you took it from the ottomans ansd made a proper mess of the region, ha ha. and israeli terrorists killed your officers with a big bomb ! yeah there have always been terrorists on both sides, and the people who did the bombing eventuslly came to power in the 80s, when israel went on the offensive (lebanon war). mapai and labor who were more or less the bolsheviks (haha) ruled from independence until begin began (menachem), and then the left gradually shrank in recent decades (rabin was the last strong labor leader, after his death they fizzled out). guess who became prime minister after rabin! well it was shimon peres as a substitute but he didn't last--netsnyahu came after! so the left fell and the right rose in the late 70s-90s and then the change consolidated, but these factions preexisted israeli independence, one pro-peace the other pro-violence. the war mongers are winning

this is a total gross oversimplification because there are infinite details i am skipping and/or simply don't know, but the more you dig the more you find and shudder and fall into a pit of despair. it's like a war fractal. the same things repeating at every level, into infinity. i don't think anyone can solve this. northern ireland is similar in a way but insignificant by comparison in either size or time or impact scales. not sure what this one would take to solve, or if it can be solved, with the warmongers in charge

but yeah, it's law. like a treaty. there's a longstanding alliance, like you and portugal, just not that old, but there are laws. and i think that netanyahu exploits them and hides behind them to have his way