mrmaplebar

I agree with you.

Keep in mind that as the American civil war was winding down President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, and so his Vice President, Andrew Johnson rose to power.

Following Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, Johnson became president. Johnson’s Reconstruction policies were lenient compared to those of the Radical Republicans. This dispute represented the conflict that many War Democrats faced, in that they supported the Union but did not wish to severely punish former Confederates or strongly protect the rights of former slaves. In the 1868 lead up to the first post-Civil War presidential election, President Johnson was a candidate for the Democratic Party presidential nomination; however, he finished second in the 22 ballots cast at the Democratic Convention, and lost the nomination to former New York Governor Horatio Seymour, a former Copperhead.[4] Lincoln appointed other War Democrats to high civil and military offices. Some joined the Republican Party, while others remained Democrats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Democrat

(Note: keep in mind that the “democrats” and “republicans” political alignment flipped around the time of the New Deal, so during the time of the Civil War, it was the Republicans (like Lincoln) that represented the northern Union states, while the Democrats represented the southern Confederate states. “War Democrats” (like Johnson) were democrats who supported the Union. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Party_System)

And now for a bit of Civil War conspiracy theory…

The events of the [Lincoln] assassination resulted in speculation, then and subsequently, concerning Johnson and what the conspirators might have intended for him. In the vain hope of having his life spared after his capture, Atzerodt spoke much about the conspiracy, but did not say anything to indicate that the plotted assassination of Johnson was merely a ruse. Conspiracy theorists point to the fact that on the day of the assassination, Booth came to the Kirkwood House and left one of his cards with Johnson’s private secretary, William A. Browning. The message on it was: “Don’t wish to disturb you. Are you at home? J. Wilkes Booth.”[121] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson

Make of that what you will!

Putting aside my ethical and cultural issues with training generative AI for a second, I have no idea what the appeal of this stuff is as a product.

Like, if they want me to pay a monthly subscription, what do they expect me to do with it? I have zero interest in chatting to a computer that’s not thinking and is just stringing together words based on probabilistic bias, and I have zero interest in making or consuming AI-generated media. I don’t want an AI “girlfriend”, nor do I want an AI to play a video game for me. Finally, I don’t see the value in having an AI tell me things that it summarized from various internet sources when we all know that the chances of it “hallucinating” (aka: making shit up or generally being totally wrong) is extremely high and basically unavoidable.

So, aside from the basic novelty of talking to your computer, what the hell is the point of all this?

Personally I wouldn’t pay $2/month for LLMs, let alone $200/month…

If the last decade has taught me anything, it’s that the civil war never ended.

Many of today’s Republicans would be perfectly happy to bring back slavery, but just like they wouldn’t cop to Project 2025, they just don’t feel that the overton window has shifted quite enough yet to be comfortable admitting it.

1. A competent government would see Ticketmaster and LiveNation as the effective trust/monopoly that they are, and break them up into multiple smaller, competing companies.
2. To his credit, Biden passed executive action to ban bullshit “junk fees” that get tacked on to ticket prices (among other things). I’m honestly not sure what became of that rule once Trump got into power, but it is absolutely a rule that we need.
3. We need like 50x more scrutiny on corporate mergers and collusion of corporate entities to jack up prices.

It’s hard to know if GoT counts as “controversial” because it seems like everyone unanimously hated it.