gal beyond the pal

This is a quote from the article summing up both studies in Technology Review: "A multi-university team of researchers has found that chatting with a politically biased AI model was more effective than political advertisements at nudging both Democrats and Republicans to support presidential candidates of the opposing party. The chatbots swayed opinions by citing facts and evidence, but they were not always accurate—in fact, the researchers found, the most persuasive models said the most untrue things."

Two independent studies found that AI chatbots were better at persuading voters than political ads. The most persuasive bots also lied the most. This is something that humans working in psyops have known for decades. AI is psyops at scale. www.technologyreview.com/2025/12/04/1...

Rep. Grijalva says she was pepper-sprayed by ICE

Chinese Hospital Ship Visits Jamaica as US Gunboats Ply Caribbean A Chinese hospital ship quietly docked in hurricane-hit Jamaica this week, projecting soft power into the heart of the Caribbean where a US armada is conducting a controversial anti-narcotics mission ...

"A Chinese hospital ship quietly docked in hurricane-hit Jamaica this week, projecting soft power into the heart of the Caribbean where a US armada is conducting a controversial anti-narcotics mission targeted at Venezuela."

A court with a normal-ish conservative majority would have been tolerable. I'm not eager for court packing, impeaching justices, and other such options. But this court sticking around post-Trump is untenable. They've already torched their own legitimacy, the only question is what do we do about it.

Dude. Yes. Alito and Thomas are of course the standout examples, but all of the Republican justices have tells in their writing and their questioning indicating that they are, to varying degrees, marinating their brains in dumb bitch juice

Woman Hailed as Hero for Smashing Man's Meta Smart Glasses on Subway A New York subway rider has accused a woman of breaking his Meta smart glasses. She was later hailed as a hero.

In terms of what’s understood to be socially acceptable behavior, normalizing the filming/taking pictures of people in public who are minding their own business (and putting it online) is one of the worst developments of the past 15 years.

Netflix Confirms Cancel Membership Button Will Be Leaving Streaming Service Next Month

Netflix Confirms Cancel Membership Button Will Be Leaving Streaming Service Next Month

you can always x, it’s always morally correct meme saying you can always break a man’s Meta glasses, it’s always morally correct

This really is grotesque: they went through years-long citizenship processes and are now being denied simply because if the country they are from. It’s formalized bigotry.

This is playful hyperbole, but it's basically impossible to overstate how exquisitely repulsive any and all "manosphere" aura is to women. Just ugly little boys crying angrily in a corner somewhere. Grow up, learn how to cook, wear clothes that fit, be kind to others.

This technology that people in school administrations and higher education are demanding everyone get behind because it's "the future" and "we just have to accept it," which is, nfn, the language of abuse.

[Tumblr] vigilantsycamore Ebenezer Scrooge: Goes outside 500 Muppets: There goes Mr Asshole! There Goes Mr Bitch!

tis the season

Great reporting and a knockout final line:

“Not long after, as the sun was going down, an SUV with tinted windows and an out-of-state license plate was seen barreling down a nearby street. It was followed closely by three cars, with drivers laying on their horns and whistling.”

A massive problem today is the uneven distribution of shame. Some of us are running dedicated on-site shame servers 24/7 while others have no access to shame at all, even though they desperately need it. What we need to do is put shame in the cloud

This was just sent to me by an LAUSD parent. A 4th grader was assigned to design a book cover for Pippi Longstocking using Adobe for Education. Here is what the AI tool generated:

I've become deeply radicalized against gambling. It's just getting more evil the longer it's allowed to fester unregulated

It’s absolutely insane how much debt exists mainly to punish poor people

They are running the government according to the logic of right-wing grievance media. I cannot emphasize that enough. The point is to create content, and they don't see an actual difference between dunking on Sabrina Carpenter, passing legislation, and bombing other countries.

I have had so many long conversations with seniors about stuff and if they only watch 24 hour news, and I don't care what channel, they are convinced the world is lawless, they're scared, and the know everyone is coming for them. No one believes me when I say crime is down.

The USPS posting a NINE BILLION DOLLAR LOSS!!! sounds terrible. Certainly worse than if you said "USPS costs thirty dollars per person per year" even though that means the same thing and more accurately describes a government service

"Between 1951 and 2000, 3M produced at least 100 million pounds of [perfluorooctanesulfonic acid] and chemicals that degrade into [it]... After the [1970s], when 3M scientists established that the chemical was toxic in animals and was accumulating in humans, it produced millions of pounds per year."

I am humbly requesting that lawmakers in every Democratic-controlled state spend every waking hour between now and Christmas cooking up new congressional district maps that draw Republicans out of electoral existence

The constitutional right for Republicans to win elections no matter how hostile the electorate is against them

Yeah, a House member needs to send up that impeachment flag. This is illegal, immoral, dangerous behavior — that is also likely unconstitutional as well.

The fact that four hostile drones tried to hit Zelenskyy’s plane & it’s barely a blip in the news cycle should terrify everyone. We’ve been dragged so deep into the chaos era that an attempted strike on a world leader doesn’t even break through. When this becomes normal, the world is in real danger.

At the beginning of the drone war in the early 2000s, people fretted that the fact it was on the screen, you weren’t looking at a human being through a rifle sight, would end up making troops completely desensitized to the fact that they were killing people.

Anyways, they watched them for 41 min.

A wealth tax is a big tent policy unless the only people you care about are billionaires.

It’s all transparently bullshit and immune to rationality, but if struggling to stabilize half a burning boat to avoid drowning is “getting back in the fight,” what they’re really saying is there’s nothing the survivors could have done to avoid being killed. And that definitely isn’t the law.

A drawing of the Enterprise E from behind, with a pinky/purpley space backdrop including a large planet just poking into frame from above. Text says: "Much like the Federation, I too have lofty ideals and no money."

This is an insane paragraph.

This is at the very least, literally, not "indisputable". The lower-court ruling you're overturning said otherwise, and there's written, public evidence the DOJ said do this for racial reasons!

"Indisputable" just means "I don't care to deal with contrary evidence."