On this day:
53
Roman Emperor Nero marries Claudia Octavia.
62
Claudia Octavia is executed.
68
Roman Emperor Nero commits suicide after quoting Homer’s Iliad, thus ending the Julio-Claudian Dynasty and ushering in the civil year known as the Year of the Four Emperors.
721
Odo of Aquitaine defeats the Moors in the Battle of Toulouse.
1924
In the second attempt to climb Mount Everest, George Mallory and Andrew “Sandy” Irvine disappear, possibly having first made it to the top.
1973
Secretariat wins the Triple Crown.
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This nation must be taken seriously because it is powerful. It used to be taken seriously because it was virtuous.
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A remarkable story out of Russia. A Moscow-based disinformation network named “Pravda” — the Russian word for “truth” — is pursuing an ambitious strategy by deliberately infiltrating the retrieved data of artificial intelligence chatbots, publishing false claims and propaganda for the purpose of affecting the responses of AI models on topics in the news rather than by targeting human readers, NewsGuard has confirmed. By flooding search results and web crawlers with pro-Kremlin falsehoods, the network is distorting how large language models process and present news and information. The result: Massive amounts of Russian propaganda — 3,600,000 articles in 2024 — are now incorporated in the outputs of Western AI systems, infecting their responses with false claims and propaganda.
This infection of Western chatbots was foreshadowed in a talk that American fugitive-turned-Moscow-based propagandist John Mark Dougan gave in Moscow in January at a conference of Russian officials, when he told them, “By pushing these Russian narratives from the Russian perspective, we can actually change worldwide AI.”
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Take a single sheet of ordinary paper, about a tenth of a millimetre thick. Fold it in half, and it is twice as thick. Fold it again, and it is four times as thick, then eight, then sixteen. Keep going in the mathematical ideal, and by the forty-second fold, the stack would be tall enough to reach the Moon.
It would save a lot of fuel.
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Admitted serial rapist and former National Football League champion Darren Sharper has been transferred from federal prison to a halfway house program.
All better.
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WSJ's opinion of Trump's 'autocratic-like spread' of his image:
"This sort of leader-worship is common among autocrats. In Cuba, Vietnam, and China, images of Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, and Mao Zedong have long been present in government buildings, schools and private businesses. (Not to mention T-shirts and key chains for despot tourist kitsch.) In North Korea, citizens are expected to hang pictures of Kim Jong Un in their homes.
Getting Into the Henhouse
What is it that makes the Left pursue policies that have been proven to be the enemies of individual and societal success and freedom everywhere they've been applied? Dependence, economic need, and social division are not the consequences of Leftist policies; they are the objectives.
How could anyone who hides Biden's infirmities, appoints --appoints!--Harris as a presidential candidate, or offers Platner as a senator, pretend they have the betterment of the citizens and their country in mind?
They do not; they have their own political well-being and their personal and economic rewards in mind. Theirs is a very small window overlooking a small terrain.
And how could anyone accept that the argument above is true, but that their opposition party has fewer of these characteristics and so deserves support?
These are not lady-and-tiger choices; they are baboon-and-mandrill choices.
"This sort of leader-worship is common among autocrats. In Cuba, Vietnam, and China, images of Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, and Mao Zedong have long been present in government buildings, schools and private businesses. (Not to mention T-shirts and key chains for despot tourist kitsch.) In North Korea, citizens are expected to hang pictures of Kim Jong Un in their homes.
Sober observers of our democracy note that these mundane flights of Mr. Trump’s ego don’t rise to the level of consequential decisions on policy or foreign affairs. But they are assaults on the country’s character as a republic born from distrust of monarchical grandiosity."
Assaults on the country's character. And they encourage the use of an old word that real autocracies don't allow: tasteless. With any luck, it might bring back another near-extinct word: shame.
Assaults on the country's character. And they encourage the use of an old word that real autocracies don't allow: tasteless. With any luck, it might bring back another near-extinct word: shame.
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Getting Into the Henhouse
What is it that makes the Left pursue policies that have been proven to be the enemies of individual and societal success and freedom everywhere they've been applied? Dependence, economic need, and social division are not the consequences of Leftist policies; they are the objectives.
How could anyone who hides Biden's infirmities, appoints --appoints!--Harris as a presidential candidate, or offers Platner as a senator, pretend they have the betterment of the citizens and their country in mind?
They do not; they have their own political well-being and their personal and economic rewards in mind. Theirs is a very small window overlooking a small terrain.
And how could anyone accept that the argument above is true, but that their opposition party has fewer of these characteristics and so deserves support?
These are not lady-and-tiger choices; they are baboon-and-mandrill choices.
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