When the guillotines come out, can we put the Sackler family at the front of the line? Just before the Kochs. The Sacklers knowingly and willingly killed hundreds of thousands of people. They reportedly made $11 billion dollars doing it. The settlement hasn’t been finalized but they’re being asked to contribute in the neighborhood of $6 billion. That leaves them with $11 billion. Yeah, I CAN do math. The $6 billion will be covered by investments and such and will be paid out over ten years. It won’t harm them. It will merely slow their income a bit – for a while. But even if it HAD come from their pockets, they’d STILL be $5 billion dollars to the good.

I hold that when a person or company commits a crime that makes them lots of money, the minimum penalty should be two times the amount they made. The Sackler murder spree netted the family $11 billion? The fine should be $22 billion. Because I’ll tell you this: nothing stops evil people from doing evil things when there’s a $5 billion dollar reward at the end…

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I’m a technology oriented guy. I’ve always been able to easily understand how technological improvements could benefit people’s lives. That’s the easy part, because it’s the part most techies want to see. It took me longer to understand how technology could be used for the wrong purposes, too. But I see it now and it’s one of those things in life that, once you learn to see it, you can’t UN see it.

So, when AI came around, I knew right away, there are many applications where this could make life better and easier. But I also saw risks right away. Especially in today’s conservative-driven, “a lie is as good as a truth” society. AI still isn’t all that good most of the time but it gets better every day and it’s already being deployed in politics. During the run-up to the New Hampshire primary, a deep-fake voice of Joe Biden was used to make a robo-call to people in NH, telling them to “save their vote for November,” as though voting in the primary would prevent them from voting in the general.

But there’s another side to it, too. A recording was recently unearthed of Roger Stone, one of Donny’s toadies, threatening the lives of sitting congressmen. He was talking to one of HIS toadies, Sal Greco. “It’s time to do it,” Stone told Greco. “Let’s go find Swalwell. It’s time to do it. Then we’ll see how brave the rest of them are. It’s time to do it. It’s either Swalwell or Nadler has to die before the election. They need to get the message. Let’s go find Swalwell and get this over with. I’m just not putting up with this sh*t anymore.”

Stone has dismissed the thing as an AI deep fake. And, hey, maybe it is! Then again, maybe it isn’t. How can we tell, so how can we know? Do we really have to wait until someone tries to kill Swalwell or Nadler to decide if the recording is true? Tools we once used in order to know something was real or not real are now going to be used against us – so we can’t know what’s real or not real.

Another, arguably worse abuse? Some slob made deep fake, sexually explicit photos of Taylor Swift and put them out on the web. She’s a VERY popular person. She has gobs of money. She already has a congress critter addressing the problem on her behalf. She has an ARMY of fans out there, ready to be her eyes and ears to get the photos taken down. But what about Debbie from down the street? Or Jill from English class? Or Brenda or Karen in the 7/11? These women don’t have the resources or the millions of eyes working on their behalf. They’re just…victims, with little to no recourse.

And men? Well, a lot of us are still in the animal stage. I can’t even imagine the kind of crap Karen will have to endure when she shows up for her shift because some dude thought she really did do those things she decidedly did NOT do. SHE gets to suffer because some cretin dumbass is able to paste her face on someone else’s body – even in video. I presume there are already members of the puke set cruising social media, looking for pretty faces they can attach to other people’s bodies doing, well, other people’s bodies.

Deep fake AI is going to instill a kind of sensory deprivation. Soon, we will no longer be able to distinguish between real and imagined. That’s fine in a movie in which our protagonist takes on some fantasy monster. That’s a nightmare pretty much everywhere else.

My favorite two books on dystopian futures are ‘Brave New World’ and ‘1984.’ Both seem to have hit the mark in one way or another but ‘1984’ is proving most accurate, as conservatives bring Big Brother to fruition.

I keep hearing George Orwell’s threat echoing in my head, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” For years, MAGAGOPCORP has been telling it’s base to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears and MAGA is happy to comply. But now? No one will have to tell us to reject evidence. We’ll do it for them, thinking we’re looking at AI. I’ll tell you this: that will be a cancer in our society I think we’ll never beat – and cancer kills…

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I don’t think Crystal Hefner is coming off really well in her smear of Hugh and the lifestyle. She was 26 when she married 86 year old Hugh Hefner. Did ANYBODY believe it was true love? Was it supposed to be news that an 86 year old man relied on a blue pill to perform in bed? I thought everybody knew that what happened at the mansion was performative, done to maintain the illusion ‘Playboy’ sold.

What? Hugh Hefner was narcissistic? Say it ain’t so! How could she possibly have known? I mean, except for the fact that she started as his number three girlfriend and worked her way up. When the role you’re hired for is “Number Three Girlfriend,” are you NOT aware there’s a Number Two and a Number One? She was hired to do a job, play a role, and she did it. Coming out after the fact and saying, “I didn’t like the job and he was icky!” seems…disingenuous.

She left once. Out of the scene. She was gone for a year. Then she came back. Cause it sucked, I guess. She got paid to do a job. She did the job. That was the deal and, according to her, she knew it. She even got a bonus at the end, which is more than most of his “girlfriends” could say. I don’t find it convincing to spend years with a misogynist narcissist and then come out AFTER the fact pretending to be surprised that he was a misogynist narcissist…

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Championship day. In the NFC, we have the Lions at the Forty-Niners in Santa Clara. In the AFC, we get the Chiefs at the Ravens. These are all good teams and should be very good football games. I often think the Championship games are FAR better football than the Stupor Bowl so it’s likely these will be the last two really good games of the season.  I think the Niners have the best balance, overall, and should do well. Detroit is up-an-coming but I think they need a few pieces still. I’m glad the Lions have finally decided to field a decent team rather than just using the franchise as a tax write-off. I’m happy for the players. Not happy enough to hope they beat my Niners, though. (If they do, I’ll be less happy about their recent success…)

The Chiefs and the Ravens are similar teams. BOTH of them rely heavily on the legs of the Quarterbacks. The Chiefs QB is older and maybe not quite as mobile but still…he’s fast. Both teams have been to and won the Stupor Bowl in recent years. In fact, both teams have beaten the Niners in the Stupor Bowl in recent years. Uh-oh. (The Niners are better than they were then.)

I think the Niners will beat the Lions because of experience and, really, the Niners are loaded everywhere. I think the Chiefs will beat the Ravens because of Andy Reid. I suspect Reid actually deserves the title of greatest Head Coach of all time. His team may be older but Reid has guile. Besides, the Chiefs have Taylor Swift and the NFL LIKES having her at the games. It’s good for ratings, you know…