Geoff Mulgan on AI and bullshitters:

Since the arrival of ChatGPT there has been much debate about how AI can replace humans or work with them. Here I discuss a slightly different phenomenon which I increasingly notice, and probably wouldn’t have without the presence of generative AI: people who act rather like large language models. The phenomenon isn’t new. It’s just that we now have a new way of understanding it. As I show it’s quite malign, particularly in academia.

The strength and weakness of ChatGPT is that it can quickly assemble a plausible answer to a question, drawing on materials out in the world. It sucks them in, synthesises and mimics, sometimes quite convincingly, someone knowledgeable talking about

There’s a lot of that about – a very very very large amount of it.

What is so troubling about about the attitude that Bragg displays here is its contemputous dismissal of concerns being voiced by women in favor of the mindless narrative that it's all just a matter of "having a go" at those who identify as trans. This is misogyny. https://t.co/yrodB3WOpp

— Prof. Gary Francione (@garylfrancione) September 23, 2023

It’s what makes the trans ideology and “activism” so extremely repellent.… Read the rest

But it’s their idenniny! You can’t say it’s not their idenniny! If they say they are Inuit they are Inuit!

Three women in Canada have been criminally charged after allegedly pretending to be Inuit to receive benefits from indigenous organisations.

According to police, two 25-year-old sisters committed fraud by posing as adopted Inuit children. Both sisters and their 59-year-old mother are facing two counts of fraud each. One Inuit group called the alleged deception “flabbergasting”. The defendants are due in court in the city of Iqaluit on 30 October.

In a statement, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said that the sisters – Amira and Nadya Gill – and their mother, Karima Manji, defrauded two local organisations of “funds that

The Telegraph:

The Cabinet Secretary has been warned by senior civil servants of a “woke takeover of Whitehall” that risks “improperly” influencing Government policy. Simon Case was told in a letter signed by 42 staff from 16 departments that ideology on gender promoted by trans activists has become embedded in the Civil Service in a “significant breach of impartiality”.

They should call it a trans ideology takeover or similar. “Woke” is too generic and too vague.

It says the concept that “everyone has a gender identity which is more important than their sex” is “treated as undisputed fact”.

Staff who dare to air gender-critical views – meaning they believe there are two biological sexes that cannot be changed

How dare Italy refuse to treat women like machines for the gestation of other people’s babies???

Italian authorities are bringing in new measures targeting LGBT families and making it harder for them to have children. Many same-sex parents feel that a new law, which would make it illegal to have surrogacy abroad, is a personal attack against them.

“We have two options: to stay in Italy and face prison, or to run away.”

Husbands Claudio and Davide (not their real names) have a baby on the way through surrogacy – a woman in another country is carrying their son for them.

They don’t “have” a baby on the way. What they have is an arrangement by which they pay a … Read the rest

Billy Bragg tells a woman how to feminism.

What?? Louise Distras hates trans people so much that she’s willing to dress in a style acceptable to Daily Mail readers in order to have a go at them. What does this have to do with feminism Louise? Or punk rock? pic.twitter.com/RO5kPuigQ3

— Billy Bragg (@billybragg) September 22, 2023

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by maddog1129 on TRANSlation.

I can’t dress in the “approved for women” way, either. With me, it starts with the shoes. I simply can’t wear the foot-binding torture devices that are assigned to women. I haven’t always had bilateral plantar fasciitis, but I’ve had the condition for several decades. In my 20’s, I could wear soft-soled oxfords; now I need all-black cushioned athletic shoes. Starting from that foundation, pants suit or pants and blazer are as close as I can get to appropriate business wear. Luckily, I didn’t have to actually go to court very often.

If I were somehow forced to put on the woman-appropriate glad rags it would feel profoundly uncomfortable…which is quite irrational.

Such womany behavior:

A trans-identified male led a gang of activists to ransack the concession [stand] of a culturally significant cinematheque in Mexico last week in protest of his removal from the women’s washroom.

Sounds like fun. I think I’ll identify as Queen Elizabeth I and flip over all the library wastebaskets when they fail to believe me.

On September 12, a man calling himself “Laura Glover” took to social media to complain that he had been physically removed from the women’s washroom at the National Cinematheque in Mexico City, the nation’s most culturally significant film archive and theatre.

…

Glover was then recorded by his friend confronting security outside of the cinema, screaming at a male guard for

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Thomas the fundraising draw.

Like you, I don’t think there’s any quid pro quo going on here. Thomas is an ideologue and a true believer.

I think there’s three things going on here:

1) Conservatives want to keep justices like Thomas “in the fold.” There has long been a belief in the conservative legal and political world that Republican appointees like Stevens, O’Connor, Souter, and even Kennedy have gone “soft” and turned into moderates because they were co-opted into the Washington cocktail party circuit, or trying to curry favor with the liberal intelligentsia or whatever. (This used to be called the “Greenhouse Effect,” named for then-NYT legal reporter Linda Greenhouse — the … Read the rest

Oh so that’s how they get there – simple – just claim that “transvestite”=”transgender” and breeze right past all the differences.

New Research Reveals How the Nazis Targeted Transgender People

The author is Laurie Marhoefer, a historian at the University of Washington.

In the fall of 2022, a German court heard an unusual case.

It was a civil lawsuit that grew out of a feud on Twitter about whether transgender people were victims of the Holocaust. Though there is no longer much debate about whether gay men and lesbians were persecuted by the Nazis, there’s been very little scholarship on trans people during this period.

The court took expert statements from historians, including myself, before finding that the

Originally a comment by Mostly Cloudy at Miscellany Room.

The extremist trans activist Alejandra Caraballo is promoting an article in the Smithsonian Magazine that claims the Nazis persecuted transgender people:

The Nazis came for trans people, burned the first trans clinic, and murdered the first trans woman who ever got bottom surgery.

To deny this is to engage in holocaust denial.

I keep hearing this claim put about by many trans activists. The obvious purpose of this claim is to smear anyone who disagrees with puberty blockers, men in women’s prisons, men competing in women’s sports, etc. as being a similar type of murderous bigot that the Nazis were.

Has anyone researched this? I know Malcolm Clark has … Read the rest

Pro Publica has more on the ever-expanding “Clarence Thomas has multiple conflicts of interest” scandal.

On Jan. 25, 2018, dozens of private jets descended on Palm Springs International Airport. Some of the richest people in the country were arriving for the annual winter donor summit of the Koch network, the political organization founded by libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch.

Libertarian meaning extremely conservative and pro-rich people & anti-poor people.

One passenger on one private jet was Clarence Thomas.

During the summit, the justice went to a private dinner for the network’s donors. Thomas has attended Koch donor events at least twice over the years, according to interviews with three former network employees and one major donor. The justice

Start at 50 minutes on this to see and hear Neil deGrasse Tyson being sillier than you or I would have thought possible.

He tells his hosts he can tell women and men apart by looking at them, and that women are more expressive with their jewelry, and that women don’t have short hair, and a whole list of things of that kind. (Every single one of them, by the way, failed to be true of me, and I’m very far from the most strikingly butch woman on the planet, so…) He tells them that with much passion and emphasis, as if he’s saying something novel or surprising or clever. The point seems to be (I got too … Read the rest

What naïve credulous babble.

Gender identity is real

We all have a gender identity. Mine is male

Womens' gender identity is female

Trans women have a gender identity that is not the same as their chromosomal sex

Their trans identity is different but equally as valid as the female identity of other women pic.twitter.com/xGBsRgevZB

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) September 21, 2023

Oh it’s real is it? How do you know? Why am I not aware of having one? How do you know you have one?

Also what is it? What does that mean? Please explain without tautology – without using the word or its cognates.

And what is a “valid” identity? How do you know trans ones are … Read the rest

A few more turns of the screw in Scotland:

Police Scotland is setting up a dedicated hate crime unit ahead of Humza Yousaf‘s hugely controversial new laws coming into force early next year, it can be revealed.

The unit is expected to go live in November and training of the force’s 16,400 officers gets underway in December in preparation for the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act being implemented in early 2024. The legislation consolidates existing law and extends protection for vulnerable groups with a new offence of “stirring up hatred”.

So we can expect even more of the kind of opinion-sniffing and women-punishing that prompted Women Won’t Wheesht. What a brilliant plan!

Under the Act, offences

The contortions they indulge in, in order to avoid saying the word “women.” Columnist Monica Hesse in the Washington Post:

‘Abortion tourism’: A tidy phrase for punching down at desperate people

Subhead:

Republicans made it harder to get abortions in red states. Now they have a punchline for trivializing the journeys people undertake to get the procedure.

But it’s not “people” who undertake the journeys. If it were, Republicans wouldn’t oppose abortion rights. It’s not “people”; it’s those harlots known as “women.” It’s those weak, stupid, yet eternally plotting and rebelling people with no penis and too much freedom. Women must be forced to carry and push out babies they don’t want to carry and push out, because they are … Read the rest

Attitudes.

Support for any form of legal recognition of trans peoples gender has also dropped. In 2019 53% of people thought trans people should be able to change their birth cert, now just 30% of us think this should be possible. 2/5

— Nancy Kelley (@Nancy_M_K) September 21, 2023

That drop in support for faking birth certificates is a good thing. It’s good that more people think blatant absurd lies should not be “legally recognized.”

While other social attitudes continue their long post war liberalisation, trans people are experiencing the opposite – a hardening of attitudes, and a lack of openness. They are demonised in the press and by many in public life, and feeling increasingly unsafe and unwelcome. 4/5

How sweet: just as Birmingham offers a new statue of The Hijabi Woman, Iran beefs up its punishments for women who try to escape the damn thing.

Iran’s parliament has passed a controversial bill that would increase prison terms and fines for women and girls who break its strict dress code.

Those dressed “inappropriately” face up to 10 years in jail under the bill, for which a three-year “trial” was agreed.

And by “inappropriately” they mean for instance a stark naked head and neck. Funny how men are allowed to have stark naked heads but women are not.

Under Iranian law, which is based on the country’s interpretation of Sharia, women and girls above the age of puberty

The bullies win another round.

The trans activist terrorists won. They rushed the stage and the cops had to shut down the entire event half way through my speech because it was too dangerous for us to continue. #1MillionMarch4Chidren

— Meghan Murphy (@MeghanEMurphy) September 20, 2023

Let me make one thing very clear: Transphobia, homophobia, and biphobia have no place in this country. We strongly condemn this hate and its manifestations, and we stand united in support of 2SLGBTQI+ Canadians across the country – you are valid and you are valued.

— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) September 20, 2023

But it’s not “very clear.” It’s very unclear. Define “transphobia.” Define “biphobia.” Explain why you burble about transphobia but not misogyny. Explain why you seem not … Read the rest