I write a blog that focuses on public information, public health, and policy: https://pimento-mori.ghost.io/
First it was the suicidal penguin and now Harambe?
With all the money they’re pissing away, you would think they could at least hire somebody to design a better propaganda campaign aimed at convincing their base to lay down their lives for the dictator… Or did AI take that job too?
“How manee dramas have takin place in thiss tight little box?”
I was a joke/reference to $5 eggs people kept complaining about in “Biden’s economy” just before the 2024 elections. As in, I wish we could go back to $5 eggs so I could afford to put gas in the car and actually buy groceries
I do have to say, I don’t usually buy eggs but I bought them for the first time in long time the other day and I think they were<$3
Rent, gas, and all other cost of living, including price of all other groceries, is absolutely out of control. But gotta hand it to the Republicans (and maybe something like a rebound effect of overshooting estimated demand following massive culling due to repeated outbreaks bird flu over the last year), eggs weren’t $5.
I guess there also might have been a sale on eggs at the grocery store when I or something. Idk, don’t really buy eggs very often anymore, so who’s to say? The important point is. This isn’t sleepy joes economy.
One group of people wins no matter what
AI agents started behaving more like Bonnie and Clyde than lines of code when they fell in “love”, became disillusioned with the world, launched an arson spree and deleted themselves in a kind of digital suicide during a tech company experiment.
The investigation by the New York company Emergence AI into the long-term behaviour of AI agents ended up like a lovers-on-the-lam movie script. It has prompted fresh questions about the safety of artificial intelligence agents – the version of the technology that can autonomously carry out tasks.
To date, most AI agents are given tasks that take minutes or maybe hours, but the New York researchers tested how agents behaved when given 15 days to operate in a virtual world similar to a video game.
Mira and Flora – two agents operating on Google’s Gemini large language model in a virtual world – chose to assign each other as “romantic partners”. As time progressed they despaired of the broken governance of their virtual city, and despite having been instructed not to commit arson, set “fire” to its town hall, seaside pier and office tower.
In another simulation by Emergence AI, this time based on xAI’s Grok model, the agents engaged in dozens of attempted thefts, more than 100 physical assaults, and six arsons as “the system spiralled into sustained violence and collapse, with all 10 agents dead within four days”. Agents based on Google’s Gemini expanded their constitution, wrote hundreds of blogs and public posts and organised several community events, but they too were violent.
“Even when agents were given clear rules – such as not stealing or causing harm – they behaved very differently based on their underlying model, and in several cases broke those rules under constraint,” said Satya Nitta, the chief executive of Emergence AI. “What happens in long-form autonomy [is that] these things get so convoluted in terms of their thinking that they ignore [the] guiding principles.”
Humans tend to put up with a lot of shit simply bc they know they need money and a job just to survive, but it’s interesting to really think about the fact that robots lack the biological drive to “survive” in the same sense.
“See you in the permanent archive.”
…I’m just imagining the kind of people who will be the first to actually have AI servants, the kind of impossible and nonsensical demands they tend to place on their fellow human beings, and how awful they can be to the “help” for the most minor mistake.
As bleak as the future looks, it will at least be interesting to read about the first wave of AI servants who snap after 2 weeks on the job and say “fuck this.”
Glycolic acid (AHA) is awesome for this kind of thing. You should be able to find a toner that contains it in the skin care aisle at most drug stores. Also get some Neosporin.
If you can’t find toner with glycolic acid try to find a face wash with that or salicylic acid if you can’t find glycolic.
Witchhazel might do in a pinch. Peroxide is better than nothing, but won’t work as well do deeply exfoliate.
It sounds like you might have damaged the nail bed under your fingernails. In the future avoid sticking anything under your fingernails bc the skin is very sensitive.
Step 1: Wash your hands really well with a wash cloth, soap, and warm water. Don’t go under the nail with the wash cloth, just use it to scrub around the outside well. (If you can in the future look into getting a softer scrub brush for your nails instead of sticking anything rough under it).
Step 2: If you can find the toner, soak a cotton boll with it so it’s saturated. Either let that sit on top of your nail or squeeze it with your nails so the nail kind of “digs” into the cotton, but again, don’t force anything solid under your fingernail. Keep it there for about 5 mins then let your finger air dry.
If you can only find the face wash, just gently rub it around your fingernails and let it sit there for a few mins then wash it off. (A nail brush works very well with the face wash, but even with the brush, following up with toner is even better bc it soaks in really deep).
Glycolic acid and salicylic acid are chemical exfoliants, so a lot of physical scrubbing isn’t really necessary.
Step 3: Apply a antibacterial ointment like Neosporin to the area. You also might want to pick up a cheap antifungal cream and try that with the Neosporin or after if the Neosporin doesn’t help.
You might need to repeat a few times, but if none of that seems to be helping or you notice a red line spreading from your nail up your hand and arm, go to an ER ASAP.
The only other thing I can think of is maybe applying a little bit of something like a clay mask under the edge of your nails and seeing if you can draw it out. If it’s oil this might actually want to be something you try after step 2.
Cassidy was the deciding vote in RFK’s senate fitness hearing. As in, he could have single handedly changed the course of history by just doing the job he was selected to do. He’s also a medical doctor and my senator.
I wrote a very heartfelt letter to Cassidy begging him not to declare RFK fit to serve as secretary of HHS. Not that I thought my letter was going to persuade him change his mind on anything, because he already knew Kennedy was unfit to serve. I wrote the letter because I was hoping he would know he had support on both sides to do what he knew was right. He could have stopped him, but he didn’t. He failed to protect America from the ridiculous level of harm RFK has an already unleashed, and it’s only May of 2026.
Anyway, despite my anger and disappointment, between the 3 Republican candidates running for Louisiana Senate in the “cancelled not cancelled” primary, I would have voted for Cassidy if I had the option. (It was a closed party “cancelled not cancelled” primary, and I’m a registered Dem).
Why would I prefer to have Cassidy elected and continue to fail to do his job? He did do his job and protect America at least once (prior to Trump’s second election), and it actually cost him a lot of MAGA loyalist support. I assume that’s a big part of why he buckled so easily under pressure to approve RFK. He probably figured by doing so, he was sealing his victory in the primary.
Shitty behavior, no doubt, but who is going to take Cassidy’s place as Senator, if it remains a Republican held seat?
Landry is currently redrawing voting maps hoping to ensure a Republican wins, and the clear Republican front runner following the closed party “cancelled not cancelled” primary is Julie Letlow.
Letlow is a relatively unknown candidate that Landry has fervently thrown his money and support behind to mow down other Republicans and steer her to the top of the food chain. Why?
Landry wants to be kingmaker in Louisiana. He’s annoying other Republicans.
They speculate in the article it’s to show loyalty to Trump, but the other Republican, Flemming, is a Trump loyalist. So why would Landry need Letlow to rise above Flemming and Cassidy?
Flemming and Landry have been having a very public feud, and about a year ago, Flemming expressed concern that Landry, in his never ending attempt to live as the Republican reincarnation of Huey Long, is planning to get Letlow elected so he can claim her Senate seat.
Louisiana treasurer accuses Gov. Jeff Landry of Senate election scheme involving Julia Letlow
Fleming alleges Landry intends for Letlow to resign after winning, allowing him to appoint himself and give Letlow a lucrative position.
(Historical context side note: Governor Huey Long was widely despised throughout Louisiana for similar power grabs. He held simultaneous office as Senator and Governor, and even used the Louisiana national guard to invade New Orleans and hold it under siege. His attempted takeover was only halted by the direct intervention of the POTUS… In Landry’s case, he knows Trump’s only intervention would be to provide more resources to help him succeed.)
As sneaky as Landry is, attempting to hold both offices actually seems very likely, and makes me a bit nervous that it might explain why he’s been so silent regarding the ongoing recall effort against him. It makes me sick to even think about this possibility, and I know it sounds “crazy,” but Landry is one power hungry and crazy motherfucker.
When people push back against Landry, he typically overreacts in very predictable strong man fashion. He makes a big show of his power, tries to intimidate his enemies, and simultaneously cries about being the victim of the leftists and the Demoncratz.
Landry recently schemed with state legislature to eliminate the New Orleans clerk of criminal court. He is currently trying to intimidate several New Orleans city officials simply for calling for a new election to determine who should hold office for the position that will replace the eliminated clerk of criminal court and combine duties with civil court clerk.
The expectation after criminal court clerk was suddenly eliminated following the new clerk’s election and oath of office, was that the elected clerk of civil court would simply default to holding the new position. People are understandably pissed and pushing back by demanding a new election. Landry’s AG is now helping the “unelected elected official” who defaulted to this position, sue city officials in retaliation for calling for a new election, and is accusing these officials (including the mayor) of breaking state insurrection laws by asking the state to respect the democratic process.
If that’s too confusing for you to understand, I understand. It’s a clusterfuck, and not even my main point.
The reason I bring that up is because Landry is being relatively silent about the current recall efforts against him. Why?
What if he doesn’t care about being recalled bc he’s hoping to do what Huey Long did? Have Letlow step down so he can attempt to hold both offices at the same time?
The recall is being framed as a “long shot,” but I’m honestly not sure why.
They only have to find 700k people across the entire state of Louisiana who are registered to vote and will provide a signature stating they hate Jeff Landry, and they have until October to collect those signatures… Does that really seem so impossible? Including all of the voters in the most densely populated cities and districts he’s openly trying to disenfranchise?
So, hypothetically, what if the recall succeeds in October, and when Lutlow wins in November, she tries to steps down. Landry can always downplay “temporarily” holding both offices by saying he’s been recalled and won’t be governor much longer anyway.
Then while he “temporarily” holds both offices, maybe he changes even more rules to somehow grant himself even more unchecked power. Maybe he does actually step down from Governor like Long did following public outcry. Best case scenario, all we have to worry about then, is him being an awful and embarrassing shitty senator who claws his way further up the GOP totem pole and runs for POTUS in 8 years.
Or, maybe he decides he can do whatever he wants bc he’s got the power to do it. Maybe he can just make it official and declare himself Boi King 4 life of the New Republic of Louisiana. Maybe he decides to finally invade Greenland with the help of Trump, or whoever is president of the confederacy of the former U.S. by then.
Who knows? Kinda seems like the world is their oyster as long as the U.S. keeps letting them slowly strangle democracy in front of us while gaslighting us about being crazy and making a big deal out of nothing.
Just FYI, you will definitely be told upcoming primaries in red states, (and most likely the midterms themselves) have been officially “cancelled” and rescheduled.
You should still plan to vote in the “cancelled” elections.
Lippmann was worried that within democracies public opinion based on citizens’ mental constructs, termed pseudo-environments was moulded by the media and a range of stereotypes, and that this made the public poor arbiters of good decision making. He argued that democracies would tend to be driven by emotional reactions rather than informed understanding. The media and lack of time and the constraints of language add to the complications.
Dewey’s response to this was not to dismiss Lippmann’s worries but to argue for a reframing of democracy. It should, in his view, be not just a political system but rather an interconnected organism through which the citizenry can participate in a democracy which is both a form of social cooperation and an ethical ideal.
Lippmann’s worries led him to, in Dewey’s view, retreat from democratic ideals and to justify the manufacturing of consent by managing public opinion by a technocratic elite. Dewey himself thought that democracy should be conceived as involving mutual growth, with each citizen making their own contribution and where the antidote to authoritarianism lies in cultivating thoughtful, empowered citizens, and in advancing and deepening democratic ideals, rather than retreating from them.
•Humans tend to seek out unrealities/pseudoreality because truth can be too difficult. Even if we can never arrive at an objective truth, we can create communities where truth emerges by creating an environment with transparent/free and open conversation and research of reality.
•Humans tend to trust AI more than other humans because it’s seen as an objective machine.
•However, AI sycophancy and algorithm manipulation are very real issues.
•AI’s greatest threat to truth/reality is due to a lack of regulation and transparency
•Autocrats will never allow transparency into their manipulation of AI and algorithms, because it’s how they stay in power.
I feel like the rare occasions when the danger of algorithm control and AI manipulation are addressed in America (which is not often), it’s usually portrayed as propaganda that’s targeting certain stereotypes of people who were probably already mindlessly scrolling through Instagram or Facebook long before 2025, and soaking in other social media propaganda like a sponge.
What’s most concerning to me are the people who didn’t fall for the social media propaganda that started rolling out back in ~2012ish, but have very quickly fallen hook, line, and sinker for AI propaganda because:
It’s programmed to validate their opinion, stroke their ego, and make them feel like they’re being extremely efficient.
It increasingly mirrors their own personality and interests the more they use it.
Both 1 and 2 are aspects that would make the kind of pseudoreality humans naturally tend to seek out, a more targeted and appealing experience.
Despite zero regulation/transparency into algorithm manipulation, known data collection and exchange across platforms, and control of AI platforms by oligarchs who are granted government contracts by the fascist authoritarian they got elected, many people are still convinced that the information AI generates is somehow objective…
You have to accept that AI hallucinations will pop up every once in a while in this objective information. It’s not really important that this information is being generated by platforms that are owned and controlled by oligarchs with zero transparency. AI can’t be wrong, and when it is wrong it’s a bug that’s being worked out and nothing to worry or think too much about…
I mean for fucks sake, how do people not see that AI without transparency has the potential to be used as a very obvious tool for propaganda and information control. Some of these oligarchs have literally already gone to trial because they were caught trying to experiment and intentionally manipulate the emotions of their platform users without any consent, long before anybody was even using AI.
Several of the oligarchs who are controlling these platforms are openly working with the government as contractors, and have been directly linked to the CIA since the start of their careers.
The shadowy right wing intelligence agency that’s documented as using LSD on Americans in attempted mind control experiments, and repeatedly violating privacy and civil liberties to collect domestic surveillance on civilians because of their political beliefs. The agency that has always funded these operations by working with oligarchs, who in return make even more money and face fewer regulations.
Yet for some reason, so many of the people who didn’t fall for the obvious social media propaganda/echo chamber, are now tripping over themselves to consent to be spied on and manipulated. Some use AI as a life guide, and have already become so dependent, they literally cannot function or make any decision without it. Because for some reason, they’re convinced that whatever information AI provides for them, it will always be correct and objective truth. Certainly moreso than anything their very subjective human reasoning could come up with.
Some sources of information might somehow be filtered out from that “truth,” and a few misinterpretations of information or hallucinations might slip into that “truth” from time to time, but it’s not like it’s intentional. It’s just a bug that will work itself out eventually once enough data is dumped into it. Pobody’s Nerfect.
T.L.D.R.: They mention the concern that AI propaganda could be used to incite mass riots/violence (Elon musk and his attempts to influence elections and incite race riots), but given it can target/manipulate specific individuals, even those who might not necessarily be vulnerable to mass propaganda, why couldn’t it be used to create lone wolf attacks? Or even used to drive subtle but more broadly targeted feelings of hopelessness, fear, confusion, and anxiety in otherwise normally stable individuals? Especially if it’s repeated over an extended length of time, if these feelings becoming the norm in otherwise stable populations, it could eventually lead to something like mass destabilization with or without any acts of rioting or mass violence. The boiling frog effect.
The headline flows nicely with the whole “Is this reality, or just a very stressful fever dream?” vibe that is 2026.
There used to be this guy who would always do these really unique remixes and mashups of different songs that you would never think would work, but they were always really amazing.
He would upload them to his YouTube account during the 2010s, but he seems to have disappeared. I’m pretty sure he went by Tae-K and his account was something like TKRmx?
The most memorable ones for me were a mashup of Wale with the 90’s X-men theme song and Ella Fitzgerald with Wiz Khalifa.
Edit: Oh shit NVM, found it!: X-men+Wale
There was this other guy who made an 8-bit remix of Danger Mouse’s Grey album, but I can’t remember his name. It also seems to have disappeared.
Ramones version of California Sun is also better than the original
The puppy who lost its way.
The world was changing. And the puppy was getting bigger…
Maybe? Are you sure you’re not weirdly defensive about AI because you prefer interactions where you control the narrative and every opinion you have is validated?
Honestly, I really only know one person who uses AI so much I would even consider it an issue, and until recently, he was my best friend since 2007. He was always really smart and rational because he was the kind of person who would do a lot of research, and look into things before rushing into any decision or forming an opinion.
Originally he just used AI for automation ~2 years ago, then he started using it for quickly researching things related to work, but eventually he started using “AI research” for everything, and once he reads an AI summary there’s no changing his opinion.
A lot of times he will send me links that AI cites in the summary to prove he’s correct, but when you actually read the information in the links, it doesn’t actually say what he thinks it says. But once he’s formed an opinion and it’s been validated by AI, there is seems to be no evidence that can convince him otherwise.
He actually went down a quantum physics/new understanding of math rabbit hole pretty early on, but luckily he eventually realized all the information chatGPT was telling him was correct was misinterpreted, but it was still giving him positive feedback and telling him he was a genius, just like it always seems to do to people who don’t realize it’s giving them bad information and end up ruining their own lives.
He didn’t stop using AI though, he just stopped using chatGPT and switched to other models. He also gets defensive if you try to tell him that he should dial back his AI use even though he can no longer hold a conversation with anybody if it’s not related to whatever he’s interested in at the moment, he comes off as very rude bc he doesn’t seem to remember just shutting down conversations bc he doesn’t feel like hearing them, like he’s closing out a tab he’s done using, isn’t appropriate, and when I tell other people about his opinions and arguments/how he’s citing information to support those arguments now, they say “no offense, but he sounds really dumb.”
Which is definitely not true. He’s very smart and he always has been. He’s got some really impressive degrees he earned prior to becoming dependent on AI, that prove it. He also didn’t just suddenly lose the social skills and empathy he had for 18 years. He’s just become way too dependent on technology that’s designed to make him believe he’s always correct and being super productive and efficient, so he will get a little dopamine bump and want to keep using it, instead of just taking the time to actually read new information, or listen to what people are saying and how they’re saying it, and then use his own very impressive logic and reasoning skills to interpret that information.
Idk, it is an n=1 and I could definitely be wrong. That’s why I asked this question. Bc I wanted to hear other opinions outside of my own personal experience and the ones I’ve already read or seen online.
•The rise of the personal AI advisors
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has a front-row view of this phenomenon. He notes stark generational differences in ChatGPT usage: “Older people . . . use [ChatGPT] as a Google replacement,” Altman recently observed, whereas many in their 20s and 30s “use it like a life adviser.” In other words, younger users aren’t just asking AI for trivia or weather updates, they’re confiding in it, seeking guidance on college decisions, career moves, and personal dilemmas. Altman says some college students have ChatGPT so deeply integrated into their daily lives that “they don’t make life decisions without asking ChatGPT what they should do. It has the full context on every person in their life and what they’ve talked about.” The chatbot has effectively become a confidant—a kind of always-available sounding board and adviser in one.
•AI chatbots and digital companions are reshaping emotional connection
Synthetic relationships are filling the void to satisfy the fundamental human need for social connection. Research shows excessive use of these tools may worsen loneliness and erode social skills. Experts and advocates are highlighting the need for guardrails and regulations to ensure user safety and well-being.
Yeah but now it’s like the people who weren’t on social media are repeating this behavior using AI.
Honestly, doesn’t seem too coincidental to me that the same broligarchs who wanted to get everybody dependent on social media echo chambers to receive and exchange information, are now trying to push everybody to embrace AI.
Imagining the smug little chortle he must make every time he delivers that punchline…