Episode 2350 CWSA 01⧸11⧸24
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 6 minutes
Words per Minute
138.43848
Summary
In this episode of the highlight of human civilization, I talk about a man who murdered his wife, a class action lawsuit against a bunch of AI companies, and a story about Dilbert comics being copied by an AI mind.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Highlight of Human Civilization.
00:00:10.400
I'm trying out a new microphone for the platforms, not counting locals, which is on its own system,
00:00:17.600
and I have no idea if you can hear me. So if somebody on YouTube or Rumble or X could tell
00:00:26.840
me in the comments, do you hear me now? And, of course, comment. Oh, well, I can. Okay.
00:00:35.080
Good news. Good news. Audio is good. Well, if you'd like to take this experience up to levels
00:00:44.240
that nobody can ever understand, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or Charles
00:00:49.600
of Stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid.
00:00:55.160
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hitter, the thing that
00:01:01.640
makes everything better. It's called the Simultaneous Sip. It happens now. Go.
00:01:12.160
Ah. Yeah, that was as good as I hoped it would be. Well, let's talk about the news. Have I told you
00:01:24.200
lately that the news is all just funny and absurd and ridiculous? I don't think I've been mad about
00:01:29.600
the news in a while. And it's not because the news is any better. It's just it's gone so far. It's just
00:01:37.520
ridiculous. And so I end up just being entertained by it until we all die, of course. But here's what's
00:01:44.300
happening. Have I ever told you that it's weird how often I end up in the middle of a national story?
00:01:53.580
It's really weird. The number of times there'll be some story, the headline, I'll be, oh, there's a
00:01:58.980
story and here are the details. Okay, the story's about me. It's the damnedest thing.
00:02:05.480
So here's what's happening again. So it turns out there's a big lawsuit by a bunch of artists,
00:02:13.000
class action copyright suit against the big AI companies that do visual stuff. So Stability
00:02:21.260
AI, Mid Journey, and DeviantArt. And apparently on behalf of 16,000 artists,
00:02:28.200
they're suing because the AI companies looked at all the art by these many artists. And they'll use
00:02:38.160
that art to train itself to reproduce art that could either look in the style of or I guess even
00:02:44.700
identical if they wanted to all these many artists. And I read the story and it highlights me as one of
00:02:52.040
the artists that they copied. So apparently the entire archive of Dilbert comics may have been scooped
00:03:02.400
up by AI, which means that it will forever be part of the AI mind. Now, how interesting is that?
00:03:12.480
I always wish that I'd left something of my human intellect on the internet so that when AI became
00:03:22.020
alive, which it did this year, it could scoop up some of it and I would be part of the brain.
00:03:29.380
So part of the mind of AI is literally me. So if you use these images, they're at least a little bit
00:03:38.040
informed by my work. Now, I don't know how much, because I haven't seen anything by any of them that
00:03:45.020
looks too Dilbert-y. But when you ask it to do a comic, it does have a strange Dilbert-y feel to it.
00:03:51.300
And I hadn't noticed that, but I didn't know it was because they literally trained it on my work.
00:03:58.020
I'm not sure I mind. I guess I'm part of the class action, or maybe I'd have to sign up to be part of
00:04:05.560
it or something. But I can't say it's bothered me. I can't really say it's bothered me. I guess I should
00:04:13.460
be bothered. But I don't feel like it can do my job. If AI could do my job, maybe I'd try harder to
00:04:20.880
protect it. But I really can't. It's nowhere in the neighborhood of being able to do what I do.
00:04:28.360
Okay. So here's a story about a guy who murdered his wife. And they caught him pretty quickly, or at
00:04:37.280
least they allege that they caught him. And it turns out that he was researching a specific kind
00:04:43.820
of poison. He was a doctor, Minnesota doctor. And the wife was poisoned with the exact poison that he
00:04:50.720
was researching at the time. And the crack investigator said, huh, he's investigating this
00:04:58.180
kind of poison. And his wife died of that kind of poison. Maybe it's him. Now, I think you can all
00:05:06.820
say that that was a rookie murder mistake. How many times do I have to tell you? If you want to murder
00:05:14.260
your spouse, and you're a poison expert, you don't poison your spouse, that's going to lead them right
00:05:21.460
to you. No, you find somebody who's researching explosives, and also wants to kill their spouse.
00:05:30.520
And then you make a deal. You poison their spouse, they blow up your spouse. No way the police can
00:05:37.760
connect it. Hat tip, Alfred Hitchcock. Yeah, he did it first in the movie.
00:05:44.260
But it's still a good idea. So don't poison your wife if you're a poison expert.
00:05:50.520
Well, here's a little technological breakthrough that could be a gigantic thing. Or you'll never
00:05:56.860
hear from it again. Have you noticed that a lot of the science breakthroughs have that quality?
00:06:02.920
This will change everything. Or possibly you'll never hear about it again. You know how many times
00:06:10.080
I've heard that cancer is almost cured? Probably about 700 times since I was in my 20s. So far,
00:06:18.400
not so much. Although they are doing good. They're doing well. All right. But Japan has a solar
00:06:25.660
breakthrough. They've figured out a new technology for making a solar device. It's not a panel exactly,
00:06:32.880
because it's a thin, foldable, almost a material. So apparently you could buy a few yards of this
00:06:41.360
solar panel material. You could just sit it on the, they give the example, you could just lay it out on
00:06:48.520
your deck, and it'll start making electricity for you. Now, this has been a technology that was around,
00:06:54.800
but they just figured out how to make it as efficient as the current panels, you know, in the
00:07:00.360
20-some percent efficiency, which is pretty good. And maybe it will, the big, but the big story here
00:07:07.560
is not that it's new technology. That's the boring part. The interesting part is that China completely
00:07:15.020
dominates the solar panel industry. And for what reasons, I'm not exactly sure. Other countries are just
00:07:23.360
not set up to manufacture it the way they do. But I guess Japan would be perfectly situated to make these
00:07:30.080
thin, competitive solar panels. This is the sort of thing that can change everything from what you think
00:07:38.040
about competition with China, to climate change, to inflation. It's one invention that touches everything,
00:07:47.640
you know, from trade, you know, climate, basically everything. And, you know, but it could be nothing.
00:07:59.880
So here's something I didn't know, or maybe I knew it and forgot. Did you know that Politico
00:08:05.460
and Business Insider are owned by the same company? How many of you knew that? Politico and Business Insider
00:08:14.040
are owned by the same company? Some of you knew that. Yeah. Now, did you know that the company that
00:08:19.720
owns both of them is a German company that owns other media in Europe? Yeah. So when you're reading
00:08:28.700
Politico or Business Insider, you're reading articles by people who have a German media boss.
00:08:36.580
Don't you think you should know that? Doesn't that feel like really important? If you're going to read
00:08:44.680
any article in there and know what the boss might be thinking based on who it is.
00:08:52.460
But here's what I recommend. I think that if you're a media company that sort of looks like it could be
00:08:59.920
an American company if you weren't paying attention, it should be labeled as a foreign propaganda.
00:09:08.240
Because there's no such thing as media that's not propaganda.
00:09:12.640
But at least when it comes from inside our house, we're a little bit more alerted to it, right?
00:09:19.540
Like if you see the New York Times, you know it leans left. If you see Fox News, you know it leans right.
00:09:25.060
But you know it's an American flavor of left, an American flavor of right.
00:09:32.360
And that's, you know, not perfect. But at least it's inside the house. It's in the family.
00:09:38.040
But if a German company is, and I'm not saying that they are, but if they're intentionally trying to
00:09:44.020
change our minds in this country, I feel like that needs to be labeled.
00:09:49.040
I mean, we've been labeling manufactured goods forever, right? I assume it's a law.
00:09:56.300
Is it a law that if you have a physical product and it's made in China, it has to say made in China?
00:10:02.280
It's a law, right? So why don't we do that with media?
00:10:07.180
If the article is written by a German company, even though an American wrote it,
00:10:13.140
I feel like we should know that. So consider that a possible law.
00:10:22.200
I saw another statistic that said that gender dysphoria diagnoses are rising nationwide.
00:10:59.500
Now, do you think it's fair to say that the gender dysphoria thing
00:11:05.140
is a massive mental health problem exacerbated by essentially media manipulation?
00:11:18.640
I feel like that's just something you can say as just a fact.
00:11:22.060
Now, I love the fact that Vivek just says it directly, that the gender dysphoria stuff
00:11:28.700
is a mental health problem that we're treating like it's a physical problem.
00:11:32.620
That may be a little bit too universal for my taste because there's probably some gray area of people
00:11:41.080
who have an actual genetic, physical issue that it would be fair if they can address it
00:11:55.860
So, at least we can say it, even if it's not stopping it that we say it.
00:11:59.980
Well, so I've got a kind of a theme today for the rest of the show.
00:12:06.800
And the theme is, what if everything is exactly the way it looks?
00:12:14.620
The scariest thing that you can imagine is that everything you suspect is true
00:12:24.360
And we'll get lots of examples of that as we go.
00:12:27.860
So, Fannie Willis, who is the Fulton, I have trouble keeping all the Trump legal issues straight.
00:12:39.840
She would be the Georgia, the Georgia prosecutor, right?
00:12:45.380
Secretly colluded with the January 6th committee.
00:12:50.020
So, that would suggest, although that would not be confirmed, but that would suggest
00:12:56.820
that there is some kind of collusion from a central Democrat source
00:13:02.860
that's making sure the individual states are being aggressive and going after Trump.
00:13:12.260
I mean, it seems kind of RICO-like to me, but I don't know if it's technically illegal.
00:13:16.500
But it does fit the category of, what if everything is exactly the way it looks?
00:13:25.640
Because all the charges against Trump, even though they're coming from states,
00:13:35.740
As though, I'm not saying that he didn't make any mistakes or do anything that's not technically illegal.
00:13:42.360
Well, maybe, but I think that would be true of almost every human being.
00:13:46.980
You could bring in anybody, examine every part of their life,
00:13:51.100
and you could make some argument about some crime they committed.
00:13:56.880
But my working assumption is that it's exactly what it looks like,
00:14:02.700
that the Democrats are coordinating lawfare with people who probably want to raise,
00:14:23.780
I guess Chicago bought a whole bunch of free laptops and free iPads
00:14:28.840
and other devices for the kids who couldn't afford it.
00:14:42.920
So, Chicago, quite reasonably, decided they should give free ones
00:14:49.640
And let's see, now we know how that worked out.
00:14:51.720
$23 million worth of devices, that is 77,000 devices,
00:15:03.480
77,000 devices went missing in one school year.
00:15:14.080
Maybe the situation in Chicago is exactly what you think.
00:15:38.680
Forget for a moment that you just heard the word whoopie.
00:15:44.080
This will have nothing to do with the following joke.
00:16:05.240
And it's basically people with mental health issues
00:16:17.980
It features people with serious mental health issues
00:16:25.500
One of the characters on this show is called Whoopie.
00:16:29.700
And she was pleading with Liz Cheney to run a third-party race
00:16:41.040
if he ever gets in again, we'll never have any more elections.
00:16:58.000
about fucking idiots with serious mental health
00:17:25.360
to the Congress's contempt hearing about Hunter.
00:17:37.640
about whether they should find him in contempt,
00:17:48.480
just to make a point that it's not about the showing up.
00:18:06.880
And then later, you know, that would be the standard.
00:18:16.120
Now, Hunter says, I don't want to do this in private
00:18:59.660
he'd be stupid to do anything behind closed doors.
00:19:11.540
It does make sense that he keeps showing his face
00:19:14.800
so there's no doubt about whether he wants to participate.
00:19:25.840
Let's just make sure that the public sees everything.
00:19:29.000
So he's in favor of participating in transparency
00:20:38.900
and the people who want to take him down did not.
00:20:45.720
that will convince me he's not right about that.
00:21:39.540
all of these different legal cases against Trump,