decibal cooper

Have not read Infinite Jest, but I like Wallace too. My favorite thing I read from him was his commencement address to the students at Kenyon university (forget the year). Phenomenal speech (and also kind of heartbreaking because he mentions suicide in it, so he may have been considering it for a while before actually completing the act himself). You have probably already seen this, but I still from time to time rewatch his 2003 interview. Still incredibly relevant and fresh how he talks about American culture and how it is at an impasse politically especially.

Sharks riding waves

Verdin

There's always a chance that someone will see your comment and that it will inspire them to read something good or at the very least check out the novel and begin forming their own opinion if they are unfamiliar with the work. I sometimes see people offering very bad takes or being dismissive of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian online, one of my absolute favorite novels. I usually just post this meme of Judge Holden blasting away on his howitzer in response with no other commentary:

Yeah, I had not looked into it but I assumed that CIA and american tech workers were most likely involved in some way. Once all is said and done I highly doubt that anyone is going to be held accountable unfortunately, even if the ICJ case gets traction after the war. It will probably be just like the American torture scandal from Iraq War days, with a few underlings getting prosecuted.

Have not checked this thread in a while, figure someone may already have commented on this, and also that this would fit just as easily in the artificial intelligence thread, but it is Mossad/IDF's artificial intelligence program(s) for target selection in Gaza. The name of the main program is named Lavender. There are two other programs, one is called Gospel and the other one has the sinister name 'Where's Daddy' (this one apparently used to target men and their families together in their home (to drop so-called 'dumb' or non-precision bombs, provided by biden admin on the homes of these ppl). I posted before of the Palestinian professor and poet Refaat Alareer, who was sheltering in a UN safe zone before leaving to stay with his family (he apparently knew that he had a target on his back and did not want to put anyone in the safe zone at risk). IDF bombed his sister's house, killing both of them and his sister's children I believe. Here is the article from +972 magazine: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ Both governments, Israel and America, have been asked on the record about this program. Not sure what Israel said, but I saw a clip of John Kirby at White House press conference say he would 'look into it' - did not confirm existence of this program. From reading the article, it sounds like the purpose was to analyze facial recognition and other identity markers of palestinians in gaza and then to rank hamas targets on a 0 to 100 scale of high ranking (must kill) to lower ranking. The point also seems to avoid engaging combatants or anyone directly on the battlefield, but to wait until they return to their residence so as to kill the whole family (I guess that in this way the IDF kills two birds with one stone: they kill as many people as possible while also making sure that the progeny of any hamas member or even non-combatant does not become radicalized and continue the fight against Israel). I am too ignorant on AI to understand how exactly these programs work, but it seems like it is just image recognition, location data, and processing power that are the key things, using all of these to develop kill lists and then determine where and when to strike so as to kill as many people as possible. The article is very long and contains an interview with the journalist who wrote it.

This arguably how it all started: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/25/joseph-weizenbaum-inventor-eliza-chatbot-turned-against-artificial-intelligence-ai I forget which of his documentaries it is, but Adam Curtis has a section on this guy and how he first tried the chatbot therapist on his secretary. She apparently asked him to leave the room after she got started so that she could talk more openly (to the computer).

No question. She is such a key character, though, and one of the things I really like about The Sopranos, how the social structure of the mafia is essentially matriarchal, despite all the male violence. Like when someone from Tony's crew really has contempt for another person from another crew, they call them a 'motherless fuck' Also that moment when Paulie hallucinates seeing the Virgin Mary at the Bing.