When the Simpsons first came on it was deeply subversive and that era of TV, where things were really opening up beyond the big three networks for the first time, has so fundamentally changed TV programming that people can forget (or younger people can just not understand) what TV was like in the 1980s before insurgents like Fox and MTV changed the landscape.
By the late 1980s the formula, form, and what was socially permitted on TV sitcoms hadn't changed much in 40 years. The Simpsons was a purposeful rejection of all of the 'rules' that sitcoms had followed to that point. A big part of that was the classic TV 'authority figures' who are always right, just, and caring were purposely subverted: the dad is a dumb, self-centered, abusive, alcoholic jerk, the cops are all corrupt and stupid, the teachers hate the children and don't care about their education, the principal is a pathetic loser with delusions of relevance, the mayor is corrupt and womanizing, the preacher just doesn't care at all and wants to be left alone; hell, the children's clown on TV is arguably the most immoral scumbag on the show.
Similarly, Homer strangling Bart was meant as a subversion of the "patient father sits the misbehaving child down for a heart-to-heart where things get resolved" trope of sitcoms of the previous half century; instead dad physically abuses the misbehaving child and nothing is ever resolved. Where TV sitcoms to that point were fantasies about what the best versions of American culture could be, the Simpsons was an over-the-top take down of what our culture actually was.
But, obviously, as the TV culture they were satirizing went away (in no small part because of their show's success) the show needed to change too. In 1989, Homer strangling Bart rather than having a soft-focused heart-to-heart with music rising in the background was unexpected, subversive satire. In 2023 it's just a depiction of child abuse whose original context is long gone. The same show just doesn't work without the cultural context it was created in and meant to lampoon.
Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of Open AI, told us: "This is an important near-term risk for the industry to address. We need a combination of responsible model deployment and public awareness."
"We also need continued collaboration across the AI industry, including with distribution channels like social media," he added.
But not regulation! We definitely can't have any real accountability for the people making the software and making it available to the public. They'll just have to be responsible and when, inevitably, they make zero effort to be responsible it's on the public to be aware. And if they're not, well, I guess that's just their fault and they should have done better.
Gotta love the shamelessness of the completely untrustworthy scumbags behind public-facing ANN tools right now. This is going to end so well.
This is part of why the GOP has been manufacturing lies about Joe Biden being corrupt so urgently: They can't convince most people that Trump isn't a criminal so they're trying to convince them that both candidates are criminals so it doesn't matter.
bogus articles were shared across social media, alleging that essential Russian chemicals were needed to create insecticides but with imports banned due to sanctions, France was left helpless against the insect invasion.
Other posts highlighted to French TV station RNC by military sources, said that “the anti-bedbug agent used in furniture and most wood materials is made in Russia “and that due to sanctions imposed on this substance”, spraying had stopped.
The fake reports repeatedly cite La Montagne as the source of this assertion, often by sharing a screenshot of an article allegedly published by the media outlet, which dates from October 4, and is titled “Sanctions against Russia have led to an epidemic of bedbugs in Paris”.
La Montagne told AFP Factuel they had never published such an article, and denounced the fake articles on social media as “forgery”.
Indeed. And that time he leveraged the power of the bully pulpit and every single person in the Executive Branch corrupt enough to help him. And he still lost.
There was no sudden infestation, people were just primed to look for them because of the fake news campaign and so found them, took pictures of them, and spread the fake panic even further.
Nicolas Roux de Bézieux, co-founder of the Badbugs site, which connects individuals with pest control professionals, added: “The mistake [is] to believe that the increase in bedbugs is strong and sudden. In reality, it has been constant and gradual for years.”
Like usual, the lies made it around the world twice before the truth got its shoes on.
Biden: 218 judges per term
Trump: 245 judges per term
Obama: 167 judges per term
W Bush: 170 judges per term
Clinton: 193.5 judges per term
H.W. Bush: 197 judges per term
Reagan: 201 judges per term
Carter: 262 judges per term
Ford: 74 judges per term
Nixon: 205 judges per term
Of this entire list he's only behind Trump and Carter.
