On Monday, I read this BBC article, “Trump supporters target black voters with faked AI images“, which points out that misinformation like this is now being generated by people in the U.S. instead of outside actors like Russia or China. Something that really jumped out at me, though, was how real the fakes looked:
There’s some giveaways that this is fake: the weird glossy focus, the kind of sameness to the guys’ faces, the software’s inability to generate recognizable logos or designs on the t-shirt and baseball cap. But it is rendering hands okay! It’s doing way better than what was being produced less than a year-and-a-half ago:
If Trump wasn’t in that top picture and I saw it as part of an article, or posted on social media, I don’t think that I’d pause to consider whether it was real or not. That’s something I worry about a lot, because I think that we’re at a point where the casual observer might not be able identify AI-generated images without scrutiny. The potential to create fake outrage bait to fuel narratives and advance agendas is pretty frightening to me. “CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Antifa member kicks puppy! You won’t believe this shocking thing that a homeless person did right in front of us! Cop shoots unarmed black mom in back! [I’m both-sidesing it, here]” If this sort of thing starts to become commonplace, then you have to start questioning every image that you see. We’ve always had image manipulation and fakes (see below), but as this technology improves it’s going to be harder to tell apart. Also, the more commonplace this becomes, the harder it will be to accept weird images that are actually real (also see below).
Seven years ago I used to work around a team of software engineers from India, who on their lunch breaks would spend a lot of time sharing clearly Photoshopped images with each other, like the one below of the blue monkey. They’d pass the image around and say stuff like, “So beautiful!” and “Nature is amazing!” I never asked them about it, but I couldn’t tell if they knew the images were fake and were just enjoying them for what they were, or if their media literacy was poor enough that they thought they were looking at real photos. I still think about them and wonder about it.
Anyway, here’s some more links to stuff I read this week, all picked from the Internet by these human hands:
- LifeHacker: “How to Make Google Show You the Good Search Results Again“. A quick setting change to allow you to get different Google results. I’ve only used it a couple of different times so far, to mixed effect, but I’m happy to know about it as an option.
- Reason: “Supreme Court Rules for Trump in Section 3 Disqualification Case“. I needed an explainer for why the Supreme Court’s ruling to permit Trump to be on the Colorado ballot was bad, so this article was helpful.
- Daily Dot: “EXCLUSIVE: A new social network built on a vision of Christian supremacy in America gains traction with GOP politicians“. This “exclusive” is not a particularly interesting part of the article, but the bigger picture is the Christian-nationalist Seven Mountains Mandate which “calls for Christians to conquer the seven domains of family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government.”
- Don Moynihan: “What “Mandate for Leadership” Says About the GOP’s Governing Philosophy“. There’s a lot of overlap with the Christion nationalists referenced above and the Heritage Foundation (it’s one of those Venn diagrams where the circles are on top of each other), so reading what their plans are for a second Trump presidency is pretty scary! Let’s try to make that presidency not happen!!
- Defector: “The Money Is In All The Wrong Places“. This article is in theory about Sidney Sweeney, an actor who I have no opinion on, but is really about the strip-mining of wealth in the arts (and pretty much everywhere else).
- Defector: “Point/Counterpoint: Senator Kyrsten Sinema Retires“. HAHAHA
Israel war links. I put these all in one place so you can skip them easier if you want to. Also, content warning on that second link: the article and my notes on it relate to sexual violence.
- London Review of Books: “The Shoah after Gaza“. This article is, in part, about Israeli’s right-wing made the Holocaust the central point of their culture, and use it as a sort of shield against criticism of any of their actions. It’s a pretty dense read, but worth it.
- NPR: “A U.N. report finds ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ attacks in Israel included rapes“. When 10/7 was happening, a lot of people on social media (including me) celebrated the breach of the walls of Gaza before learning about the horrors that would happen next. I’m guessing that a lot of Israelis and Jewish people saw that and understandably misunderstood that as people supporting Hamas. Anyway, once it became clear that this was an attack and not a breakout, it was easy to see from videos and pictures that horrific violence was going on. I saw one video of a hostage that showed, to me, pretty clear evidence of sexual assault. Shortly afterward, I read a post from some left-wing group I’d never heard of arguing that there was no indication of any Palestinians sexually assaulting people and that to suggest it was racist. In it they referenced the same video that I saw, suggesting that what was pretty clearly blood was just dirt instead. It was such a gross, obviously-wrong thing for them to claim. The most generous interpretation of their post was that they were blinded by their politics. When I hear people talking about antisemitism on the left, that’s the post that comes to mind.
- Washington Post: “U.S. floods arms into Israel despite mounting alarm over war’s conduct“. I am too dumb to understand why we are advocating for a ceasefire and trying to deliver aid to Gaza while we are still giving bombs to Israel.
Portland & Oregon links
- Bike Portland: “Closer look at new carfree path through Rose City Golf Course“. Come for the pix of the carfree path, stay for the tale of unhinged driver behavior.
- OPB: “Lawsuit accuses Portland officer of excessive force, city of failing to provide medical care in 2022 shooting of unarmed Black man“. I’d forgotten about this police shooting and the details about it are worse than I could have imagined.
- OPB: “Multnomah County promised to expedite $3M to homeless day shelters last fall, but hasn’t delivered“. It’s pretty frustrating to see Multnomah County have all of this extra money that isn’t being spent on the services that it’s meant for (see also Preschool for All), but on the other hand people would be up in arms if the county was just handing out money to organizations without any checks & balances or accountability. The article does point out that the County Chair is speeding up the process by cutting out some steps.
- Willamette Week: “As Oregon Lawmakers Criminalize Drugs Again, Washington Offers a Cautionary Example“. I’m really disappointed to see Measure 110 revoked by HB 4002 for exactly the reasons addressed in this article. The rollout of Measure 110 was badly done but it needed time to get off of the ground. HB 4002 is gonna let conservatives and I-told-you-sos gloat about the failure of Oregon’s decriminalization “experiment”. Here’s another article on HB 4002: OPB: “Oregon’s new drug penalties would mean surge in convictions, jail stints, state estimates suggest“.
- Willamette Week: “Christine Drazan Will Seek Return to the Oregon House“. I wouldn’t have normally included this link, but it referenced the time State Rep. James Hieb (R) was arrested for being a drunk asshole at the Clackamas County Fair back in 2022: “Body Camera Footage, Police Report Depict Rep. James Hieb as “Extremely Intoxicated”“. There’s some parts of the body cam video that are basically Tim Robinson in a “I Think You Should Leave” sketch.
Table-Top Role-Playing Game links
- D&D Beyond: “How to Write a D&D Campaign“. Some good baseline advice for creating campaigns for any role-playing game.
- Gnome Stew: “HOW TO MAKE A PUBLISHED RPG SETTING YOUR OWN“. I was looking forward to reading this article, having lightly adapted “Descent Into Avernus” and “The Wild Beyond the Witchlight” to fit into my campaign world, but I found the article too generic to be useful. No offense to the author, but I had to check to see whether it was written by AI.
I’ll end this week’s post with a recommendation: I don’t normally read online comics, but this week I started reading “3rd Voice” and I’ve been enjoying it so far.
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