96 Comments
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Manqueman's avatar

Apropos Acosta's scoop there: What the fuck is this fucked up fucking shit?

Sorry for the profanity. Lemme retry:

What the trump is that trumped up trumping trump?

As for the post, it's a fuc--- I mean trumping banger.

Bern's avatar

I have no quarrel with this post.

2 marks.

Manqueman's avatar

Trump, yeah!!

LittlePig's avatar

In Britain, 'trump" means 'fart'. Edward DeVere farted in front of Queen Elizabeth I as he bowed (he stayed away from court for seven years. When he finally returned the Queen said "We had quite forgotten about the fart"). When Trump met Queen Elizabeth II, it was noted that it will be the second time in history that a Trump appeared in the Queen's presence.

All that just to note "What the trump is that trumped up trumping trump?" made me laugh my hammy ass off.

Manqueman's avatar

So using “Trump” as a replacement for all the profanities, I’d be saying “fart that” instead of “trump that”?

Well, trump that trumping trump I must say.

SundayStyle's avatar

My heart breaks for the Parkland parents, and for the parents of all the victims of school shootings who have not only lost children but often been harassed by cruelty-obsessed members of the Right.

That said, this is creepy as hell. Seriously, uncanny valley creepy. If people start generating AI images of dead loved ones as kind of a 21st century update to the seances of past generations, then we've moved into Black Mirror territory and I'm not sure how we get back from there.

ssdd's avatar

I hate to break it to you but it’s been a thing for a while now. https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/06/tech/ai-communicating-with-dead

And yeah imho it’s messed up.

SundayStyle's avatar

I don't blame you for telling me, but add this to the growing list of things I really didn't want to know about. Holy shitake mushrooms.

Roy Edroso's avatar

"a machine so beautiful that a soul would want to live in it" brrrrr no thanks.

Even worse (sorry): AI dead victim impact statements! https://www.npr.org/2025/05/07/g-s1-64640/ai-impact-statement-murder-victim

SundayStyle's avatar

Absolute stuff of nightmares. Looks like I picked the wrong day to stop smoking/drinking/sniffing glue, lol.

E. Lewis's avatar

… smoking meth, shooting smack, banging coke, burning my eyelids with matches, playing Russian roulette, napping in the middle of the highway, etc, etc, etc…

Bern's avatar

TODAY! of ALL days...!

billcinsd's avatar

don\t forget lighting your Trumps

DrBDH's avatar

I agree with SundayStyle, I didn’t know and don’t want to know about this. But now that I do, I imagine future funerals with AI presentations instead of the current slide shows of the departed’s life and times. Beats open casket, I guess.

Bern's avatar

I've never personally beat open a casket, so can't comment (HA!)

I could envision a casket-beating-open scenario, but would probly devolve into pissing on the deceased inside, and there are only a very few eventually-to-be-dead personages I save my precious urine for.

Derelict's avatar

Motivated reasoning meets Silicon Valley grift and gets blended with huge vats of stupidity and malice. Given the huge amount of resources being put into developing sex bots for the incels, I can easily see the day when any woman can be walking down the street and see the creepy abusive asshole she rejected walking along with a robot copy of herself.

E. Lewis's avatar

Oh fuuuuuuck… THAT is dark.

Bern's avatar

Yes.

Yoicks.

SnarkiNorski's avatar

Mourning jewelry made of the deceased’s hair was macabre, but that seems much healthier than an AI slop homunculus of your loved one.

SteveB's avatar

But the AI can't be trained on the totality of who you were, all it has access to is who you were on the internet. Any parent who wants to bring back their dead teen is gonna be mighty shocked.

SteveB's avatar

"We spent $250k for Robot Jimmy, and all he does is sit in the basement and play Call of Duty! Which Real Jimmy only did sixteen hours a day!"

SteveB's avatar

So much better than Meat Jimmy, the fuckin' loser.

Pere Ubu's avatar

That's the thing - AI sims of people go way back in SF, but what we have now IS NOT AI but a crappy emulation. It's like trying to play Doom on a difference engine.

We MIGHT get to that level in the far future, but we sure as hell don't have it now, and it's sad, depressing, and hilarious somehow to see people pretend.

SteveB's avatar

"It's like trying to play Doom on a difference engine."

AI Charles Babbage resents this comparison.

Pere Ubu's avatar

Well, I couldn't think of the name of the old computer you had to flip switches to program.

k_kamath's avatar

Kentucky Fried Movie, the Active Dead. Mummified sovereigns of the Inca now for the general public. Pharaoh, eat your heart out! Literally!

billcinsd's avatar

especially so if they cheap out and use Grok

SteveB's avatar

"That's funny, little Jimmy didn't express much interest in White genocide before!"

Ellis Weiner's avatar

Black Mirror is exactly right. Next up: AI Rich Little "doing" George Washington.

Bern's avatar

'Black Mirror' brings up no link from apple's dictionary. So I used the goog and found something about a new BBC series that is allegedly an update of Twilight Zone. That the reference? I might get around to checking it out...

Ellis Weiner's avatar

Yes, for 3 or 4 seasons. It takes modern tech developments and extends them just a wee bit into the future to ponder the implications. Way recommended, especially the season 2 (I think) ender, about robot bees. You heard me.

Bern's avatar

So, bee-sized drones then? Been done, Shirley.

SteveB's avatar

"I'd like to have been a fly on the wall" is a phrase ready for obsolescence, when there's a fly on EVERY wall.

SteveB's avatar

Is Michael Caine in it? Are they KILLER bees?

Worriedman's avatar

Even with the best intentions, AI just screws everything up.

AI versions of dead children will be ubiquitous soon. They will age in real time. It will become a big business. Funeral homes will provide the service as part of their pre-planning. ( There are so many things wrong with the phrase" pre-planning) Olan Mills will gladly insert your AI children into your family portraits.

Jesus, is this depressing.

redoubtagain's avatar

Reminder that Rick Santorum brought a dead fetus home to "meet" his other kids *twenty-nine* years ago.

Worriedman's avatar

Yup -

Wonder how the Santorum kids are doing? I hope at least one of them is ferociously gay.

And worships Satan.

billcinsd's avatar

If not ferociously gay then trans for the win

E. Lewis's avatar

Never forget the wise words of Sen. Bob Kerry: “Santorum is Latin for asshole.”

Bern's avatar

Thanks but no thanks for that reminder.

Pere Ubu's avatar

Yes, but that's Rick Santorum.

SteveB's avatar

"Rick Santorum brought a dead fetus home..."

And his wife reached for the box of Fetus Helper.

SteveB's avatar

C'mon, what's a guy gotta do to earn an Oof around here?

SnarkiNorski's avatar

I don’t want to be on this ride anymore.

SteveB's avatar

Too bad, one you get past the "You must be THIS tall" sign there's no backing out.

SnarkiNorski's avatar

[clutching the safety bar with a death grip, rictus frozen on face]

SteveB's avatar

Hey, speaking of carnival rides, we just switched over to a new Learning Management System called Brightspace, which is supposed to be better-optimized for phone use, meaning it's more "visual", so every content area has to have a picture. If you don't choose a picture one will be chosen for you. The picture Brightspace chose for my "Class Meeting" content area? A Ferris wheel. Yeah, that's great, "Come to Mr. B's class, where you go around in circles and end up sick."

Bern's avatar

"Yeah, Mr B's class has its ups and downs, but the seats are cool! They rock back and forth – I can go to sleep easy!"

Adding hear that I thought the word for 'learning management system' was 'teacher'.

SteveB's avatar

It's kind of depressing when I think about how much of my job is simply the management of various websites, making sure the correct boxes are checked, proper items on each pulldown menu are selected, etc. "Professor Point-n-Click" is how I refer to myself.

Pere Ubu's avatar

I think they mistranslated "You must be THIS HIGH"

SteveB's avatar

"I mean, you can be less high, but you'll be missing all the fun."

Pere Ubu's avatar

This is the kind of “fun” I can do without.

SteveB's avatar

I tend to do my planning post, when it's too late to do anything.

Bern's avatar

Mr B, last past the post again...

redoubtagain's avatar

There won't be any of this from Uvalde because even their AIs would still be considered illegal immigrants (despite being American-born)

henry sholar's avatar

tears about started right in the beginning of this — that strong, man.

i live probably less than fifty miles from history prof Seth Cotler. At the end of the piece i was pretty sure it could one of his nightmares — if he has nightmares and i think we all do, these days.

RWAlex's avatar

I knew Prager U Bots were gonna show up in this shitshow...

I'm wondering if anyone has asked the Philip K Dick robot about this madness.

Pere Ubu's avatar

See, HE would be the person I chose to do this with. "He" would really be into it.

SnarkiNorski's avatar

[“What a Wonderful World” has finished playing, but the needle remains on the record, clicking rhythmically]

[Leland Palmer adjusts his tie in the hallway mirror]

GIANT: It is happening again.

Bern's avatar

I was wondering when the real people would reclaim the sacred screenspace.

Edward Kazala's avatar

Any world that I'm welcome to

Is better than the one I come from

(Becker/Fagen)

SteveB's avatar

Oh, why can't "We’ll be back with James Carville and Andrew Cuomo!" ALWAYS be accompanied by the face-melting wind?

Bern's avatar

Well, from a purely practical standpoint, one face-melting wind should be enough, surely...

Pere Ubu's avatar

"face-melting wind" = standing downwind from Schitzenführer

SteveB's avatar

Coming up on 10 years of Tubby yelling "Fake News!" and people like me patiently explaining that, no, it's not fake just because you don't like what it's reporting and YOU'RE NOT HELPING CNN.

SteveB's avatar

My sincerest apologies to CNN, apparently Acosta isn't with them anymore and now he has... a Substack? Which needs some clicks, baby!

LittlePig's avatar

What utter bullshit. Artificial Lack Of Intelligence, more like. 1978, my first computer class I got the teaching "Garbage In, Garbage Out" Start with lousy data, you get lousy results. And no way in hell could you make an avatar work this way. This is absolutely fucking ridiculous.

America dies of stupidity. What a crock. "It's shiny object time!".

SteveB's avatar

Imagine the editorial meeting where this was approved.

Bern's avatar

Pass.

LittlePig's avatar

I believe it is judged by having posters of ideas put up, and the one the chimpanzees throw the most shit at is the winner.

Pere Ubu's avatar

It's jingly keys, all the way down.

Blueb4sunrise's avatar

Damn. I was hoping that this weeks theme was going to be boobs.

Bern's avatar

Notwithstanding the tits, surely Jim Acosta qualifies...

Blueb4sunrise's avatar

There's bigger.

billcinsd's avatar

Chesty Morgan died a few tears ago IIRC

SnarkiNorski's avatar

We still have Mamie Van Doren

billcinsd's avatar

But she's only a little bigger than half Chesty's chest size

Bern's avatar

I'm envisioning now (and for the very first time ever – no, REALLY!) gymnastics being reorganized by heft...and a 9.9 score for a magnificent performance including an immaculate Chesty Morgan.

Cheez Whiz's avatar

A more perfect summation of our current media environment than a respected newsman interviewing a video image of a dead victim of a mass shooting resurrected by AI cannot be imagined. It is perfection. Consise, complete, confounding, corrupting, cruel, and cheap. These are words that start with a C this time... Elephant Talk!

SteveB's avatar

Like a dipstick into the tank of Media Credibility showing the tank's run dry.

k_kamath's avatar

This is just what I needed on a tawdry Tuesday. That's entertainment!

The only thing better might be a dead Donald dressed up like Heston on a horse at the end of El Cid, with broomstick down his back and instead of banner a musket with a sign: "From my cold, dead hand to yours!"