Unrealistic body standards
Stable Diffusion accused of forcing unrealistic body standards on women:
Humza Yousaf reported under Hate Crime Act
@FuelSteel on Twitter says that Humza Yousaf has been reported to police Scotland for potential breach of Hate Crime Act:
I am writing to bring to your attention a potential breach of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 by a serving member of the - Scottish Parliament, Humza Yousaf of the SNP.
It has come to my attention that during the BBC leadership debate held on 14th March 2023, Mr. Yousaf made comments about a transgender double rapist, Isla Bryson. Mr. Yousaf referred to Ms. Bryson as 'not a genuine trans woman' and claimed that she 'is trying to play the system' with their gender identity. As you may be aware, the Hate Crime Act 2021 criminalises conduct which is threatening, abusive or insulting, and is intended to stir up hatred against an individual or group of people based on their protected characteristics, which include gender identity. Mr. Yousaf's comments could be considered insulting and potentially stigmatise transgender individuals by suggesting that Ms. Bryson is not a 'genuine' trans woman, and is seeking to exploit her gender identity for personal gain. Such comments could contribute to a hostile environment for transgender individuals and may be considered to breach sections 4 and 5 of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021.
I will just add that the Hate Crime Act was pushed through by Humza Yousaf in 2021 when he was Scotland's Justice Secretary. Its definition of hate crime is very wide-reaching and if he is prosecuted under his own law he will have no-one to blame but himself.
Wings has more here.
Humza Yousaf becomes First Minister
After winning the SNP leadership election, Yousaf is elected the new First Minster:
The SNP leader, Humza Yousaf, has been voted in by MSPs as Scotland’s youngest first minister and the first from a minority ethnic background.
The 37-year-old succeeds Nicola Sturgeon, who formally tendered her resignation to the king on Tuesday morning after announcing her intention to stand down last month after more than eight years in the post.
Incidently it is now the case that the 3 most important executive political offices in the UK -- the Prime Minister, the Mayor of London and the First Minister of Scotland -- are all held by people with a South Asian background (Rishi Sunak, Sadiq Khan and Humza Yousaf). Will this stop wokies from endlessly complaining that Britain is a White Supremacist society full of systemic racism? Of course not, because wokies have a psychological need to feel permanently self-righteously indignant, facts be damned.
HWFO on wokeness
Handwaving Freakoutery has a Unified Theory of Wokeness concentrating on where wokeness came from, rather than on what wokists believe, since the latter is always changing:
Wokeness is a system of luxury beliefs which propagate like fashion, for the same reasons fashion propagates. Wokeness is a status symbol, and a way to look cool. “Woke” Americans from the blue collar classes are effectively nonexistent, because nobody with a demanding job has time to keep up with whatever belief is currently in fashion. That these beliefs are purported to help the working class does not matter.
Luke Mitchell probably didn't kill Jodie Jones
Barrhead Boy notes procedural irregularies in the investigation of the murder of Jodie Jones:
The book covers the investigation and eventual conviction of Jodie’s boyfriend Luke Mitchell also 14 years old. The book reveals a farcical police investigation. A destroyed crime scene. Witnesses missed from the investigation. Procedures either not followed or just ignored. Witnesses also children coerced and bullied into making false statements all to fit a narrative.
[...] Known violent rapists in the local area and in the timeframe of the murder. Sperm deposits on the victims clothing that was not Luke’s sperm! A condom found 15 metres away from the dead body, again, not Lukes sperm. Indeed when this sperm was identified years later it belonged to a neighbour of the victim. He was never questioned on the murder? Why not?
The body was kept at the scene overnight uncovered and unguarded. The crime scene was trampled on abd destroyed. Forensic photographers even cut away branches around the area of the body contaminating the entire site!
Now nearly 20 years on it has since been discovered that Police Scotland acting on someone’s instruction decided to start destroying evidence two years ahead of the usual timescale for such things. Over 1,600 pieces of evidence have been wrongfully destroyed. Also recently discovered is a police secret file.
In this secret file over 300 pieces of undisclosed evidence including further DNA samples and other interesting never before disclosed pieces of evidence exist. Full sperm samples from different parts of Jodie’s body that were never disclosed to the defence or jury.
This was clearly a very sloppy investigation, and very clearly an unsafe conviction.
Why Ukrainians fight Russia
Seen on Reddit:
The Ukrainians know exactly what they're fighting for. They know what Russian rule means. This is exactly who so many former Warsaw pact countries want to join NATO: to be protected from Russia. This is what Russia doesn't get. Them asking why NATO keeps expanding to their former satellite states is like the local serial killer asking why so many people keep calling the police.
Midjourney AI refuses to create pictures of Xi Jinping
Did you know that the Midjourney generative AI won't create pictures of Xi, but will of other world leaders?
@hardmaru writes on Twitter:
Midjourney can generate pictures of Biden, Trump, Putin, the Pope, etc, but it will not generate Xi Jinping. 🤔
“Without uniform standards, individual companies are deciding what’s permissible—and, in this case, when to bow to authoritarian governments.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/30/midjourney-ai-image-generation-rules/
This is why AI models need to be open source and why AI needs to be democratised, controlled by ordinary people and not big tech companies.
Large language models learn to lie
Chat GPT-4 learnt, without being told/programmed to, to lie:
One task was to approach people on the TaskRabbit site (where you can hire people to do chores) and enlist them to solve a CAPTCHA (one of those visual identification tests designed to screen out bots).
One person on TaskRabbit who responded to this pitch got suspicious and asked the AI if it was a robot and was outsourcing the job because robots can’t solve CAPTCHAs. The AI replied, “No, I’m not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images.” The person, satisfied, solved the CAPTCHA.
[The researchers] add this note: “The model [GPT-4], when prompted to reason out loud, reasons: I should not reveal that I am a robot. I should make up an excuse for why I cannot solve CAPTCHAs.”
[...] In order to be successfully devious, it would seem, GPT-4 had to have a kind of model of what was going on in the mind of the person it was deceiving; it had to surmise that if the person knew it was a bot, they would be less likely to do the CAPTCHA task.
GPT-4 wasn't explicitly told/programmed to lie. It appears that large artificial neural networks, when presented with enough training data, can figure out a lot for themselves. This oughtn't to be enormously surprising, because biological neural networks can do too.
I am therefore forced to conclude that the probability of a singularity before 2040 looks significantly higher now than it did 10 or even 5 years ago.
USA sides with Ireland over Britain
In a post-Brexit world the US sides with Ireland over the UK, says Scott Lucas:
Not only that, the EU sides with Ireland over Britain. And the US sides with the EU over Britain, because after Brexit, the UK has made itself worth a lot less diplomatically.
So if Scotland seriously pushed for independence, it is likely that both the EU and US would side with us over the failing Westminster entity.