Bruce Buchan | Lightnews

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 8h

Define ‘party’ and specify ‘with’.

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 8h

You can say this about fascists, some like to get paid for their violence, but most are happy to enact their rage, resentments, inadequacies, and homicidal intent for peanuts. The ICE Freikorps seem to fit that description.

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 1d

I certainly remember alcohol taken to final tutorials at Flinders Uni in that era.

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 1d

Trump is literally a reverse-Midas. Everything he touches turns to shit.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Trump: "I have determined that the fastest way to bring The Trump Kennedy Center to the highest level of Success, Beauty, and Grandeur, is to cease Entertainment Operations for an approximately two year period of time, with a scheduled Grand Reopening that will rival and surpass anything."

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

After a one year review of The Trump Kennedy Center, that has taken place with Contractors, Musical Experts, Art Institutions, and other Advisors and Consultants, deciding between either Construction with Closure and Re-Opening or, Partial Construction while continuing Entertainment Operations through a much longer period of time, working in and around the Performances, I have determined that The Trump Kennedy Center, if temporarily closed for Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding, can be, without question, the finest Performing Arts Facility of its kind, anywhere in the World. In other words, if we don’t close, the quality of Construction will not be nearly as good, and the time to completion, because of interruptions with Audiences from the many Events using the Facility, will be much longer. The temporary closure will produce a much faster and higher quality result!

Based on these findings, and totally subject to Board approval, I have determined that the fastest way to bring The Trump Kennedy Center to the highest level of Success, Beauty, and Grandeur, is to cease Entertainment Operations for an approximately two year period of time, with a scheduled Grand Reopening that will rival and surpass anything that has taken place with respect to such a Facility before.

Therefore, The Trump Kennedy Center will close on July 4th, 2026, in honor of the 250th Anniversary of our Country, whereupon we will simultaneously begin Construction of the new and spectacular Entertainment Complex. Financing is completed, and fully in place! This important decision, based on input from many Highly Respected Experts, will take a tired, broken, and dilapidated Center, one that has been in bad condition, both financially and structurally for many years, and turn it into a World Class Bastion of Arts, Music, and Entertainment, far better than it has ever been before. America will be very proud of its new and beautiful Landmark

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Trump: "I have determined that the fastest way to bring The Trump Kennedy Center to the highest level of Success, Beauty, and Grandeur, is to cease Entertainment Operations for an approximately two year period of time, with a scheduled Grand Reopening that will rival and surpass anything."

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 2d

Whatever their uses may be, I have neither seen, read, or heard anything to persuade me to use, recommend, or tolerate any LLM. I have however found considerable evidence to make me mistrust, despise, and wish destruction upon all the corporations who have forced LLMs upon the world.

Dr. Stephanie Seul @stephanieseul.bsky.social · 2d

Still thinking LLM are smart?

"Last spring, security experts raised concerns that malign actors, including Russian propaganda networks, were churning out massive volumes of disinformation in an effort to seed AI models with lies, a process called “LLM grooming”.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Latest ChatGPT model uses Elon Musk’s Grokipedia as source, tests reveal

Guardian found OpenAI’s platform cited Grokipedia on topics including Iran and Holocaust deniers

www.theguardian.com

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 2d

40 or so years of neoliberal governments have taught us at least two things. First, that hollowing out our public life and institutions only enables corruption and fascism. Second, that ‘the market’ is a source of no kind of moral value whatsoever.

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 2d

As a species, humans richly deserve the extinction we are working so assiduously to accelerate by cooking the planet. The many millions of other species we are burning with us are due an infinitely greater share of our attention, obligation, and our urgent action than our own.

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 2d

When I studied political science in the 1990s, we were taught that ‘conservatives’ were in favour of property and tradition, and an attenuated notion of the common good. Turns out in the 2020s that conservatives only favour their own advancement by excusing corruption and defending pedophiles.

Dr. Stephanie Seul @stephanieseul.bsky.social · 2d

Still thinking LLM are smart?

"Last spring, security experts raised concerns that malign actors, including Russian propaganda networks, were churning out massive volumes of disinformation in an effort to seed AI models with lies, a process called “LLM grooming”.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Latest ChatGPT model uses Elon Musk’s Grokipedia as source, tests reveal

Guardian found OpenAI’s platform cited Grokipedia on topics including Iran and Holocaust deniers

www.theguardian.com

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 3d

This is the ultimate lesson: Democracy depends on us being willing to hold our fellow humans to account as persistently, cleverly, tenaciously, and humanely as we can. Democracy is a struggle that never ends, because the alternative is what every opportunist desires: tyranny. 8.

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 3d

We must understand that democracy is not a system of government based on airy feel-good fictions or naive expectations of mutual goodwill. Democracy anticipates our wickedness, and puts mechanisms in place to make it harder for it to prevail. Nothing is guaranteed. There is no iron-clad defence. 7.

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 3d

The inevitable consequence of this corrosion of democracy is the slide into criminal corruption and fascism. Fascism and rampant corruption are concomitants of government by opportunists. They are what happen when societies open direct pathways to power by self-serving chancers. 6.

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 3d

This is why the last 30-40 years of neoliberal government have been so corrosive. The neoliberals deliberately hollowed out our public lives, undermining the separations and divisions of power that prevent tyranny by making one source of power, status, value, fame, and influence supreme: money. 5.

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 3d

There’s a long list of these tedious and cumbersome practices. They often cause us irritation because they seem inefficient or time-consuming or irksome. But we fail to understavd that each of them embody this single quality: they make the sole exercise of power over others untenable. 4.

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 3d

This is an unsexy but vital function of democracy. It is achieved in multiple ways, by dividing power among different branches of government; administering laws separately to executive power; having public elections; separating culture, art, and intellectual life from political power, etc. 3.

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 3d

No society or government is ever going to be free from these people, and none can prevent their regular rise in different spheres of life. All we can do is make pathways to power as crooked and perilous as possible by incorporating as many checks and balances on the single-handed abuse of power. 2.

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 3d

One of the things about democratic governments that most people do not understand is that they are based on the simple idea that given the opportunity, many humans will literally say and do anything for power over others. What they want is clear a pathway to power (or money, status, fame, etc). 1.

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 3d

Political Sociology.
Revolution: A History.
Conquest and Colonisation of Mexico and Peru.
Reason, Freedom, and the State (Kant, Hegel, and Marx).
A History of Modern America 1860-1960.

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 3d

Can any politician who trots out this lazy, vacuous line name even one person, one tax payer or business person who does not benefit from living in a well educated society?

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 5d

Somehow I don’t think the world is quite ready for fully automated, robotic AI Hitlers in every household.

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 6d

Bravo!

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 6d

I think Dante, were he here to see this, would be multiplying his circles!

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 6d

Manages also not to mention he’s in the driving seat of an administration killing its own citizens in broad daylight.

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 6d

I don’t know much about Ilhan Omar, but she has two powerful recommendations. First, she is an articulate and courageous critic of American fascism. Second, as this incident shows, she is a demonstrably stronger and more admirable person than the deranged cowards who would silence her.

taylr @taylordahlin.com · 6d

video of the moment a man tried spraying something at ilhan omar at her town hall in minneapolis tonight

taylr @taylordahlin.com · 6d

video of the moment a man tried spraying something at ilhan omar at her town hall in minneapolis tonight

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 8d

Our political problem is that hypocrisy among our governing class merely fuels cynicism. Cynicism may be satisfying, but changes nothing. If we are to achieve the political change we crave, we need to leave our cynicism at the door and expect that hypocrisy should have consequence.

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 8d

The moral problem of hypocrisy is not just that sets aside truth for expediency. It is that the hypocrite is an existential catastrophe. When hypocrites perjure themselves by lying to their own consciences, what further bar to evil will restrain the hungry ambition of their deceit?

Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 8d

We’ve become far too complacent about political hypocrisy. We expect it of our political class. It sickens and infuriates us, but we tell ourselves ‘they’re all the same’. Years ago Judith Shklar eloquently warned us that hypocrisy leads inevitably to cruelty.

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