‘If we can learn to speak their language, what should we say?…’ (The Atlantic)

‘Without clear guidance from the Court, House Democrats suggest that they might not certify a trump win on January 6….’ (The Atlantic)

‘Last week, OpenAI released Sora, a generative AI model that produces videos based on a simple prompt. It’s not available to the public yet, but CEO Sam Altman showed off its capabilities by taking requests on X, formerly known as Twitter. Users replied with short prompts: “a monkey playing chess in a park,” or “a bicycle race on ocean with different animals as athletes.” It’s uncanny, mesmerizing, weird, beautiful — and prompting the usual cycle of commentary.

Some people are making strong claims about Sora’s negative effects, expecting a “wave of disinformation” — but while I (and experts) think future powerful AI systems pose really serious risks, claims that a specific model will bring the disinformation wave upon us have not held up so far.

Others are pointing at Sora’s many flaws as representing fundamental limitations of the technology — which was a mistake when people did it with image generator models and which, I suspect, will be a mistake again. As my colleague A.W. Ohlheiser pointed out, “just as DALL-E and ChatGPT improved over time, so could Sora.”…’ (Vox)

‘The 18th annual Santa Monica Film Festival, which held in-person screenings on Saturday, February 3 and which is running online screenings through February 28, chose to feature and then give awards to some dangerous right-wing conspiracy theories masquerading as “documentary” films.

The festival awarded “Best Documentary Feature” to The Great Awakening, the third film in anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Mikki Willis’ Plandemic series….

The films in the Plandemic series continue to be circulated online, and have been seen millions of times. They have also been thoroughly debunked…

Next, the film We Will Not Be Silenced won the film festival’s award for “Best International Documentary.” The film festival’s Instagram describes the film, which was directed by Brian Rose and Luis Solarat…

Rose continues to platform reptilian conspiracy theorist David Icke and spread antisemitic conspiracy theories and disinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines….

Finally, “Shot Dead” is another “documentary” that was screened at the film festival, although it didn’t win anything. This film, a “We the Patriots USA Original Production” features parents who believe their children were killed by COVID-19 vaccines…

Can someone please go check on the Santa Monica Film Festival and make sure they’re alright? Because these films that they’ve platformed are so full of dangerous disinformation and conspiracy theorizing, it’s a stretch—at best—to call them documentaries. It seems clear that the Santa Monica Film Festival is fully red-pilled now. I sure hope other film festivals don’t follow suit.

For more analysis of the film festival, check out Conspirituality Podcast’s episode, “Plandemic Takes the Promenade.”‘ (Boing Boing)

‘Speaking to the Black Conservatives Federation, adjudicated rapist donald J. trump gave an off-the-rails demonstration of his racism.

So many times, donald trump says things that would end any other politician’s career for good. Here, the Orange Menace claims Black people like him because he is a criminal. …trump spends this speech just saying all the Republican “quiet parts” out loud. This is crazy offensive and, once again, should invalidate him from holding any office….’ (Boing Boing)

‘In this speech,  tired and struggling real estate fraud donald trump, is speaking to evangelicals and can not pronounce the word evangelical the same way twice. He made up polling numbers, told stories about baby murder, and elevated his January 6th insurrectionist mob to spirited patriots. Promises to close the Department of Education also went over big to folks who love banning books….’ (Boing Boing)

(YouTube)