fearless citizen, dislikes dictators and bullies. twitter is my unpolished megaphone. nafo irregular
Joined April 2008
- Tweets19.2K
- Following2.5K
- Followers2.6K
- Likes33.7K
lesser evil retweeted
When a public intellectual writes with AI, what is lost?
The short answer is: the unconscious mind. What's lost is access to the unconscious mind as the stimulus for the words on the page.
What's lost is unconscious intent: this is when words appear on the page which the author intends, but does not intend consciously.
When you write with AI, you confine yourself to the space of conscious intent. This is the shallower kind of intent. It can still produce clear and technical writing.
But you lose proper authorial intent, which depends on a two-step process. (1) A psychological reality in the mind of the author, which is (2) converted into words on the page in a way the author intends but doesn't intend consciously.
The big problem here is that authorial intent is the central concept in literature as an art. Moreover, you also lose, by extension, the concept of style. Style refers to the non-shallow features of a writer's writing, which can never be reduced to a set of surface signatures, but are always seen in the work.
Of course, there is a gradation here. A brief piece of political analysis in a daily paper will suffer less than a long essay in a serious magazine.
But in the end, all good writing has a style of its own - and all good writing moves and transforms the reader via a style of it's own. AI writing is necessarily pre-stylistic. In that regard, it confines the writer to childhood - before they have matured to develop a style of their own.
lesser evil retweeted
This is demonstrably true. Previously, each Vatnik Soup thread received between 300k and 5M impressions. Now, we're lucky if we get 100k.
Our annual views have dropped from 700M to 280M. Posts about Ukraine shared by accounts with millions of followers barely get any traction, whereas our more generic posts about AI, for example, can get millions of views.
Ukraine is still one of the hottest topics on this platform, yet voices supporting the country are being throttled, just like Starlink/Starshield was.
lesser evil retweeted
So they finally caught up to Jared. Let’s hope they do something about it.
🤖 Made with AI
lesser evil retweeted
What about my paintings again?
Jared Kushner’s Hacked Phone Revealed His Secret Negotiations—Including More Than $700 Million In Transfers vanityfair.com/story/jared-k…
lesser evil retweeted
The @GOP must be thrilled that 11 days before elections, we learn that the Trump family secretly orchestrated a deal to allow Russians to drill Alaska in exchange for a $25 billion "investment" funneled through their proxies.
lesser evil retweeted
US energy company execs have resigned in disgust as the Trump family is caught secretly expediting the funneling of $25 billion from a sanctioned Russian energy giant in exchange for allowing Russians to obtain a natural gas project in Alaska.
According to investigations by The New York Times and Financial Times, Russia's Novatek allegedly concealed its financial involvement in the American project through a UAE-linked intermediary.
Gentry Beach, a longtime Trump ally and close friend of Donald Trump Jr., signed an agreement with Novatek to pursue natural gas development in Alaska. Reuters documented the arrangement in February.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin discussed this cooperation on the Alaska energy project with Trump's representatives, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, during negotiations involving Russia and Ukraine.
The controversy deepened when Polar Train LNG's CEO, Joel Riddle, raised concerns about concealed Russian financing and possible sanctions violations. He departed in September, followed by other senior executives.
The Financial Times also described discussions about a potential arrangement under which Novatek would provide technology for the Alaska project in exchange for sanctions relief benefiting its Arctic LNG 2 development in Siberia.
According to The New York Times, Riddle and two other departing executives warned the Trump administration about the Russian financing and urged officials to investigate.
The White House maintains that the project was mentioned only briefly and that no detailed discussions took place. There is no established evidence that Kushner or Witkoff knew about the allegedly concealed financing. Polar Train LNG denies wrongdoing.
The central question is how a sanctioned Russian energy company became involved in a major American energy venture while Putin was discussing potential economic cooperation with Trump's representatives and a longtime Trump family associate was pursuing a separate agreement with the same Russian company.
Selling Alaska to the Russians or selling Ukraine to the Russians - to the Trump family it's all the same.
ft.com/content/e9cfbfbb-e65a…
lesser evil retweeted
The speed limits on Starlink and Starshield are still there. The speed has not been restored. And the delivery of interceptors to protect us against Russian ballistic missiles is still delayed. We’re waiting for interceptors that were already agreed on. But they are still not coming. This is a real problem, because the Russians attack us almost every single day.
All of this is happening while we continue our quite successful operations on the front. We keep defending positions. Things have become harder – partly because of the Starlink and Starshield policies and speed limits. But our frontline is still holding and I am proud of how strong our people are.
From an address at the Hudson Institute. (2/3)
lesser evil retweeted
Einfacher Dreisatz: Journalistische Angebote in Deutschland unterliegen dem Pressekodex. "Nius" hat den Pressekodex nicht unterzeichnet. "Nius" ist kein Journalismus, sondern millionärsfinanzierte Propaganda.
spiegel.de/politik/friedrich…
lesser evil retweeted
No, @elonmusk, the U.S. stopped funding Ukraine last year. In fact, U.S. companies make money on American weapons for which we Europeans pay.
The more you meddle in our politics and the more you play politics with your products, the more you damage your brand.
lesser evil retweeted
Members of the Verkhovna Rada are calling on Germany to reconsider its approval of cooperation with Rosatom/Framatome. In Lingen, Germany is supporting Russia in the production of Russian-designed fuel assemblies. This approval must be revoked immediately, as it poses a security threat to Germany.
Russia has always used its state-owned corporation Rosatom as an instrument of hybrid warfare and for specific influence operations in countries that cooperate with Rosatom or its subsidiaries. It is incomprehensible that Germany would seek to further strengthen existing dependencies in the field of nuclear fuel elements by relying on an instrument of the terrorist state of Russia, which is waging a war of aggression in violation of international law. We should listen to our Ukrainian colleagues in the Rada. Germany must revoke the approval. Rosatom must leave Germany.
comeuroint.rada.gov.ua/news/…
says the grifter son in law galore.
its all a misunderstanding.
trump, kushner, wittkoff, epstein, musk, miller and those other guys.
all white vests like the devil's advocate
.@VanityFair posted an excerpt from a book containing outrageous and categorically false allegations.
The allegations made by this author are completely insane and never happened. We denied every one of these claims on the record, yet the author failed to provide a single shred of evidence to substantiate any of them. No bank statements, wire transfer records, account numbers, transaction dates, or other verifiable details were provided to support these extraordinary accusations.
During the period in question, I was one of the most scrutinized people in the world, subjected to intense media coverage, multiple congressional investigations, and a special counsel investigation. I voluntarily cooperated with these investigations, providing over 30 hours of testimony. None of these allegations ever surfaced, because none of these events ever happened.
These are outrageous fabrications being presented as investigative journalism. This is not journalism. It is a mixture of fantasy, fiction, and advocacy, written by someone who is either deeply disturbed or acting with sinister intent.
lesser evil retweeted
It’s horrific! Footage has been released online showing a Russian ballistic missile—equipped with a cluster munition warhead—striking Kyiv last night.
The Russians are using banned cluster munitions with the intent to kill as many civilians as possible.
lesser evil retweeted
Festnahme wegen mutmaßlicher geheimdienstlicher Agententätigkeit, Pressemitteilung der #Bundesanwaltschaft vom 22.10.2026
generalbundesanwalt.de/Share…
lesser evil retweeted
“In late spring 2020, a source I knew to be reliable called me with a story,” writes Matthew Cole. “The Dutch government had hacked into Jared Kushner’s phone and monitored him as he accessed a Dubai-based bank account. What was odd, the source said, was that the money in the account—hundreds of millions of dollars—had come from a bank in Azerbaijan. Most importantly, Kushner appeared to have transferred significant amounts of money from the Dubai account to other individuals, including a warlord, a mercenary and a one-time hit man. The story sounded preposterous, I told my source. And yet.
Six months later, I found myself speaking with someone else about the UAE government and their use of mercenaries in conflicts around the Middle East and Africa when I asked, on a whim, whether they knew anything about Kushner and bank transfers from a UAE account. My acquaintance grew quiet. Then they replied, ‘Yes.’” Kushner’s lawyer denied the bank account existed.
Read an exclusive excerpt from Cole’s book, ‘Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East’: vanityfair.visitlink.me/Q5_W…
lesser evil retweeted
Here’s a bullet-point summary of the Vanity Fair article (excerpt from Matthew Cole’s book):
• Dutch intel (MIVD) reverse-engineered a Russian GRU hack of Kushner’s iPhone X in 2018 and monitored his screen activity.
• They saw him access a UAE “Alpha” account at First Abu Dhabi Bank holding ~$750M from Azerbaijan, used as a slush fund for secret ops.
• Kushner was a signatory and transferred funds to a warlord, mercenary, and former hit man.
• UAE’s MBZ and Saudi’s MBS allegedly provided at least $2B total (Alpha + “Beta” accounts, some via Israel) for off-books Middle East diplomacy and influence.
• No presidential approval or required financial disclosures reported; lawyer denies accounts existed or any violations.
lesser evil retweeted
It’s now officially confirmed.
Tonight, russia struck Kyiv’s historic centre with an Iskander ballistic missile carrying a cluster warhead.
58 submunitions explode in mid-air, designed to inflict maximum casualties across a 400 × 400 metre area.
“This strike had no military purpose. The goal was to destroy part of the old city and injure as many people as possible,” said a Ukrainian presidential adviser.
No military objective. Just terror.
lesser evil retweeted
Witkoff called Putin a humanitarian today.
Here is some of his humanitarian work:
