April 2, 2025

MIKE SOLANA: Bad Ghibli.

Regardless of the quality, it was hard to argue the avalanche of AI-generated images we saw last week, grasping for attention in a kind of life-like mass beyond anyone’s control, wasn’t slop-like, and I alluded to as much that afternoon. Later, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded on X, “One man’s slop is another man’s treasure.” Different strokes for different folks, case closed. But the conversation on slop, in keeping with its basic nature, was a bit of a distraction.

It was Sam’s following tweet that exposed a real — and in my opinion really fascinating — problem:

Obviously, he was alluding to the White House social media team’s Ghibli, now the most famous example of OpenAI’s new image generation by far. And the first really great, and really impactful, example of bad AI-generated art:

A bad Ghibli, we’ll call it. A piece of AI-generated art that is incredibly successful — at conveying something you didn’t intend to convey.

* * * * * * * *

While it’s hard to know exactly what the White House social media team was trying to achieve with its Ghibli (though my sense is probably nothing, and they were simply working from instinct as most of us are online), I think it’s safe to say they didn’t want to evoke a sense of pity in the average American for a deported fentanyl dealer. But that is what they achieved.

The moment their Ghibli went viral, and the first wave of backlash began, many hardline supporters of the White House were quick — naturally, correctly — to point out this was an AI-generated picture of a felon, almost certainly responsible for the death of Americans, who had already been deported once before. She was also, in real photos that emerged, (I am not being petty here, this is important) physically repulsive. Just look at her, the bad Ghibli defenders cried. And I understand the impulse. I mean, take a look yourself:

Who wants this person in their country? Nobody. Who cares if she cries on her way home? Not me. But, incredibly, in order to defend the cartoon, White House allies had to point to the real photo of an actual criminal, which the White House had already released at the time of the Ghibli. In this, we are not using imagery to massage or explain away reality, as we often see with propaganda. We are using reality to explain away an entirely generated controversy that happened, it seems to me, by mistake. Because someone who is not an artist generated real art he didn’t understand.

How did we get here?

Read the whole thing.

In his early days as creator/producer of Saturday Night Live, Lorne Michaels once rejected a potential sketch by telling its writer that it suffered from “premise overload.” In 2022, Biden’s infamous nighttime Independence Hall speech rant was the result of his handlers trying to put him in a real-life “Dark Brandon” scenario, which thrilled his hyper-online far left base and left the vast majority of Americans confused and angered by the Leni Riefenstahl-like images they were seeing. Similarly, the Trump comm team’s confusing AI slop last week was premise overload as well. I didn’t make the connection with Basora-Gonzalez, and I initially pondered if the man in the cartoon was some sort of Tim Walz callback, given his rounded face and middle-aged appearance, and Walz’s comical obsession last year with camouflage-colored haberdashery.

Solana concludes, “Be careful what you prompt for.” I would argue, prompt away; ChatGPT’s ability to effortlessly spitout Ghibli cartoons is lots of fun, but a political comms shop needs to make sure that the vast majority of the people seeing the image will connect with it before deciding to hit the publish button on social media.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 4

SHOULD GRANTS SUPPORT INDIVIDUAL SCIENTISTS, NOT TEAMS? “The creativity, curiosity, perseverance, and skills, observational as well as cognitive, of the scientist are, in fact, the main factors in the success of basic science… Sadly, government science agencies now make no effort whatsoever to assess these qualities as part of the grant-proposal process. This was not always the case.” We can certainly do better than whatever we’re doing now.

Posted at 4:13 pm by Robert Shibley 0

I HAD THOUGHT MAYBE THIS WAS AN APRIL FOOL’S PRANK, BUT NO: New San Francisco program backed by Newsom will issue speeding tickets based on income. “Violations for speeding range from $50 to $500, but individuals with a household income at or below 200% of the federal poverty level are eligible for a 50% discount, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. Indigent persons, or individuals who are homeless, are eligible for an 80% discount on the speeding ticket.”

Posted at 2:48 pm by Stephen Green 206

ROBERT SPENCER: It Was All Fake: Far-Left Billionaires Astroturfed the Tidal Wave of Early Enthusiasm for Harris.

Last summer, after Old Joe Biden was forced out of running for reelection and Kamala Harris was anointed as the Democrat candidate for president, the far left’s propaganda arm (that is, the establishment media) made a massive push to make this failed vice president and longtime party hack seem new and appealing. A key part of this effort was a gaggle of young “influencers” who took to Instagram and TikTok with an enthusiastic pro-Harris message. It was sincere, it was spontaneous, it was exciting — or at least that’s what it seemed to be. Now (I know, knock me over with a feather) it turns out that the whole thing was faked: the entire Harris bubble was the artificial creation of a bunch of leftist billionaires.

RealClearInvestigations blew the whistle on this astroturfing enterprise in a lengthy exposé on Monday, detailing concerted efforts to portray Harris as if she had “Gen Z-friendly hipster appeal.” This involved “influencers” making “neon-matcha green pro-Harris videos synced to beats from singer Charli XCX’s album ‘Brat’ released last year,” as well as flooding the interwebs with “memes celebrating Harris as the voice of queer and black youth, in contrast with the Republican agenda of white supremacy.” Yeah, not only did they create a fictional Harris, but they conjured up a fake opposition to her in the bargain.

The campaign went heavy on sexual excess, with a heavy helping of hysteria: “Digital creator Amelia Montooth, in one viral TikTok video, kissed a woman and tried searching for pornography, actions her sketch suggested would be banned if Harris lost the election.” Apparently presenting Harris as the porn candidate wasn’t enough, and so “another TikTok and Instagram series backed by the donors, called ‘Gaydar,’ featured interviews quizzing people on the streets of New York City about gay culture trivia with little election-related content,” but the pro-Harris subtext was unmistakable.

Then there was a caravan featuring “an inflatable IUD” that traveled to Philadelphia, Washington, Raleigh, St. Louis, and elsewhere. “The tour, which featured content creators producing posts along the way, was designed to bring attention to claims that Trump would ban contraceptive devices.” Yeah, of course he would.

Harris never quite gelled as the front woman for twenty-first century amorality; RealClearInvestigations notes that she was “a career politician favored by the Democratic Party’s establishment,” and so “never quite fit the bill as an icon of activist movements.” But this wasn’t for want of trying: “the sudden influencer buzz seemed to transform the stodgy former prosecutor into an icon of the cultural zeitgeist.”

Harris’ campaign was the last gasp of Obama’s advisors attempting to run his playbook to advance a candidate who lacked his rock star 2008 appeal. And speaking of Barry: Obama was working against Kamala Harris behind the scenes, didn’t think she could win, new book reveals.

Reporter and author Jonathan Allen said Tuesday that former President Barack Obama was working against Vice President Kamala Harris after President Joe Biden dropped out, advocating for an open primary because he didn’t think Harris could win.

“President Obama absolutely did not think that Joe Biden should continue, according to our sources close to President Obama,” Allen told MSNBC. “And he also didn’t want Kamala Harris to be the replacement for Biden. He didn’t think that she was the best choice for Democrats, and he worked really behind the scenes for a long time to try to have a mini-primary, or an open convention, or a mini-primary leading to an open convention, did not have faith in her ability to win the election.”

Allen, a senior politics reporter at NBC News, and Amie Parnes, a senior political correspondent for The Hill, joined MSNBC to discuss their new book set to be released this month, titled, “FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House.”

“As it turned out, she didn’t win, but he was really working against her,” Allen continued.

But hey, his former advisors sure got to burn through lots of money trying: Democrat Megadonor: The Kamala Harris Campaign “Legally Stole” the $1.5 Billion They Raised from Donors.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll 84

OKAY, I’M SOLD — REPEAL THE 22nd AMENDMENT: Neil Young says he may be barred from returning to US over Donald Trump criticism.

Neil Young has shared his concerns of being barred from the US after his European tour later this year, thanks to his outspoken critiques of Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, on his website Neil Young Archives, the 79-year-old musician – who has dual Canadian-American citizenship – wrote of his fears after the recent spate of people being detained and deported upon entering the US. These incidents have been credited to vague or unspecified visa issues, but have frequently affected individuals who have criticised the Trump administration either publicly or in messages on their phone read by immigration officers.

“When I go to play music in Europe, if I talk about Donald J Trump, I may be one of those returning to America who is barred or put in jail to sleep on a cement floor with an aluminium blanket,” Young wrote. “That is happening all the time now. Countries have new advice for those returning to America.”

Evergreen:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll 175

BLUE CITY BLUES: Seattle mayor reveals $47 MILLION payroll tax deficit as companies flee the Emerald City.

Last week, the mayor of Seattle announced that the Emerald City collected $47 million less in payroll taxes last year as large companies continue to flee the liberal oasis. According to the Seattle Times, the mayor and Seattle City Council expected the tax to haul in over $400 million in revenue from the tax, but instead, the city brought in only $360 million in 2024.

The $47 million payroll tax deficit adds to a $260 million budget deficit Seattle was already facing from out-of-control spending.

On Tuesday, Mayor Bruce Harrell said in a joint statement with Councilmember Dan Strauss, “Today’s announcement that [payroll expense tax] revenues collected in 2024 were $47 million lower than projected requires action to ensure our budget remains balanced.”

Harrell’s statement went on to blame… Trump.

Posted at 1:46 pm by Stephen Green 149

PRESIDENT KLAIN DISSEMBLES: Ex-Biden aide Ron Klain was alarmed by ‘out of it’ prez ahead of disaster debate, book says.

Ron Klain, a longtime aide to former President Joe Biden known for his intense loyalty, is insisting he “never doubted” Biden’s mental fitness — as a new book describes Klain’s distress ahead of Biden’s dismal June 2024 debate against Donald Trump.

In “Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History,” author Chris Whipple writes that Klain viewed Biden, then 81, as “out of it” and even “half-seriously” worried that Biden thought he was “president of NATO.”

“I never doubted the president’s mental acuity,” Klain told The Post Wednesday after a report on Whipple’s book was published by the Guardian.

“He had become singularly focused on foreign policy and detached from Democratic allies in the pursuit of GOP support on Ukraine and Israel,” Klain said of his impressions of the 46th president.

“He thought that being a great foreign policy president was enough.”

* * * * * * * *

Whipple writes that Klain, Biden’s White House chief of staff from 2021 to 2023, was “startled” when he arrived at Camp David to help with debate prep.

“He’d never seen him so exhausted and out of it,” the author relates.

I suspect former President Klain saw former (P)resident Biden exhausted and out of it on numerous occasions when he was part of the Democrats’ brain trust running the show in DC under Biden’s name:

More on Klain and Biden’s career ending debate with Trump: In a new book, top Biden aide describes ‘out of it’ president before Trump debate.

Ron Klain served Biden from 2021 to 2023, then returned to his side last June to run debate preparation as he had for numerous Democratic presidents before.

According to Klain, it turned out that Biden “didn’t know what Trump had been saying and couldn’t grasp what the back and forth was”; left preparation and fell asleep by the pool; obsessed about foreign leaders, saying “these guys say I’m doing a great job as president so I must be a great president”; “didn’t really understand what his argument was on inflation”; and “had nothing to say about a second term other than finish the job”.

As described by Klain to the reporter Chris Whipple, at one point Biden had an idea.

“If he looked perplexed when Trump talked, voters would understand that Trump was an idiot. Klain replied: ‘Sir, when you look perplexed, people just think you’re perplexed. And this is our problem in this race.”

Flashback:

What struck me instead as I read Leibovich’s slightly tongue-in-cheek profile was the distance between the bourgeois comfort of Klain’s personal and professional life and the facts, as they say, on the ground. One cannot finish reading the Leibovich piece without coming to the conclusion that, all in all, things have worked out pretty darn well for Ron Klain. For America? Not so much.

Klain is the most powerful chief of staff in recent memory, the beating heart of Joe Biden’s White House, a man whose portfolio is so wide-ranging and whose boss is so (let’s face it) odd that Republicans on Capitol Hill refer to him as “Prime Minister Klain.” Like most Washingtonians, he is a well-degreed workaholic, a graduate of Georgetown and Harvard Law School who has spent decades rotating from positions in Democratic administrations to lucrative gigs at the intersection of law, technology, and finance. He calls his expensive home in Chevy Chase, Md., “the house that O’Melveny built,” after legal giant O’Melveny & Myers, where he was a partner from 2001 to 2004.

Among his clients there were AOL Time Warner and Fannie Mae. In 2004 the chairman of AOL Time Warner, billionaire Steve Case, invited Klain to join his D.C.-based venture capital firm, Revolution. Leibovich informs us that Klain’s salary in 2020 was some $2 million. That buys you a lot of hors d’oeuvres.

What Ron Klain actually did in the private sector—besides tweet—is no mystery. By the alchemical process through which influence is manufactured in Washington, he converted his relationships with Democratic power brokers into cash money. “At times,” wrote Michael Scherer in a November 2020 profile for the Washington Post, “Klain appears to have worked with every Democratic leader of the past three decades.” Such a network is worth something to the incalculable number of interests seeking out favors, damages, or relief from the federal government.

—“The Mark of Klain,” Matthew Continetti, the Washington Free Beacon, July 23rd, 2021.

UPDATE:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll 76

“EVIL PEOPLE”: Organized ‘Bankrupt Tesla’ Group Tied To Formerly USAID-Funded Disinfo Queen. “On Tuesday morning, former Biden administration ‘disinformation czar’ Nina Jankowicz repeatedly refused to disclose who’s funding her new gig – the ‘American Sunlight Project’ – which cropped up after a stint at the USAID-funded UK-based Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) – for which she registered as a foreign agent while serving as their Vice President.”

The American Sunlight Project has secret funding because of course it does.

Posted at 12:44 pm by Stephen Green 84

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Shot:

Chaser:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 54

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: A story about enrollment at Howard University, a leading HBCU founded in 1867, reveals that Howard’s student population is only 25% male. Apparently, this is not that unusual for HBCUs. “This very much seems like a problem worth addressing. As someone quoted in the story points out, it’s hard to achieve upward mobility in today’s world if you don’t go to college. But I also wonder if this isn’t a case where something has changed more generally and black male students are just a leading indicator. There have been plenty of recent stories about a gender gap among all students headed to college.”

Posted at 12:17 pm by Glenn Reynolds 118

SHOCK — WOMEN’S TV SHOW DISAVOWS 19th AMENDMENT! The View Lauds Ellie Mystal, Claims All Laws Pre-1965 Are ‘Unconstitutional.’

ABC News’s The View had become a home for far-left extremist politics. That fact was obvious during Tuesday’s episode where they invited far-left extremist writer Elie Mystal to promote his unhinged book designed to tear at American’s elevation of the rule of law. The liberal ladies gleefully welcomed his ridiculous pontifications about how all laws pre-1965 shouldn’t be considered legitimate and how there shouldn’t be voter registration laws.

There to promote his book Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America, co-host Sunny Hostin heaped praise on Mystal. “I love this book! You are dead on and it is a fantastic book! One of the laws you write about is playing out right now, the Immigration and Nationality Act,” she touted.

“One of my premises for the book is that every law passed before the 1965 Voting Rights Act should be presumptively unconstitutional,” Mystal explained. “Because before the 1965 Voting Rights Act we were functionally an apartheid country!”

* * * * * * * *

Laws passed prior to 1965 that Mystal, and the cast of The View, would presumably support included most laws against murder, the First Amendment (freedom of speech, 1791), the Fourth Amendment (unlawful search and seizures, 1791), the 13th Amendment (the abolition of slavery, 1865), the 19th Amendment (women’s right to vote, 1920), and the National Firearms Act (1934); just to name a few.

Between Mystal disavowing all laws passed prior to 1965* and the environmentalist far left destroying Teslas, the party that once preached a tolerance for diversity have entered further into Taliban statue toppling territory, which is what they spent the summer of 2020 doing. It’s a Mirror Universe cargo cult — since they can’t create anything new, they’re determined to burn it all down out of spite.

Flashback: Beyond the Culture of Repudiation:

As a modern conservative, [the late Roger] Scruton defends a form of democracy unknown to Aristotle. Following David Hume and Edmund Burke, however, he opposes the idea that the “political order is founded on a contract.” For Scruton, the state of nature is a chimera—an invention of modern political philosophers who had forgotten the debt and gratitude owed to our predecessors. The fictitious state of nature—so central to philosophical liberalism—obscures the fact that membership in a community, with its requisite duties and obligations, is a precondition for meaningful freedom. “Absolute freedom”—doing whatever one wants—is always an invitation to anarchy or tyranny. In the modern world, the nation is the political form that guarantees membership and self-government.

In all of his political writings, Scruton takes on the Left for scorning existing norms and customs, and for promoting a “culture of repudiation.” The Left is “negative.” It dismisses “every aspect of our cultural capital” with the language of brutal invective: accusing every defender of human nature and sound tradition of “racism,” “xenophobia,” “homophobia,” and “sexism.” Like 1984’s “two minutes of hate,” this language tears down, intimidates, and can never build anything humane or constructive—it is nihilistic to the core. At the same time, Scruton wants to reach out to reasonable liberals who eschew ideology and who still believe in civility and the promise of national belonging. His conservatism can discern the truth in liberalism (another Aristotelian trait) while the partisans of repudiation see half the human race as enemies.

And from 2019, VDH: Waging War Against The Dead. “Not since the iconoclasts of the Byzantine Empire or the epidemic of statue destruction during the French Revolution has the world seen anything like the current war on the past. In 2001, the primeval Taliban blew up two ancient Buddha statues in Afghanistan on grounds that their very existence was sacrilegious to Islam. In 2015, ISIS militants entered a museum in Mosul, Iraq, and destroyed ancient, pre-Islamic statues and idols. Their mute crime? These artifacts predated the prophet Mohammed. The West prides itself on the idea that liberal societies would never descend into such nihilism. Think again.”

* I wasn’t expecting the House of Stephanopoulos to sign onto invalidating the 22nd Amendment, but Trump supporters are everywhere, apparently.

UPDATE:

Like Glenn’s theory that the Squad were Roger Stone’s best dirty trick ever, are we sure Mystal isn’t a Republican plant whose mission is to further discredit the left?

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll 91