What the internet and now AI reveal about us

What the internet and the latest forms of AI have revealed is that many people harbor the ugliest of impulses. People are likely to have had ugly impulses all along but only those in their physical proximity knew about them, if at all. But with the internet and social media, these people are able to not only anonymously reach a much wider audience but now with AI, they are able to find ways to exhibit those impulses in new and increasingly disgusting ways, as this article reveals. They are taking picture of real women (and even children) and doctoring them in sexually explicit ways, a process known as ‘nudification’. The targets of these new ways of attack are usually women, of course.

Such doctoring of images have been occurring since the invention of photography but it used to require sophisticated skills But now pretty much anyone can use the freely available AI (such as Elon Musk’s Grok) to generate doctored images of people and then share them widely through social media channels (like Musk’s X), while those companies seem to make little or no effort to find ways to prevent such abuse. And the situation is getting rapidly worse, on a time scale of days.
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Blog comment policy

I said that at the beginning of every month, I would repost my comments policy for those who started visiting this site the previous month. I stopped doing so after awhile because I thought that at least long time readers would have absorbed the message. But it seems like the reminders are necessary, since there have been violations, some seemingly accidental and some so egregious that I have had to take action. But here is the general policy again.

As long time readers know, I used to moderate the comments with a very light hand, assuming that mature adults would know how to behave in a public space. It took outright hate speech targeting marginalized groups to cause me to ban people, and that happened very rarely. But I got increasingly irritated by the tedious and hostile exchanges among a few commenters that tended to fill up the comment thread with repeated posts about petty or off-topic issues. We sometimes had absurdly repetitive exchanges seemingly based on the childish belief that having the last word means that you have won the argument or with increasingly angry posts sprinkled with puerile justifications like “They started it!”

So here is one rule: No one will be able to make more than three comments in response to any blog post. Violation of that rule will result in banning.

But I also want to address a couple of deeper concerns for which a solution cannot be quantified but will require me to exercise my judgment.
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Another day, another murder by ICE

The thuggish and murderous rampage by ICE that is terrorizing the country continues, and now we have the murder of a woman on the streets of Minneapolis. There is video of the event that shows her trying to drive away and being shot multiple times by ICE agents. Trump is of course lying about what happened, claiming that she ran over the ICE agent when the video clearly shows nothing of the sort. There is only one word to describe it: murder.

Here is a video of the murder and the aftermath showing ICE preventing a physician from checking on the victim.

The mayor of Minneapolis Jacob Frey was unequivocal in his condemnation of the murder, not mincing his words.


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Christmas messages

I know that the Christmas season is over but I found some amusing stuff that I wanted to share just to break up the bad news that has been happening recently.

It is the custom in the UK for the monarch to give a Christmas message to the nation and the satirical puppet show known as Spitting Image provides a parody. (Thanks to commenter brigerjohannson.)

Another tradition that began in 1993 is for the UK’s Channel 4 to give an alternative message to the monarch’s speech and this year US talk show host Jimmy Kimmel was surprised to be asked.

Here is Kimmel’s message.

Noam Chomsky and Epstein

I have long been an admirer, from my college days in Sri Lanka when I first came across his work, of Noam Chomsky, for his tireless support of oppressed people around the world, his deep analyses of the media, and his relentless critiques of the role of the US in creating and perpetuating injustices. He is not just one of the premier public intellectuals, he has been an inspiration of those seeking radical change around the globe.

Hence it came as a shock when the latest release of photographs from the Epstein files showed him flying with him in the latter’s private jet. Noam Chomsky? That Epstein would seek to ingratiate himself with Chomsky was no surprise, since Epstein, when not being an active pedophile, loved to surround himself with renowned intellectuals and used his wealth to buy that access, possible to compensate for the fact that he himself was not one. But what was Chomsky doing with a low-lifelike him? Many former admirers of Chomsky have been quick to to condemn him and Chomsky himself has not responded.

Michale Albert is someone who has known Chomsky well over five decades. Albert and Lydia Sargent founded the progressive magazine Z in 1987 as part of ZCommunications, later changed to ZNetwork. Albert has long been a friend of Chomsky and is possibly the best person to try and explain what happened and he has done so in a long essay that is well worth reading.

The first thing I learned is the reason for Chomsky’s silence. He suffered a devastating stroke in 2023 when he was 95 years old and has been unable to communicate since then. As Albert writes, following the release of the photo of Chomsky with Epstein:
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The new imperialism, just like a very old imperialism

It us becoming more clear what Trump intends with his attack on Venezuela and his abduction of its president Nicolas Maduro and his wife and bringing them to the US. He dismissed what seemed the likely choice to replace Maduro, the Trump-worshipping opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, in favor of Maduro’s vice-president Delcy Rodríguez, someone who had worked with Maduro for years.

Trump is signaling what is going on.

The prospect of the United States seizing direct control of Venezuela appeared to recede on Sunday after the shocking seizure of President Nicolás Maduro – but US officials said Washington was keeping a 15,000-strong force in the Caribbean and might make a fresh military intervention if Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, did not accommodate their demands.

While Rodríguez kept up a defiant tone in public, the substance of conversations she had had in private with US officials was not clear.

In the aftermath of Maduro’s abduction on Saturday, Donald Trump said the US would “run” the South American country of 30 million people. On Sunday he warned Rodríguez to heed US wishes. “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” he told the Atlantic.

Rodríguez, 56, had on Saturday pledged fealty to Maduro and condemned his capture as an “atrocity” but the New York Times reported that Trump officials several weeks ago identified the technocrat as a potential successor and business partner partly on the basis of her relationship with Wall Street and oil companies.

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What next in Venezuela?

I have refrained from commenting on the outrageous act of imperialism by the US in Venezuela because the immediate aftermath of such things is confusion and misinformation and it takes a while for a more accurate picture to emerge. What I did expect to see was that after deposing the president Nicolas Maduro, the US would announce that there was an interim president chosen by them and that there would be statements by at least some top military leaders that they supported the new leader. That is usually how these things play out.

But not in this case. For some reason, Trump has been dismissive about the person that I expected that he would announce as the new leader, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, which is surprising given that she is an ardent Trump supporter. The fact that she had just won the Nobel peace prize would give her some credibility, even if some of us have long dismissed that prize as worthless. But Trump dismissed the idea of her taking over saying that she was not consulted and that she “doesn’t have the support” within Venezuela.

Instead Trump said that the vice-president Delcy Rodríguez would be the new president and would work with the US. She was sworn in as president but denied that she had agreed to work with Trump and said that Maduro was the only president. There have also been no statements from the military leaders either way. Of course, it is possible that secret deals have been made that will trickle out over the coming days but as of now, it looks like the goal of the US attack was to capture Maduro and his wife and there was no real plan for what to do after that, which is really strange.
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Trump attacks Venezuela

He has done what he has been itching to do for some time, and that is have his own war. Given his dropping popularity and troubles at home, he has done what American president have frequently done in such situations and that is attack a smaller country, which tends to rally the jingoists, of whom there are many in this country, around the president. These people do not care about international law or committing war crimes.

This attack should be roundly and instantly condemned by everyone.

Mamdani not backing away from progressive election platform

Candidates after winning an election on a platform that appeals to the progressive base (because that is where the energy lies, especially among young people) often try to move to the center upon taking office because of powerful interests that oppose those measures. Hence they try to tamp down expectations of big changes.

The newly inaugurated mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani does not seem to be following that path. In his first speech as mayor, he vowed to govern as a democratic socialist, the label he proudly wore in the campaign. His swearing in featured two of the most progressive voices who hold congressional office, senator Bernie Sanders and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Zohran Mamdani on Thursday vowed to “reinvent” New York City in a speech on his first day as mayor, promising “a new era” for America’s largest city and an ambitious start to his term of office.

The 34-year-old political star and democratic socialist, who a year ago was a virtually unknown state assemblyman, is the city’s first Muslim mayor, first of south Asian descent and the first to be born in Africa. He is also the first to be sworn in using the Qur’an.

Mamdani added that a “moment like this comes rarely and rarer still is it that the people themselves whose hands are upon the levers of change”.

The mayor said that in writing his remarks, he was advised to lower expectations. “I will do no such thing,” he said. “The only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations. Beginning today we will govern expansively and audaciously. We may not always succeed but never will we be accused of lacking the courage to try.”

Mamdani did not shy away from his socialist politics. “I was elected as a democratic socialist and I will govern as a democratic socialist. I will not abandon my principles for fear of being called radical,” he said to loud cheers from the gathered crowd.

He ended by saying: “The work has only just begun.”
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Hope for the New Year

2025 was a no good, very bad year. I would like to think that the coming year will be better but since nearly all the things that made this year awful are all pretty much still in place, the likelihood of that happening is slight.

But despite that, I would like to hope that at least in your personal lives, the coming year brings good things. It is admittedly a very modest hope but it is all that I can genuinely summon up.

Thanks all who took the trouble to come here and read and comment.

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