The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

In The Mailbox: 01.16.25 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | January 16, 2025 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Maui’s (and Los Angeles’s) Deadly Firestorm, AG Nominee Pam Bondi’s Confirmation Hearing, and Are Oaks In Trouble?
Twitchy: Ga. State Senator Who Exposed Fani Willis Shoved Then Arrested By Speaker Of Ga. House, Axios Sounds The Alarm Bells – CEOs Can Now Say Whatever They Want, and Justine Bateman DROPS Staffer For Trying To Delete Pics Of Mayor Bass Partying While LA Burned
Louder With Crowder: That scumbag Eagles fan who went viral? Turns out he is (or WAS) a woke DEI advisor with pronouns in his bio (UPDATED), Pam Bondi Puts Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) On Blast: “You were the only one who refused to meet with me”, and Scott Jennings drops the mic on Pete Hegseth’s performance with four simple words: “He kicked their @$$es”
Vox Popoli: Neil Gaiman Doesn’t Believe All Women, Calling Out the Publishers, Reading List 2024, and They Deserve Their Fate
Cedar Sanderson: Joy Stands on the Hilltops
Stoic Observations: Hands-Free Driving
Ammo.com: Gun Violence Among Black Americans

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: 1000 Drones vs. Our DDG
Don Surber: Trump splits the press, also, Who’s sorry now, Germany or Hamas?
Protein Wisdom Reborn: Another humpday shrapnel post

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Category: Linkagery

Ashkenazi Jews Have the Highest IQs on Average, But Then There’s Jen Rubin

Posted on | January 16, 2025 | No Comments

Before we discuss Jen Rubin and her “exciting new online platform,” let’s first take time to examine the problem of stereotypes. Being a member of the Appalachian-American community (we consider “hillbilly” to be an offensive slur), I know a few things about belonging to an ethnic group with reputational issues. This is why, despite my noted musical abilities, I never learned to play the banjo. Also, I’ve never lived in a mobile home, I don’t drink moonshine and my wife is not my cousin.

One has a duty to try to avoid behaviors that might contribute to negative stereotypes of one’s ethnic group. However, one must acknowledge that stereotypes don’t arise for no reason, but rather have some basis in fact. The stereotype of hillbillies as lazy and stupid arose at a time when the dangers of the hookworm parasite were unknown; a disease that sabotages health cannot be prevented if you don’t know what causes it, and the South suffered as a result. Nowadays, we have hillbillies graduating from Yale Law, thank you very much, and so it’s time to stop the anti-hillbilly hate speech. (Stay off the moonshine, J.D.)

People who claim The Bell Curve is “racist pseudo-science” either (a) have not read the book or (b) are too stupid to understand it. As I have repeatedly pointed out, the most important part of The Bell Curve is the first 115 pages, about how standardized testing gave rise to “cognitive partitioning,” and has nothing to do with race, a topic that doesn’t appear until page 269. One point that the authors emphasize, but which critics seem determined to ignore, is that when discussing “Ethnic Differences in Cognitive Ability” (the title of Chapter 17 of The Bell Curve) they are talking about group averages, which are not predictive of any individual’s ability or life opportunities. That is to say, however one’s group may rank in terms of median IQ, it is one’s individual score that really matters. It is only because our political system has developed an obsession with categorizing people as members of groups that an analysis of such differences is necessary, in order to demonstrate that racism (there are five A’s in “RAAAAACISM!”) isn’t the causative factor of social problems. These problems won’t be solved by quota regimes (“diversity”) nor by any of the other “reforms” advocated by liberals.

Well, I could continue that rant indefinitely, but the point is that group averages are not predictive for individuals. Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ of any ethnic group and yet, there’s the helplessly stupid Jen Rubin who thinks we’re going to believe her when she claims she voluntarily left her job at the Washington Post, rather than getting axed as deadwood at a newspaper that’s lost readership and revenue at a startling pace in recent years. So, in announcing she’s going to launch “The Contrarian” with Democrat apparatchik Norm Eisen, Jen Rubin delivers a sanctimonious lecture about how “billionaire owners of major media outlets have betrayed their audiences’ loyalty and sabotaged journalism’s sacred mission — defending, protecting and advancing democracy.” And she’s going to fight the good fight for the “sacred mission” with . . . a Substack blog? Because that’s what her gushing about an “exciting new online platform” is about, as if there were something unique being offered, rather than a mere $7-a-month newsletter on Substack. John Nolte quips: “The good news is that The Contrarian’s subscription fee will be $7 per month, which means we will all save $7 per month by not reading Jennifer Rubin.”

Some of us are old enough to remember when Jen Rubin was much less stupid than she is now, and the cause of her cognitive decline is generally attributed to Trump Derangement Syndrome. However, I have an alternate theory — tertiary syphilis, sometimes called “general paresis,” a degenerative neurological disorder caused by untreated syphilis:

Typical symptoms include loss of social inhibitions, asocial behavior, gradual impairment of judgment, concentration and short-term memory, euphoria, mania, depression, or apathy. . . .
Delusions, common as the illness progresses, tend to be poorly systematized and absurd. They can be grandiose, melancholic, or paranoid.

Well, if “poorly systematized and absurd” delusions are symptomatic, the idea of saving democracy with a $7-a-month Substack certainly would tend to confirm such a diagnosis in the case of Jen Rubin, but I am not a doctor and this is only an alternate theory.



 

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Category: Media Bias

Retarded Asian Woman Challenges Fake Indian for Title of ‘Worst Senator Ever’

Posted on | January 15, 2025 | No Comments

There may be dumber people in the Senate than Mazie Hirono, but I’m having trouble naming one after the Hawaii Democrat’s absurd questions to Pete Hegseth during Monday’s confirmation hearing:

MAZIE HIRONO: “Would you carry out an order from President Trump to seize Greenland, a territory of our NATO ally Denmark, by force, or would you comply with an order to take over the Panama Canal?”
HEGSETH: “Senator, I will emphasize that President Trump received 77 million votes to be the lawful commander.”
HIRONO: “We’re not talking about the election. My question is, would you use our military to take over Greenland or an ally of Denmark?”
HEGSETH: “Senator, one of the things that President Trump is so good at is never strategically tipping his hand. And so I would never in this public forum give one way or another direct what orders the president gives in any context.”
HIRONO: “It sounds to me that you would contemplate carrying out such an order to basically invade Greenland and the Panama Canal.”

These are the important issues for Democcrats, see? Instead of talking about readiness, recruiting, equipment shortages or any of the other actual issues affecting the Department of Defense, Mazie Hirono wants to keep campaigning against Donald Trump, with this silly sound-bite stuff about Greenland and the Panama Canal. The fact that voters in Hawaii consider Hirono qualified to serve in the Senate tells you that Hawaii is full of very bad people, perhaps even worse than the people of Massachusetts who elected notorious fraud Elizabeth Warren.

Simple question: Was there ever any chance that Elizabeth Warren would have voted to confirm Pete Hegseth? Is there any other Democrat on the Armed Services Committee who was ever likely to vote in Hegseth’s favor? I think not. In fact, I wish someone would research whether Elizabeth Warren has ever voted to confirm anyone — Cabinet member, judicial nominee, whatever — appointed by Donald Trump. Because I feel pretty certain she was always a reliable “no” vote on confirmations during Trump’s first term, and her elaborate Kabuki performance of outrage in Tuesday’s hearing was just that — a performance, a melodrama staged for theatrical effect. What cannot be overlooked about Warren is her fundamental dishonesty, exemplified by how she gamed the system by claiming to be Cherokee and thus qualifying for affirmation action benefits at Harvard University. The people who elected this vicious fraud to the Senate should be ashamed of themselves, but if they had any sense of shame they wouldn’t be Democrats, would they?



 

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Category: Senate

In The Mailbox: 01.14.25

Posted on | January 15, 2025 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Sorry about yesterday – got super tired halfway through and crashed early. Starting earlier tonight and hoping for the best.
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

Gov. Hairgel touts his non-graft accomplishment.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Deforestation Is the New Green
EBL: Jennifer Rubin’s Sexual Healing, Gavin Newsom Responds To His Critics, and Pete Hegseth Senate Confirmation Hearing to be Secretary of Defense
Twitchy: NYT Reporter Tries Backpedaling On Kavanaugh Coverage And X Is NOT Having It, Occasional Cortex Rants About Women Bleeding Out In Parking Lots Nationwide, and NYT’s Pentagon Correspondent “Fact-Checks” Pete Hegseth On Racism In The Military
Louder With Crowder: Biden and Kamala team up for one last derptastic appearance, brag about how little they’re giving LA wildfire victims, Trans congess(wo)man reads book to children pushing trans ideology, blames “society” for thinking “she” is a he, Enjoy these Democrat senators turning Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing into a TOTAL clown show, Carrie Underwood beams with patriotism in response to her haters about performing at Trump’s inauguration, and GOP senator went SCORCHED EARTH on Democrat hypocrisy over Pete Hegseth “How many senators showed up drunk to vote at night?”
Vox Popoli: The Japanese Know, The Conservative Rock Star, Game Over, Gaiman, LA 2.0, and The Bad Road Not Taken
Bugscuffle Gazette: Poetry Tuesday
Defending The Wood Perilous: Nick Enlowe Defends The Wood Perilous
Toni Airaksinen: “Jews & Power” Course At Oberlin Ignites Controversy

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: America Is to Blame for the Failure of Russia–Ukraine Negotiations
American Greatness: OK Senator Markwayne Mullin Puts Dem Colleagues on Blast For Their ‘Ridiculous’ Hypocrisy During Hegseth Confirmation Hearing, DOJ Releases Jack Smith Report on Trump Case, Outgoing Biden Administration Spends $1M on Foreign DEI Initiatives, Border Agents Discover “Sophisticated” Illegal Immigrant Tunnels Built During Biden Administration, and LA Fires Illustrate a Nationwide Competency Crisis
American Thinker: The Climate Hoax
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Los Angeles Train Wreck News
Babalu Blog: Sugar production in Cuba down 75%, Jailed Cuban, 73, beaten to death by prison officer, Holguin munitions explosion update: No word yet from Cuban dictatorship about missing victims, and Latin America’s Three (Socialist) Musketeers 
BattleSwarm: Prager On Why California Is Burning, Lefties Mourn End To Facebook Censorship, Russian Mercenary Captured At Border, and Straus/Bonnen/Phelan Cabal Screws Republican Voters Yet Again
Behind The Black: China completes second launch in 2025, SpaceX launches another 21 Starlink satellites, After more than two years, Australian rocket startup thinks its launch approval is about to finally arrive, Boom about to go supersonic, and Is China’s Yutu-2 lunar rover dead?
Cafe Hayek: Michael Pettis Continues to Blunder, Economists Should Never Abandon Their Principles, and Percentage of Nonfarm Workers in America Employed in Jobs Classified as “Manufacturing”
CDR Salamander: So I Assume Fuel Supply For The Pacific Fight Is Fat & Secure?
Chicago Boyz: People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump, The Persistence of the Left, and Imagine No Internet
Dana Loesch: Hunter Biden Case Report Released
Don Surber: Why they burned LA down
First Street Journal: Shedding a tear for Jennifer Rubin, who’s leaving The Washington Post, also, No matter how much you hate the credentialed media, you do not hate them enough!
Gates Of Vienna: Waiting for the Thaw, also, A Culture-Enriching New Year’s Grope-Fest in Milan
The Geller Report: President Trump Announces Plant To Create “External Revenue Service” to Collect Tariffs, Duties, All Revenue From Foreign Sources
Hollywood In Toto: Alamo Drafthouse Workers Seek to Cancel September 5, Oh, Canada Is Last Thing We Expect from Paul Schrader, Michael Rapaport: I’ve Been Canceled by Facebook, Instagram, Identity Crisis Sounds Alarm on Gender-Affirming Care, and Reagan Not Diverse Enough for Oscars
The Lid: Starbucks Quietly Cancels Woke, BLM-Inspired Open-Door Policy
Legal Insurrection: China Prepares to Impose Restrictions on Export of Essential Components for EV Batteries, Bob Dylan’s Cold War, Most New York State Residents Back Ban on Masks Following Anti-Israel Incidents, Two House Democrats Join Republicans to Pass Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, and Biden Admin Will Remove Cuba From List of State Sponsors of Terrorism
Nebraska Energy Observer: Saturday – just for you, Why We Care, and Tuesday T-6
Outkick: Jemele Hill Quietly Deletes Caitlin Clark Post Following Stalker Arrest, Transfer Portal Could Be Headed For Major Changes, NFL Fans React To Sam Darnold’s Crushing First-Round Exit With Vikings, NFL’s Daryl Johnston Answers If Deion Sanders, Jerry Jones Team Up Can Work Out, and  Spurs Player Pull Classy Move For JJ Redick, Family After Losing Home in LA Wildfires
Power Line: Mississippi, 1963, Judge Beaton, we can lend a hand, Republicans Stand Firm, and The Left Is Losing It
Protein Wisdom Reborn: Notes from a cluttered mind
Shark Tank: State Sen Tom Leek Introduces Bill To Honor Slain Daytona Beach Officer
Shot In The Dark: Bring Your Popcorn, A First, Courting Collapse, This Is Today’s DFL, and Your Fault
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – The Return of SALT
The Political Hat: Those Who Can’t, Teach In New Jersey, also, The Pernicious Invention of “Disparate Impact”
This Ain’t Hell: California National Guard Mobilized, Members of White House National Security Council evaluated for ‘loyalty’, Young trial starts, and Another WWII ace in the making?
Transterrestrial Musings: Costco’s Clothes Business, New Glenn Delay, The Fires, and Trump’s Senate Confirmations
Victory Girls: Kamala Harris Is A Sore Loser Brat
Watts Up With That: BBC Try To Wriggle Out Of Extreme Weather Claims, NOAA’s “no evidence” that wind kills whales violates the Information Quality Act, The Great Retreat: A Eulogy for the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, and Assigning Responsibility for the Tragic Los Angeles Fires
The Federalist: Special Counsel Slams Biden In Slim Report After Allowing Hunter To Escape Most Serious Charges, Sen. Joni Ernst Backs Hegseth Following Conservative Pressure Campaign, The White House Blames Rent Increases On AI, But The Real Problem Is Bidenflation, Democrats’ Hegseth Hearing Theatrics Prove They’re Unserious About U.S. National Security, and Leftist New Mexico Secretary Of State Settles Lawsuit In ‘Win For Election Transparency’
Mark Steyn: Of Paedos and Policemen, Broken Codes: Myrna Loy and Irene Dunne in Thirteen Women, Tender in Limbo, A Palsied Limb of Nature’s Frame, and Goldfinger

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 01.13.25

Posted on | January 14, 2025 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

“Famed author [Neil Gaiman] accused of sexual assault as shocking new details revealed” – AL.com

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: How Should a Woman Who Is 9 Months Pregnant Defend Herself? also Politics and the Los Angeles Fire
EBL: Why Greenland Is So Incredibly Empty… It’s Not Just The Ice, Silvia Presente, Democrat Mayor of LA Karen Bass,and Why don’t we roast chestnuts anymore?
Twitchy: Trump Reveals What Obama Really Said To Him At Carter’s Funeral,  Pull The Liar Alarm! and Receipt King Drew Holden Savagely Roasts Jen Rubin 
Louder With Crowder: Gavin Newsom launches Orwellian website to “fact check” anyone who points out his incompetence, Whoops! Woman arrested after texting cop (she meant to text her drug dealer), Mark Zuckerberg has one more thing to atone for before we believe he’s been “red-pilled”, Shameless Joe Biden swears border numbers came “Way Down” when he became president, and Biden’s Title IX Gender Identity Rule Struck Down By Federal Court
Vox Popoli: Protecting the Pakistani Rape Gangs, GaimanGate: The Next Chapter, Let California Burn, Denmark Turns to Russia, and No Safe Words with Neil Gaiman
Bacon Time: Convicted Felon
Defending The Wood Perilous: Consent In Romance – The Needs Of Culture vs. The Needs Of Drama
Gab: Complacency Is Not An Option
Stoic Observations: Everything Burns, also, Boxtag Archive

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Maduro’s Third Six-Year Term Spells Doom for Venezuela
American Greatness: Biden Claims Border ‘Numbers Came Way Down’ After He took Office, Petition Calling for Karen Bass’ Resignation Garners over 92,000 Signatures, An Absolute Disgrace: Joe Biden Adds to His Shameful Legacy, Lying About History: Efforts to Whitewash Biden’s Foreign Policy Failures, and Gov. Newsom’s Solution to the Los Angeles Wildfire Disaster? More Government
American Thinker: A DEI Green New Deal Hydrogen Bomb, also, Newsom, Bass, and Negligent Homicide
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday!
CDR Salamander: Improving US/Allied Shipbuilding & Repair, also, So We’re Going To Screw Up DDG(X) Too?
Da Tech Guy: Why I Think This Hostage Deal Will Come Through
Don Surber: Thank FJB for the acceptance of Trump
STUMP: The Week In Meep, also, 2023 Top U.S. Causes Of Death By Age Group

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Category: Linkagery

Rule 5 Sunday: Golden Globes

Posted on | January 13, 2025 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

SOTD
Nobody cares about the Golden Globe awards. I got your Golden Globes right here, loyal readers of the Commentariat.
Ladies and gentlemen, Sydney Sweeney.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

EBL: Saturday Night Girls With Guns, “Burn It All”, Five Feet Apart, Temple, Ashley Moody, MAGA Greenland, Nicole Arbour, and Karen Pine. 

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Carina, Cold Weather Bodes Well for Bay Bass, Fish Pic Friday – Rosemary Jadoonath, Tattoo Thursday, The Wednesday Wetness, Tuesday Tanlines, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Random Celebrity News, Just Waiting on the Snow and Sunday Sunrise

BACON TIME: Rule Five – Had To Call For Help With The Plumbing

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

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Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: New York, New York

Posted on | January 12, 2025 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

A good week for my Senators as the bts came alive and we swept the Angels on Tuesday and took two out of three from the Yankees at the Polo Grounds, which we’re really liking since it’s really short down the lines and our boys like to jack those long balls just inside the foul poles. Joe Coleman and Spaceman Lee got their second wins, but Pat Dobson had the bad luck to face Bruce Kison, who utterly crushes righties, in our sole loss of the week. So we’re 7-7, tied with Pete’s Brewers for third behind the Twins and Royals, and traveling to Cincinnati (8-6) for a three-game series on Tuesday.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

4-1. We’ll take it.

FMJRA 2.0: Giant Killers
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Rule 5 Sunday: Smoke Break
Animal Magnetism
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum


In The Mailbox: 01.06.25
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 01.07.25
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Vindicated: Britain’s ‘Grooming Gangs’ Finally Get the Attention They Deserve
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 01.08.25
Daybreak Bulletin
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

His Ex-Girlfriend Was Driving the Bus
EBL

In The Mailbox: 01.09.25
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 01.10.25
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum

Top linkers for the week ending January 10:

  1.  EBL (9)
  2.  (tied) 357 Magnum and A View From The Beach

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

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Category: FMJRA Award

The Fake Priesthood of ‘Misinformation’

Posted on | January 12, 2025 | 2 Comments

We shall explore the buffoonery of Jeff Hancock, of whom Professor Glenn Reynolds has said, “Honestly, that he calls himself a ‘misinformation expert’ proves that he is a charlatan already.”

Before we get into the details of Hackock’s blunder, however, I first wish to point out that our beloved hero and role model, Ace of Spades, has for months been styling himself “Misinformation Expert Ace,” the point being that he’s just as much an “expert” as any of the academics sucking up federal grant money and 501(c)3 cash for their alleged “expertise” in this entirely bogus field. “Misinformation studies” sprang into existence — a la Athena emerging from the head of Zeus — after Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Democrats blamed this event on Russian “meddling” in the election. Supposedly, a handful of Internet trolls operating in the Balkans had flipped the 2016 election by publishing “fake news” clickbait. Any sophomore student of logic could have found the flaw in this absurd claim — how is X the cause of Y? It might be true, on the one hand, that these Macedonian “misinformation” farms were somehow part of a Russian intelligence operation, but where is the evidence that even one American voter was influenced by these “fake news” stories? Yet it was on the basis of such unproven causality that there emerged an apparently lucrative industry employing self-anointed “misinformation experts,” an industry that subsequently proclaimed itself qualified to determine the truth of claims surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. “Misinformation experts” were closely allied with the “fact checkers” who were paid to direct Facebook’s suppression of inconvenient news about, e.g., the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“Misinformation studies” is a cult religion, of whom “experts” are the priesthood. The existence and purpose of the quasi-religious witch hunt against “misinformation” is entirely political, having originated in the post-2016 effort to prevent the reelection of Donald Trump.

Now, via Wikipedia, this thumbnail biography:

Jeffrey T. Hancock is a communication and psychology researcher and professor at the College of Communication Stanford University. Hancock is best known for his research in fields of deception, trust in technology, and the psychology of social media. Hancock has been published in over 80 journal articles and cited in National Public Radio (NPR) and CBS This Morning.
Hancock was born in Canada, though he currently resides in Palo Alto, California. He received his bachelor’s degree of Applied Science in Psychology from the University of Victoria in 1996. . . . In 1997, he began his doctoral program in Psychology at Dalhousie University in Canada, from which he would graduate in 2002. From 2002 to 2015, Hancock was a faculty member and professor of Information Science and Communication at Cornell University.

The man is a psychology major. You know who else has a Ph.D. in psychology? Deb Frisch. “Your honor, I rest my case.”

“Argument from authority,” as we sophomore logic students were once taught to call the fallacy of relying on the prestige of a source as evidence of the truth for any assertion. The fact that Jeff Hanckcock has a Ph.D. and has been associated with elite univerities (Cornell and Stanford) is insufficient to prove that we can trust every word he utters.

Professor Hancock’s expertise was solicited in defense of a 2023 Minnesota law “to criminalize the use of deep-fake technologies to influence elections.” Christopher Kohls is an online content creator known as “Mr. Reagan,” who had used artificial intelligence (AI) technology to create parody videos about Kamala Harris. At least one of these videos was shared by Minnesota Republican state legislator Mary Franson. When one of Kohl’s parody videos got retweeted by Elon Musk and went viral, it was denounced by prominent Democrats, including Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. Subsequently, Kohls and Franson filed for a preliminary injunction on First Amendment grounds to prevent the use of Minnesota’s “deep fake” law against themselves. Professor Hancock was then enlisted as an expert witness by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and submitted a brief with the federal court under penalty of perjury — a phrase that the judge made a point of emphasizing in his ruling that disqualified Hancock’s testimony:

With his responsive memorandum in opposition to Plaintiffs’ preliminary-injunction motion, Attorney General Ellison submitted two expert declarations … [including one] from Jeff Hancock, Professor of Communication at Stanford University and Director of the Stanford Social Media Lab. The declarations generally offer background about artificial intelligence (“AI”), deepfakes, and the dangers of deepfakes to free speech and democracy….
Attorney General Ellison concedes that Professor Hancock included citations to two non-existent academic articles and incorrectly cited the authors of a third article. Professor Hancock admits that he used GPT-4o to assist him in drafting his declaration but, in reviewing the declaration, failed to discern that GPT-4o generated fake citations to academic articles.
The irony. Professor Hancock, a credentialed expert on the dangers of AI and misinformation, has fallen victim to the siren call of relying too heavily on AI—in a case that revolves around the dangers of AI, no less. Professor Hancock offers a detailed explanation of his drafting process to explain precisely how and why these AI-hallucinated citations in his declaration came to be. And he assures the Court that he stands by the substantive propositions in his declaration, even those that are supported by fake citations. But, at the end of the day, even if the errors were an innocent mistake, and even if the propositions are substantively accurate, the fact remains that Professor Hancock submitted a declaration made under penalty of perjury with fake citations. . . .

You can read the whole thing. “The irony,” indeed. Permit me to add a personal anecdote: One of my sons is a law student who has worked as an intern/clerk and, as part of his job, was able to detect fake citations in a brief, which were the result of someone else relying on AI research the same way Professor Hancock did. If my 20-something son is more capable of finding AI fakery than this Ph.D. “expert”?

Yeah, your credentials are bullshit, Professor Hancock.



 

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