MyPillow’s Mike Lindell Lost $5M Pillow Fight & AI Is Set to Influence 2024 Elections While Also Making Our TV Shows Without Writers or Actors
Texas School District Wants to Replace "The Laramie Project" with "Mary Poppins," Ending of "True Detective" Gets Frostbite, Oscar Isaac sings “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me”
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: Sometimes our deepest hurt is also our most effective cure.
Federal judge affirms MyPillow’s Mike Lindell must pay $5M in election data dispute: Lindell wagered $5 million that no one would disprove his lies about the election being stolen. Then someone did.
‘Disinformation on steroids’: Is the US prepared for AI’s influence on the election?: This is how democracy will end, not with a bang but a text.
TV soaps could be made by AI within three years, director warns: If we let this happen we deserve the results. You can’t deep-fry cardboard and call it a steak.
Texas School District Axes ‘The Laramie Project,’ Play About Hate-Crime Victim Matthew Shepard: What exactly is the board afraid the audience will see? Are they afraid the play will make them more compassionate?
Kareem’s Petty Media Gripes: The Ending of True Detective: Night Country Is Lazy: I loved the series, but am disappointed that the season’s creator chose to be ambiguous about important plot points. That’s just lazy and insulting.
Oscar Isaac sings “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me”: This song from the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis shows why Oscar Isaac can do anything.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
That kind of hurt has to eat.
S.A. Cosby, All the Sinners Bleed
While I was reading Cosby’s intensely suspenseful and poetic mystery novel, All the Sinners Bleed, this line appeared and I paused to fully absorb it. Many of us know instinctively what that means: When you suffer a hurt so deep it feels carved into your bones with a dull knife. The rest of your life is viewed through the distorted lens of that hurt. Usually, that hurt is a betrayal from someone we trusted and loved—a parent, a sibling, a friend, or a lover. That hurt is so profound that we feel like some essential part of ourselves was ripped out and we spend the rest of our lives trying to fill that empty space.
There’s a famous Cherokee parable about two wolves:
A grandfather is talking with his grandson. The grandfather says, “In life, there are two wolves inside of us which are always at battle. One is a good wolf which represents things like kindness, bravery, and love. The other is a bad wolf which represents things like greed, hatred, and fear.”
The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second then he looks up at his grandfather and says, “Grandfather, which one wins?”
The grandfather replies, “The one you feed.”
Some pains gnaw on us throughout our lives. Not all are caused by others against us, but caused by us against others. I don’t think we should try to eradicate the beast that lives within us, but we must learn to tame it so it is more of a cautionary reminder than a snapping predator. We need to remember the hurts to avoid becoming victims of them or inflicting them on others.
What we don’t want to do is fetishize or romanticize them, which is feeding them, to excuse ourselves from constantly making the same mistakes, the way Mary does in Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”:
You can hide 'neath your covers and study your pain
Make crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain
Waste your summer praying in vain for a savior to rise from these streets
Mary’s disillusionment left her hiding from the world, turning her pain into a single-person cult, and waiting for someone else to save her, which the song makes clear only makes it worse. We have to save ourselves.
I’m not suggesting this is the kind of soul-searing pain you can “walk off” or that it’s just a matter of “pulling yourself up by the bootstraps.” Deep-rooted pain is insidious and more often than not requires the help of others to recognize and to tame. That means sharing without making your pain your most important characteristic.
We all have “the kind of pain that has to eat.” That’s why we understand it in others and want to help. It may have to eat, but we don’t have to let it consume us. After all, we have teeth, too.
‘Disinformation on steroids’: is the US prepared for AI’s influence on the election? (The Guardian)
SUMMARY: Already this year, a robocall generated using artificial intelligence targeted New Hampshire voters in the January primary, purporting to be President Joe Biden and telling them to stay home in what officials said could be the first attempt at using AI to interfere with a US election. The “deepfake” calls were linked to two Texas companies, Life Corporation and Lingo Telecom.
It’s not clear if the deepfake calls actually prevented voters from turning out, but that doesn’t really matter, said Lisa Gilbert, executive vice-president of Public Citizen, a group that’s been pushing for federal and state regulation of AI’s use in politics.
“I don’t think we need to wait to see how many people got deceived to understand that that was the point,” Gilbert said.
Examples of what could be ahead for the US are happening all over the world. In Slovakia, fake audio recordings may have swayed an election in what serves as a “frightening harbinger of the sort of interference the United States will likely experience during the 2024 presidential election”, CNN reported. In Indonesia, an AI-generated avatar of a military commander helped rebrand the country’s defense minister as a “chubby-cheeked” man who “makes Korean-style finger hearts and cradles his beloved cat, Bobby, to the delight of Gen Z voters”, Reuters reported. In India, AI versions of dead politicians have been brought back to compliment elected officials, according to Al Jazeera.
But US regulations aren’t ready for the boom in fast-paced AI technology and how it could influence voters. Soon after the fake call in New Hampshire, the Federal Communications Commission announced a ban on robocalls that use AI audio. The FEC has yet to put rules in place to govern the use of AI in political ads, though states are moving quickly to fill the gap in regulation.
MY TAKE: It might be easy for many readers to shrug off this threat as much ado about nothing because they believe they would never be so gullible as to fall for that kind of hokum. But as robocalls become more and more sophisticated, falling prey to some sort of scam seems inevitable. In 2022, about 70 million Americans lost $40 billion from telephone scams, including those that begin with a simple text that you innocently click. In 2024, celebrities like Robert De Niro, Elton John, and Billy Joel lost tens of millions of dollars to scammers. That’s how easy it is.
If people are that vulnerable when it comes to their own money, imagine how much easier it is to scam them during an election. Democracy requires some work: Reading news articles, examining opposing opinions, and fact-checking. That’s probably the most patriotic thing a person could do. But we’re lazy. It’s easier to declare our patriotism with an American flag on our beer cooler.
This is nothing less than an invasion of our sovereignty that can be launched from anywhere, foreign and domestic, and can severely damage the foundation of our country: our elections. We need strict laws, and trained experts dedicated to finding the culprits and prosecuting them. We need to be relentless. There’s too much at stake not to be.
RELATED: TV soaps could be made by AI within three years, director warns (The Guardian)
SUMMARY: Television soaps could potentially be created by AI within the next three to five years, according to a leading director. James sovereignty, vice-chairman of Directors UK and director of the Apple TV+ Gary Oldman spy drama Slow Horses, told parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport committee inquiry into British film and high-end television that digitally made scripts will soon be upon us – particularly for soaps.
…Hawes believes AI will create the scripts and the footage, potentially removing the need for writers and actors. To explain the latter, he referred to Sora, the OpenAI tool that instantly creates video which was launched last week.
MY TAKE: AI is a terrific tool for the sciences and the arts, allowing scientists to better pursue their research and artists to make their visions a reality. But when we use AI to completely create our art, no matter how charming it may seem, we’re missing out on much of the point of art. The poem, novel, script, or painting is the product of human exertion. A person experiences something and then translates those thoughts and feelings about that experience into something they had to put effort into. That process is as valuable as the finished product. Having AI write, direct, and manufacture actors is like watching Citizen Kane performed by mimes.
Sure, there’s plenty of fast-food art—not everything has to be cooked by a Michelin chef. We can nail that art up on motel walls and call it a day. But the danger is that this kind of conveyor belt art, which is based on imitating others’ creations, will be so fiscally attractive that it will soon consume all levels of art and we will be left with nothing but photocopies of photocopies of photocopies of art. Ghost images of what was once our deepest expressions. This will lower the joy we get from art because it will all be vaguely similar. Experiencing it will be like watching a sitcom while heavily sedated.
Texas School District Axes ‘The Laramie Project,’ Play About Hate-Crime Victim Matthew Shepard (The Daily Beast)
SUMMARY: A Texas school district has cancelled a planned production of The Laramie Project, a play about the reaction to the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, who was viciously killed because he was gay. The Dallas Morning News reports that Timber Creek High School parents were not given an explanation when they were informed the show would not happen this spring. “We understand that it is unusual for a production change like this to take place. Students will still have an opportunity to read, discuss, and analyze the play during the school day,” the email read. However, the paper pointed out that Keller Independent School District, which includes Timber Creek, has adopted policies barring teachers from using transgender students’ preferred pronouns and banning books that mention gender fluidity. A spokesman for the district said The Laramie Project will likely be replaced by a show along the lines of Mary Poppins or White Christmas. Shepard’s mother, Judy, told the Morning News she was disappointed. “My heart is broken when people still refuse to see how important this work is,” she said.
MY TAKE: Some lessons are never learned. When I was in high school, school districts forbade plays that they thought were too political or risqué for innocent high schoolers. Remember, this was at a time when 18-year-olds were being drafted or enlisting to go to Vietnam. They could die for their country but they couldn’t vote or see mature plays.
Today, high school seniors who are 18 can vote in elections but must be shielded from knowing that some mindless homophobes in their early twenties beat 21-year-old Matthew Shepard to death because he was gay. I realize that high schoolers aren’t all 18, but they are certainly of an age where we expect them to behave with a certain responsibility. Yet, we insult them by treating them like helpless children. Perhaps if high schoolers were exposed to more stories like this, there would be fewer attacks on the LGBTQ+ community.
J.D. Salinger’s coming-of-age novel The Catcher in the Rye has been banned in various schools since it was first published in 1951. One reason often given is it contains obscene words. Ironically, in the novel, Holden Caulfield is furiously trying to erase these obscene words when he finds them to protect kids’ innocence. Another reason given is that Holden suffers from depression. Unfortunately, teenage mental health issues have increased sharply over the years, with 15% of those aged 12-17 suffering from at least one major depressive episode in the last year. In addition, 10.6% in the same age range (over 2.5 million) cope with severe major depression. This is an example of parents banning works they don’t understand because they are not properly educated. They are like anti-vaxxers prohibiting the medicine that might save their children’s lives.
Teaching high schoolers about life is not about showing them Mary Poppins and White Christmas, which they can get at home. It’s about exposing them to the kinds of information, behavior, and insights they should expect from their education. Sadly, this school district is among those that follow nineteenth-century educator Elizabeth Missing Sewell’s belief that “Obedience is the primary object of all sound education.” I believe the primary object is to gather the skills to think for oneself.
By the way, at the end of The Catcher in the Rye, Holden watches his little sister Phoebe on a carousel precariously reaching to grab for a ring. He suddenly abandons his Quixotic quest to protect all children from losing their innocence because he realizes it’s harmful to them:
All the kids kept trying to grab for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she’d fall off the goddam horse, but I didn’t say anything or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it’s bad if you say anything to them.
When did trying to keep our children less educated become a good thing?
Kareem’s Video Break
So this is what it’s like to run with unbound energy and enthusiasm. I may not be able to do it anymore, but this brings back fond memories of when I could. I can still appreciate this little pup’s joy.
Federal judge affirms MyPillow’s Mike Lindell must pay $5M in election data dispute (AP News)
SUMMARY: A federal judge on Wednesday affirmed a $5 million arbitration award against MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell in favor of a software engineer who challenged data that Lindell said proves China interfered in the 2020 U.S. presidential election and tipped the outcome to Joe Biden.
Lindell said he plans to appeal. Asked if he can afford to pay, he pointed out that the breach-of-contract lawsuit was against one of his companies, Lindell Management LLC, and not against him personally.
“Of course we’re going to appeal it. This guy doesn’t have a dime coming,” Lindell said.
Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the 2020 election, launched his “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge,” as part of a “Cyber Symposium” he hosted in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in August 2021. Lindell offered a $5 million reward through Lindell Management for anyone who could prove that “packet captures” and other data he released there were not valid data “from the November 2020 election.”
MY TAKE: This might seem like a story of having some fun at Lindell’s expense. After all, he challenged someone to prove his lies were lies—and they did. So, yeah, I’m enjoying watching him squirm because he deserves it. Turns out he’s just another rich White guy who mistakenly thinks that making millions also makes him smart about politics. Remember, he did try to destroy democracy by undermining our elections. And he’s still at it!
However, there’s more going on here. This is a story of triumph and tragedy. The triumph is that reason and evidence won a victory over bombast, money, and lies. That’s great because our record of beating those things hasn’t been great lately.
The tragedy is that Lindell’s defeat will not affect on those still claiming the election was stolen because no amount of evidence will change their minds. Go ahead and ask any one of the one-third of Americans (over 100 million people) who, according to a Monmouth poll, believe President Biden won only due to voter fraud. Two-thirds of Republicans agree he won by fraud. The most shocking fact is that the poll numbers hardly changed between 2020 and 2023, despite the avalanche of evidence proving there was no fraud and absolutely no evidence proving there was. Every bit of “proof” cited by Trump and his minions has been disproven, much of it by Republicans. Yet, here we are.
We can’t get discouraged and give up on shaming these people, both in the media and in courtrooms. That is how you defend the integrity of democracy.
Kareem’s Petty Media Gripes
The Ending of True Detective: Night Country Is Lazy
A few weeks ago, I gave a resounding recommendation to Max’s True Detective: Night Country, the latest installment of the series. I stand steadfastly by that recommendation. I’ve liked all seasons of the series, even the second season. But this season is the most suspenseful of all. What it lacks in the intellectual posturing (which I happen to enjoy) of the first few seasons, it makes up for in bold characters and an intriguing mystery. But the last episode makes a classic blunder that is amateurish. It refuses to explain some of the plot points.
Fiction is basically a series of promises and payoffs. The writer creates a suspenseful question with the implication that they will later reveal the answer in a pay-off scene. A dead body in a mystery is a promise; the denouement revealing the killer’s identity is the payoff. While most of the promises this season are paid off, some are not (I won’t spoil the ending by revealing which aren’t).
There are exceptions to this rule. This year’s Anatomy of a Fall, which is nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, [spoiler alert about the ending of the movie] has a body at the beginning, but doesn’t resolve the cause of death. That’s because the real death the movie is investigating is the death of the marriage—the husband’s death is incidental to that.
What bothers me about True Detective is the deliberate ambiguity that the show’s creator Issa López thinks makes the series elevated: “One thing that we hear Danvers say in Episode 5 is, ‘You need to know when to stop asking questions.’ That’s one line — the other one is, ‘Not every question has an answer.’ So there’s things that will be up for our audience to decide on themselves. And that was very important to me too.” That is the kind of lame justification you see in a freshman creative writing class. I want to see the artist’s vision and then decide whether or not I like that vision. To not provide definitive answers is lazy writing masquerading as being profound.
For example, in the final scene (this isn’t a spoiler), Navarro and Danvers appear to be together on a porch. It’s unclear whether they are physically there or if it’s Danvers projecting. Making it clear is crucial to understanding where the characters are as a result of their adventure together. Giving options abdicates responsibility for having a point of view and taking responsibility for the consequences of that. When an artist says it can be whatever you want it to be, that artist has no insights to offer, no depth of thought.
Despite this minor letdown, it’s still one of the best series of the year and I would highly recommend it.
Kareem’s Jukebox Playlist
Oscar Isaac: “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me”
There’s a wonderful sub-genre of music about criminals and their sad fates: The Kingston Trio’s “Tom Dooley,” Sam Cooke’s “Chain Gang,” Frankie Laine’s “Wanted Man,” and Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” Add to it “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” from the Coen brothers’ 2013 movie Inside Llewyn Davis about a fictional folk singer in 1961 trying to build a successful career.
“Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” is an old folk song that goes back to the 1930s and has been knocking around the blues and folk worlds ever since. It was popularized by folk singer Dave Van Ronk, upon whose life Inside Llewyn Davis was loosely based. Listen to his version here.) What I like about Isaac’s interpretation is the commitment to the character telling his story. He captures the narrator’s despair but also the self-loathing and self-justification. I ended up humming this song for days after first hearing it. You will, too. Sorry…and you’re welcome.
Daytime soap opera as art?? it's already artificial and I wouldn't presume to call the writing intelligent.
I think the ending to True Detective makes more sense if you think of it as a horror story rather than a mystery. Lots of haunting!