In December 2024, Mario Voigt became Minister President of Thüringen, sworn in at the head of a political monstrosity known as the blackberry coalition.
It really is the way these people have total cognitive dissonance about culture. They say one thing and then do the opposite - or in this case let AI do it for them...
And it's perfectly fine to write about how the Catalonians protest against foreigners buying up their apartments, and how the Catalonians want to preserve their distinctive identity.
And here is the New York Times on more Asians marrying within their race: "and she is delighted by how COMPLETELY RIGHT it feels". Any reporter who wrote this way about Whites for marrying each other would get fired.
WHEN she was a philosophy student at Harvard College eight years ago, Liane Young never thought twice about all the interracial couples who flitted across campus, arm and arm, hand in hand. Most of her Asian friends had white boyfriends or girlfriends. [False; most of the Asian women had white partners, not most of the Asian men.] In her social circles, it was simply the way of the world.
But today, the majority of Ms. Young’s Asian-American friends on Facebook have Asian-American husbands or wives. And Ms. Young, a Boston-born granddaughter of Chinese immigrants, is married to a Harvard medical student who loves skiing and the Pittsburgh Steelers and just happens to have been born in Fujian Province in China.
Ms. Young said she hadn’t been searching for a boyfriend with an Asian background. They met by chance at a nightclub in Boston, and she is delighted by how completely right it feels. They have taken lessons together in Cantonese (which she speaks) and Mandarin (which he speaks), and they hope to pass along those languages when they have children someday.
“We want Chinese culture to be a part of our lives and our kids’ lives,” said Ms. Young, 29, an assistant professor of psychology at Boston College who married Xin Gao, 27, last year. “It’s another part of our marriage that we’re excited to tackle together.”
Interracial marriage rates are at an all-time high in the United States, with the percentage of couples exchanging vows across the color line more than doubling over the last 30 years. But Asian-Americans are bucking that trend, increasingly choosing their soul mates from among their own expanding community.
By "anchor", he means something annoying catching on the bottom and dragging and stopping his garbage barge from crashing into civilization and destroying it.
Tolerance of plagiarism has come a long way. I remember back around 1987, Joe Biden was exposed as a serious plagiarist when he was in law school, 20 years earlier. He withdrew from the presidential race, and I was sure we would never hear from this miscreant again. How dumb was I? He was elected to the Senate just a few years later. All was forgotten or forgiven. Today, nobody cares at all about the deep dishonesty that plagiarism reveals.
I keep wondering how much longer AI can keep operating given the clear violation of "intellectual copyrights". Hollywood is beginning to react, starting with imagery, but sooner or later, text will come under closer scrutiny. I hope!
You've hit the nail on the head. Your analysis is brutal and insane. We are already at the point where 50% of output is AI thus AI is self-plagiarising. Whether this results in a fossilization of the language and argument we await with bated breath. It's brutal. It's insane. And it is.
QUOTE: ... how much longer [can] AI keep operating given the clear violation of [copyrights].
The answer is simple - "indefinitely."
Federal appellate courts will be instructed [yes] to hold that the causal nexus between obviously cribbed AI output following the voracious, industrial-scale gobbling up of obviously related copyright works is too VAGUE AND ATTENUATED to constitute actionable copyright infringement.
The appellate courts will hold that such situations are not capable of supporting claims for copyright infringement "AS A MATTER OF LAW." This phrase is legalese meaning "don't even bother looking at the facts, we [i.e. the higher courts] have concocted this convenient rule, so we will NEVER hold defendants liable for copyright infringement in AI scenarios. Any lower court judge holding otherwise can kiss her/its/[preferred pronoun] career goodbye."
P.S.: "Copyright works" is correct, the older U.S. term "copyrighted works" reflects an outdated system under U.S. law where works had to be "copyrighted" by registration to enjoy any legal protection.
QUOTE: [Joe Bidet] giving the exact same speech as that Irish politician…exact speech “ I was the first to go to college ..."
Celtic background, but closer to the Home Counties: the original speech was by UK politician Neil Kinnock, aka the Welsh Windbag, aka as Kinnocchio, more recently elevated to the peerage as Baron Kinnock of Bedwellty.
Kinnock's son Stephen Kinnock, while apparently residing mostly in the Papal States, is married to former Danish prime minister[ess] Helle Thorning-Schmidt. Our modern socialist nobility understands the value of continent-spanning marriage alliances.
The elephant in the room of politicians being given a pass for plagiarism is dwarfed by the T-Rex effect of plagiarizers being given leadership roles in academic institutions -- all the way up to Harvard.
Another masterpiece, both hilarious and horrifying. Such is modern life.
I really don't understand these coalition governments. I used to think the US should move to a parliamentary form, but now I'm re-thinking this!
Been reading Aristotle, about the founding of democracy, and what strikes me is that humanity has not changed in 2000 years. We have the same kinds of political scandals, corruption, grandstanding. Perhaps there is no hope for clarity, we will just keep muddling along in our human way.
One of the most interesting parts was the support for native German music. Isn't this against everything that party stands for? Diversity is the highest good! The local and individual is evil! Careful going down that road, it can lead to actual pride in your nation and your culture.
In Britain the system of government is infinitely malleable, as we have seen since the Blair years. What is being discussed here is a change to the electoral system. By changing from a first past the post system to some sort of proportional system, the old elites hope they can hang on to a few seats in Parliament and deny Reform a majority.
No doubt if they achieve that the old parties would form a meaningless coalition of the sort you have described in Germany. The added advantage of a PR system to the old elites is they can make sure who is at the top of their lists: themselves and their political mates.
Also being discussed here by Reform and adjacent researchers and thinkers is how to change the government system. The current thinking is to drastically reduce the size of the Cabinet to something like the size of a big public company, appoint COOs and CEOs in major policy areas perhaps not congruent with traditional departmental structures. These people would be accountable through ministers to parliament, would be paid well with a significant success bonus.
Remaining to be resolved (IMHO) is how to pass any legislation here with the House of Lords, judiciary,. quangos and media all on one side against Reform.
The key is to understand that any acceptance of leftism at all, even a little bit, even just accepting that it's reasonable for it to exist, ends with you becoming a far left totalitarian extremist. There are no true moderates, just people more or less down that path.
The reason is that the underlying belief systems of leftism have no limiting factors. If you accept the left wing premises about anything you must eventually accept their premises for everything.
For example, leftists say immigration restrictions are at least sometimes driven by racism, and racism is morally wrong. If you accept both premises then you must eventually become an open borders extremist. You don't have any intellectual tools to push back, because otherwise you'd end up supporting something morally wrong.
This turns any political movement or party that isn't strongly right wing into grey goo. They might have once had distinct identities but because they accepted some leftist premises decades ago, the intervening time has pushed them all into an identical corner. All parties end up looking identical and so they find it reasonable to create these nonsensical coalitions designed only to stop the right. Because there's nothing else left in their minds beyond hatred for anyone who isn't as far left as themselves.
The only thing that stops this process is a principled rejection of left wing premises.
Yes. I look at it more broadly, I think, as a problem of any totalitarian system. That's how they work, you accept any part of the ideology, you end up having to accept all of it, that's Totalism. It's clearly some form of group-think, and can come from any part of the political spectrum. When you lose respect for the individual, for different ideas, for anything that doesn't align exactly with your beliefs...it goes bad, very bad. Currently, Western countries are facing the ugly authoritarianism of the Left, the Leftist form of fascism.
All forms of government love the Chinese Social Credit System model. That's what they all seek: complete control of the citizens. This is something I can acknowledge, but I don't relate to it or really understand the appeal. May be why I'm not a politician! For me, it's totalism that must be fought, whatever style it appears in at the moment.
I’d like to comment, but I forgot to pay for this month social media license. But if I were to comment, I would only say that more German music should be promoted—such as that of the great David Hasselhoff, the inimitable Grace Jones, and of course, the immortal Die Beatles
Guy sounds like a real shitheel. Hopefully the videos of him being sodomized by a Great Dane that I heard rumors about find their way to the public soon. Well, and of course, that the public is actually put off by them, rather than impressed.
At least leftist female voters in Germany don't get all fluttery and swoony over roughneck candidates with prominent Totenkopf tattoos -- at least not where others might notice.
This post sounds like the plot of some fictional parody (but I live in Germany, so I know it is actually happening), and it is hard to believe that this situation is what has come to be accepted and condoned in Germany. All for a good cause! More like a glimpse of a country descending into a madhouse.
I live in Canada, we have plenty of problems, but it seems to me, after reading your columns, that Germany has the most obtuse brain-dead politicians in the entire galaxy. I found this article hilarious and I laughed several times when reading it. Thanks for all the entertainment.
Oh I would have loved to have seen Justin contest one last election just for our most succesfull political party to be wiped off the map in one night. It would have been glorious.
I get annoyed every time someone references thrilling deathless speeches by JFK or Reagan as though they were the souls of these miserable guys elevated to the highest sphere of eternal truth, or something.
Voigt must be the purest--avatar?--of nonentity yet.
Advertising has long gotten us used to a discourse that works better when it does not pretend to be true. And for some time, even political consent has been given without the presence of actual conviction—the assumption being that truth is not at stake in electoral speeches. -- Giorgio Agamben
What I find especially funny is that the arguments for German music and culture are the exact opposite of the arguments for massive immigration.
'structures that favour the global and cause the local to fade into the background'
'the need for a sense of direction is growing. For something that endures. Our language is such an anchor. Our culture is such an anchor.'
I thought local culture was evil? This attitude is especially visible in the UK.
Well spotted. The same when talking about invasive species. Talk about cognitive dissonance
Can't have cognitive dissonance without cognition.
It really is the way these people have total cognitive dissonance about culture. They say one thing and then do the opposite - or in this case let AI do it for them...
And it's perfectly fine to write about how the Catalonians protest against foreigners buying up their apartments, and how the Catalonians want to preserve their distinctive identity.
And here is the New York Times on more Asians marrying within their race: "and she is delighted by how COMPLETELY RIGHT it feels". Any reporter who wrote this way about Whites for marrying each other would get fired.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/fashion/more-asian-americans-marrying-within-their-race.html
WHEN she was a philosophy student at Harvard College eight years ago, Liane Young never thought twice about all the interracial couples who flitted across campus, arm and arm, hand in hand. Most of her Asian friends had white boyfriends or girlfriends. [False; most of the Asian women had white partners, not most of the Asian men.] In her social circles, it was simply the way of the world.
But today, the majority of Ms. Young’s Asian-American friends on Facebook have Asian-American husbands or wives. And Ms. Young, a Boston-born granddaughter of Chinese immigrants, is married to a Harvard medical student who loves skiing and the Pittsburgh Steelers and just happens to have been born in Fujian Province in China.
Ms. Young said she hadn’t been searching for a boyfriend with an Asian background. They met by chance at a nightclub in Boston, and she is delighted by how completely right it feels. They have taken lessons together in Cantonese (which she speaks) and Mandarin (which he speaks), and they hope to pass along those languages when they have children someday.
“We want Chinese culture to be a part of our lives and our kids’ lives,” said Ms. Young, 29, an assistant professor of psychology at Boston College who married Xin Gao, 27, last year. “It’s another part of our marriage that we’re excited to tackle together.”
Interracial marriage rates are at an all-time high in the United States, with the percentage of couples exchanging vows across the color line more than doubling over the last 30 years. But Asian-Americans are bucking that trend, increasingly choosing their soul mates from among their own expanding community.
Was thinking the same thing!!
By "anchor", he means something annoying catching on the bottom and dragging and stopping his garbage barge from crashing into civilization and destroying it.
It makes sense if you assume they want more migrants rapping (raping).
What’s more multikukti than funding AbdulXXX to bastardise the language and airwaves?
Tolerance of plagiarism has come a long way. I remember back around 1987, Joe Biden was exposed as a serious plagiarist when he was in law school, 20 years earlier. He withdrew from the presidential race, and I was sure we would never hear from this miscreant again. How dumb was I? He was elected to the Senate just a few years later. All was forgotten or forgiven. Today, nobody cares at all about the deep dishonesty that plagiarism reveals.
I keep wondering how much longer AI can keep operating given the clear violation of "intellectual copyrights". Hollywood is beginning to react, starting with imagery, but sooner or later, text will come under closer scrutiny. I hope!
You've hit the nail on the head. Your analysis is brutal and insane. We are already at the point where 50% of output is AI thus AI is self-plagiarising. Whether this results in a fossilization of the language and argument we await with bated breath. It's brutal. It's insane. And it is.
Or maybe it's the end of copyrights? Maybe we need new ways to protect intellectual property.
Jousting seems like it should make a comeback.
I know you're joking, but personal duels over honor would fix at least half of the problems in politics
QUOTE: ... how much longer [can] AI keep operating given the clear violation of [copyrights].
The answer is simple - "indefinitely."
Federal appellate courts will be instructed [yes] to hold that the causal nexus between obviously cribbed AI output following the voracious, industrial-scale gobbling up of obviously related copyright works is too VAGUE AND ATTENUATED to constitute actionable copyright infringement.
The appellate courts will hold that such situations are not capable of supporting claims for copyright infringement "AS A MATTER OF LAW." This phrase is legalese meaning "don't even bother looking at the facts, we [i.e. the higher courts] have concocted this convenient rule, so we will NEVER hold defendants liable for copyright infringement in AI scenarios. Any lower court judge holding otherwise can kiss her/its/[preferred pronoun] career goodbye."
P.S.: "Copyright works" is correct, the older U.S. term "copyrighted works" reflects an outdated system under U.S. law where works had to be "copyrighted" by registration to enjoy any legal protection.
There was nothing more egregious that giving the exact same speech as that Irish politician…exact speech “ I was the first to go to college
For Christ Sake …There was video of the other guy .
My best guess is Biden had an 85 IQ ..certainly no higher
QUOTE: [Joe Bidet] giving the exact same speech as that Irish politician…exact speech “ I was the first to go to college ..."
Celtic background, but closer to the Home Counties: the original speech was by UK politician Neil Kinnock, aka the Welsh Windbag, aka as Kinnocchio, more recently elevated to the peerage as Baron Kinnock of Bedwellty.
Kinnock's son Stephen Kinnock, while apparently residing mostly in the Papal States, is married to former Danish prime minister[ess] Helle Thorning-Schmidt. Our modern socialist nobility understands the value of continent-spanning marriage alliances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2FKh8MsmrE
During his presidency? Well, I don't know how the demented old do on IQ tests. But when he was decades younger, he certainly was solidly above 120:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0SbEn94LOQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgqliJmxxRU
The elephant in the room of politicians being given a pass for plagiarism is dwarfed by the T-Rex effect of plagiarizers being given leadership roles in academic institutions -- all the way up to Harvard.
Another masterpiece, both hilarious and horrifying. Such is modern life.
I really don't understand these coalition governments. I used to think the US should move to a parliamentary form, but now I'm re-thinking this!
Been reading Aristotle, about the founding of democracy, and what strikes me is that humanity has not changed in 2000 years. We have the same kinds of political scandals, corruption, grandstanding. Perhaps there is no hope for clarity, we will just keep muddling along in our human way.
One of the most interesting parts was the support for native German music. Isn't this against everything that party stands for? Diversity is the highest good! The local and individual is evil! Careful going down that road, it can lead to actual pride in your nation and your culture.
'I really don't understand these coalition governments. I used to think the US should move to a parliamentary form, but now I'm re-thinking this!'
Same here.
I think any system of government will end up being gamed for someone's profit. It's human nature.
In Britain the system of government is infinitely malleable, as we have seen since the Blair years. What is being discussed here is a change to the electoral system. By changing from a first past the post system to some sort of proportional system, the old elites hope they can hang on to a few seats in Parliament and deny Reform a majority.
No doubt if they achieve that the old parties would form a meaningless coalition of the sort you have described in Germany. The added advantage of a PR system to the old elites is they can make sure who is at the top of their lists: themselves and their political mates.
Also being discussed here by Reform and adjacent researchers and thinkers is how to change the government system. The current thinking is to drastically reduce the size of the Cabinet to something like the size of a big public company, appoint COOs and CEOs in major policy areas perhaps not congruent with traditional departmental structures. These people would be accountable through ministers to parliament, would be paid well with a significant success bonus.
Remaining to be resolved (IMHO) is how to pass any legislation here with the House of Lords, judiciary,. quangos and media all on one side against Reform.
It's not that hard to understand, I think.
The key is to understand that any acceptance of leftism at all, even a little bit, even just accepting that it's reasonable for it to exist, ends with you becoming a far left totalitarian extremist. There are no true moderates, just people more or less down that path.
The reason is that the underlying belief systems of leftism have no limiting factors. If you accept the left wing premises about anything you must eventually accept their premises for everything.
For example, leftists say immigration restrictions are at least sometimes driven by racism, and racism is morally wrong. If you accept both premises then you must eventually become an open borders extremist. You don't have any intellectual tools to push back, because otherwise you'd end up supporting something morally wrong.
This turns any political movement or party that isn't strongly right wing into grey goo. They might have once had distinct identities but because they accepted some leftist premises decades ago, the intervening time has pushed them all into an identical corner. All parties end up looking identical and so they find it reasonable to create these nonsensical coalitions designed only to stop the right. Because there's nothing else left in their minds beyond hatred for anyone who isn't as far left as themselves.
The only thing that stops this process is a principled rejection of left wing premises.
Yes. I look at it more broadly, I think, as a problem of any totalitarian system. That's how they work, you accept any part of the ideology, you end up having to accept all of it, that's Totalism. It's clearly some form of group-think, and can come from any part of the political spectrum. When you lose respect for the individual, for different ideas, for anything that doesn't align exactly with your beliefs...it goes bad, very bad. Currently, Western countries are facing the ugly authoritarianism of the Left, the Leftist form of fascism.
All forms of government love the Chinese Social Credit System model. That's what they all seek: complete control of the citizens. This is something I can acknowledge, but I don't relate to it or really understand the appeal. May be why I'm not a politician! For me, it's totalism that must be fought, whatever style it appears in at the moment.
There's nothing new under the sun. And if you like my phrase, feel free to take it
“but according to me …” Eugyppius, I love this turn of phrase and, so far as I’m aware, it is uniquely your own.
I'll be using the phrase in the near future.
I had to go find one of those speeches because, whether it was written with AI or not, it was cheesy.
After watching it the most authentic thing i noticed about his speech was the lack applause.
I’d like to comment, but I forgot to pay for this month social media license. But if I were to comment, I would only say that more German music should be promoted—such as that of the great David Hasselhoff, the inimitable Grace Jones, and of course, the immortal Die Beatles
Guy sounds like a real shitheel. Hopefully the videos of him being sodomized by a Great Dane that I heard rumors about find their way to the public soon. Well, and of course, that the public is actually put off by them, rather than impressed.
At least leftist female voters in Germany don't get all fluttery and swoony over roughneck candidates with prominent Totenkopf tattoos -- at least not where others might notice.
"A picture is worth a thousand words."
Eugyppius is a brilliant and insightful writer. And funny and entertaining. Keep it up!
This post sounds like the plot of some fictional parody (but I live in Germany, so I know it is actually happening), and it is hard to believe that this situation is what has come to be accepted and condoned in Germany. All for a good cause! More like a glimpse of a country descending into a madhouse.
I live in Canada, we have plenty of problems, but it seems to me, after reading your columns, that Germany has the most obtuse brain-dead politicians in the entire galaxy. I found this article hilarious and I laughed several times when reading it. Thanks for all the entertainment.
Justin Trudeau has entered the chat
Oh I would have loved to have seen Justin contest one last election just for our most succesfull political party to be wiped off the map in one night. It would have been glorious.
Continue being so humorous bitte
It's strangely honest in its way though.
I get annoyed every time someone references thrilling deathless speeches by JFK or Reagan as though they were the souls of these miserable guys elevated to the highest sphere of eternal truth, or something.
Voigt must be the purest--avatar?--of nonentity yet.
“a testament to the quality of modern Thuringian politics.”
Sure is, apparently.
My AI is helpless with laughter so I’m afraid I will be unable to comment.
This is hilarious from start to finish.
Advertising has long gotten us used to a discourse that works better when it does not pretend to be true. And for some time, even political consent has been given without the presence of actual conviction—the assumption being that truth is not at stake in electoral speeches. -- Giorgio Agamben