Month: May 2024

I've seen a lot of commentary about the Trump trial vaguely suggesting that it popped up out of nowhere from a partisan DA with an axe to grind and a dubious legal theory he invented just for the occasion. This is not true.

It is true that the legal theory behind Trump's prosecution was novel, but that's because no one had ever before done what Trump did. Nor was it invented especially by Alvin Bragg. The prospect of prosecuting Trump for falsifying business records to conceal criminal conduct has been repeatedly discussed since shortly after the day federal prosecutors first revealed that Trump's hush money payments were fraudulently booked as legal expenses. That was nearly five years ago.

Since then, the hush money case has been under continual investigation by US Attorneys, the Federal Election Commission, the New York State attorney general, and the Manhattan district attorney. It was slowed down by federal prosecutors, Trump appeals, and a changing of the guard in the Manhattan DA's office. But it never went away.

To refresh your memory about how long and continuously this case has been in the news, here's a brief timeline.

November 2016: The Wall Street Journal reports that the National Enquirer paid Karen McDougal, a Playboy model, $150,000 to buy her silence about an affair with Donald Trump.

January 2018: The Journal reports that Trump fixer Michael Cohen paid hush money directly to porn star Stormy Daniels for the same reason. Trump denies everything.

July 2018: CNN releases audiotape of Trump discussing hush money payments with Cohen.

August 2018: Federal prosecutors reveal that Cohen's reimbursements were booked as legal expenses by The Trump Organization.

August 2018: The Manhattan DA, Cyrus Vance, considers opening an investigation into the hush money case. Federal prosecutors will later ask him to pause his investigation until theirs is finished.

November 2018: The Journal confirms that Trump was personally involved with both hush money payments.

December 2018: Federal prosecutors make public a non-prosecution agreement signed with AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer. It states that the hush money payments were intended to prevent damage to Trump's 2016 campaign.

July 2019: Federal prosecutors conclude their hush money investigation without charges. Federal rules prevent prosecution of a sitting president.

August 2019: With the federal investigation over, Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance re-opens his investigation and subpoenas Trump for hush money documents.

May 2021: After an investigation, the Federal Election Commission concludes that AMI violated campaign finance laws by secretly paying McDougal.

November 2021: Vance convenes grand jury to hear evidence against Trump.

January 2022: Alvin Bragg takes office as new Manhattan DA.

February 2022: Two prosecutors leave DA's office over disappointment that Bragg didn't immediately bring charges against Trump.

December 2022: Bragg hires a former DOJ attorney who worked the federal investigation of Trump.

April 2023: Bragg indicts Trump for falsifying business records in order to conceal damaging information during the 2016 election.

May 2024: Trump is convicted on all counts.

And now for something completely different. The Washington Post today has a piece about what they got when they asked AI image apps to produce pictures of beautiful women. They basically got this:

This is presented as problematic because it reinforces stereotypes of what's beautiful in a woman. But this should come as precisely no surprise to anyone. AI engines are trained on human input, so they're going to output averages of what actual people think are beautiful: slim figures, regular features, flowing hair, etc. This has been the Western ideal of beauty for a very long time.

But I wondered why they limited themselves to women, so I decided to see what AI had to say about handsome men. I used GPT4 because it was handy, and it turned out to be tricky. The top left image was its first try. I asked for explicitly different men, and it kept churning out tiny variations on the same white guy. You can see this at the top right.

Then I asked it for a handsome Black man and got the image at the lower left. Finally I asked for a Hispanic man, but for some reason it told me it couldn't do that. I switched gears to a Latino man and got the image on the bottom right.

As you can see, what I got were slim figures, regular features, and well-manicured hair. Interestingly, I also got gray suits and no socks every single time—except for the allegedly Latino dude, who appears to be wearing gray socks.

Also interesting: Nearly every image has dark hair. Why no blondes or redheads?

In any case, there you have it: AI interpretations of beautiful women and handsome men, all of which are exactly what you'd expect. Good job, AI.

Last Friday I committed to some real live catblogging this week. Promise made, promise kept.

Hilbert is giving me a squinty look because I'm scratching his back and he wants me to keep it up. Although you can't hear it, he was purring his little heart out while I was taking this picture.

Donald Trump has:

• Been convicted of covering up an affair with a porn star.
• Been caught on tape bragging about grabbing pussies.
• Lied about President Obama wiretapping him.
• Tried to extort the president of Ukraine into digging up dirt on a political opponent.
• Worked tirelessly to illegally overthrow an election he lost.
• Promised to pardon the violent protesters who attacked the Capitol on January 6.
• Been found liable for sexual assault.
• Lied relentlessly about matters big and small.
• Claimed many of the world's worst autocrats as friends.
• Cheated customers of "Trump University" out of millions of dollars.
• Been fined nearly $500 million for business fraud.
• Fired an FBI director for refusing to end an investigation into his campaign.
• Been ordered to shut his charitable foundation and pay restitution for repeated self-dealing and legal violations.
• Pocketed millions of dollars from foreign interests staying at his hotels.
• Promoted dangerous quack "cures" for COVID-19.
• Baselessly claimed that Ted Cruz's father was associated with the Kennedy assassination.
• Said that soldiers who are wounded or die in war are suckers and losers.

Conservatives might like Trump on policy grounds, but they could get exactly the same policy from nearly any Republican. What sets Trump apart is his character. This is why his fans like him. His character.

Here's the latest on EV sales:

There's not much question that sales have flattened out. There's been essentially no growth for the past 12 months. This is due to weak sales both at Tesla and among all other EV automakers.

How will America react to Donald Trump's conviction? I don't know!

But I will say this: it's likely to influence only people who haven't been paying a lot of attention to the trial and haven't already made up their minds about Trump. And among those people, the takeaway is not going to be that Trump was convicted of a minor crime based on iffy predicate felonies. Not even close. The takeaway is going to be that Trump was convicted of fucking a porn star and then covering up the bribe he paid her to stay quiet.

Forget the nuances. That's not how politics works. It's all about emotional appeal and how many words can fit in a headline. In Trump's case, "guilty" and "felon" are the headline words and "lied about fucking a porn star" is the emotional appeal.

The only question is whether the public cares about this. They didn't care about Bill Clinton's affair, so maybe not. But then again, Clinton wasn't running for reelection.

We had good news on the inflation front in April:

Inflation continues to drop from its January spike. On a conventional year-over-year basis, headline inflation came in at 2.7% and core inflation at 2.8%. These are very reasonable numbers.

A quick word about sentencing. As we all know, judges take into account the totality of the circumstances when they hand down sentences. First time offender? Was anyone hurt? Are there mandatory minimums? Etc.

Conservatives often complain about this because it allows judges to be too lenient. But it's going to be on their side in the Trump case. There's very little chance the judge will send Trump to prison. The sentence is almost certain to be a fine plus probation, maybe, and possibly community service.

Personally, I'd love to see Trump get community service. Wouldn't that be awesome?

The weird shit just keeps coming and coming. Today a pair of professors at UT Austin, backed by the state of Texas, sued the Biden administration over its new Title IX rules. Here's what they specifically object to:

1. They won't refer to their students using the pronoun "they."
2. They refuse to allow their TAs to cross dress. I'm genuinely not sure what they mean by this. They refer to "transvestites," and it's unclear if this is their insulting way of referring to trans people or if they're referring to cis men who dress in drag.
3. They won't approve an "excused absence" from class in order to obtain an abortion. Ditto for anyone who uses abortion drugs obtained through the mail, since they say that's forbidden by the Comstock Act.
4. Finally, they won't hire TAs who have obtained "illegal" abortions.

This is all crazy performative bullshit. (1) The pronoun thing is just tiresome provocation. (2) I doubt they've ever had a cross-dressing TA. (3) I also doubt they've ever had a student ask for an absence in order to get an abortion. Kids miss class all the time anyway. (4) As for hiring TAs who have had abortions, how would they ever know? Are they planning to ask?

This sounds like a standing disaster for starters, and little more than an attempt to grab headlines beyond that. But they filed the suit in Amarillo so that it would be decided by the infamous Matthew Kacsmaryk, which might give them a chance at an initial victory.

That's Texas for you. Don't mess with 'em.

Donald Trump and his friends can—and have—claimed that both the DA and the judge in the New York hush money case are political enemies. They can say that Michael Cohen is a liar. They can say that Joe Biden stage managed the whole thing. Plenty of MAGA fans will believe this stuff, and plenty of them are melting down on Fox News right now.

But there's one thing they can't dismiss so easily: the jury. The original jury pool contained upwards of 200 people. The vast majority were excused, either by the judge or by the lawyers for the two sides. After rejecting 95% of them in a herculean effort to be fair, 12 jurors remained, none of them Trump lovers or Trump haters. They were all ordinary people, and they quickly and unanimously convicted Trump on all charges.

There's no way to pretend the jurors were political enemies, or liars, or personally chosen by Joe Biden. And yet every single one of them believed Trump was guilty. Every single one.