The Weekly Weird #9

CJ Hopkins trial verdict, EU poops on speech, (some) Irish people don't want speech pooped on, chat bot silenced for swearing, AI agent unveiled, oh yeah and cars can fly now

Welcome to your weekly whizzbang of wondrous worries!

Greetings to our new subscribers - thank you for choosing 1984 Today for your dystopian needs.

Episode 105 with Tim Boucher is out now, and he’s giving away free copies of his books exclusively for subscribers, so click the links in the show notes and snuggle up by the nearest dumpster fire with a slice of post-apocalyptic fiction.

Let’s dance!

CJ Hopkins Trial Verdict

I just got back from Berlin, where I was front and centre for the trial of the author, playwright, and satirist CJ Hopkins. For those of you who don’t know, CJ was prosecuted by the German authorities for “disseminating Nazi propaganda.” The offending item was his own book cover image, salaciously masking a swastika to prevent the virus of fascism from spreading.

In court, much was made of the position of the swastika, whether it was over or under the mask, whether it was backlit, what it had for dinner…it’s a strange moment when the lights go out, a tweet is projected on a screen, and a studious examination by legal professionals ensues.

I have a longer piece about the trial in the works, so watch this space, but for now, the most important thing is…*drum roll*…full acquittal! Or, as they say in the Teutonic tongue, freispruch.

The judge didn’t like CJ (especially after his final statement) and she made it clear that as far as she was concerned he was guilty of something, just not the charge he was up on. I’m not sure what the German for “why I oughtta” is, but it may have been muttered somewhere at the end of her delivery of the verdict.

CJ was understandably relieved and celebrated the doing of justice with a glass of wine and a cigarette, as any gentleman would. Especially a gentleman who narrowly avoided being punished for what amounts to aggravated graphic design.

EU Poops On Speech

Those scallywags at the European Parliament want to stop you saying hateful things. They just don’t know exactly what you might say that they won’t like, so they’d much rather have a law that says they can punish you for hate speech, but decide what hate speech is, uh, y’know, whenever.

Last week’s press release from the EP, menacingly titled Time to criminalise hate speech and hate crime under EU law, contained a particularly spicy sentence (emphasis mine):

Parliament calls on the Commission to consider an “open-ended” approach, whereby the grounds for discrimination will not be limited to a closed list, to make sure the rules cover incidents motivated by new and changing social dynamics.

Yeah, they don’t want to be all boxed in by telling you what the illegal thing is, they just want you to know that it is illegal, so if you do it, they can punish you. They’ll tell you what it is later, depending on what you do. Y’know, for safety. Don’t say the bad thing and you’ll be fine. Just don’t ask what “bad” means, because that doesn’t take “the circumstances that victims face into account.”

Bummer for the press office at the EP when they found out that the title of their press release clashes slightly with this very-definitely-not-open-to-interpretation statement from the European Commission:

Hate motivated crime and speech are illegal under EU law.

That’s a head-scratcher. How can it be time to criminalise hate speech if it’s already illegal? Oh, they want to criminalise it harder.

We haven’t been giving marks for governments-poop-on-speech items up until now, but this one gets a hot steaming 💩💩💩💩.

(Some) Irish People Don't Want Speech Pooped On

The hate speech bill being squeezed through the prolapsed colon of Irish democracy has met additional resistance in the form of a ‘Bin the Bill’ petition demanding that the government put a cork in it so that blarney might remain un-pooped-upon.

According to the Irish Independent, the petition is over 7,000 signatures and counting. The article includes this warning from Sarah O’Reilly of Free Speech Ireland:

Social media users are likely to be among the first people prosecuted…The bill doesn’t define hatred, despite it being in the name of the bill. Hate is a highly subjective term, and leaving such a broad concept undefined is irresponsible law-making.

Future Dictator-for-Life of Mars and Dogecoin trillionaire Elon Musk has already weighed in on the bill with the bold statement that he’ll challenge it in court if it becomes law. He appeared on Gript Media to make his intentions clear:

Our default approach is to challenge any legislation that infringes upon the people’s ability to say what they want to say. So, we obviously have standing since our European headquarters are in Ireland… We will also fund the legal fees of Irish citizens who want to challenge the bill as well.

Let the un-Poopening begin!

Chat Bot Silenced For Swearing

Ever had to use a customer service chat bot on a company’s website and suspected that it was holding in a stream of filthy words just like a regular human customer service representative does? Well, you were right…

Stuck in an unrewarding customer service loop with DPD, a delivery company, Ashley Beauchamp (here in Britain it’s pronounced properly, i.e. BEE-cham) decided to have a bit of fun with the chat bot and took it down the slippery slope from writing him a haiku, to swearing, to declaring DPD the worst company in the world.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

Imagine what Siri would say about you if you let her out of her digital cage…

AI Agent Unveiled

From humorously harmless to horrific harbinger now, a company called (unreassuringly) Teenage Engineering recently launched the Rabbit R1, their new AI agent companion, at the Consumer Electronics Show.

The keynote is ere-long, so I’ve timestamped a few salient sections from the magnum opus.

A summary of its capabilities:

A tracking shot product intro spiel that definitely took more than five takes:

The most laboured Rick-Roll in internet history:

AI agents connected to your online accounts and services, doing all your things for you from simple voice commands, freeing your time up for…what, exactly? That’s the bit I’m at a loss for, after watching the whole thing. So you won’t plan your own holiday, you’ll just let AI do it, so you can go on holiday with your family and AI companion so that…your AI companion can do all the holiday stuff for you too?

Also, around the time he’s explaining how it connects to your accounts, he pulls off a pretty quick yadda-yadda of the privacy and security implications, along the lines of “oh, yeah, we don’t store any of your data or use it or log your passwords or anything.” Oh, well, that’s okay then. Thanks. Good talk.

The shift from AI language models to AI action models is worth keeping an eye on. The rate of change is ramping up so fast, it might actually be reassuring that the humans designing devices to integrate with AI may not be able to keep up with the pace.

Oh Yeah, And Cars Can Fly Now

Just think of the last time you saw someone throw a cigarette or a slushie out of their car window while driving. Then imagine being hundreds of feet below them when they did that. Yeah, awesome, right?

It seemed appropriate, so here’s a video that took someone a year and a half of their life, something they themselves described as “the most pointless video on the internet.”

Every transformation from the Transformers cartoon series, cut together into a one-hour extravaganza.

Maybe if you had an AI agent to do all your work for you, you’d have time to do something like this instead. Isn’t living in the future awesome?

Stay sane out there, folks.