Lately I’ve been getting comments on my posts that seem to be generated by AI. One made it past Akismet, and I had to reject it manually. It’s worth looking at where they are and where they’re headed. Here’s a comment which I just rejected for one of my recent posts:
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It’s unusual for me to write on this blog about a local politician, but I want this on the record so that people doing searches for information on Rockingham County Commissioner Steven Goddu will find this and know why they should never vote for him for anything.
Rockingham County, New Hampshire, has been negotiating with ICE to hold abductees and get money for it. County government in New Hampshire (which handles only a few functions) is headed by commissioners. Rockingham has three of them: Kathryn Coyle, Steven Goddu, and Thomas Tombarello. I was able to find contact information only for Goddu, so I wrote an email to him urging that the county not collaborate with ICE. His reply shows he is a dishonest person and should not be elected to any public office.
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This is a post about word usage, not about the murder of Charlie Kirk, but it started from seeing a lot of online rage about a statement of his. According to Snopes, he once said:
I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage. But, it is very effective when it comes to politics. Sympathy, I prefer more than empathy. That’s a separate topic for a different time.
It’s strange that of all the things he said, this should draw so much anger. If I were cynical, I’d say it’s because people saw an opportunity to pull the first sentence out of context and create a deceptive impression. In this case, cynicism is fully justified.
How much difference is there between sympathy and empathy, anyway?
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Murder is wrong.
Advocating or applauding murder is wrong.
Criticizing a person, even harshly, is not advocating or applauding murder.
There’s no inconsistency in condemning a person’s ideas and condemning his murder.
Misrepresenting a person’s ideas is not a valid way to make a point.
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Ilya Somin has written an in-depth analysis of Judge Kavanaugh’s opinion in the Supreme Court’s decision to lift the injunction against racial profiling by ICE. I can’t claim anything close to Somin’s expertise, but I want to call attention to an alarming point in Kavanaugh’s statement. Somin writes:
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