"Are you for real?"

I asked at the end of a post about an essay about social media, vacations, and self-knowledge, but it's the same question I want to ask about these videos Meade has been texting me this morning — this and this.

I texted back: "Is this real?" "Is this AI?"

I took my suspicious mind to Grok: "How can I detect AI video? I'm seeing things like [the above-linked videos]. I believe it is AI. It looks off, especially in the mouth. The person doesn't have a name and the person seems to be confidently spewing talking points. The person has attributes that seem chosen to boost credibility (often a nice-looking person of color saying something conservative)."

I know. If I hate AI, why am I using AI? Maybe AI is better at detecting AI than I am. A fight-fire-with-fire concept. It's different, at least. A second opinion.

Here's Grok's answer. It's not conclusive, but for both videos, it finds evidence that these are AI. I won't copy all that Grok had to offer. I'll just say watch the mouth. The lip shapes don't fully match the phonemes in the audio. And is the flow of language human? Catch yourself. You might like it because you think the person is articulate, but it's not human eloquence. Don't become the person who likes what is artificial.

I'm sounding the alarm. Please, we need to preserve our capacity to detect what is fake. But in the end, we are going to lose. I think we already know that, and I fear that many of us are already thinking that we prefer the fake, even if we can tell, maybe even especially when we can tell. 

"A Texas man whose girlfriend used abortion pills to end her pregnancy is suing a California doctor who allegedly mailed her the medication..."

"... in what appears to be a first-of-its-kind wrongful-death lawsuit — and a fresh test of federal and state abortion laws. The complaint, filed in a Texas federal court, accuses the doctor of violating state law that prohibits performing or facilitating an abortion, including by distributing pills. But California, where the physician is based, has a 'shield' law explicitly protecting providers who mail abortion pills, including to states where the procedure is banned. The case appears to be the first time an interstate wrongful-death claim over an abortion has been filed in federal court. It is also the latest legal challenge against a provider as antiabortion activists attempt to curb the flow of abortion pills, which are being mailed into all 50 states under shield laws passed after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade...."

From "Man sues over girlfriend’s abortion in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit/he first-of-its-kind wrongful-death lawsuit tests the laws blue states passed to protect abortion access after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade" (WaPo).

"The Wisconsin Supreme Court invalidated a state abortion ban that was enacted in 1849 and had been dormant for five decades...."

"The court ruled 4-3 to strike down the ban, and while the justices are officially nonpartisan, the decision split them along ideological lines. A new justice who had campaigned on her support for abortion rights, Janet Protasiewicz, joined the majority....Writing for the majority in the case, known as Kaul v. Urmanski, Justice Rebecca Dallet [wrote]... 'Comprehensive legislation enacted over the last 50 years regulating in detail the "who, what, where, when, and how" of abortion so thoroughly covers the entire subject of abortion that it was meant as a substitute for the 19th century near-total ban on abortion'.... The opinion noted that the court had historically set a high bar for such 'implied repeal.' But in this case, the majority of the justices found that the Legislature had met that bar by entirely revising state law on abortion.... In a separate order Wednesday, the court dismissed a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin that had asked the court to find that the right to equal protection in the state Constitution protects a right to receive an abortion and protects medical professionals who provide one. The court said its ruling in Kaul v. Urmanski effectively settled the issue...."

The NYT reports.

That is, the decision is based on statutory interpretation and not on a state constitutional right. It's up to the legislature to make new law restricting (or permitting) abortion. The 1849 law is gone, but some or all of it could be reenacted. If that were to happen, question about the state constitutional right would need to be answered.

"Supreme Court allows states to cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood."

WaPo reports.  Free-access link.

At issue for the justices was whether a provision of the federal Medicaid Act allows individual Medicaid patients to sue to obtain care from their provider of choice.... Several justices during oral argument seemed eager to provide clarity to help lower courts determine when a statute simply confers a benefit to an individual and when it goes further, empowering those individuals to sue to enforce that benefit or right. The Supreme Court has typically set a high bar for allowing lawsuits against the government, seeking to shield public officials from liability....

"The most extreme end of the promortalism movement is 'Efilism,'which takes its name from 'life' spelt backward..."

"... and argues that all sentient life should be extinguished to prevent suffering. Gary Mosher... one of its most prominent proponents... endorses violence towards women, even claiming he will murder any woman he gets pregnant who refuses an abortion. 'The end goal is for the truth [Efilism] to win, and once it does, we can finally begin the process of sterilising this planet of the disease of life,' he wrote in an online manifesto. But after the IVF clinic in Palm Springs was bombed, he distanced himself from the violence. 'The fact is that there’s people in the world who are lonely, and some that are crazy, and this, that and the other thing,' he said on [YouTube]. 'They have some reason to be despondent, and they have low investment in their existence, and those are dangerous people.'... [I]t is not hard to find members recommending various methods for killing oneself, or using the term 'CTB' — or catch the bus — for suicide...."

From "Inside the ‘strangest terrorist movement the US has ever seen’/Guy Bartkus tried to destroy an IVF clinic to save the embryos the pain of existence. Alarmingly for national security, his ‘promortalist’ philosophy does not die with him" (London Times).

"Perhaps the biggest shot in the arm for the fetal-personhood movement came in the form of an executive order ostensibly unrelated to abortion..."

"... one with an especially unwieldy and Orwellian name: Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. The order proclaims, with unwarranted confidence, that '"Female" means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell. "Male" means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.'... At this year’s March for Life rally... Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House... brought up Trump’s executive order early in his speech: 'I don’t know if you saw his executive order on gender, but it defines life as beginning at conception, rather than birth.' Johnson put invisible air quotes around 'gender,' but he came down hard on the word 'conception,' jabbing one finger in the air as he said it. The crowd cheered. Ideas have consequences."

Writes Margaret Talbot, in "Does a Fetus Have Constitutional Rights? After Dobbs, fetal personhood has become the anti-abortion movement’s new objective" (The New Yorker).

Why were the anti-Trump protests yesterday called "Hands Off"?

That was my first question, and it led to a series of questions:

• Generally, I would think, it is the role of the President to take charge, to handle all problems, and to get things done. A "hands-on" President sounds like an effective, active President, so it sounds as though it is an objection to the elected President being President. That reads as anti-democratic to me.

• If these protesters were libertarian, the slogan "hands off" would make more sense. These would be people wanting government to do as little as possible. But even then, much of what Trump is doing is cutting back government, making it smaller, more like the libertarian ideas. The tariffs are an exception to that, but you get my point. His hands are ON many government programs for the purpose of ending them or cutting them back. The protesters want to preserve big government.

• I think the tariffs are a means to an end of eliminating the tariffs against us. If that's what's really going on then the tariffs are not an exception and could be characterized as getting government out of free trade.

• Trump has been making big moves that have won cooperation from his antagonists. I'm thinking of the universities and law firms that backed down when confronted with financial loss.

• He has good reason to think that huge moves are needed or people will just resist and drag it out and wait it out. He needs shock and awe. The response "hands off" seems weak. Who will "hands off" convince? How did that slogan emerge?

All of that is for the annals of Things I Asked Grok. If you want to see how Grok answered, here's the link. Those are all prompts, by the way, so don't assume I believe all those assertions. It's a bit like teaching law school: You frame ideas to engage your interlocutor. You don't profess belief. You open things up for a better look.

One thing I saw is that the "Hands Off" slogan came from the abortion-rights discourse. But Hands Off My Body is a libertarian concept. 

Pasting Susan Crawford posters on public property in Madison.

The fine print says "VOTE BY 04.O1/FOR SUSAN CRAWFORD."

Crawford is one of the candidates in the much-watched Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

I photographed the posters this morning, but yesterday evening, I saw the man pasting them up. I couldn't believe that he had the nerve, in daylight hours, to deface public property. How does it help your candidate to conspicuously trash the neighborhood of the people you hope to influence? Are you picturing desperate, anarchic citizens who don't care about anything but abortion?

If I were Susan Crawford, I would be distressed to have my name on something like this. I have no idea if she or her campaign has anything to do with it. The ultra-fine print might answer that question, but it's not legible in my photographs and most definitely not legible to those of driving through the underpass.

A pedestrian could stop and read the ultra-fine print. Of course, pedestrians walking through an underpass, especially if female, can feel physically vulnerable, and pasted-up posters can magnify fear. Vandalism speaks of chaos and a breakdown of vigilance. Maybe that's the idea. The woman worries about the problem of rape, and the posters offer the second-rate solution: abortion.

UPDATE: Here's the ultra-fine print:

"If you cannot get married and start a family within three quarters, the company will terminate your labor contract...."

"Not responding to the call of the country, not marrying and having children, is disloyal."

Said the memo to unmarried employees of Shandong Shuntian Chemical Group, quoted in "Chinese Company to Single Workers: Get Married or Get Out/As China’s government worries about the falling birthrate, some private employers have ordered workers to do their part, or else" (NYT). 

The notice from the chemical company, which began circulating online last month, was directed at unmarried employees between the ages of 28 and 58, including divorced workers. As online ridicule grew, the company quickly backtracked. Reached by phone, a woman at its headquarters said the notice had been retracted, and that the local government had ordered the company to undergo “rectification.”...

Years ago, when the Chinese authorities wanted to limit births, they resorted to coercive measures like forced abortions and sterilizations. (The city where the chemical company is based, Linyi, was particularly notorious for such tactics.) Now that Beijing is trying to do the opposite, it is taking a softer approach, perhaps to avoid setting off large-scale resistance.

"I simply made myself available for a chat, should anybody like to approach me and speak about any matter on their mind."

"I didn’t breach the rules of the buffer zone – I didn’t harass, intimidate, or even seek to influence anyone. I simply stood there, available to speak with love and compassion. It isn’t right to deprive anyone of the right to take up my offer to talk. And it isn’t right to censor zones within our country from thoughts, beliefs and conversations that authorities may simply disapprove of. Buffer zones aren’t 'pro-choice' – they deprive women of the choice to have a chat outside the clinic. That isn’t right."

Said Rose Docherty, quoted in "Grandmother arrested for holding sign offering conversation outside Scottish hospital performing abortions/'Buffer zones aren’t ‘pro-choice’ – they deprive women of the choice to have a chat outside the clinic,' Rose Docherty said" (Fox News).

Scotland's The Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Act purports to forbid any "acts" that  "Intentionally or recklessly influence someone’s decision to access, provide, or facilitate abortion services," expressly including "acts" that we Americans would consider speech: "attempts to persuade or dissuade someone through verbal communication, handing out leaflets with anti-abortion messages, or displaying signs intended to affect choices." It also forbids "acts" that "Cause Harassment, Alarm, or Distress," including "shouting, religious preaching directed at individuals, or silent vigils that target and emotionally affect those entering or leaving the facility."

Docherty's sign read "Coercion is a crime, here to talk if you want."

"Alongside Romania, Germany and Sweden, Vance singled out the UK for some of the most scathing passages of his tirade."

"He complained that the British authorities had been jailing journalists.... Vance also railed against the 'crazy' conviction last year of Adam Smith-Connor, a physiotherapist and army reserve veteran, who was fined £9,000 for conducting a brief 'silent prayer' protest in the legal 'buffer zone' around an abortion clinic in Bournemouth. He then turned to the Scottish government, which he said had been distributing letters to households near abortion clinics that warned residents they would be committing a crime if they prayed against abortion in the privacy of their own homes. 'Actually, the government urged the readers to report any fellow citizens suspected to be guilty of thoughtcrime,' Vance told the Munich Security Conference. 'In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.'"

From "JD Vance attacks UK and EU over 'retreat of free speech'/Addressing the Munich Security Conference, the US vice-president avoided mentioning Ukraine but said censorship was more dangerous to the West than Russia" (London Times).

The full speech:

"The whole point of this bill wasn't to get it passed. The whole point of this bill was to call out the hypocrisy."

BREAKING: Ohio lawmakers have proposed a new law that bans men from ejaculating without intent of conception, would fine men up to $10,000 per ejaculation. pic.twitter.com/eOtMUatSPt

— Daily Loud (@DailyLoud) February 14, 2025

If there's an exception for LGBTQ people, it seems you could avoid the $10,000 fine, by identifying as bisexual or "queer." Who could challenge you? You are what you say... among the kind of people who would institute an exception like this.

Not that anyone would ever really get charged. And obviously and admittedly, the bill will not get passed. Republicans control the Ohio legislature.

These Democrats are introducing The Conception Begins at Erection Act for rhetorical purposes. They want to expose hypocrisy within the anti-abortion group, which tends to say to women, if you don't want to get pregnant, don't have sex. 

ADDED: These Democrats present the idea of leveling. Since sexual intercourse only risks pregnancy for the women, the law should impose an equivalent burden on men. Equity = $10,000. This reminds me of the much-loved Kurt Vonnegut story, "Harrison Bergeron," which begins:

"Attorneys for the defendants called them peaceful demonstrators emulating sit-ins from the civil rights era."

"Federal prosecutors in court documents described their efforts as 'organized invasions' carried out with physical force, chains, ropes and locks — all of it carefully planned and live-streamed.... In a letter lobbying Trump for the pardons this month, the antiabortion Thomas More Society called them a group of 'peaceful pro-life Americans' that included 'grandparents, pastors, a Holocaust survivor, and a Catholic priest.' They argued to Trump that the [Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances] Act was unconstitutional and that part of prosecutors’ reasoning for bringing the charges was to protect the right to abortion, which no longer existed in 2023 because of the Supreme Court’s ruling the year before overturning Roe v. Wade."

From "Trump pardons antiabortion activists who blocked access to clinics/The pardons came the evening before thousands of activists are expected to march to the U.S. Capitol in the 52nd annual March for Life" (WaPo)(free-access link).

"Our ethical judgments, he suggests, are governed not by a complex of modules but by one overriding emotion."

"Untold generations of cowering have written fear into our genes, rendering us hypersensitive to threats of harm. 'If you want to know what someone sees as wrong, your best bet is to figure out what they see as harmful,' [writes Kurt Gray, the director of the Deepest Beliefs Lab]. At another point: 'All people share a harm-based moral mind.' At still another: 'Harm is the master key of morality.'..."

Writes Elizabeth Kolbert, in "Does One Emotion Rule All Our Ethical Judgments? When prehistoric predators abounded, the ability to perceive harm helped our ancestors survive. Some researchers wonder whether it fuels our greatest fights today" (The New Yorker).

"Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?"

The new episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast — audio and transcript here (at Podscribe).

This was annoying to listen to for so many reasons, but I will leave it to you to discover most of them. I'll just pick out one glaring problem: The abortion right that was found in Roe and rejected in Dobbs was never based on equality. It was based on substantive due process, sometimes phrased as privacy, found in the Due Process Clause. If the ERA could be a source of a new right to abortion, the Equal Protection Clause is already there to serve the same purpose. One of the reasons the ERA failed back in the 1970s was because many people believed that all the equality rights women needed could be found in the Equal Protection Clause. What good was a new text to puzzle over? 

"It’s clear from this election that there are many voters, especially those hardest hit by rising prices, those who experienced the pandemic-era financial support slipping away, who voted primarily on the economy."

"We’ve seen in the United States and worldwide if you have to break pearls in half to be able to afford your groceries, that is going to be the top-of-mind issue when you go to the ballot box. Democrats win when voters know that we’re the ones fighting for them against those who will seek to rip them off to add an extra billion dollars to their bank account."

That's Ben Wikler, answering the question: "You have said for years that abortion rights is the issue that best motivates Democratic voters and best convinces Republicans to vote for Democrats. Did something change about that in this election, or did the Harris campaign not focus enough on abortion rights?"

From "Wisconsin Democratic Chair Says He Is the One to Revive a Distressed Party/Ben Wikler, who has led the Wisconsin Democratic Party since 2019, announced a bid to be national party chair with a platform to 'unite, fight, win'" (NYT)(free-access link).

I like Ben because I knew him quite well when he was a teenager. He's obviously got highly developed verbal skills. Not highly developed enough to keep me from noticing that he didn't confront the complexities of the Democrats' involvement with the abortion issue. They forefronted it, and he wanted them to forefront it.

Did something change about that in this election, or did the Harris campaign not focus enough on abortion rights? What's the answer? The question required him to pick. Either it's no longer true that abortion is the Democrats' best issue OR the Democrats needed to push even harder on the abortion issue. But maybe leaping past a reporter's well-structured question and saying "It's the economy, stupid" in elaborate, elegant language is a good demonstration of the skill Democrats want in their chair.

ADDED: I spent a lot of time trying to ascribe meaning to "break pearls in half." A commenter — wild chicken — asked if that's "a saying in Wisconsin." And I got all involved:

I googled it when I was writing the post, and I considered elaborating on this figure of speech. I couldn't find any example of "break pearls in half" as a figurative expression. I did find out that pearls are *cut* in half for some purposes, but these were real, not metaphorical, pearls. What did Ben mean? All I can think of is Mickey Mouse, starving, and cutting one bean into slices.

Then I got a text from Meade: "Pills/Bad transcription by NYT."

For more laughs, here's Mickey:

"Their existence, and my relationships with each of them, are essential to my understanding of life itself."

That's a very strangely written sentence... by M. Gessen, in "What Democrats Are Getting Wrong About Transgender Rights" (NYT). 

Context:

I am trans and I am a parent of three children, one of whom I carried. Their existence, and my relationships with each of them, are essential to my understanding of life itself. I also have many friends (none of them trans, as it happens) who never had children. I occasionally envy their freedom. They may occasionally envy me my sprawling family. In neither case is the feeling of regret — if it can even be called that — significant or particularly long-lasting. It is, rather, an awareness that life is a series of choices, all of which are made with incomplete information.

Presumably, Gessen has one relationship with each of the children, but it's possible that Gessen really does means to claim multiple relationships with each one. I suppose the grammar was a minor distraction on the way to proclaiming the superiority of a life lived without regrets. 

Anxiety about trans people and reproduction, and the laws and rules that it produces, cut both ways...

Puzzling commas again. And why choose a cutting metaphor here? Intentional prodding of our anxiety about surgery?

There's a lot more going on in the article, which was originally titled "The Secret Behind America's Moral Panic." What's the secret? And what are "Democrats... Getting Wrong About Transgender Rights"? This is the most useful passage:

"Guns, God and gays — that’s the way they say it. Guns, that’s an issue; gays, that’s an issue, and now..."

"... they’re making the trans issue such an important issue in their priorities; and in certain communities, what they call God, what we call a woman’s right to choose."

Said Nancy Pelosi, answering the question "why did voters who earned less than $100,000 go for Trump in such large numbers," in "The Interview/Nancy Pelosi Insists the Election Was Not a Rebuke of the Democrats" (NYT).

"I’m worried that if the Harris campaign wins on an abortion, abortion, abortion, presidential message, that the Democrats will take the lesson..."

"... that the way to win is to divide America along gender lines and convince young women that the essence of their political identity should be focused on making sure that they have the right to terminate their unborn children in the womb. That, I think, would be a very depressing future for American liberalism and would make me unhappy for my daughter’s future."

Said Ross Douthat, on November 1, in "This Election Is the Tiebreaker Over Trumpism/The hosts dig into what they got right, and what they got so wrong, about this campaign season," an episode of the NYT "Matter of Opinion" podcast.

The Democrats, most emphatically, did not win the election, and I wonder: Did they learn that it's not a winning strategy to divide us along gender lines?

Scanning the headlines of columns this morning, I get the impression that the response is to double down on gender division. I'll just link to Maureen Dowd's "It’s This Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World":

"So why [did Melania] come forward with purported support for abortion rights one month ahead of the election?"

"The issue remains one of Donald Trump’s biggest weaknesses in November, no matter how much he tries to flip-flop on his position. His most recent attempt was to say he would veto a national abortion ban.... A cynical read would be that the Trump campaign hopes these Melania excerpts will help them with moderate voters who are angry about Dobbs and fear the former president will go even further to roll back our rights if he’s reelected. The women in his orbit have always been useful in softening his image: In a similar fashion to Ivanka Trump being painted as a 'moderating force' during the first Trump administration, the former First Lady’s memoir helps portray her as someone who will advocate for women’s rights from inside the White House...."

Writes Andrea González-Ramírez, in "Melania Trump Suddenly Wants to Talk About Abortion Rights" (NY Magazine).

Yes, I would presume that Melania's seemingly independent voice is coordinated with the Trump campaign. Those who are imagining that she's antagonistic to Trump and intentionally undermining him are — I suspect, reading their mind while they read hers — projecting.