Martha near Seattle, 8647

@marthawt

Born-inside-the-Beltway politics nerd, public education advocate, Xitter refugee fighting despair. I AM ANTIFA—a never-paid, unorganized volunteer against destruction of the American Project.

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Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· Jul 12

THIS is how it’s done. No unequivocal praise but no vitriol, either. In the end, actually optimistic. 👍🏼

Hunter Biden: When I heard about Senator Graham's death last night, the first thing I thought about was not all the things he said and did in service of Donald Trump. I thought of the time before Donald Trump when he
was a brother to Senator John McCain. A time when senators from different parties could fight about politics and still be friends. A time when a conservative Republican from South Carolina could say of my father: “If you can't admire Joe Biden as a person, you've got a problem. He's the nicest person l've ever met in politics. As good a man as God ever created.”
That is the Senator Graham I will remember today.
Not because I have forgotten what came after. Because in that memory there is hope. Hope for a country where brothers can fight like hell over policy and still share a meal, and a laugh, and the loss of the people they love. I will choose to remember the time before Trump. Because I believe in an America after Trump.

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· Jul 10

The Trump administration has fired the remaining commissioners of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), leaving the independent bipartisan agency without any sitting commissioners. The EAC plays an important role by certifying voting systems, accrediting voting equipment testing laboratories, distributing certain federal election funds, and providing guidance to help states administer elections.
Ask yourself: WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT⁉️

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· Jul 6

Just back from a nephew’s wonderful wedding in Columbia Gorge, the occasion for meeting family old and new for the best of reasons on a gorgeous day.

Photo of the Columbia River and Gorge between WA & OR.

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· Jun 25

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· Jun 25

This direct mailing from a GOP candidate could have been written by Adolph himself.

JOIN THE MAURY COUNTY
YOUNG REPUBLICANS
• Stop the Great Replacement
• Expel the invader
• Punish the traitor
• Ban Islam and Hinduism
• No wars for Jews
• Men in charge
Tennessee Young Republicans

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· Jun 23

I’m thinking that driving a bunch of multi-ton vehicles across the uncured liner may have had something to do with its failure.

Presidential motorcade IN the half-coated pool

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· Jun 23

Gee, I wonder who drove the Beast & entourage across the uncured pool liner? 🤨

Guy in hot dog suit: “We’re all trying to find the guy who did this” meme

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· Jun 22

As Trump blames his over-priced, no-bid, insider-contract Reflecting Pool debacle on mythical vandals, let’s recall who has actually been defacing our capital city.

Matt Wuerker cartoon of a hooded Trump with too.s and spray cans of gold paint adding his name to the Institute of Peace, the Kennedy Center, the Reflecting Pool, his stupid planned arch, the White House (with ruined East Wing and ugly wrestling arch)

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· Jun 20

More strategic statecraft occupying our Commander in Chief as the Strait of Hormuz is closed again and the ersatz peace plan to end Trump’s War falls apart.

Our idiot emperor polls followers on Lie Social about their preference between Dumocrats and Dumbocrats.

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· Jun 18

Remember when we had allies? 🥺

Two photos of G7 meetings: Obama smiling and surrounded by other attendees, Trump standing alone as no one wants to even speak to him.

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· Jun 18

The IRONY of Trump signing the unconditional surrender in his war at Versailles.

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· Jun 16

“Neck deep in the Big Muddy….” @anntelnaes.bsky.social

Cartoon of Trump wading into quicksand labeled Trump’s War. As he sinks beneath the surface, he says “I’m bored.”

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· Jun 14

Trump’s exact wording:

Trump: Hopefully, this process will all work out quickly, easily, and smoothly. If it doesn’t, we have the ultimate alternative, hopefully never to be used again!

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· Jun 13

Someone got the shot anyway. 😁 (NPR did not give the photographer for me to credit.)

Photo taken through gap in tarps to show worker removing the T from the Kennedy Center in the middle of the night.

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· Jun 12

Editorial cartoon of Trump, having “inserted billions,” operating a claw machine labeled “Iran War,” trying and failing to retrieve a trophy labeled “Victory” (or a labeled oil drum) while Whiskey Pete cheers him on.

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· Jun 3

NO ONE IS SAFE FROM THE MOB BOSS.

Bill Pulte used access to mortgage docs to go after Adam Schiff, Letitia James & Lisa Cook. Now he is acting Director of National Intelligence, with inside info on EVERYONE.

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· Jun 1

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· Jun 1

A proposed Trump policy would put Russ Vought in charge of American scientific research, able to cancel grants at will, reward cronies, promote favored ideologies, and prevent collaboration. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-creep-...

Under the new policy, political appointees determine which grants should be funded, and can cancel them whenever they want. Grants must meet partisan litmus tests like "demonstrably advance the President's policy priorities" but political identity can also be used in punitive ways: a scientist's ties to disfavored groups can be used as a basis for cancelling grants. Using federal funding to attend scientific conferences, engage with non-US scientists, or communicate to the public or media is actively discouraged. The peer review process, the cornerstone of scientific rigor, is not just devalued in federal grants processes. Vought also carves out exceptions to public notice when it is in the "national interest." This creates the potential for a back-door slush fund for favored universities or companies to receive public dollars for research. At the same time OMB would have a credible lever to punish disfavored individuals or institutions by withholding grants.

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· May 28

I assume that vote-only-by-mail states like OR & WA that have declined to share their voter lists with the feds will not be allowed to mail ballots at all. One federal judge has already declined to block this. 😡

A Trump executive order tells the Postal Service to deliver mail-in ballots ONLY to voters on federally compiled eligibility lists. Trump doesn't have to order a state to suppress votes if he controls the mail.

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· May 28

The real reason

Matt Weurker comic of a gilded Trump battleship

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· May 27

Legal commenters are not sure this attempt to kill the Insurrectionist Slush Fund will work, but I applaud the effort.

Text from the filing, including: “Setting aside the Notice and reopening the case in order to determine whether an actual case or controversy existed is necessary to ensure that the parties have not corrupted the judicial process, and to prevent federal courts from providing cover to a collusive settlement. Indeed, the corruption of the judicial process is exactly what happened here.” And “The parties have plainly tried
to shield this conduct from necessary judicial scrutiny by short-circuiting this Court's inquiry.”

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· May 27

@kenwhite.bsky.social, you still on vacation?

Trump rant about Iran ending in “They have gone absolutely CRAZY!!!”

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· May 26

Alison Gopnik likens the development of AI to the story of Stone Soup. But at least in the story they did not go back and sell the soup to the villagers who had collectively made it.

So here's the Al version of this. There's a bunch of tech execs that go to the village of computer users, and they say, we're going to make artificial general intelligence just from next-token prediction and gradient descent and transformers, just a few algorithms, and the users say, that's amazing, that's wonderful. You're going to do that? They say, yeah, but it would be much better if we had more data. It really depends on having a lot of data. Do you guys have any data that you could give us? All the users say, well, there's everything, every book we've ever written, every story we've ever had, every picture we've ever put out on the Internet. Sure, of course, we'll give you that.
People say, yeah, see, it's getting more intelligent, but it still says a lot of stupid and obnoxious things. Could you do reinforcement learning from human feedback, which is that the model produces some response and then literally there's whole villages in Africa that are saying, no, that's good or no, that's bad. Going through and saying that's wrong. Could you do that? The villagers say, oh yeah, we're happy. We'll spend hours and hours saying whether it's wrong or right.
Then finally they say, yeah, see it's more and more intelligent, but it's still saying stupid things. Could you do prompt engineering? If you ask it in in-context way with exactly the right prompt, then it will do better and of course the users say, yeah, we'll spend hours and hours doing prompt engineering, working this out and then at the end of the process, the people say, oh yeah, look, see we told you, we made intelligence. This computer is now artificially intelligent just from a few algorithms. When I said this at NURBS, which was one of the big AI conferences, Ted Chiang, who was there said, yeah, but at least in the story, they don't sell the soup back to the villagers.

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· May 23

Yep. This is from when the Big Ugly Bill was passed a year ago.

Chart using CBO data to show that the “savings” from cuts to Medicaid & SNAP was less than the tax cuts for those with more than half-a-million $ in income.

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· May 23

Re Trump announcing an imminent peace deal with Hormuz opened as before, Iran says they did not agree to that, and the news agency added this through-the-looking-glass detail. 😖

FarsNews Agency: It should be noted that American officials have acknowledged in multiple messages to Iran that Trump's tweets are primarily for promotional purposes and media consumption within the United States, and they have recommended that no attention be paid to these statements.

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· May 22

I would normally avoid giving this putz any airtime, but look at this epic gaslighting. We should be GRATEFUL HE DID NOT STEAL EVEN MORE FROM US⁉️

I gave up a lot of money in allowing the just announced Anti-Weaponization Fund to go forward. I could have settled my case, including the illegal release of my Tax Returns and the equally illegal BREAK IN of Mar-a-Lago, for an absolute fortune. Instead, I am helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, JUSTICE! President DJT

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· May 22

Except you “cannot be messaged.”

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· May 20

INTOLERABLE CORRUPTION

Bramhall comic of Trump handing a big bag o’ cash to a J6er holding a Confederate battle flag and a sign saying “Your tax dollars at work” with the seal of the totally corrupted ersatz Justice Dept.

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· May 16

A BlueSky friend suggested Lauren Lyle (of Outlander and Karen Pirie), and I was intrigued.

Martha near Seattle, 8647@marthawt· May 16

😱 Detention camps —> labor camps —> death camps? www.projectsaltbox.com/p/contracts-...