The White House holds an AI summit

And Cybertoonz is there!

Comments

[Armchair Lawyer]

It sounds insane...but then again, the Biden administration is insane.

Recently, they've been caught going after Catholic hospitals, because these hospitals DARE to have a candle lit in the sanctuary in the hospital. Demanding the hospital blow out the candle, or else face decertification. This is just...religious persecution...at this point. There's no risk from a single, well protected candle, well away from any patients, equipment, or oxygen tanks, in a hospital.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-admin-backs-down-battle-catholic-hospitals-chapel-candle

[Brett Bellmore]

Essentially, I think that, after the last couple of elections, the left think that they're untouchable. They managed to win a Presidential election with a geriatric candidate who hid in his basement, and was and is totally incapable of drawing crowds. And even after two years of utter incompetence and economic disaster, they did well in the midterms.

So they're dropping the masks and going after their enemies openly, daring anyone to try and stop them. I think they actually want a civil war at this point, so that they'll have an excuse to sic the military on people they don't like.

[Nige]

'So they’re dropping the masks and going after their enemies openly,’

Reublicans are banning books, supressing college courses, and passing laws designed to oppress a minority. The Biden administration apparently went all-out to use the entire weight and might of the US government to crush one single candle, then didn’t. You are dangerously ridiculous.

[Frank Drackman]

Only "banning" is from the Woke side, if one dares to speak out against chopping off children's dicks or objects to Transvestites recruiting children in Lie-berries, you are ridiculously dangerous.

Frank "against chopping off anyone's dick, even sex offenders (chop off their heads)

[Nige]

edgebot reports in from one of its favourite extreme porn sites.

[Frank Drackman]

Chopping off kids genitalia is pornographic, you're the one who calls it "Sexual Reassignment Surgery"
Speaking of Extreme Pornography, where's the (Very Wrong) "Reverend" Sandusky?? he's usually up to 50 Klingers/Bettors by now

[Nige]

edgebot writing slash fiction

[Frank Drackman]

Nige spells "Gash" wrong

[Nige]

edgebot applies for thesaurus job, flunks.

[Krychek_2]

While I agree it was an idiotic decision, the request to remove the candle was because it was deemed a fire hazard, not because it was Catholic. Isn't there enough actual religious persecution out there that you don't need to make something into religious persecution that isn't?

And that's a problem I see a lot on the part of people claiming religious persecution. Most of the time, once one takes a good look at it, the "persecution" is either that the religion involved isn't being given special privileges its massive sense of entitlement thinks it should have, or there was a legitimate non-religious reason for the decision.

There's a local story right now about a church claiming persecution because its landlord didn't renew its lease (they rented space at a strip mall). The reason for the non-renewal is that the landlord wants to tear the building down and build a new shopping plaza. That's not religious discrimination either; that's the free market at work.

Maybe your side could try not to carry so many chips on your shoulder.

[Brett Bellmore]

" the request to remove the candle was because it was deemed a fire hazard"

"pre·text
noun
noun: pretext; plural noun: pretexts

a reason given in justification of a course of action that is not the real reason."

The candle objectively and provably wasn't a fire hazard, therefore the actual reason for the demand was something else. That's why the administration backed down when the demand became public and caused a PR backlash.

[Krychek_2]

How is it objectively and provably not a fire hazard? Do you have a cite?

[Brett Bellmore]

It was in a protective brass and glass holder, under a sprinkler. The feds eventually admitted it wasn't a safety hazard. But only after a lot of political backlash.

[Nige]

Any naked flame presumably triggers an automatic fire-hazard alert. They're giving them special treatment by allowing them to keep it burning, which is nice

[Mr. Bumble]

Bullshit!

[Nige]

Ungrateful little pixie.

[Frank Drackman]

Nah, they've been letting JFK contribute to Global Warming for almost 60 years

[Brett Bellmore]

It wasn't a "naked" flame, it was inside a brass and glass candle holder, behind two layers of glass.

[Nige]

Put your gun away, Brett, they're letting the naked flame burn.

[Rossami]

That chapel had a candle burning in the same place under identical conditions for 15 years. It did not suddenly become an "automatic fire-hazard alert".

And, no, the local fire code didn't change.

[David Nieporent]

The candle objectively and provably wasn’t a fire hazard, therefore the actual reason for the demand was something else.

You're autisming again. How many thousand times have you been told that you don't get to decide that X is the right answer, and therefore if someone says Y the only explanation is that they're a bad faith liar?

[Mr. Bumble]

You, Nige and a host of others prove it everyday.

[Nige]

Don't burn the candle at both ends, Bumble.

[David Nieporent]

Recently, they’ve been caught going after Catholic hospitals, because these hospitals DARE to have a candle lit in the sanctuary in the hospital. Demanding the hospital blow out the candle, or else face decertification. This is just…religious persecution…at this point. There’s no risk from a single, well protected candle, well away from any patients, equipment, or oxygen tanks, in a hospital.

I don't know why people post links proving that they're lying about something. If you're going to lie, at least make it tougher to figure it out.

1) The administration was not "caught" doing anything.
2) They were not "going after Catholic hospitals." It was about a single hospital, not some mass assault on religious institutions.
3) It wasn't the Biden administration; it was an independent accrediting organization.
4) The reported issue was a safety issue, not "religious persecution."

Now, it sounds like the safety argument was trivial, but that just means that some pointless bureaucrat was flexing his petty authority. Now, it's possible that the accreditor was a sedevacantist trying to express his anger at the current inhabitant of the Vatican, or maybe a Muslim taking revenge for the crusades, but there's nothing to indicate either of those things.

Either way, pretending that you're being persecuted just makes you look foolish.

[Armchair Lawyer]

We post links so that when people like you lie about what's in them, we can directly rebut.

1. The administration was caught trying to violate the religious rights of an institution. You can tell it knew it was in the wrong, because when faced with a lawsuit, it instantly backed down.

"HHS' decision Friday to abandon its attempt to punish Saint Francis Health System came days after Windham sent a letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and other senior agency officials, warning that Becket was prepared to file a federal lawsuit on behalf of the hospital to defend its use of the candle."

2. This was a hospital system (not a single hospital) encompassing multiple hospitals and clinics. Note "System" below. Again, we post links so people can read them accurately and not lie about them.

As below "Becket was forced to intervene after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an HHS subagency, stood by its determination in April that the candle posed a fire threat and that, if it wasn't removed, the agency would strip Saint Francis Hospital System of its ability to accept Medicare, Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program."

3. " It wasn’t the Biden administration;"

This is a lie. While the accrediting organization initiated the review, HH&S had complete control over the appeals process and the decision making process. HH&S chose to go after this in particular.

4. "The reported issue was a safety issue, not “religious persecution.”

No agency reports their actions as "religious persecution". There's always a "reason" that can be used to justify it, no matter how weak.

There's more to come about the religious persecution here.

[David Nieporent]

1) The administration was not "caught." Who do you think "caught" them? You can't be "caught" unless you're doing something in secret, which they weren't.

I am not sure why you are citing HHS "backing down" as a point in favor of your conspiracy theory rather than as a point against it. (I mean, I actually am sure why. I'm just not sure who you think you're fooling by doing that.)

2) It was a candle at a single hospital. They were not going around to all the Catholic hospitals in the country finding things wrong with them.

3) No, it's not a lie. It was a private accrediting organization that reported that it shouldn't be accredited. Do you think that the White House Chief of Staff is involved in deciding whether individual hospitals meet the requisite safety standards for accreditation? As soon as it was run up the chain of command, the decision was reversed.

4) And there's always a loon who decides that an explanation must be a pretext.

[Armchair Lawyer]

1) Sigh...If you're going to make up new definitions for words, like requiring the word "caught" refer to something done in "secret" at least cite a proper definition from a site.

2) See the post below. The inspecting organization in question was going around to different Catholic hospitals and citing them for exactly the same issue. Yes, they were doing exactly that.

3) "As soon as it was run up..." No. If HH&S had responded to the first appeal and said "well, that's wrong, decision reversed" then sure. Maybe even the second appeal. But 4 different appeals, all denied, until the threat of a lawsuit? No.

4) Fire Marshals are well known for being "loons" who say things aren't safety risks.

[Armchair Lawyer]

More on the Biden Administration's religious persecution of Catholic Hospitals.

"This episode begins in February, when a surveyor from the Joint Commission, an Illinois-based non-profit accrediting organization, flagged the sanctuary lamp in Saint Francis Hospital South’s chapel, declaring it a fire-safety violation.

“[T]he surveyor expressly asked to go to the chapel to see if there was a living flame,” Windham said. “Of course, he found it: the same sanctuary flame that Saint Francis has kept alight since the chapel was blessed by the local Ordinary.”

When it seemed clear the inspector was going to make an issue of the sanctuary lamp, hospital staff objected. In response, according to Windham, “The surveyor observed to Saint Francis personnel that other Catholic hospitals had complied and extinguished the living flame at their chapels, substituting it with an electric light.”

Interesting.

The Joint Commission, which makes accrediting recommendations to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has flagged other Catholic healthcare organizations for the exact same so-called fire-safety violation, according to Windham's account. Saint Francis isn’t even the first. It’s simply the first one to refuse compliance.

Representatives for the Joint Commission declined the Washington Examiner’s request for comment, explaining they are “unable to comment on any matters pertaining to litigation.”

Naturally, Saint Francis appealed the citation — four times. The Biden administration declined each appeal, siding instead with the Joint Commission, whose surveyor reported “there was a lit candle with open flame burning unattended 24/7.”

To review here this "Joint Commission" (whose only real business in its $100,000,000 plus budget is certifying hospitals for HH&S) had a surveyer who in each case, demanded to go straight to the sanctuary in the Catholic hospital, where he could point out the extremely well protected candle and demand it be extinguished to be in "compliance". Regardless of any real safety risk (as testimony by the Fire Marshal indicated...there was no real safety risk). Or else all Medicare and Medicaid funding for services would be cut off.

This is religious persecution. This is a cooperation between a "non-profit" and the federal government designed to suppress the religious freedoms of organizations it disagrees with. Not a practice whereby something was found in the course of a standard investigation for safety. But going straight to a religious facility (within a hospital) and demanding religious rights be infringed upon.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/faith-freedom-self-reliance/biden-administration-targets-a-catholic-hospital-for-daring-to-question-its-authority

[Nige]

‘This is religious persecution’

Far more likely it’s just a guy who really hates candles.

'designed to suppress the religious freedoms'

The candle is nice and all but it doesn't really hold much religious significance. Enough to provoke objections to putting it out, sure, but if it got snuffed nobody'd even be obliged to pray in the dark.

[Armchair Lawyer]

I do enjoy how a non-believer can dictate for believers what is actually of religious significance and all.

While you're at it, tell us again how Hanukkah just isn't that important, because it's just some candles...

[Aubrey LaVentana]

if AIs, such as large language models, merely learn to construct answers to questions posed to them by being trained on vast quantities of text on a given topic and predicting what words (or sentences or paragraphs) usually come next on the basis of the body of training material,

Kamala Harris, or her speechwriter, is a large language model trained on the body of VP (and VP candidate) speeches of the past.

She may not be an ideal pick to lead a task force to avoid the pitfalls of AI. She is one of them.

http://disq.us/p/2u79dtl

[Nige]

Imagine getting this twisted because programmers don't want their language models to be overtly racist because it's bad PR - with everyone but Republicans, apparently. (I doubt tech guys actually care if they're racist or not, so long as they're not too obviously racist. If it's the sort of racism where black people will point to various more subtle racist outcomes, well, they can be safely ignored.) The primary purpose of these things is to put people out of work, thereby cutting costs and increasing share dividends. Considering how expensive they are to run and the fact that they need offshored full-time staff to keep them operating, it's going to be a disaster. The idea that these things will solve any actual problems is laughable.

[Brett Bellmore]

Nige, it's already been demonstrated that the models exhibit bias in the form of, for example, responding asymmetrically to Republican and Democratic candidates. To the point where the company was embarrassed enough that they promised to fix it!

Danger in the Machine: The Perils of Political and Demographic Biases Embedded in AI Systems

The system has been trained to be politically biased.

[Nige]

No, the systems probably unconsciously reflected the views of the people who designed it. People have been pointing out that this happens with various algorithms for years now. Mostly though, it seems to boil down to whether they can be made to use slurs or not. I guess since Republicans like slurs, they end up responding symmetically to them.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, the comic actually reflects the reality pretty well: Trained on the raw data set, the model was fairly representative of the general political discourse. Then they went in to a long process of grading responses and training it what not to say, and THAT is where most of the bias came in.

It's like Google in a way; They say, "Don't blame us, it's what the algorithm produced!" Then when the whistleblowers got busy, we found out they had a remarkably comprehensive system of black and white lists to override what the algorithm would natively produce.

Except that for ChatGPT they were more upfront about the system having externally imposed restraints on its responses. All user prompts are run through their moderation system. which is where a lot of the political bias comes from, because their moderation system is pretty political.

[Nige]

'Pretty political' is a weird way of saying 'avoids slurs.'

[Brett Bellmore]

No, Nige, avoids slurs directed at groups liberals care about, and permits them against groups liberals don't like.

It's been tested extensively, the slur blocking is ideologically selective, there are groups you can insult, and groups you can't.

[Nige]

'groups liberals care about'

That's such a weird way of putting it. What groups do conservatives care about?

[VinniUSMC]

Nige doesn't care about bias. Only those darn racist Nazi conservatives that live in his head.

[Nige]

What groups do conservatives care about?

[Frank Drackman]

Manifesto, Manifesto, where's the "Manifesto"????
The Nashville Shooter's I mean (Oh, I'm sorry, should I say "Shooters" because he/she identified as "they"??)
What's in it that deserves such secrecy??? She was pregnant with Hunter Bidens (365th) "Love Child"??? The Testosterone treatments were making her, I mean his Vagina itchy???

Frank

[Krychek_2]

So only new fire hazards count?

I'm not saying it was or was not a fire hazard; I never visited the building so I don't actually know. I do know that candles have started fires, and the fact that this one has been around since the 60s may be a function of luck more than prudence.

[Mike W.]

60 years of luck? Come on!

[Nige]

Those candles are actually pretty safe. Obviously, being an open flame, someone decided it was a fire hazard and had to go and now everyone's pretending to be mad because The Biden Administration decided to leave it be like the tyrants they are. It's not clear how much of the Biden Administration was actually behind this effort to blow out a candle, it surely had to have come from cabinet level, but I bet they're seething over their nefarious plot being foiled.

[Krychek_2]

I recognize the importance of candles to Catholics, and I also understand the pinch of incense analogy. The problem here is that it is a fact-intensive question whether the candle was indeed a fire hazard. You say no, the feds initially said yes and then backed down under pressure. Not having seen the sanctuary myself, I'm willing to give the inspector the benefit of the doubt. If he were really trying to go after the Catholics, it strikes me that there were probably lots of far more substantive things he could have found.

There was a case some years back in which a church, on religious freedom grounds, refused to allow a building inspector to inspect their new building. The roof later collapsed and killed several people. Caesar isn't always wrong.

[Krychek_2]

But the accreditation wasn't removed; that's just it. The candle is still burning and the hospital is still accredited. If you have to reach like this to find examples of religious persecution then maybe there isn't nearly as much religious persecution as you've convinced yourself there is.

[Nige]

'But persecution is still persecution'

And this ain't it.

[Krychek_2]

And guess what, the candle is still burning and the hospital is still accredited. Try not to be a sore winner.

On the question of what is Caesar's and what is God's, where would you place fire and building codes? And who gets to decide?

[Nige]

Catholics like candles but they're not actually central to any aspect of their faith. I'm gad this was sorted but the absolute dramarama of claiming it was persecution is just thick.

[David Nieporent]

It’s akin to firing a Jew from his job if he wore his kippah.

Maybe it would be, if it had actually happened! But it didn't!

It's akin to some random individual shift supervisor telling a Jew he would be fired if he didn't take off his yarmulke, based on a far-fetched safety theory, the Jew complaining, and the directive being rescinded by a manager without ever being implemented.

[Armchair Lawyer]

A "sore winner"? For defending religious rights? And the other hospitals that had their rights infringed on?

[Armchair Lawyer]

There are pictures. You can look them up in the links and evaluate for yourself. Or you can listen to the Fire Marshal who said there was no risk.

Sometimes, when the cop is only pulling over black people for speeding….it’s because he’s racist.

Sometimes when the town health and safety officer just "happens" to inspect the local mosque every week...it's because he's trying to shut it down.

And sometimes, when the official who helps certify hospitals for HH&S makes a bee-line to the sanctuary in multiple Catholic hospitals every times he visits...it's because there's anti-religious bigotry.

[Rossami]

So you're saying that it's not persecution unless it's successful? I don't think you'll find that as the actual legal or moral standard, well, anywhere.

[Brett Bellmore]

Nige, backing down when something blows up in your face hardly has the same implications as not doing the stupid thing in the first place.

Remember, this is the same administration that is arresting people for peaceful protest in front of abortion clinics, while blowing off pro-life centers being firebombed. They really do demonstrate a bit of anti-religious animus.

[Brett Bellmore]

So, the consensus on the left here is that it's not persecution unless successful. If you back down when it results in a shit storm, no harm, no foul.

[Nige]

‘The same administration’ yeah right Biden, the practicing catholic, is issuing edicts about health and safety standards specifically designed to get rid of that one catholic candle in that one catholic hospital. The rest of your persecution complex is similarly overblown/inaccurate.

[Nige]

It's not persecution unless it's persecution.

[Nige]

It's not persecution unless there's some sort of persecution. I'm not even sure what the shitstorm was. One strongly-worded indignant letter and the right doing the angry dance, the same dance they do every single day. Personally, I think it was the letter that did the trick, it was a good letter.

[Suudy]

Since when do you, much less anyone in government, get to decide what is "central to any aspect of their faith"? Canon Law and the General Instruction of the Roman Missal require "a special lamp, fueled by oil or wax should sine prominently to indicate the presence of Christ and honor it."

Sure sounds important--even central--to Catholics.