They then worked with a deepfake artist who used an open-source algorithm to swap in Putin’s and Kim’s faces. A post-production crew cleaned up the leftover artifacts of the algorithm to make the video look more realistic. All in all the process took only 10 days. Attempting the equivalent with CGI likely would have taken months, the team says. It also could have been prohibitively expensive.
Like Alexis de Tocqueville described early 19th century US, this article lays out well the current cancer of the country.
Ubu is a grotesque and shameless character, megalomaniac and authoritarian, an who ‘says stupid things with loutish authority’. Indifferent to the rules he sets and violates, if not contemptuous of them, he is sometimes transparent in trumpeting his designs and methods.
The 20th century had no shortage of putschist generals, bloodthirsty buffoons and other Ubu-like figures who caused havoc in the countries they ruled.
The president-elect flew into a rage when he learned that a fundraiser was being organised to pay staff for his accession into office and screamed at the head of the transition team, ‘You’re stealing my fucking money.’
Kakistocracy in action is personified by the outsized role of presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner
Beyond ‘misgovernment for profit’, kakistocracy serves a political agenda. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said the aim of free-market zealots is to reduce the size of the state ‘in order to be able to drown it in a bathtub’, implying it needs incompetence to discredit the idea of public service.
This story reads as the one about Matthias Corvinus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Corvinus and Vlad Tepes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impaler or Vlad the Impaler., or Vlad Dracula.
After the Ottoman Empire attacked Vlad Tepes from the South, Matthias Corvinus, one of the recognized most educated sovereign in his times, start spreading rumors that Vlad sucks blood from his peasants, to spread demoralization, so he can expand to the East on account of Vlad Tepes’ lands.
Tech companies largely oppose paring Section 230’s protections, which they say have been essential to the development of the internet. Now with the election just weeks away, some warn that the legislation could make tech platforms reluctant to act on potentially harmful disinformation.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has said Section 230 should be “revoked”, arguing that tech companies should be held to the same standards as media companies, which can be sued for printing falsehoods.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., one of the original authors of Section 230, accused the Trump administration of trying to intimidate tech companies.