Hispanic Fanatic

We have definitive proof, as if any were needed, that our president is a depraved sociopath.

The most chilling aspect of this homunculus of hatred’s response to a beloved director and his wife getting murdered is not the gloating, the mocking, or the praising of himself. It is the implication that if the murderer turned out to be a right-wing goon, that was fine, because the couple had it coming. Even MAGA fans (well, some of them, at least) were disgusted at this rejection of basic decency and the grotesque wallowing in violence.

Don’t conservatives ever get tired of defending this repulsive behavior? At what point are they no longer owning the libs and instead cackling over pure evil? Do they even know anymore?

In any case, I will wrap up this final post of 2025 by celebrating the great Rob Reiner, who was responsible for one of my favorite films of all time, the insanely underrated road-trip comedy The Sure Thing.

I saw this movie when I was 16, and to this day, I have never related to any onscreen character more than Gib. Maybe it’s because Gib was a funny guy who was awkward with women. Perhaps it is because Gib tried to go with the flow but still got moody and morose. Or maybe it is because to this day, there are very few Midwestern-raised Latino characters in movies, so I don’t have a lot of options.

In any case, The Sure Thing is hilarious, which is a big reason I love it. But another reason for my admiration developed only later, when I rewatched the movie as an adult. 

It’s clear that Alison takes life too seriously, and she learns to lighten up through her relationship with Gib. But as Reiner himself pointed out, Gib takes life too frivolously, and he learns much from Alison. That nuance took me a while to figure out.

Yes, this director was so good, even his 1980s teen comedies were deep.

See you in 2026.

I recently created my first AI agent.

Don’t be impressed. It took ten minutes and no technical skill at all. The AI basically synthesizes my news feed.

But maybe I should look into developing an AI chatbot that can convert hardcore right-wingers into progressive activists, because that would be one hell of a cultural improvement from a tool that, so far, has been most effective at writing poorly phrased emails for lazy people and creating bizarro images.

You see, a recent study has found that AI chatbots “can sway voters better than political advertisements.” The researchers found that “a conversation with a chatbot can shift people’s political views” more effectively than talking to a human can. But since we’re talking about AI here, and there is always a dark side, you will be unsurprised to know that “the most persuasive models also spread the most misinformation.”

Basically, your Tia Ana will remain steadfast in her political views no matter how many facts you throw at her or regardless of how much you plead. But her principles may waver if an AI bot lies to her enough. 

No, that’s not reassuring.

The researchers say that “the chatbots’ persuasive power could have profound consequences for the future of democracy.” For example, politicians who “use AI chatbots could shape public opinion in ways that compromise voters’ ability to make independent political judgments.”

As we know, many Americans believe Jewish space lasers control the weather and vaccines cause babies to explode. And those beliefs have a head start even before AI does it thing. 

Research shows that the affinity to believe total nonsense is more of a trait for conservatives. This tendency apparently extends to AI, as the study revealed that “chatbots advocating for right-leaning candidates made a larger number of inaccurate claims than those advocating for left-leaning candidates.” 

You see, if AI is parroting right-wing nonsense, it quickly runs out of objective truths. So the chatbots create “misleading or false information” to become more persuasive, and AI “essentially reaches to the bottom of the barrel of stuff they know, so the facts get worse quality.”

The researchers conclude that this study implies “a troubling world for democracy.” But they have a solution. All we need are “strong guardrails to keep the systems in check.”

If AI chatbots could laugh, they would bust out cackling at that statement. Because in the interest of making tech bros even more money, and to facilitate Silicon Valley’s continued right-wing drift, the Trump administration has made it difficult to create any guardrails — never mind strong ones.

Most likely, conservatives will swarm Americans with AI chatbots, deep fakes, and technological tricks designed to fool people into thinking progressives are diabolical and the GOP is competent, neither of which is true.

So in the future, perhaps robots won’t need to rise up, attack humans, and subjugate them. Maybe we will just meekly do whatever AI tells is to do.

I know. We had the audacity to celebrate Thanksgiving, treating ourselves to the briefest of respites from the nonstop clown-car shitshow that now makes up American government. And what happens?

Well, for starters, our possibly ailing, possible senile president openly admits to committing war crimes (but then tries to jettison the blame to someone else). 

Hey, remember that “controversial” video of Democratic leaders reminding military personnel that they should refuse to carry out illegal orders? Yeah, it looks like that was sound advice that has unfortunately gone unheeded. 

In other disturbing news, our nation’s centuries-long reputation as a beacon of freedom for oppressed people has been stomped into oblivion. We are kicking out refugees who helped us in a botched war because one of them is a homicidal lunatic. This is because we now judge whole groups of people based on their worst members, unless of course, they are white Americans who tried to overthrow the government, in which case we do not even judge the worst of them at all.

And while we’re at it, we’re expelling other immigrant groups because… well, there really is no good reason. Hell, even the most ardent Trump defender has to admit that referring to communities of black people as “garbage” and harassing them for a crime that they are not even remotely responsible for is not, as the kids say, a good look.

But don’t worry. Our government has made it clear that Afrikaners can get going on rebuilding their whites-only homeland right here. So we still love certain immigrants, and the reasons why are not glaring or obvious in the least. Nope.

Oh, one more thing. It is more than a little odd for a guy to threaten war (despite his boasting that he would never start a war) because he is so angry about the illegal drug trade, but then turn around and pardon a man who flooded America with those same illegal drugs.

Yes, it’s all very depressing, infuriating, and perplexing. So basically, it is another day in Trump’s America.

And we just can’t get a fucking break.