Stephen T. Stone 's Techdirt Comments

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• On the post: The Hallucinating ChatGPT Presidency

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 29 Apr, 2025 @ 01:23pm

  Your call, child.

• On the post: The Hallucinating ChatGPT Presidency

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 29 Apr, 2025 @ 11:40am

  Nah, you can call me Team Inept Hotness. If you’re going to do the Voldemort shit, the least you can do is anagram my name like he did.

• On the post: Congress Moving Forward On Unconstitutional Take It Down Act

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 29 Apr, 2025 @ 10:49am

  The people on United Airlines Flight 93 on the morning of 9/11 probably figured out soon after the hijacking that they were all going to die. None of them could’ve prevented their deaths that day. But the brave souls who fought the hijackers for control of the plane still fought anyway. The fight is everything. Sometimes, it’s all we really have.

• On the post: Congress Moving Forward On Unconstitutional Take It Down Act

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 29 Apr, 2025 @ 10:44am

  How likely is any of that to happen

  Nobody here can tell you, with the certainty of God, what the mathematical odds of anything like this happening are. Someone could say 99% and someone else could say 1%, and there’s no real way to tell you which one is right. You’re looking for certainty in an uncertain world. I get it, I do. But that is always a fool’s errand because it’s equally possible that I either die of a heart attack ten minutes after I post this comment or I keep on living. The future is not set, nor will it ever be. Get comfortable with not knowing.

• On the post: One Of RFK Jr.’s ‘Extraordinary Healers’ Caught Measles, Kept Treating Patients In Facilities

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 29 Apr, 2025 @ 10:24am

  Koby’s been awfully quiet the past few days. I’m guessing he fried his brain trying to come up with a way to spin “kids dying of a disease we had practically eradicated is good, actually” as a net positive.

• On the post: The Hallucinating ChatGPT Presidency

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 29 Apr, 2025 @ 09:38am

  So what you’re saying is that the lizard people did a shit job of programming Trump. 🙃

• On the post: FCC Commissioner Gomez Blasts Brendan Carr’s ‘Campaign Of Censorship’

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 29 Apr, 2025 @ 09:31am

  even if the latter hasn’t happened yet

  What good does it do you to think this thing that hasn’t happened already did happen and act like the whole world is crashing down⁠—and to do that every day for the rest of your life?

• On the post: One Of RFK Jr.’s ‘Extraordinary Healers’ Caught Measles, Kept Treating Patients In Facilities

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 28 Apr, 2025 @ 10:59pm

  An incredibly good point. 🤣

• On the post: The Untold Story Of How Ed Martin Ghostwrote Online Attacks Against A Judge — And Still Became A Top Trump Prosecutor

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 28 Apr, 2025 @ 09:18pm

  I’d go with Option C and say “it’s a bit of both”. Trump’s entire modus operandi in re: human relationships is that, to him, every relationship is transactional. If you can do something for him, he’ll do something for you⁠—right up until you stop being useful to him, at which point you get thrown under the bus. (This is why he goes on about loyalty: He sees it as a one-way street going towards him and him alone.) The kind of people who willingly associate with someone like that are the kind of people who either like being used or don’t care about being used so long as they get their end of the bargain.

• On the post: The Untold Story Of How Ed Martin Ghostwrote Online Attacks Against A Judge — And Still Became A Top Trump Prosecutor

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 28 Apr, 2025 @ 09:11pm

  To wit: He allowed brands to buy advertising on the White House lawn for the Easter Egg Roll.

• On the post: Government Actually Threatens Wikipedia’s Editorial Freedom; Self-Proclaimed Free Speech Warriors Suddenly Have Other Plans

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 28 Apr, 2025 @ 09:09pm

  Conservatives always want to be the authority and the anti-authority, the rule-makers and the rulebreakers. Them not being popular or “cool”⁠—i.e., not having any real cultural cache⁠—even with power and money on their side sticks in their craw. Just look at Elon Musk: He’s the wealthiest man alive and he’s still widely mocked by much of the world and bullied online. While he’d never say so out loud, that shit has to eat him up inside.

• On the post: One Of RFK Jr.’s ‘Extraordinary Healers’ Caught Measles, Kept Treating Patients In Facilities

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 28 Apr, 2025 @ 09:04pm

  The biggest tip-off for me that this dude is a quack? RFK Jr. referred to him as a “healer”. Don’t get me wrong, it’s possible to refer to a good doctor as a “healer”. Ain’t an unheard of thing, I admit. But considering how that word in the context of healthcare is often connected to grifters and scammers (especially “faith healers” who bamboozle people with fake/staged “miracles”), I have a hard time thinking anyone described as such is anything but a grifting piece of shit.

• On the post: FBI Arrests Wisconsin Judge For Allegedly Obstructing The Arrest Of An Undocumented Immigrant

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 28 Apr, 2025 @ 04:24pm

  The judge took actions designed to thwart the federal agents that the judge knew were there to arrest him.

  [citation needed]

• On the post: DHS Deported A Two-Year-Old US Citizen To Honduras And Now A Federal Judge Wants Some Answers

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 28 Apr, 2025 @ 02:31pm

  SCOTUS seems primed to decide that case in a way that privileges religious beliefs over secular education and will make those opt-outs applicable to subjects other than queer people (which will make those opt-outs even worse). That’s bad no matter how you look at it. And by the by, you might want to check in with me before you go saying I believe something that I don’t actually believe. Ways to contact me outside of Techdirt aren’t hard to find. Replying to one of my comments by asking me about my opinion on a given subject (instead of trying to shove words down my throat that didn’t first come from it) also works.

• On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 28 Apr, 2025 @ 12:25pm

  Vance also entered office with the lowest approval rating of any vice president ever, which really doesn’t bode well for him. Toss in a bit of “the couch-fucker killed the Pope” viral mockery for good measure and the dude’s got no real chance of being the successor to Trump. Then again, no one is really primed to do that. Plenty of people in the GOP are at least as cruel as Trump, but none of them have that same kind of weird-ass charisma and appeal that Trump does. With any luck, once 2027 rolls around, the GOP will find itself in the unenviable position of having no one capable of being “the next Trump” for the 2028 campaign.

• On the post: DHS Deported A Two-Year-Old US Citizen To Honduras And Now A Federal Judge Wants Some Answers

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 28 Apr, 2025 @ 11:29am

  Two things.

  1. Directly replying to me isn’t going to alter some algorithm or cost you social credit points or whatever, so doing this “I’m not gonna directly reply to you” bullshit isn’t going to have the effect you think it is.
  2. Cynicism is understandable, but your post sounds like it comes from someone who’s ready to concede defeat to Trump⁠—yes, Trump⁠—and watch as the world crashes down because you think Heaven’s looking better every day, and that’s never a good look for anyone.

• On the post: DHS Deported A Two-Year-Old US Citizen To Honduras And Now A Federal Judge Wants Some Answers

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 28 Apr, 2025 @ 10:19am

  I believe the administration is trying to build the precedent that deporting citizens is acceptable in preparation for deporting citizens without regard to the legal status of their parents.

  You’re right that this is another step to normalizing horrific actions by the Trump administration. But you’re wrong about the endgame: It’s about deporting U.S. citizens regardless of any factors (including age and parental status) and with only “because the boss said so” as the reason.

• On the post: DHS Deported A Two-Year-Old US Citizen To Honduras And Now A Federal Judge Wants Some Answers

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 28 Apr, 2025 @ 09:50am

  The fact that these kinds of cases are even being publicized, let alone fast-tracked by a notoriously slow judiciary, should bring you at least a small bit of optimism. If it doesn’t…well, maybe you need to go touch grass for a while, because being this fucking cynical all the time isn’t healthy.

• On the post: DHS Deported A Two-Year-Old US Citizen To Honduras And Now A Federal Judge Wants Some Answers

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 28 Apr, 2025 @ 09:43am

  The whole thing about the child’s mother (allegedly) taking the child with her and the assertion that the child be deported in such cases harkens back to the legal doctrine of “partus sequitur ventrem” (lit. “that which is born follows the womb”). That doctrine, established in British crown colonies in the late 1600s, basically said “the mother’s legal status is conferred upon to her children”. It was used primarily to ensure that any child born to a female slave would be legally considered a slave upon their birth. We are seeing here, and I say this without hyperbole, a return to slave-state logic from a government administration staffed and led by segregationists. This includes (but isn’t limited to) Stephen Miller, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump. If you think I’m exaggerating, ask yourself why all this fuss is being made about brown-skinned immigrants (legal or not) but no one in Trump’s orbit is saying shit about, say, European immigrants whose skin colors would match the upper half of that one chart from Family Guy.

• On the post: John Carmack: Calm Down About Video Game AI Tech Demos, Folks

  

  Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 28 Apr, 2025 @ 06:36am

  I remember reading a while back that AI was being used to restore very old photographs and film reels.

  Yeah, boutique anime company Discotek Media has used the AstroRes upscale process/device/whatever several times to help them remaster or restore footage that couldn’t be done any other way. That process was almost used for the remaster of Project A-Ko until the long-lost masters for that film were found pretty much by accident.

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