news – Pain In The Bud

Exclusive: Trump’s New Press Secretary Used AI To ‘Write’ Fawning Columns That Helped Get Her The Job

Katie Zacharia, Trump’s newest propagandist, used a large language model to write obsequious columns that helped put her on his radar.

Like most Americans who saw clips of Katie Zacharia’s debut as the newest ~~Baghdad Bob~~ White House press secretary, I was taken aback by how utterly unprepared she was, and the apparently Herculean struggle required for her to read a handful of sentences aloud, slowly, as she introduced herself.

“Her reading is good for an 11-year-old,” Jimmy Kimmel quipped the following night, and the social web’s been buzzing with bets over whether she’ll last a full Scaramucci before Trump Apprentices her and declares she’s “a terrible person” who was unworthy of lying to Americans on his behalf.

So last night I was reading a story about the fact that, while she’s been loudly and frequently telling anyone willing to listen that she’s a lawyer, no one can find any records that Zacharia passed a bar exam in any US state.

When a reporter asked Trump where Zacharia served as a practicing attorney, the president turned and gestured to Zacharia, who smiled and said “When I moved to China.”

There are just a few small problems with that. China’s bar equivalent is the National Unified Legal Professional Qualification Examination, commonly known as the Fakao. It is notoriously difficult, and it’s only administered in Mandarin, Mongolian, Kazakh, Uyghur and Korean. Also, only citizens of China can take the exam.

Zacharia previously told an interviewer she speaks “a bit of Mandarin,” mostly conversational, and she spent less than three years in the country, which means she would not be able to pass the Fakao even if the test didn’t have a nationality requirement.

There’s a nonzero chance she watched the Netflix Korean drama Extraordinary Attorney Woo a few thousand times, got Xi Jinping to personally waive the citizenship requirement and passed the exam on a combination of osmotic knowledge and luck, just like I can’t entirely eliminate the possibility that my cat is a Bengal tiger with dwarfism.

But that still doesn’t explain why Zacharia claims she held positions as chief counsel and specialist in particular areas of law for US corporations. She could not serve in those roles if she was not an attorney.

A female news commentator speaking on the Matt Gaetz Show, with a city skyline background at night. — A clip of Zacharia telling disgraced former congressman Matt Gaetz that World War II was started by German-speaking Anthony Faucis spreading propaganda about vaccines.

Then the story mentioned Zacharia got the job as press secretary partly on the strength of her relentless glazing of the president in columns she wrote for California Globe, a “non-partisan” politics-oriented site with a focus on the Golden State.

Now I was interested. Perhaps Zacharia isn’t marginally literate and her disastrous debut at the White House podium was due to nerves, particularly at the prospect of serving a man who, in her words, is “without a doubt the greatest president the world has ever seen.”

Zacharia’s columns are saturated with slobbering praise calling Trump an “unparalleled titan of American politics,” a “visionary leader” possessed of “unmatched courage” and “a resolve that defies comprehension.”

Her columns credit him with accomplishments equaling or surpassing those of George Washington, of singlehandedly saving our republic from the shadowy forces of deep state evil. They portray him striding across our political landscape like a colossus who also happens to be a “beacon of liberty,” a mobile lighthouse (AI loves using lighthouses in metaphors) whose towering steps between golf courses and McDonald’s rally True Patriots to America-loving endeavors like storming the Capitol for attempted insurrection. Zacharia also paints Trump, naturally, as the world’s foremost champion of election integrity.

There was another quality to the columns worth noting: they were written by AI.

That is not to say they’re good, because AI writing never is. Rather, they’re the sort of thing a person like Zacharia thinks is impressive, filled with the kind of overwrought language ChatGPT generates when the person doing the prompting asks for moving prose but can’t articulate what that looks like and is too lazy to offer much more than “Write a column describing all the ways Donald Trump is awesome and the greatest president in history. Oh! And flatter him a lot so he’ll notice I exist, I’m blonde, and I kind of look like Ivanka if you squint from a distance. Or that conniving Natalie Harp, who totally doesn’t deserve to be so close to Presisent Trump!”

The columns are saturated with the sort of over-the-top superlatives Trump and his minions believe are acceptable substitutes for basic qualities like integrity and compassion. They vacillate between bursts of excessive glazing and demonstrable lies about the president’s accomplishments, which in reality amount to little more than setting the world on fire while increasing his net worth and that of his minions by many billions.

They’re marked by telltale AI clutches, sentence construction, and the underlying rhythm of the language.

A screenshot of a text editor displaying a letter addressed to President Trump, highlighting his political influence and leadership qualities, along with a tool indicating that the text is 100% AI-generated.

Screenshot of a dashboard displaying AI detection results for a text analysis, showing 89% AI-generated content and 11% human-written content.

Every Zacharia column I ran through Pangram, the premier AI writing detection tool, came back as between 89% and 100% AI written. Perhaps most conclusively, the woman we saw bumbling through sentences equivalent to the prose of a children’s book is not capable of constructing the columns, as bad as they are.

Zacharia’s efforts were so sloppy, she didn’t bother to remove the bolding and other formatting tendencies that mark text as the output of an LLM, in this case ChatGPT:

The one portion of this text Zacharia likely edited by hand was referring to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as a communist rather than a democratic socialist, in a column bemoaning the fact that an election worked the way it was supposed to and the winner was the candidate chosen by voters.

Katie Zacharia is not a clever person. Anyone who thinks they can lie their way into a role that comes with national scrutiny, communicating daily to people whose job involves intellectual curiosity, really hasn’t taken into account what happens the second the story becomes about her instead of the Iran war, the midterm races or one of Trump’s other hires behaving disgracefully. Granted, there’s plenty of the latter, although even Kimberly Guilfoyle’s ignominious end as a “public servant” didn’t distract reporters and the public from the Zacharian train wreck they were watching in real time.

Unfortunately for Zacharia, the story became about her the moment she stepped up to that podium. If I were a prediction market guy, I’d put my money on Katie surviving a single Zacharia, a unit of time equal to about half a Scaramucci.

If you’re here for the first time, yes, this is a cat blog, and yes, I believe felines should serve as heads of state. The world can’t possibly be any worse under their leadership, and we’d all be much better rested.

Header image credit: The White House

Larry The Cat Back At Downing Street After Surgery, Sporting A New Scar

Veterinarians removed a cyst that was causing the legendary mouser some discomfort, but it did not appear related to any larger health issue.

Not even surgery can slow him down.

Larry the Cat, the long-serving chief mouser at No. 10 Downing St. in London, underwent an operation on Oct. 8 and was back in the UK’s seat of power the following day.

Veterinarians removed a cyst from the beloved feline, who has held his post for 15 years and is currently on his seventh prime minister. Citing “a Downing Street source,” The Telegraph reported Larry didn’t miss a beat.

“He is feline much better but taking things one paw at a time,” the source told The Telegraph’s Sapphire Hope. “We are grateful to the vets for their outstanding care.”

A striped cat sitting on a colorful patterned rug, looking towards the viewer. — Larry overseeing government operations in the prime minister’s office. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Cysts are pockets of tissue that are mostly benign but can cause pain and discomfort. There’s nothing to indicate the cyst removed from Larry was associated with any larger health problem, and he reportedly didn’t skip a beat when returned to his rightful place in the UK’s equivalent of the White House, returning immediately to his usual rounds, napping and treats.

A photo provided by No. 10 Downing St.’s Ben Perry (top image) shows a patch of shaved fur and Larry’s new scar. Perhaps it will make him more popular with the female mousers in nearby government offices.

At 19 years old, Larry has outlasted a record number of prime ministers since he was appointed to his position in 2011 during David Cameron’s tenure, but The Telegraph notes he’s not yet the longest-serving mouser. Peter III, a void kitty, served 17 years until his death on March 9, 1964. Peter oversaw the activities of five ministers prime, including Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, and enjoyed a similar level of popularity with the adoring public and overseas admirers.

Caturday Links And Open Comments: That Study About Cats = Happiness, The ‘Carrie’ Remake, And More!

Open comments, open links! Plus, we talk about cat-friendly hotels, the recent report on contaminants in cat food, Mike Flanagan’s latest Stephen King adaptation, and more!

We’re gonna try something new this week and dedicate “Caturday” to links, off-topic discussions and anything you’d like to post about.

It’s a good opportunity to touch on stories that we didn’t get a chance to go in-depth on, talk about and recommend entertainment, and follow up on stories in the news.

If there’s anything we’ve missed, something you’d like to point out, or you just want to write about what a dashing and meowgnificent feline Bud is, you can do that here too. (And don’t forget to talk about your own cats!)

The Clean Label report on contaminants in cat food

Five cans of cat food displayed on a white countertop, each with a different texture and color of the food inside. — Mmmm, slop!

Thanks to Candi A. for keeping us in the loop and posting the link to her friend’s assessment of the concerning findings about heavy metals, pesticides and other nasty stuff found in cat food.

In case you missed it, here’s the link Candi shared.

I have only been able to read it once and have not yet read the full report, so I’m going to refrain from adding anything yet. I need to see all the details and whether the brands I usually buy are included. I expect they will be, as Clean Label chose samples from the 100 most popular cat food brands sold in the US. (For our friends outside the states, there could be useful information as well. The big brands are corporate conglomerates with international reach, so brands sold in the US are likely sold under different names or slightly different packaging elsewhere.)

Of course I’m not an expert on feline nutrition either, so we should all decide what’s best for our cats based on what we know about them and the information we gain from reports and analysis.

I hope to revisit this in an in-depth post, hopefully with some input from veterinarians and experts on feline health.

Contractor work and staying at a pet friendly hotel

I won’t be able to use my bathroom overnight while a contractor puts in new floors, sink, etc., and my friend who feeds Bud while I’m away will have me, but not him. (I wonder why? It couldn’t have anything to do with him practicing some light mauling on her at least three times, would it?)

There’s also no way I’m gonna leave him here with an unfamiliar person, work noise and the uncertainty of not having me there to show him it’s all okay.

A cat sitting on a bed in a modern hotel room with wooden walls and a large window showing the outside view.

So it looks like I’m gonna stay at a pet-friendly hotel that I have verified as specifically cat-friendly as well. I’m going to get a disposable litter box, bring his bowls and some food, and I think he’ll be okay as long as he’s with me and I don’t leave him alone in an unfamiliar place. I’ll pick up dinner or order delivery, and I think we should be good.

But since there are plenty of cat experts here (that’s YOU!), including those of you who have dealt with this situation, I figured it’s a good idea to ask if there’s anything I haven’t considered or if you have advice for helping things go smoothly.

I think we have a good secure attachment thing going on. The earthquake about 18 months ago verified that — we woke up to the building shaking, Bud was sleeping on me, and he popped up his head to look at me like “Are we good here, Big Bud, or should I start running around screaming?”

I was actually proud of him for that, and for taking my word for it that everything was fine. Once he got reassurance from me, he relaxed and went back to sleep.

So I think that as long as I’m there with him, my fearless tiger companion will be okay.

Cats = happiness?

So, about that study: a research team looked at happiness indicators in 93 countries, as well as rates of cat ownership, toxoplasma gondii infection rates and other factors.

A happy cat sticking out its tongue with closed eyes, sitting against a blue background.

They found that having a cat or cats is linked to higher self-reported satisfaction with life.

It’s pretty wide-ranging, and the researchers themselves caution against drawing any hard conclusions from the data. However, they did note a few interesting points, including:

Toxoplasma gondii infection is higher in countries with fewer cats. This tracks with earlier studies that show even though t. gondii is heavily associated with cats in the popular imagination, felines are actually not the primary transmission vector. Other factors, like rodent infestations, as well as the quality of waste and sanitary infrastructure, are much more closely related to exposure and infection in people
The total number of estimated cats in a country is not associated with higher happiness levels, but the number of “owned” cats is. In other words, the link between cats and happiness seems to hinge on our personal relationships with cats, and not merely their presence. Countries overrun by strays, for example, do not have the same correlation
Speaking of correlation, that’s as far as this goes. The researchers note the data they have cannot prove causality. In other words, countries that have higher levels of cat adoption and ownership may be wealthier in general, and wealth — at least enough to free people from true poverty — is correlated with happiness. It could be that people who have more money are more likely to spend disposable income on little buddies. It does not mean you have to be wealthy by societal definitions, and it helps to remember how fortunate most of us in the first world are compared to the true poverty of the “global south”

Overall, the study’s authors conclude we need follow-up research to firmly establish a potential causal link between felines and greater satisfacfion in life.

A woman in a striped robe holding a glass of red wine, looking confidently at the camera. — Telegraph columnist Hannah Betts

If you’re skeptical of a causal link between cats and happiness, here’s a take from a Telegraph columnist who admittedly loves the slobbering subservience of dogs and detests the fact that feline affection must be earned. In fact, she questions whether feline affection actually exists.

Fair warning, she has an uncharitable view of our beloved house tigers and retrograde views on what their behaviors mean, but sometimes it’s helpful to understand why certain people don’t like our perfect little angels who can absolutely do no wrong. And yes, that’s sarcasm. I love Bud in spite of the fact that he can be a jerk at times, and maybe even a bit because of it, but it would be madness to claim cats don’t feel affection toward their bonded humans.

Influencers

Speaking of Jenner-Kardashians, I’m not sure if I missed this at the time or decided if it wasn’t worth getting upset over, but while I was just searching for Betts’ column to add the link, I found this story from seven months ago about widespread disgust with Khloe Kardashian for having her cats declawed.

A person dressed in a gray cat costume with cat ears and whiskers, holding a gray cat in her arms.

That the Kardashians are a family concerned with little else besides fame and money is not news, but I am planning on posting about the effect of celebrities and influencers on pet trends in the near future, and whether it’s declawing, purchasing “exotic” wildlife like monkeys as pets or keeping entire menageries of neglected, miserable animals, like it or not there are a lot of people who think it’s okay to do things because the walking examples of botched plastic surgery they idolize have made the behavior popular.

Animals are the ones who suffer, and groups dedicated to their welfare fight uphill battles trying to correct misinformation/combat harmful trends spread by influencers. There’s gotta be a better way, including holding social media platforms accountable when they elect to ignore animal welfare concerns. A video does not have to involve direct violence inflicted on an animal for it to qualify as animal abuse, and it’s crucial people understand that.

One disturbing example is a Youtube video uploaded by a young woman who adopted an adorable baby macaque, then proceeded to mentally torture the poor animal. One video involved her repeatedly offering a bottle of milk to the baby only to yank it away at the last second, laughing as if her actions were pure comedic genius. The baby became so traumatized, she stopped eating. That IS animal abuse, even if some minimally-trained, ignorant moderator employed by Youtube does not agree. Social media operators are not the ultimate arbiters of morality, animal welfare, criminality, political speech or anything else, even when they’ve appointed themselves to those roles.

These are the same people who invite teenagers and pre-teens onto their platforms, employ psychologists to help them keep the kids hooked and doomscrolling all day, provide them with filters that do little besides undermine their self confidence, provide platforms that are practically custom-made to enable anonymous bullying, then absolve themselves of responsibility when the inevitable happens. They are the last people we should trust with deciding what is acceptable or moral.

Mike Flanagan’s ‘Carrie’

A young woman with long dark hair and dirt smudges on her face is aiming a bow and arrow with a determined expression. — Amber Midthunder, a Native American actress, played a Comanche healer named Naru who wants to follow in her brother’s footsteps as a hunter in 2022’s “Prey.”

Which finally brings us to the brand new adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie, streaming now on Amazon.

I’m only a few episodes in so I can’t offer any major conclusions, but so far it seems to be everything we’ve come to expect from a Flanagan project — thoughtful, respectful of the source material while also giving it a modern makeover, and operating on a strong foundation of writing and acting.

It has a lot to say about bullying and the modern technologies that turbo charge the cruelty kids are capable of. Adults are hopelessly outgunned on the tech front, which makes foundational parenting more crucial than ever.

I’m especially happy to see Amber Midthunder in a major role after her exceptional performance in 2022’s Prey, and I’m really hoping we’ll see more of Cassandra Naud, who showed up briefly in one scene so far with a hint of more to come.

A woman smiling with a bruise on her left cheek, set against a purple background. — Cassandra Naud

Naud was awesome as the legitimately terrifying antagonist in Influencer and its sequel, Influencers, and she’s unmistakable thanks to the birthmark that dominates the right side of her face. She’s a fantastic actress and astonishingly beautiful, and in interviews she talks about her childhood decision not to have the birthmark removed because of potential complications. She came to see it as an advantage because it renders her unforgettable, but I think her work speaks itself these days.

Carrie was released this week, with all eight episodes available to stream at your pace. Frequent Flanagan collaborators Samantha Sloyan, Michael Trucco, Rahul Kohli, and Ruth Codd have returned, while Flanagan’s next project is an Exorcist sequel due early next year.

Thoughts? Questions? Links? Stories about your cats? Flattering notes about what a dapper furred fellow the Budster is? Leave ’em in the comments!

He Got Virginia’s Harshest-Ever Animal Abuse Penalty. It’s NOT Enough

Some people should not be allowed back into society, for the protection of people and animals.

Rodney Travis Jr. will spend the next 15 years in prison.

The 27-year-old Virginia man has received the harshest animal abuse penalty in his state’s history for what prosecutors called “acts of unspeakable evil”: Travis “adopted” dozens of cats from shelters, then checked into hotel rooms and tortured them for an online audience, who paid him for his acts of savagery.

I’m not going to get into exactly what he did. I’ve read about similar cases and I’m still haunted by the horrific things people do to cats for the sick bastards who get some sort of grotesque thrill from the suffering of animals.

What I will say is that 15 years is not enough.

This man needs to be permanently removed from society. I don’t believe the death penalty is consistent with a general respect for life, and it would be the easy way out.

Travis should sit in a prison cell for the rest of his life and think about what he did to animals, innocent creatures who feel pain just as much as we do.

Collage of various cats in different poses and settings, showcasing their distinct features and expressions. — Some of Travis’ victims.

He should remain segregated from human society for the rest of his life, because a person who is capable of planning such acts of barbarity, who used multiple identities to fool shelters and rescues, who taunted suspicious rescuers and inflicted so much pain and suffering, is emphatically not a person who can be released back into society.

Travis was caught thanks to the efforts of an entire network of animal lovers who helped track him down, and by a concerned hotel employee, who informed police when Travis checked into a hotel at 2 a.m. and departed about seven hours later, leaving blood and cat fur behind.

In addition to brutally torturing cats, Travis admitted to making $400,000 by posing as a good guy, uploading images of the injured cats online, and accepting donations he said were for veterinary care. He also claimed some of the cats had been diagnosed with cancer, opening Instagram accounts for each cat and relying on the sympathy of well-intentioned animal lovers.

In addition to proving how intentional and calculating Travis was in his crimes, this should be a reminder to everyone that our charitable dollars are best spent on reputable organizations that are registered as non-profits and have Form 990s filed with the IRS in good standing, with the documentation available on public sites like GuideStar. Too many bad actors, including people who operate rage-bait sites that post animal abuse cases and solicit money for things like running petitions, vacuum up cash from people they deceive.

Do not let him out

Statistics on recidivism, particularly for the kind of crimes Travis committed, do not bode well for anyone unlucky to encounter Travis when he is released – human or animal.

Animal life has intrinsic value, and that’s reason enough to keep Travis imprisoned, but we also know people who harm animals are very likely to move on to human victims as well. The evidence is overwhelming.

People who harm animals are five times as likely to harm humans compared to non-violent criminals. Forty three percent of school shooters had animal abuse incidents in their past. School shooters in Uvalde, Parkland and Buffalo, the authors of some of the worst school massacres in American history, all had records of animal abuse and abuse involving cats specifically.

Of those school shooters with histories of killing and torturing animals, some 90 percent committed “up close and personal” mutilation, bludgeoning, burning or strangling of their non-human victims.

Psychological studies of animal abusers show faulty brain wiring that results in a lack of empathy, extreme callousness, histories of anti-social behavior and lack of impulse control.

Anyone who tortures or kills beautiful, innocent animals should face the same punishments society inflicts on people who torture or kill humans. Credit: Mayara Caroline Mombelli/Pexels

These are not people we should be allowing back into society, no matter how many misguided people argue that their victims are “just” cats, dogs and other animals. Every sign points to recidivism, yet somehow we act as if it’s a ludicrous idea to sentence people to long prison terms for animal abuse crimes.

Equally important is the fact that our politicians, who never met a special interest they wouldn’t take money from, have utterly failed to meaningfully update animal abuse laws or make penalties commensurate with the brutality of the crimes in question.

We accept endemic corruption, naked self-interest and the destruction of our country because we think politician A or B is some crucial vote in ultimately meaningless culture war nonsense, then act as if we’ve been given mana from heaven when one or two deign to listen to the handful of overworked, under-funded animal welfare organizations with vague promises that maybe, at some nebulous time in the future, they might allow a committee hearing on an animal abuse problem that has existed for decades.

That needs to stop. Our “public servants” need to be held accountable at the polls for their inaction.

Travis tortured 26 cats that we know of. Only four survived. He posted the videos to Youtube, Instagram and TikTok, platforms that collectively have an abysmal record of responding to animal abuse reports and seem to have a policy of doing absolutely nothing until law enforcement or an animal rights charity with national reach comes calling.

We, and most especially the animals, deserve better than this.

25 Years Later, The 9/11 Attacks Still Feel Surreal

I saw the survivors disembark the train, dead-eyed and covered in dust and debris.

It was a few minutes before 9 am and my roommate was shaking me awake. I wasn’t due in the office until 3 pm, but my roommate told me the public editor had called, said there was a terrorist attack, and asked me to come in ASAP.

When you get a call like that from the public editor instead of the city desk or someone else in the direct news loop, you know the newsroom is in chaos. And it was, worse than I’d ever seen it in my short time there.

At the time I was a glorified newspaper intern and as the low man on the totem pole, I got the crappiest assignment. My editors sent me to wait until the subways and trains started up again, so I spent almost the entire day stuck on a platform with a group of people, listening to their panicked chatter and participating in it myself.

I will never forget when a guy came running onto the platform out of breath and shouted “They hit the Pentagon! They hit the f—ing Pentagon!”

There was a low murmur of disbelief among the people on the platform, with one or two loudly expressing skepticism. The Pentagon? Surely that cannot be possible.

Reality was smashing against the aura of invincibility Americans had enjoyed for half a century. We were not prepared for it.

Aerial view of the Pentagon Building on Sept. 11, 2001. Credit: US Navy

Smartphones wouldn’t be invented for another seven years and the phone lines were overloaded that day, so all you’d get when trying to dial was a busy signal on repeat. Combined with the utter confusion at ground zero and news anchors who could do little more than speculate for most of the day, rumors were flying and we didn’t know what to believe.

I remember someone else announcing that there were hundreds of passenger jets still in the air, the government did not know how many had been compromised, and we should prepare ourselves for waves of hijacked planes smashing into skyscrapers, bridges and, God forbid, nuclear reactors like Indian Point just north of the city.

At the same time, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani gave a sober assessment that potentially “tens of thousands” of people could have been killed, because no one knew how many people made it out of the towers.

Another indelible memory: an enraged woman pacing the length of the platform, screaming that “this bulls–t” had interfered with her plans for the day. She was shaking with anger, grumbling to herself with occasionally louder outbursts, and apparently she believed the heliocentric model had been replaced with one that placed her in the center of our solar system and the universe itself.

Finally the first train arrived in the afternoon, and a crush of zombies stumbled out covered in the pulverized concrete, silica, steel dust, asbestos and human remains that blasted through Manhattan in two powerful kinetic waves as the towers collapsed.

They were dead-eyed and in shock as they clutched their briefcases, Blackberries and messenger bags.

I spoke to one man whose office had a direct view of the towers. He sobbed as he told me his story. His building was evacuated shortly before the first tower collapsed and he’d been caught in the blast, caking his suit, his face and hair in the toxic mix of debris.

Others were almost mute with shock or a mix of relief and survivor’s guilt. Most were commuters who worked within a block or two of the World Trade Center. Others had appointments that day, including a woman who survived because she was a few minutes late to a meeting on one of the upper floors.

Another woman shook with emotion and horror as she described watching desperate people jumping out of the skyscrapers to escape the flames inside.

I gathered as many quotes and details as I could, returned to the newsroom and made my small contribution to the events of the day. I wasn’t a first responder, I wasn’t digging people out of the rubble, I didn’t cook meals for the firefighters or guide bewildered survivors away from ground zero.

I told the stories of a handful of people who directly lived through the attack, and I hope I told them well.