Category: Breitbart
NJ’s blue wall may be cracking in governor race, new poll shows — GOP hopeful racks up Democrat endorsements
In the fiercely competitive race for New Jersey governor, just one point separates the Democratic and Republican candidates, a new poll shows.
Mikie Sherrill (D), a current U.S. representative, held a narrow lead against Jack Ciattarelli (R), a former New Jersey state representative, in an October 27 co/efficient poll. Males, individuals ages 55 and older, and those with no party affiliation preferred Ciattarelli, while females and those ages 18 to 54 favored Sherrill, according to the recent survey.
‘Why would anyone vote for New Jersey and Virginia Gubernatorial Candidates, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, when they want transgender for everybody, men playing in women’s sports, High Crime, and the most expensive Energy prices almost anywhere in the World?’
Separate poll results from Emerson College, dated September 25, gave Ciattarelli the best odds, showing the two candidates tied.
All other polls gave Sherrill a more substantial lead over Ciattarelli, ranging from one to seven points, with the RealClearPolitics poll average showing her 3.8 points ahead of her Republican rival.
By Sunday, roughly 90,500 New Jersey residents had returned their early-voter ballots, according to Newsweek. Of those turned in, 38,039 were from registered Democrats, 35,512 were from Republicans, and another 16,895 ballots belonged to those with other party affiliations.
Only New Jersey and Virginia are holding gubernatorial races this year.
Mikie Sherrill. Photo by Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images
President Donald Trump has weighed in on these races, stating Sunday in a post on Truth Social, “Why would anyone vote for New Jersey and Virginia Gubernatorial Candidates, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, when they want transgender for everybody, men playing in women’s sports, High Crime, and the most expensive Energy prices almost anywhere in the World? VOTE REPUBLICAN for massive Energy Cost reductions, large scale Tax Cuts, and basic Common Sense!”
Trump endorsed Ciattarelli in May, calling him “a terrific America First Candidate.”
While New Jersey has traditionally been a blue stronghold, Ciattarelli has grabbed at least eight endorsements from local Democrats, according to the New York Post.
RELATED: Pressure mounts for New Jersey Democrat gubernatorial candidate as past catches up to her
Jack Ciattarelli. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
On Saturday, New Era Democrats President Celia Iervasi stated, “We are proud to endorse Jack Ciattarelli for Governor of New Jersey.”
“As life continues to become unaffordable for the working class and New Jersey continues to be one of the highest taxed states in the country, Jack is the right person that is needed to make life more affordable for the residents of the Garden State,” Iervasi said. “We look forward to joining a coalition of organizations that are supporting Jack in the upcoming election and know that he is the right person to lead New Jersey in the right direction.”
Other New Jersey Democrats to support Ciattarelli include North Bergen Mayor Nick Sacco, North Bergen Commissioner Allen Pascual, Dover Mayor Jim Dodd, Branchville Mayor Anthony Frato, Branchville Councilman Jeff Lewis, and former Hudson County Democratic Organization Chair Anthony Vainieri. Garfield Mayor Everett Garnto also endorsed Ciattarelli and, at the same time, announced he was leaving the Democratic Party to switch to the GOP.
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A new study hints what happens when superintelligence gets brain rot — just like us
AI and LLMs appear to be in a bit of a slump, with the latest revelatory scandal coming out of a major study showing that large language models, the closest we’ve come yet to so-called artificial general intelligence, are degraded in their capacities when they are subjected to lo-fi, low-quality, and “junk” content.
The study, from a triad of college computer science departments including University of Texas, set out to determine relationships between data quality and performance in LLMs. The scientists trained their LLMs on viral X.com/Twitter data, emphasizing high-engagement posts, and observed more than 20% reduction in reasoning capacity, 30% falloffs in contextual memory tasks, and — perhaps most ominously, since the study tested for measurable personality traits like agreeableness, extraversion, etc.— the scientists saw a leap in output that can technically be characterized as narcissistic and psychopathic.
Sound familiar?
The paper analogizes the function of the LLM performance with human cognitive performance and refers to this degradation in both humans and LLMs as “brain rot,” a “shorthand for how endless, low-effort, engagement-bait content can dull human cognition — eroding focus, memory discipline, and social judgment through compulsive online consumption.”
The whole project reeks of hubris, reeks of avarice and power.
There is no great or agreed-upon utility in cognition-driven analogies made between human and computer performance. The temptation persists for computer scientists and builders to read in too much, making categorical errors with respect to cognitive capacities, definitions of intelligence, and so forth. The temptation is to imagine that our creative capacities ‘out there’ are somehow reliable mirrors of the totality of our beings ‘in here,’ within our experience as humans.
We’ve seen something similar this year with the prevalence of so-called LLM psychosis, which — in yet another example of confusing terminology applied to already confused problems — seeks to describe neither psychosis embedded into LLMs nor that measured in their “behavior,” but rather the severe mental illness reported by many people after applying themselves, their attention, and their belief into computer-contained AI “personages” such as Claude or Grok. Why do they need names anyways? LLM 12-V1, for example, would be fine …
The “brain rot” study rather proves, if anything, that the project of creating AI is getting a little discombobulated within the metaphysical hall of mirrors its creators, backers, and believers have, so far, barged their way into, heedless of old-school measures like maps, armor, transport, a genuine plan. The whole project reeks of hubris, reeks of avarice and power. Yet, on the other hand, the inevitability of the integration of AI into society, into the project of terraforming the living earth, isn’t really being approached by a politically, or even financially, authoritative and responsible body — one which might perform the machine-yoking, human-compassion measures required if we’re to imagine ourselves marching together into and through that hall of mirrors to a hyper-advanced, technologically stable, and human-populated civilization.
RELATED: Intelligence agency funding research to merge AI with human brain cells
Photo by VCG / Contributor via Getty Images
So, when it’s observed here that AI seems to be in a bit of a slump — perhaps even a feedback loop of idiocy, greed, and uncertainty coupled, literally wired-in now, with the immediate survival demands of the human species — it’s not a thing we just ignore. A signal suggesting as much erupted last week from a broad coalition of high-profile media, business, faith, and arts voices brought under the aegis of the Statement on Superintelligence, which called for “a prohibition on the development of superintelligence, not lifted before there is 1. broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably, and 2. strong public buy-in.”
There’s a balance, there are competing interests, and we’re all still living under a veil of commercial and mediated fifth-generation warfare. There’s a sort of adults-in-the-room quality we are desperately lacking at the moment. But the way the generational influences lay on the timeline isn’t helping. With boomers largely tech-illiterate but still hanging on, with Xers tech-literate but stuck in the middle (as ever), with huge populations of highly tech-saturated Millennials, Zoomers, and so-called generation Alpha waiting for their promised piece of the social contract, the friction heat is gathering. We would do well to recognize the stakes and thus honor the input of those future humans who shouldn’t have to be born into or navigate a hall of mirrors their predecessors failed to escape.
Justin Bieber confesses Christian faith in candid livestream
Justin Bieber’s latest album ends with the pop star delivering an almost eight-minute, spoken-word retelling of the first three chapters of the book of Genesis.
Now the 31-year-old singer has opened up about his own Christian faith on a recent livestream, a clip of which was shared on YouTube. In it, the Canadian-born heartthrob sits over fast-food takeout with some of his crew, discussing the Bible, God, and what it means to be a man.
‘Now we get to live free and rather than focus on sin, now we can focus on Jesus, the wonderful savior.’
Many of Bieber’s comments revolve around the responsibility he feels he has to others and to God and how he is doing his best not to judge life based on perceived outcomes.
“It rains on the just and the unjust,” Bieber says, going on to stress that:
Bad s**t happens to everybody, you know? Bad s**t happens to good people, good s**t happens to bad people. … Everyone’s on the same equal playing ground, and that’s hard for people to really comprehend or want to digest because I think it’s makes us feel better to be like, ‘Well, I’m better than this guy.’
He adds, “I don’t want to think I’m better than anybody ’cause you don’t know what someone’s born into.”
‘It’s the same thing’
The conversation also turns to matters of morality, with Bieber speaking about taking “ownership” as a man and avoiding the sin of adultery:
“If you even think of a woman with lust it’s the same thing as actually doing it; committing adultery or whatever,” he says, clearly referring to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount and Matthew 5:28. “It’s the same thing. So if it even just crosses your mind for one second, if you treat a man with anger or something, it’s the same as killing a man, scripture says.”
RELATED: Why the Bible is suddenly flying off shelves across America
– YouTube
Am I worthy?
The singer seems to touch on his own mental battles when he speaks of God’s mercy.
“Someone’s probably struggling with their own self-image of like, ‘You know, am I worthy of love?’ And God says you are. You know what I mean? I don’t make the rules. But Jesus says that, and I really believe Him.”
“I believe He loved us so much,” Bieber passionately continues.
He put on skin and bones and came onto this Earth as a person, as a human. Lived a sinless life so that we don’t have to be focusing on sin because none of us can do the right thing all the time. And then He literally went to the cross, was lashed, whipped, made fun of, then he rose on the third day defeating death, Hell, and the grave. Now we get to live free and rather than focus on sin, now we can focus on Jesus, the wonderful savior. And I really think He’s the king of the world, bro. He’s the king of Hollywood. He’s the king of L.A., bro. He’s the king.
Transaction reaction
The men further discuss how and when scripture makes its way into their daily lives, with Bieber revealing that at this point in his career, he does not want to work with people for transactional purposes.
“That’s what, like, business is these days,” he says. “It’s just like, ‘I scratch your back, you scratch mine.’ And you guys, it’s not based on love.”
When asked how he learned about his faith and if it simply comes from reading the Bible, Bieber responds by saying much of it has stuck with him after his mother rewarded him for memorizing passages as a child.
“I would get a gold star. So I would just memorize it,” he recalls enthusiastically.
Bieber admits he often doesn’t know where a particular passage comes from in the Bible — just that God brings it to the front of his mind.
“The scripture says, ‘I will remind you the things that I’ve told you’ and He just reminds me,” Bieber concludes. “Because He knows what I want. He knows that I want this for other people. So I think He puts it to my brain.”
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United Nations Finally Recognizes Homeschooling — By Demanding Government Ruin It
Homeschooling embodies the basic American principles of self-governance, freedom, and the presumption that families know what is best for their children.
EXCLUSIVE: Sean Hannity Townhall with Jack Ciattarelli – Thurs. Oct. 30th
Join us for an exclusive Sean Hannity Town Hall with Jack Ciattarelli this Thursday, October 30th in Point Pleasant, NJ.
