As previously noted, Mike the Musicologist and I took a short trip up to the Dallas-Fort Worth area for the Gun Rights Policy Conference.
After we got back on Monday, I went down hard with con crud. This is the first day I’ve felt like trying to blog.
In my personal opinion, the two best talks at AMM-CON (Alternative Mass Media Con, the prelude to GRPC) were:
- “AI & Ethics: How 2A Media Can Use AI Without Losing Trust”, by Rich Yumul.
- “How To Read and Understand 2A Court Decisions” by Mark Smith of Four Boxes Diner.
Mark Smith’s presentation was the one I wanted to follow up on, but I can’t find any contact information for him. But the link above goes to YouTube video of his talk, which has a transcript, which gives me what I was looking for: his list of the best and worst appellate courts. “The Supreme Court is very good.” After that:
- The next two best: the Fifth Circuit which covers Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. And the Third Circuit that covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.
- “reasonably okay. They’re not great, but they’re not terrible”: The Eighth Circuit out of Missouri, the Sixth Circuit, which is “Kentucky-ish” and Michigan, and the 11th Circuit out of Florida.
- “the bad stuff”: “The 10th Circuit is generally bad, but occasionally you will get a good panel.” After that, the Fourth Circuit out of Virginia (“terrible”), the Ninth Circuit out of California (“terrible”), and the Second Circuit out of New York City (“generally terrible”).
- “And the worst court in America by far is the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit out of Boston. There is no combination of three judges that you can get that will uphold the constitution in any respect.”
Here’s a map of the courts for easy visualization.
I can’t find video of Mr. Yumul’s talk on AI, but I did take notes, and may try to post those tomorrow. One thing he did provide us was a very interesting prompt that will take a piece of writing (such as a blog post) and analyze it as if the AI was a hostile fact checker. I intend to ask him if he would mind me sharing that here.
I also want to make note of his four principles, which I think are a good general approach to AI:
- Is it TRUE?
- Is it MINE?
- Is it HONEST?
- If it’s wrong, did I FIX it?
I may want to write more about GRPC tomorrow and over the weekend, though I do think the window is closing. Two things I do want to squeeze in:
- The director of BATFE spoke at GRPC. Let me repeat that: the freaking DIRECTOR of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, an organization that most firearms owners consider a “wretched hive of scum and villainy”, spoke to a room full of gun people. Along with the agency’s chief council. That link will take you to video.
- The freshly pardoned Patrick “Tate” Adamiak also spoke at GRPC and at AMM-CON, along with Lee Williams (who did much to draw attention to his case). If you’re not familiar with Mr. Adamiak: he was a US Navy sailor, who’d been selected to try out for the SEALs. Then BATFE raided his house over his collection of firearms. He was convicted and sentenced to twenty years in prison for allegedly selling “machine guns” in an egregious example of BATFE conduct under the Biden administration. (One of the “machine guns” was a toy STEN that you can buy off the Internet today. The BATFE also took a de-milled RPG, completely rebuilt it in their lab so it could fire a single round of 7.62 ammo, and then claimed it was a destructive device.)
(One of my compatriots noted that a lot of Secret Service types were nervously fingering their sidearms during the BATFE talk. There were also more than a few people in the room who were open carrying, and who knows how many that were carrying concealed.)
(Seriously, the “Tate” Adamiak case should outrage anyone who gives a flying flip at a rolling doughnut about justice. I had vaguely heard about it, but wasn’t following it very closely. MtM gave me a briefing in the car on the way up.)
Obligatory: