February 21, 2024 - 6:00pm

→ RFK Jr.’s fickle voter base

Life ain’t easy for RFK Jr. The general election is less than eight months away, but the independent candidate has, so far, only made it onto two state ballots (New Hampshire and Utah), with his campaign increasingly strapped for cash. Until now, the Kennedy scion could comfort himself with relatively strong polling figures: in a five-way race, he wins nearly 14% of the vote, which is well above fellow independent challengers Cornel West and Jill Stein.

But new polling puts those figures in a slightly different light. According to Puck magazine, only 24% of Kennedy supporters said they were definitely going to vote for him in November, with 65% saying there was a chance they would change their mind (Stein and West supporters were even less committed). Puck also found that much of the support for Kennedy is “surface-level” and based on his famous surname. In the online survey, the magazine tested whether likely voters could identify RFK Jr in a side-by-side image comparison with his father, the late Robert F. Kennedy. Results showed that a third of voters confused the two… Maybe that’s why the RFK SuperPAC lent into Kennedy family lore for the candidate’s Super Bowl ad.

→ Is Google’s AI bot ‘racist’ towards white people?

Google’s Gemini, an AI bot launched last week, has been producing some very amusing — and wildly inaccurate — historical images. From marauding Roman soldiers to George Washington crossing the Delaware, one clear theme emerges: the absence of white caucasians. Try anything modern too, and the result is similar.

Users can ask the AI bot to draw, generate, and create images with simple prompts. But critics have argued that there is a significant ideological component to it, with the model generating a disproportionately high number of black and brown faces. Type in, for instance, “average rural British person” or even “someone eating a mayo sandwich on white bread”, and it will produce some rather bizarre results. The “wokeification” of the AI world continues apace…

→ Holocaust-denier David Irving falls victim to death hoax

There is something quite poetic about a conspiracist falling victim to a conspiracy. In this case, several far-Right commentators lined up to express their sorrow over the passing of historian and Holocaust-denier David Irving. “David Irving, possibly the bravest British historian ever, has died, aged 85,” tweeted former BNP leader Nick Griffin. “After years of persecution by the Holocaust industry, he was asked ‘Mr Irving, are you anti-Semitic?’ His instant reply: ‘Not yet’.” The eulogies, however, were premature. According to Irving’s X account, he’s not dead but is “currently facing health challenges”. No doubt Mr Irving would be pleased with all the historical revisionism going on with his death.


is UnHerd’s Newsroom editor.

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