The Sorensen Monologues
Archive for January, 2024
Signs Your Government is Committing Crimes Against Humanity
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir responded “Hague Schmague” after the world court allowed South Africa’s charges of genocide to proceed. Netanyahu’s Twitter account posted “Nobody will stop us – not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anybody else.” Whenever you hear government officials attempting to discredit The Hague, that is a huge warning sign that something has gone very wrong in that country. Yes, Hamas committed heinous crimes requiring a response, but Hamas is not the same as the whole population of Gaza, which is being indiscriminately slaughtered and starved to death. Journalists reporting on the carnage are being targeted as well.
For more background on the third panel about the State Department making human rights exceptions for Israel, see this Guardian article.
Help keep this work sustainable by joining the Sorensen Subscription Service! Also on Patreon.
The AI Journalism Awards
Almost overnight, the internet has become flooded with junky AI content (the word “content” really does apply here). I tend to do a lot of research for my cartoons, both image and news searches, and the top results used to be mostly trustworthy publications, or at least sites I was familiar with. Now I get walls of search engine-optimized garbage. A publisher of a tech website complained on social media the other day that AI sites are showing up in news results instead of their publication that employs actual human journalists. Amazon’s website has been notoriously plagued by AI-generated products, including fake books on Kindle. Sports Illustrated, which just got shut down (!), made news a little while ago for using fake AI-created writers with realistic biographies.
Help keep this work sustainable by joining the Sorensen Subscription Service! Also on Patreon.
Pundits Pave the Way to Hell
A few weeks ago, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump is ineligible for the ballot due to his attempt at insurrection. And then the mewling of the performatively unbiased pundit class began. Among the worst examples was New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait, who laughably wrote that insurrection was “not the most precise term. When I have the chance to use a longer description, I generally say that Trump attempted to secure an unelected second term.” Several others platitudinally argued that we should “let the voters decide” — as though we didn’t already go through that with the candidate in question, who very much did not respect the voters’ decision, and would likely never let them decide again.
Help keep this work sustainable by joining the Sorensen Subscription Service! Also on Patreon.
Billionaire Buttinsky on Campus
This cartoon was inspired by recent events at Harvard, but the same dynamic is happening at many universities. Harvard’s behavior is shameful, allowing a petty tyrant to rule the university with an iron fist. They need to reinstate Gay. It seems we’re knee deep into an authoritarian era even without Trump back in the White House.
Help keep this work sustainable by joining the Sorensen Subscription Service! Also on Patreon.
