According to the Associated Press, “An image of black smoke billowing next to a bureaucratic-looking building spread across social media Monday morning, with the claim that it showed an explosion near the Pentagon. The posts sent a brief shiver through the stock market and were quickly picked up by news outlets outside the U.S., before officials jumped in to clarify that no blast actually took place and the photo was a fake. … Experts say the viral image had telltale signs of an AI-generated forgery, and its popularity underscores the everyday chaos these now increasingly sophisticated and easy-to-access programs can inflict.”
Really?!?! That picture is supposed to be an image of the Pentagon? Are you f***ing kidding me? I’m no expert, but it took me a millisecond to apprehend that picture is not the f***ing Pentagon. Forget about the “A.I.” scare. (It’s pretty sh*tty “intelligence.”) One would think even artificial “intelligence” could at least conjure a fake picture using an image of the actual Pentagon. It’s been many, many years since I took Geometry, but I’m pretty sure by definition that a pentagon-shaped building does not have 90-degree corners. Let me double-check my math: 360 degrees divided by 5 is 72 degrees. 90 degrees ≠ 72 degrees. Since we are talking about a building, then we should reference interior or complementary angles. Thus, 180 – 90 = 90 (for a traditional square building with four corners) and 180 – 72 = 108 (for a pentagon-shaped building). Once again, 90 degrees ≠ 108 degrees. Oh, good. They, indeed, do not equal. So a square-shaped and a pentagon-shaped building have distinctly different corners as the math proves. I was worried that I forgot how to do math for a second. So, now let us re-evaluate the original image. Does the corner of the building look obtuse (> 90 degrees) to you? It does not! It appears to be a right angle (90 degrees) to me. Hence, that building cannot be the Pentagon. Whoever (whatever idiot “A.I.”) created the picture must have thought Americans would be stupid enough to believe what they saw. And they would be correct. But whatever! I live in stupid hell where people are too stupid and believe anything. Welcome to stupid America!