The Outsider Perspective Issue 471 | The Beltway Outsiders

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Good Friday Morning! Except for Christmas thieves, or rather, the way-too-early Christmas shoppers. If you’ve noticed a lack of Santa Claus decorations this year, there’s a reason for that: everyone is sold out. That is especially true of the large inflatable Santas that sit in people’s yards.

Home Depot, for example, sold out in August. The DIY giant dropped its holiday catalogue and immediately sold out. The New York Post now reports people are panicking because they can’t find things like those inflatable Santas anywhere, because everyone is still sold out.

So, if you think people are getting Christmas stuff out early in November, please realize that some people are emptying Home Depot of Christmas decorations in August. Talk about some Christmas spirit.

This week, I’m going to touch on how AI is impacting conservatives – especially with how I’m seeing it directly right now – links to follow.

Quick Hits:

The Minnesota Fraud Scheme is insane. Tim Walz seems unaware that his entire political career hinges on this one debacle. A CIS report showed that 81% Somalian immigrants in Minnesota are on some form of welfare, vs 21% of native born Minnesotans. The fraud schemes show that this money isn’t going to help actual people here; it’s getting funneled back overseas. The timeline, the numbers, and the scope are just mind-boggling. It’s one of the biggest scandals in the country, and your average Democrat has never heard of it—wild stuff.
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Where you can find me this week

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The AI Race Hits A Critical Moment In The United States – Conservative Institue

Notre Dame Represents Everything Wrong With College Football – Conservative Institute

The J6 Case Biden Ignored – Conservative Institute

AI Is Changing Everything

For the first time in my career, as both a writer and a lawyer, I finally designed, through prompt engineering, a workflow that produced an AI output that made my jaw drop. I say that because the AI produced words in a way that it had steadfastly refused to do for months and years, and now the floodgates opened.

ChatGPT launched its new 5.2 model, and it is clear that something has changed internally. As a conservative who has used tech for any amount of time, you know, eventually, they all crack down. Rarely do things move in the opposite direction. When a tech tool lets a conservative do actual work through it, the playing field gets unfair for liberals really quickly.

I’ll give you an example: Earlier this year, the FTC warned Google it faced a probe over suppressing emails from Republicans. Now, I can tell you, without total confidence, this is something all Republican or conservative outlets that rely on email communication have seen and experienced firsthand.

Every outlet can tell you they will go along, everything is going great, their customers are opening and clicking on emails, and then boom – they get nuked by Gmail, Yahoo, AOL., etc. The rules change with no warning; the left rarely gets impacted, but the right always does.

About a month ago, this newsletter got spiked by a delivery hit. I had people asking me if I’d quit writing. It turned out it had been moved to spam. I’ve since seen numbers rebound, and we’re in good shape again. But this is something that happens with a high frequency, and you can talk to any conservative outlet relying on email, social media, YouTube, etc., they’ve all gotten targeted by liberal rules.

Back to AI, though, OpenAI is allowing conservatives to crank through actual conservative work in ways they previously had guardrails against. Without getting into the details, part of my work obviously involves getting news to conservative readers. I’ve mentioned the American Almanac for a while; I’m also involved with other publications.

One of the eternal headaches with OpenAI is that it has long been the best model, with Anthropic close behind, while keeping ridiculously dumb blocks up for conservative content. For example, getting OpenAI to summarize or handle news stories around the 2020 election, J6, RFK Jr’s vaccine skepticism, and more can trigger a block. The AI will say, “This violates my policies.”

In reality, you can’t cover those topics from the right, no matter what angle you’re taking. It’s absurd.

However, the launch of GPT5.2 seems to have changed this. And in the process, it cracks open a whole new world for people like me and conservatives in general.

Part of this is because Trump is friendly with the AI companies. His executive order will allow them to remain in wild-west mode and really push the boundaries of what is possible. The other part, though, is sheer market competition.

Eventually, Elon Musk’s Grok will figure things out. And if you’re a conservative, it’ll be a better platform simply because itwill let you do what you need to do (in theory). I’ve struggled with Grok because it just doesn’t get to where I need it to go. However, it is improving.

On the other side, there’s Google’s Gemini. Personally, I hate that Google is getting back into this game, because they ruined internet search, particularly for conservatives (and everyone, frankly). Growing up and using Google to write blogs, argue with strangers on message boards and social media, and more have helped create the writer I am today.

When Google killed that capacity in the late 2010s, it was endlessly frustrating. When you know a fact exists and need to find it to cite it, but Google no longer allows you to, it’s a frustrating experience.

AI is in the Wild West right now, though. I can get it to give me the information I need. If OpenAI is moving in the opposite direction of censorship, which it seems they are right now, it really does open the world up for the right.

I continue to maintain that I don’t know where AI is going. I do know this, however. For the first time, I was sitting at my computer, looking at AI output, and realized it was replacing me at one of the jobs I’ve done in media for about three years.

AI has been helpful, and it’s created work products that were close to what I’ve needed in the past. This week is the first time that it nailed my request on the first request with no edits. And I knew it needed no edits within ten seconds of seeing it.

It’s a new world. ChatGPT5.2 was released on a Thursday, and I’m writing this newsletter the same day, coming to these conclusions. It’s wild how much better these models are getting. Every year, we’re in a radically different place than we were previously, and that’s because the progression in weeks and months is getting better.

I hope the competition in the tech space keeps the AI race in a place where conservatives can use it because it’s going to level the playing field against left-wing outlets really quickly.

I’m waiting for the left to begin its loud crackdown campaign against AI. They can’t really do it yet, but it’s coming.

And they’ll be wrong on that, as they were the crackdowns on social media, search, and more.

Quick Hits:

Where you can find me this week

AI Is Changing Everything

Links of the week

X/Twitter Thread(s) of the week

Satire of the week

Thanks for reading!