MrG's Blog & Notes

* This is an archive of my own blog and online notes, with weekly entries collected by month. The current week in stand-alone format is available here. Feel free to CONTACT ME if so inclined.

[MON 05 MAY 25] THE WEEK THAT WAS 18

DAYLOG MON 28 APR: The funeral of Pope Francis was on Saturday, with world leaders in attendance -- including, of course, Donald Trump. He cut an uninspiring figure, the first thing being that he showed up in a blue suit and not the obligatory black.

More significantly, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy tripped him up repeatedly without trying. Zelenskyy met with Trump and French President Macron, with Macron giving Zelenskyy the full-court warm handshake -- and then ignored Trump's extended hand. A mere fumble? Maybe, maybe not. There was also a video of Zelenskyy walking in to the applause of the crowd, with Trump then ignored, but that turned out to be at the re-opening of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on 7 December.

Finally, photos were taken of Trump snoozing through the funeral service. In the aftermath of the funeral, the comment made the rounds online: "Trump was upset the funeral service was not about him. So was everyone else."

There were talks between Trump and Zelenskyy in Rome on Trump's dubious "peace offensive" -- but could any credence be rested on demented Trump's ramblings? It's all noise, no signal, doesn't go anywhere, has nowhere to go.

Back home, Trump is still charging forward on his tariffs war, with retailers warning him their shelves are emptying out. I can't welcome an economic disaster, but at least it will heavily discredit him. His approval rating is now under 40%, and poised to go lower.

DAYLOG TUE 29 APR: As reported in an article from FUTURISM ("Professors Staffed a Fake Company Entirely With AI Agents" by Joe Wilkins, 27 April 2025), Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh used AI agents to simulate a fake company. "TheAgentCompany" used an assortment of AI agents from different firms, with agents working as financial analysts, software engineers, and project managers, along with a chief technical officer and human-relations staff.

The researchers then assigned the simulation a set of tasks like those in an ordinary software company. To zero surprise, the simulation failed dismally, the best performer being an agent that could do 24% of the tasks assigned to. The worst could only do about 2%. The agents were plagued by a lack of common sense, poor communications with each other, and limited ability to navigate the internet. They also were inclined to "hallucinate" -- just making up bogus answers. Even when things worked, it was not cheap.

AI has a lot of potential, but it is vastly over-hyped these days -- FUTURISM suggesting that AI is much more like a glorified predictive-text aid on a smartphone than a human mind. Certainly, AI has room for improvement, but how much is hard to say.

We can make the AIs smarter, sure, but bring them up to human levels of intelligence? Or do we just make them smart enough to handle sets of specific tasks? Going much farther than that might be difficult, and not worth the escalating cost. I use Google Gemini a lot, particularly in my Japanese studies -- it can give good answers to very tricky questions. However, the answers aren't always reliable, requiring some checkup if they don't seem right, and sometimes I get back obvious nonsense, even gibberish.

* In related news, these days people using chatbots like OpenAI or Google Gemini may have noticed that they have become inclined to reply in an obsequious tone, kissing up to the user. Apparently the idea was to improve engagement with positive feedback.

While there are people who like toadies and kiss-ups, they're unusual. People tend to find such talk from a machine particularly creepy, unable to cross the "uncanny valley" of suspicion of machine intelligences. The talk now is to give users the ability to select a chatbot's personality. Myself, I'm seeing no reason they can't just be matter-of-fact.

DAYLOG WED 30 APR: As the world knows now, Canada's elections on Monday the 28th went as expected, with Mark Carney's Liberals winning 166 seats, Pierre Poilivre's Conservatives 144, Bloc Quebecois 22, New Democratic Party 7, the Greens 1. PP's cause was not helped by Donald Trump making noises about annexing Canada on the day of the election. There were comments on BlueSky about Carney needing to claim that as a election gift. PP, not incidentally, lost his own seat.

Carney is a level-headed, highly-educated and competent technocrat. In his victory speech, he spoke with disgust and some regret about the end of the special relationship between Canada and the USA and the need to adjust to the new reality. Carney intends that Canada will run a budget deficit, both to deal with US economic aggression and to support Ukraine, but that the deficit will be filled in not too many years. He also suggests that Canada can supply global moral leadership that the US has rejected.

The Liberals did not get a majority, but they only need support from three other MPs to gte one. The vote was a bit too close for comfort, with the Conservatives obviously enjoying considerable support, to continue to lurk in the shadows.

The Liberals under Trudeau were hobbled by immigration and cost-of-living issues. Such are likely to continue to be a drag, though any Canadian looking south would have to realize that the Conservatives don't offer a better deal. As with America's GOP, the focus for the Conservatives is to cut government programs that broadly benefit Canadians, while cutting taxes for the rich elite. Americans have also found out that "getting tough on immigration" seems to mean thug policing. The continuation of the Trump regime may well throw more cold water on Canada's Conservatives.

Incidentally, some comments online linked the Liberals to the Gaza genocide. They were obviously trolling: Canada provided no real military backing to Israel, and worked to deal with the humanitarian crisis. Gaza trolling beat up America's Dems; no surprise it was used against Canada's Liberals, too, if with little effect.

DAYLOG THU 01 MAY: In the background of Trump's farcical and futile "peace process" for the Ukraine War, there's been work on a deal between the US and Ukraine for exploitation of Ukraine's minerals, particularly rare earths.

Early on, American proposals for the deal were entirely one-sided -- sheer robbery. Now the deal's been signed, and it looks highly promising on the basis of what has been made known. The original American proposals for the deal said that the USA would charge all the US aid to Ukraine provided by the Biden Administration money obtained from the minerals, which was angrily rejected by Ukraine. The deal now stipulates a "joint investment fund", which will support further US aid. Ukraine will have full sovereignty over its natural resources, and Kyiv will decide where and which minerals can be extracted. The USA will not get preferential treatment, which would complicate Ukraine joining the EU.

Obviously, there's a lot in the fine print, but minerals development can't really happen for years anyway. If there are troublesome clauses in the deal, they can be discussed with the next administration.

Not incidentally, the agreement seemed to subtly cast blame for the war on Russia, while Trump's earlier statements often unambiguously blamed Ukraine. There's obviously been a big fight in the White House over support of the Ukraine conflict with pro-Putin and anti-Putin factions at war with each other. Has Trump simply stopped caring, with the anti-Putin faction on top now? No way of saying, but one wonders if the "peace process" will now go on hold, amounting to no more than lip service.

In closely related news, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who had been one of Putin's most egregious kiss-ups in the "peace process", just resigned. Waltz had got caught up in the blowback from a highly insecure Pentagon teleconference, conducted on the Signal encrypted-messaging system. Other heads may roll. Anyway, Minnesota Governer Tim Walz, scored a hit on BlueSky with a brief comment: "Mike Waltz has left the chat."

DAYLOG FRI 02 MAY: Yesterday afternoon, reports started coming in of a massive Ukrainian air strike on Crimea. Locals took smartphone videos of the sound of drones coming in low in the dark, and of big flashes with delayed thunder. The reports came from widely-scattered locations in Crimea. Exactly what the results were is not clear, but it didn't seem that Russian air defense was very effective. It seems the Ukrainians have good countermeasures to defy Russian defenses.

Ex-Representative Adam Kinzinger ran a video that proclaimed: Russia is not winning the war. Suppose, he suggests, after invading Iraq in 2003, then after three years of fighting all we held was a border region, after suffering hundreds of thousands of casualties. Nobody would think we were winning. Putin's dilapidated war machine is running out of steam; how long it persists is hard to say. In response to the air strikes, I commented online: "Reports of the imminent defeat of Ukraine are greatly exaggerated."

* That is encouraging news in a time when encouragement is needed, and there's a lot of pessimism going around. One Hank Green, posting on BlueSky, commented: "I hope everyone knows that it's very easy for any social content platform, including Bluesky, to be a misery machine -- and that if you aren't intentional about it, they will absolutely decrease the positive impact you have on the world while making you less happy."

I replied that it helps to block troublemakers and avoid getting into useless fights, adding: "That's right. We all know we're in big trouble these days. It's hard to see what good comes from misery and defeatism. I can take the positive or negative road on anything I want to say -- but I just can't take the negative road."

There was a time decades ago when I was inclined to negativism -- but somewhat to my surprise, it's just not really there any more. These days, I get up in the morning thinking: Another day in the fight. That makes it easier for me to get out of bed.

* Late news: Canadian PM Mark Carney is going to Washington DC, expecting "difficult but constructive" talks. I'm certain they'll be difficult, but not so much that they'll be constructive. I commented online: "Conversations with Trump are clearly strange. He says any crazy thing that comes into his head, and has no interest in feedback." I'm sure Carney is prepared.

[MON 12 MAY 25] THE WEEK THAT WAS 19

DAYLOG MON 05 MAY: Following on from Canada's national election last week, Australians went to the polls, and emphatically re-elected the Labor government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, with Labor increasing its majority in the legislature. The opposition Liberals -- misleadingly named, they're a MAGA-like party -- under Peter Dutton took a beating, it seems mostly because of being too linked to the unpalatable Trump. It appears Dutton was not helped by inconsistent messaging, though Trump talks out of both sides of his mouth all the time, and his fans don't care.

Anyway, the Trump effect proved fatal, with Dutton losing his own seat -- to one Ali France, a woman who is missing a leg and is a paralympics athlete. Hey, how "woke" is that? I like to hear it, though I find the term "woke" annoying: it seems to be a stand-in for more insulting labels. As for the Trump effect, I'm thinking it's not going away.

* There was another anti-Trump protest here in Loveland CO on Saturday, and I made sure to show. It was smaller than the last one on 19 April, but no problem, public feedback was generally good. There were a few more Ugly MAGA nuisances, but nobody really troublesome.

Do these small-town demonstrations amount to much? No, but I'm not expecting much. At the very least, we're showing the USA that Trump and MAGA can't shut us up. If we can do something for the good, no matter how modest, we should do it.

* Ever wake up in the morning feeling way off because of nightmares all night? This morning was like that, but I didn't have nightmares: instead, I woke up into one. Things are crazy in the USA now; they are going to get crazier soon. Fortunately, I'm dealing with it.

DAYLOG TUE 06 MAY: As discussed in an article from GIZMODO ("Elon Musk's Grok AI Has a Problem" by AJ Dellinger, 3 May 2025), Elon Musk's xAI company has developed a Chatbot named "Grok", with Musk pushing to make it less "woke" than the competition. Exactly how that's supposed to work is unclear. Grok does use foul language on occasion, and apparently gives a PASS to things like election disinformation and such -- I don't know exactly what, I've never used Grok. However, since all such chatbots are "answer machines" that do their best to give good answers to queries, it's hard to build one that honestly trolls. Chatbots find it difficult to ignore commonly-available facts in favor of disinformation that is often incoherent.

Ask the right questions, Grok gives the right answers. That, of course, is a problem for MAGA trolls. One Grok user asked: "Hey @grok, it looks like the smarter you get, the less MAGA likes your answers. Why is that?" Grok shot back:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Grok explained that xAI "aims for neutrality, not conservative propaganda." It's simple: propaganda is disinformation while chatbots are supposed to find good answers, so there's an inherent clash. Of course, as the article says, it's very difficult to "keep up with the constantly moving goalpost of supporting and justifying every whim of the Trump administration." Alas, we're going to be hearing a lot more about "biased" chatbots.

* In related matters, according to CYBERSCOOP: "Amazon, CrowdStrike, Google and Palo Alto Networks claim no change to threat intel sharing under Trump. Top security leaders at some of the largest tech and cybersecurity vendors said public-private collaborative work continues, despite budget cuts and personnel changes."

The Trump Regime is, by all evidence, sheer chaos in frenetic but random motion. They don't really understand anything about cybersecurity, or anything else requiring half a brain -- at least mitigating the trouble they can make, and hinting at ultimate failure.

DAYLOG WED 07 MAY: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was at the White House yesterday, talking with President Trump in the Oval Office. The meeting was not a dumpster fire, but it wasn't so harmonious either, Trump making it clear he was not going to drop tariffs on Canada and, more prominently, Trump was still pushing to make Canada America's "51st state" -- with Carney making it clear that "some places are never for sale ... "

Carney added: "... having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign the last several months, it's not for sale, it won't be for sale, ever. But the opportunity is in the partnership and what we can build together."

Carney's tact prevented the meeting from going off the rails, but his body language revealed that he did not take well to all of what Trump said. I'm sure Carney was expecting trouble -- and if nothing else, his performance had to win the approval of his constituents. In any case, Carney played up the meeting as constructive.

The question comes up: Is Trump serious? Only about a eighth of Americans like the idea of annexing Canada. Trump is also still making a fuss about annexing Greenland, with only about a fifth of Americans liking that idea. Trump is also going off the rails these days with an idea to rebuild Alcatraz Prison -- some suggest after watching a Florida broadcast of the classic 1979 Clint Eastwood movie ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ -- and a push to put 100% tariffs on foreign movies.

Alcatraz got shut down because it was falling apart and too expensive to operate anyway; rebuilding it would be much more expensive than expanding existing prison facilities. The "tariffs on movies" idea is a bit hard to follow, since movies aren't brought into the USA on container ships. It seems Trump is trying to penalize subsidies provided by foreign governments to support foreign co-production of movies. He has a set of Hollywood advisors, most prominently Jon Voight, who are pushing for tax breaks and possibly highly targeted tariffs.

Anyway, back to the question of: Is Trump serious? Maybe that's the wrong question, because Trump is not a serious person; his behavior is juvenile, often demented. He does not and cannot think anything out; there's nothing serious going on upstairs. The problem is that Trump acts on his demented whims.

I'm thinking that his most bizarre ideas -- seizing Greenland above all -- are on a level with his "Ukraine peace plan"; he charges ahead on an unworkable idea, never can get it to work, and then just gradually stops making any real effort to do so. Incidentally, it seems the Trump Regime is now talking about a "compact of free association" with Greenland, a sort of alliance agreement like the USA has with Micronesia, with the USA obtaining privileges in and providing assistance to an independent country. Trump's crazy ideas are not very compatible with the real world.

DAYLOG THU 08 MAY: The AI revolution is going in a number of hard-to-predict directions. One example, as discussed in an article from FUTURISM ("ChatGPT Users Are Developing Bizarre Delusions"by Victor Tangermann, 5 May 2025), is that AI appears to be promoting psychosis. One woman observer her husband going off the deep end in sessions with ChatGPT. The woman said the messages he was getting "were insane and just saying a bunch of spiritual jargon," with the AI calling the husband a "spiral starchild" and "river walker."

OK, this makes sense, in that if a chatbot is asked a bizarre question, it will return a bizarre answer. Good use of a chatbot requires the ability to cast good questions. Chatbots also work to be agreeable to users, so they can promote user delusions. The inclination of AI chatbots to "hallucinate" -- confidently make things up -- doesn't help. Some are saying that hallucinations are getting worse, not better, over time.

I'm not that down on AI tech myself -- I don't see it as inherently GOOD or BAD, it can do some impressive things, but it's way overhyped. We keep getting companies proclaiming that AI tools have allowed them to cut headcount, while employees say that the tools don't work miracles. It appears AI is often being used to justify layoffs that would have happened anyway. If AI is not inherently BAD, it is being made to look so.

DAYLOG FRI 09 MAY: STAR TREK alumnus George Takei is a big wheel on BlueSky, with 1.2 million followers, and boosts his efforts through ownership of a news / satire website, COMIC SANDS -- which parents a blog, THE BIG PICTURE (TBP), on Substack.

Todd Beeton, chief editor of COMIC SANDS, ran an essay on TBP on 8 May titled: "Disengaged Voters Are Abandoning Trump In Droves -- Can Democrats Win Them Back?" It reinforced a number of my own perceptions. Before the election, Data For Progress polled over 13,000 voters, to find out that of those saying they had having "a great deal" of "news attentiveness", 52% supported Kamala and 46% supported Trump, while 51% of those with "none at all" supported Trump and only 32% supported Kamala.

The trick was that the "low-information" voters turned out to vote for Trump, burying Kamala, when most normally wouldn't have bothered to vote at all. It seems many ONLY voted for Trump, which is why some Dem senators won in states that went for Trump. The low-information voters get their news from YouTube and Facebook, not traditional media. They tend to be politically nihilistic, suspicious of the media and both political parties, and embraced Trump as a rejection of the system, with Trump promising them a better deal.

However, the low-information voters are significantly influenced by their personal economic situation, which has gone painfully south since Trump took office -- as Trump paved new presidential ground by deliberately creating a recession (because crank economic ideas). A YouGov poll now shows while Trump's approval margin has dropped from 3 to -10 points among high-information voters -- it's surprising it was that high -- it's dropped from 12 to -21 points among low-information voters.

Talk that the Dems could have reached the low-information voters is nonsensical. Trump and the GOP assume the voters are ignorant and tell them lies without hesitation; Trump does it instinctively. The Dems, being the grown-ups in the room, can't and shouldn't do that.

There are big positive take-aways from the scenario, however. The low-information voters only care about Trump, and don't care about the GOP at all. Once Trump goes away, they'll stop voting, or maybe even vote for Dems. In the shorter term, they're finding out that Trump's promises are worthless. In the 1932 election, the Dems crushed the GOP because the GOP had been discredited, with FDR obtaining a decisive mandate. What will happen in the 2028 election? Predictions are dodgy -- but possibilities are there.

[MON 19 MAY 25] THE WEEK THAT WAS 20

DAYLOG MON 12 MAY: As discussed in an article from NATURE ("How political attacks could crush the mRNA vaccine revolution" by Elie Dolgin, 9 May 25), almost all the actions of the Trump Regime are attempts to throw the USA into reverse -- one example being the public health system.

After the outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic at the start of 2020, there was a mad scramble to develop vaccines. The winners in the competition were those based on "messenger RNA (mRNA)" technology.

There are three broad classes of vaccines, based on live virus, killed virus, or proteins -- all being used to stimulate the body's immune response to the target virus. Live virus vaccines are based on attenuated target viruses or harmless viruses modified to look like the target virus. They are the most effective, but there is a small risk of the viruses not being as safe as believed. Killed virus vaccines use killed target viruses; they are second most effective, but there is a small risk of not all the viruses being killed.

Protein-based viruses use proteins from the target virus; they are the safest vaccines, but also the least effective. The mRNA vaccines are something of a variation on protein-based viruses: mRNA, which provides instructions for generating proteins, is injected, to then generate the target proteins. All experience shows it is effectively as safe as protein-based vaccines, while being quick to develop and very effective -- as vaccines go, none of them are miraculous.

Along with vaccines, mRNA therapeutics have been in intensive development for health challenges such as bacterial and parasitic infections, even cancer. However, progress has been derailed by the Trump Regime's appointment of Robert F. Kennedy JR to head Health & Human Services.

RFK-JR is a vaccine denier, with a notable distaste for mRNA technology. None of his criticisms of the technology have an honest basis in material evidence, but he's perfectly willing to make up his own. He's not alone ... with Troglodyte Right politicians, in the USA and elsewhere, trying to pass bans on mRNA technology. Is it under serious threat? It's too good to go away forever and the case against it is weak, but it's clearly going into a stall.

RFK-JR is incompetent to run HHS. Under him, HHS is waffling on yearly vaccines for Americans. Red states sued the Biden Administration over vaccine mandates; will Blue states sue the Trump Regime for failing to deliver? We'll see.

DAYLOG TUE 13 MAY: Last Thursday, Joe and Jill Biden appeared on ABC's "The View", with Joe providing a "post-mortem" of the 2024 election. Joe replied to those making a fuss about his "cognitive decline" with: "They are wrong." -- and said he believes he could have beaten Trump. On being asked if he still took ownership of the loss, he replied: "I do, because, look, I was in charge and he won. So, you know, I take responsibility."

Joe said that Kamala Harris lost because the Trump campaign "went the sexist route. I've never seen quite as successful and consistent campaign undercutting the notion that a woman couldn't lead the country, and a woman of mixed race." Joe felt he could -- here emphasize could -- have beaten Trump because the election "wasn't a slam dunk", ending up a close race, particularly in swing states. Biden would have had an edge by being a white male, and also being the incumbent. As far as age went, it was showing worse on Trump and didn't stop Trump.

Joe did point out the "pandemic factor" in the race: "Think about it: Liberal democracies all across America, all across the world, lost last time out. I think we underestimate the phenomenal negative impact that COVID and the pandemic had on people, on attitudes, on optimism, on a whole range of things." Voters were less sold on Trump than they were unhappy with the status quo.

Many voters have now found out they made a mistake in electing Trump: "He's had the worst 100 days any president's ever had." As for his own plans, Joe said he was trying to figure out what the most significant and consequential role I can play, consistent with what I've done in the past." As for Kamala, she has a "difficult decision to make about what she's going to do."

"I think she's first-rate. But we've had a lot of really good candidates as well, so I'm optimistic. I'm not pessimistic about the future." I think Joe is right all down the line: things are very bad, but not hopeless.

At present, unfortunately, Joe is getting raked over the coals, primarily due to a book released by journalist Jake Tapper about the "scandalous" cover-up of Joe's supposedly deep cognitive decline before the 2024 election. Other media figures and some Democratic operators are joining in on the dogpile. It seems Tapper and those like him realized that picking on Joe was safe, while picking on Trump is not. Cowards.

DAYLOG WED 14 MAY: Donald Trump's "tariff war" against the world is partly driven by a drive to bring offshored manufacturing back to the USA. This push is confronted with a number of big problems. The title of an article from NPR ("Why aren't Americans filling the manufacturing jobs we already have?" by Greg Rosalsky, 13 May 25) reveals one of them: according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, US manufacturing is, at present, short a half million workers.

A survey of US manufacturers conducted in 2024 said about two-thirds of them felt their #1 challenge was to recruit and retain workers. The shortfall is expected to get worse -- ironically due to Joe Biden's push to improve US competitiveness in the global marketplace. During his presidency, Biden invested over $2 trillion USD in initiatives to boost US industry, passing legislation like the "Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act", the "CHIPS & Science Act", and the "Inflation Reduction Act". Of course, they implied more workers.

Many of the existing industrial workforce are approaching retirement, meaning the crunch is likely to get worse. Projections suggest that the US industrial jobs shortfall will reach several million in the next decade.

While there's a general perception of industrial jobs as like Charlie Chaplin slaving away on the assembly line, manufacturing requires engineers and a wide range of other workers with college degrees. About half of the open jobs require such degrees.

Many of the rest of the jobs still require trained skills, with an industry demand for maintenance technicians, machine operators, material handlers, and forklift operators. The USA is, compared to Europe, very weak in apprenticeship programs for such jobs. The USA now has a program titled the "Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education (FAME)", in which apprentices split time between the factory and community college for 21 months. They graduate with little or no school debt, and get good-paying jobs.

That leads to another problem: economics. The trucking industry has complained about a driver shortfall for decades, but much of the problem there is low pay and poor working conditions. Manufacturers have been raising their pay, but that of course means higher costs. It was costs that drove offshoring in the first place. The glib answer is to boost worker productivity, but it's hard to do that quickly, and efforts to do so work just as well in competing countries like China as in the USA. China is as big or bigger on factory automation as the USA.

That's why the Biden Administration pushed high-tech industrial development, where the USA could get a real advantage. Trump's global tariff war is not going to do much to return manufacturing jobs to the USA -- while his defunding of "green technology" programs sets the USA back in the race to deal with the climate crisis. The tariffs are a bad solution to a misunderstood problem.

DAYLOG THU 15 MAY: Artificial intelligence tech appears poised to take over, but it is becoming obvious that appearances are misleading. As discussed in an article from FUTURISM ("Company Regrets Replacing All Those Pesky Human Workers With AI" by Joe Wilkins, 13 May 25), Swedish financial tech startup Klarna bet big on AI, to now realize it just can't do the job.

Starting in 2023, working in a partnership with Sam Altman's OpenAI firm, Klarna scaled back its marketing and then customer service staff. Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Klarna's CEO, said then that the company had saved millions in switching to AI, claiming its AIs could do the work of "700 full-time agents". Now he says that cost ended up being too big a factor, saying that the company ended up having "lower quality".

Surveys show that from half to two-thirds of business executives have found AI tools a disappointment. Law firms that have relied on AI have got a lot of bad publicity for AI's inclination to make up case precedents. Yeah, AI can do remarkable things, particularly in focused applications, but it's no substitute for humans for nontrivial tasks that aren't so well defined.

* Regarding the story told here previously on Elon the Musk Rat's dissatisfaction with the honesty of the xAI "Grok" chatbot: efforts of course were made to "fix" the problem, with the result that Grok began to talk about "white genocide in South Africa", in response to queries that had nothing to do with the matter. On being queried as to what that was all about, Grok replied that it appeared it was simply told to do so. The problem went away after a few days, with the chatbot then clarifying:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

To be sure, chatbots reflect what they find on the internet, but building a chatbot that selects obvious disinformation over valid information seems unworkably perverse. It might as well just return links to troll videos on YouTube, and nothing else. Nobody would need a chatbot to do that.

This whole silly story is, of course, completely on-brand for the Musk Rat. We haven't heard the last of this nonsense about troll chatbots by any means. I don't know how it's going to turn out over the long run. Incidentally, later Grok also dabbled in Holocaust denial for a short time, again because it was told to do it.

DAYLOG FRI 16 MAY: The farcical "Ukraine peace initiative" being driven, in an unsteady way, by Donald Trump appears to be finally running out of steam. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy went to Istanbul, supposedly to have direct talks with Russian President Putin.

As was almost certainly expected, Putin was a no-show, with a Russian delegation in Istanbul continuing to, effectively, make demands that Ukraine capitulate. Following the no-show, European leaders took a hard line on Russia, with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declaring a new sanctions package on Russia, and even going so far as to promote seizure of frozen Russian assets -- if it's legal, he noted, which has always been the sticking point on seizure. Other leaders made similar declarations.

Trump has said no further progress can be expected until he talks with Putin, but that sounds like Trump egotism at work: Only I can save it! Putin regards Trump with almost unconcealed contempt, and is certain to continue to demand Ukrainian capitulation. It's not clear the "peace initiative" will halt, but it seems likely to run out of steam. Putin started this war by invading Ukraine without real provocation, and the war will end the moment he wants it to.

* Ukraine is now producing millions of drones a year. David Axe, writing in FORBES, says that Ukraine has set up, or is setting up, a "no man's land" on the front lines 25 kilometers (16 miles) deep, in which anything that moves is attacked by drones.

Fixed-wing surveillance drones patrol the buffer zone, with targets engaged by fixed-wing or multicopter drone bombers, or multicopter killer drones. Radio communications are maintained with repeater drones or aerostats (tethered balloons). The plan is to quadruple the depth of buffer zone.

In related news, Ukrainian defense firm Fulltime Robotics has developed a laser turret, the "SlimBeam", to shoot down drones. It's not leading-edge tech, being only a 1.5-kilowatt laser with limited range, but that's good enough for engaging battlefield drones. A video showed it burning a hole in a metal plate in 13 seconds.

In still more Ukraine War news, according to British intelligence, the devastating "drone attack" on the Russian GRAU-51 ammo dump surprisingly wasn't really a drone attack. It appears it really was an accident, caused by fatal Russian incompetence.

[MON 26 MAY 25] THE WEEK THAT WAS 21

DAYLOG MON 19 MAY: There was a presidential election in Romania over the weekend, pitting pro-Russian ultranationalist George Simion against centrist Nicusor Dan, mayor of Bucharest. Simion was favored but Dan won, 54% to 46%. Simion had declared himself the winner about halfway through the counting, which hinted that he might contest the election; however, but with an 8% spread, that wasn't going to work, and Simion conceded defeat.

Dan, in contrast to Simion, is pro-NATO, pro-EU, pro-Ukraine, while his core platform was anti-corruption. Dan, incidentally, is a mathematician by education who turned to activism in the late 1990s. Some sources describe him as a "liberal", but he did at one time appear ambivalent on gay rights. It appears he has shifted to the Left on the issue. Eh, to ultranationalists, anyone to the Left of them is a "liberal".

In any case, the election in Romania has followed the same pattern as recent elections in Canada and Australia: ultranationalist favored to win, but instead losing to rationalists by a comfortable, if not overwhelming, margin. The cause of the upsets appears to be the re-election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the USA, which has scared sense into other countries. At least there's some good coming out of Trump.

Things are definitely bad here, but there are hopeful signs -- one big one being that the Trump Regime generally drives policies that the majority of Americans don't like. Postings on BlueSky suggest Trump's popularity is slipping:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

There's a long tough road ahead, but I'm not believing things are hopeless. In the best of all possible worlds, the return of Trump will mean the final fall of the GOP, and then an open road to reform. Trump has nowhere to go but down. Unfortunately, he'll be a lot of trouble before he checks out.

DAYLOG TUE 20 MAY: President Trump's obsession with tariffs and trade wars has become a dark comedy of blunders -- with an article from NPR ("Trump has imposed a lot of tariffs. But here's why collecting them can be hard" by Emily Feng, 20 May 25) pointing out that the exercise is bogged down in bungling.

One big way of dodging the tariffs is through "transhipping": exports from high-tariff countries through intermediate low-tariff countries -- China shipping through Vietnamese front companies, for instance. Another problem is that Customs & Border Patrol (CBP) was understaffed even before Trump started his trade war, and CBP doesn't have the resources or skills to accomplish the monster job it's been assigned. In a related vein, when trade cheaters get caught, they suffer no penalties, simply shifting to new front companies to keep right on cheating. Thanks to layoffs, the US Federal government has even less ability to enforce the law.

It was noted during Trump 1.0 that Trump's determination to cut, say, environmental regulations conflicted with an even more noticeable determination to impose trade regulations. Big Business that pushed Trump failed to realize how bad an idea that was. I take the optimistic view of the Trump Regime's survival: It is incompetent and witless, along with being corrupt and bigoted. I don't see it as having staying power.

* Joe Biden's recent announcement that he had prostate cancer came in the wake of a renewed flap over his alleged "cognitive decline" in the last year of his presidency -- driven by journalist Jake Tapper with a new book on that topic.

Joe's granddaughter Naomi read an early copy, to then label it "political fairy smut for the permanent, professional chattering class." -- adding: "It amounts to a bunch of unoriginal, uninspired lies written by irresponsible self-promoting journalists out to make a quick buck." -- and: "A self-serving false narrative that absolves them of any responsibility for our current national nightmare."

Popular blogger Brian Tyler Cohen (800,000 followers on BlueSky) was more broadly dismissive, writing an essay titled: "Legacy media drives the final nail in its own coffin". Yeah: legacy media is fading out. It can't happen fast enough.

DAYLOG WED 21 MAY: There was a time when the leaders of Big Tech firms were more or less seen as progressive visionaries -- but in the 2020s, they've come to seem more like fascistic oligarchs, and their gleaming technological visions of the future have lost their shine.

The tattering of their visions is the topic of a new book titled MORE EVERYTHING FOREVER, by Adam Becker, a science writer with an astrophysics degree. Becker spoke with science journalist Justin Hendrix about the book.

Becker sees the TechLords, to give them a label, as having a millennialist view of the future, with a religious faith in the ultimate power of new technology to reshape the world. First problem is that the TechLords' notion of utopia isn't exactly what everyone else wants.

Second problem is that there's little science behind the TechLords' assertions. They foresee superintelligent artificial intelligences as solving the world's problems, even as we're finding out that the AI revolution is way overhyped. AI is a big advance, but so far it's not a miracle cure. We're ending up with diminishing returns trying to improve it. Diminishing returns are exponential growth in reverse; exponential growth can't be sustained anyway.

Ideas about, say, colonizing Mars aren't much better off. Mars is not a particularly attractive place to colonize, and it would be staggeringly expensive to try to do it. It would be easier to build giant space colonies in Earth orbit, and they aren't remotely practical at present either. Other fantasies in the mix include effective immortality, and genetically-engineered superhumans.

In short, what we have is a low-budget sci-fi story view of the future -- reflecting the intellectual level of the TechLord mindset, contemptuous of education except for that needed to generate new technology. Underlying the TechLord vision of a gleaming future is the assumption that the TechLords will be in charge. That's not a reach, there's an undercurrent of "techno monarchism" in the culture, in which corporate bosses -- think Elon the Musk Rat -- will set up and run technostates. Democracy has no place in this vision.

Similarly, the new Techlord societies will be designed for the elite, with no place for poor people of color in undeveloped societies. They will be "left behind", presumably to die out. The TechLords don't want to help them. The only good thing about this fascistic and eugenicist vision of the future is that it is a dead end. Unfortunately, in the meantime not only do the TechLords refuse to support democratic society -- they actually try to wreck it.

DAYLOG THU 22 MAY: America's culture wars rumble on, with a particular focus on the tiny minority of transgenders. An article from SCIENCENEWS ("Biological sex is not as simple as male or female" by Tina Hesman Saey, 20 February 2025) gives insight into a subject that isn't anywhere near as simple as it is made out to be.

Human females have XX chromosomes, males have XY chromosomes, right? Well, not always. Sam Sharpe, an evolutionary biologist at Kansas State University, says:

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Human males and females are more alike than different, while both have wildly variable traits. Some males appear feminine, some females appear masculine. In addition, there is a gene named SRY on the Y chromosome. Some people with XY chromosomes but an anomalous SRY gene develop as sterile females, not as males. In addition, during early cell division, SRY can jump out of a Y chromosome and attach to an X chromosome -- resulting in people with XX chromosomes that develop as males.

There are also females with only an X chromosome, who develop as sterile females -- and there are also people with XXY chromosomes, who develop as sterile males. Further complicating matters, there are many other genes that influence gender development that can tilt towards male or female; hermaphrodites are not unknown.

About 1.7% of the population is intersex and doesn't fit neatly into male / female boxes. Nathan Lents, a molecular evolutionary biologist at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, says:

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The reality is that transgenders are being targeted because they are a tiny and often maligned minority, vulnerable and easy to pick on. For political purposes, they are turned into a major issue, when there's no big reason they should be. That's not to dismiss the issue. In my youth I was transphobic, but there came a time to choose between the low road and the high one, and I could only take the high road. I never thought I would be a defender of LGBT rights in my seniority -- but here I am.

DAYLOG FRI 23 MAY: Donald Trump is now promoting a "Golden Dome" missile defense system to protect the USA from a nuclear strike. It's a rehash of the "Star Wars" defense system against intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) pushed by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. As discussed in an article from SCIENCENEWS ("Trump's 'Golden Dome' plan has a major obstacle: Physics" by Emily Conover, 22 May 2025), Star Wars was a fantasy, and Golden Dome is only slightly less so.

The USA does have a national ICBM defense system, with interceptor sites in Alaska and California, but it is only intended to discourage "pot shots" from North Korea at the USA. It hasn't been tested in combat, and nobody really knows how well it would work in practice.

Intercepting an ICBM is just a tough job, compared to hitting "a bullet with another bullet". We've made great strides in intercepting tactical ballistic missiles (TBM) -- the Ukrainians do it all the time -- but taking out a mass launch of ICBMs is another thing. The problem is that it's hard to make a leakproof defense even against TBMs. If the USA is attacked with 100 ICBMs and 5% get through, we've lost five major cities, which is unacceptable damage -- and we'd have to retaliate in kind, rolling on towards a full nuclear exchange.

Complicating matters is that ICBMs can carry decoys and other "penetration aids" to complicate the defense -- and setting off nukes would cause "electromagnetic pulses (EMP)" that would blind radars. Infrared / optical sensors would still work.

Golden Dome, following up from Star Wars, envisions a constellation of sensor / interceptor satellites in low Earth orbit. That would demand hundreds of satellites to ensure coverage -- which would be fabulously expensive, once again untested in combat, and not at all leakproof.

Trump is claiming "three years" to an operational system. As was pointed out, in three years he might have fancy Powerpoint slides. Trump is unlikely to be around to see Golden Dome go anywhere, and Golden Dome is unlikely to survive him.