* 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.
DAYLOG MON 28 JUL 25: Donald Trump went on a visit to Scotland, with the Scots giving him a right proper welcome -- thousands turning out to protest in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and elsewhere, with signs such as: SCOTLAND TOTALLY HATES TRUMP ... BEAT IT YA BIG ORANGE JOBBY ... VERY BAD PEOPLE NOT WELCOME ... with bagpipes offering some background music here and there.
The Scots paper THE NATIONAL ran a big headline: CONVICTED US FELON TO ARRIVE IN SCOTLAND. Seems they sold a lot of papers. A British activist group projected "LOSER" in red-white-blue on the front lawn of Trump's golf course resort at Turnberry. A video caught Trump on the golf course, cheating by planting a golf ball. So what else is new for Trump?
There was more going on diplomatically. Trump also had a meeting with EC President Ursula von der Leyen at the golf course, with Trump proclaiming a huge victory in trade negotiations with the EU. Of course he'd say that; exactly what the agreement really amounts to remains to be seen. A video of the two sitting together showed von der Leyen looking distinctly uncomfortable as Trump ranted on. He also had a meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer there, with one "Duty To Warn" commenting on Xitter:
QUOTE:
Watching Trump this morning, sitting alongside the UK Prime Minister. He opens his mouth and words come out, but they're not anchored in information, logical progression, or continuity -- he's owned by his pathology, and he's in decline. There's one half-sentence addressing a question or topic, and then suddenly, he's talking about his polls, his stupid enemies, things he hates like windmills, and his grandiosity.
Sometimes, he goes off the rails completely, like informing the audience that Kamala had a last name ... and by the way, it's Harris. And wherever his oratory takes him, it's always with a shockingly simplistic vocabulary. Addressing the plight in Gaza, he said "We're going to be getting some good strong food."
END_QUOTE
It appears one function of the trip was to get Trump out of the line of fire of the public outrage over his Epstein connection, which surprisingly isn't fading out. He's panicking and stonewalling so much that it seems obvious he's covering up really bad things. There's talk going around that Trump will have the DOJ will release doctored evidence -- but if they did, it wouldn't work; the majority of the Federal government rightfully sees Trump as the enemy, and there would be widespread leaks denouncing the fraud.
DAYLOG TUE 29 JUL 25: As discussed here before, there's been widespread talk of AI putting everyone out of jobs. An article from CNBC ("AI is radically changing entry-level jobs, but not eliminating them by Bob Violino, 26 July 2025) suggests the fears are exaggerated.
Zanele Munyikwa, an economist at labor analytics firm Revelio Labs, says that AI is indeed "reshaping all jobs", adding that while employment for entry-level jobs is down, that's a general trend not strongly linked to AI.
The jobs that would seem most threatened are technical, including data engineers, database administrators, IT specialists, and cybersecurity personnel -- along with financial workers such as auditors. These workers are not, however, faced with extinction. Such people are now making good use of AI tools, with almost a third of them currently doing so, and enjoying significant productivity gains. According to Munyikwa, management needs to boost AI training and rethinking jobs with regards to AI.
Jobs not so vulnerable to AI, of course, typically involve tasks that are hard to automate -- such as manual work in manufacturing, hospitality roles, or interpersonal work. There's actually shortages of workers in these fields.
Fawad Bajwa -- a data / analytics / AI leader at global advisory firm Russell Reynolds Associates -- says: "Generally, jobs that are repetitive, rule-based, and easily codified are most at risk." However, for now such jobs are generally being restructured, but not eliminated. Again, management needs to be proactive and plan for the impact of AI on their companies.
Munyikwa says Businesses will need new "on-ramps", such as apprenticeships and AI-focused "boot camps". He says: "Leaders must plan for continuous upskilling, not one-off training sessions, to keep teams productive alongside rapidly evolving AI tools." Properly applied, AI makes workers more productive; despite real problems, it is more of an opportunity than a threat.
* I spent a lot of time in technical customer support, and I can see AI would help a lot. Many customer problems are petty, most of the labor involved just being to get a straight story out of the customer, and an AI troubleshooter could screen those problems out. Given that customer problems can be painfully devious, however, there's no way an AI system could do more than back up a trained human troubleshooter. Of course, the management always wants to cut costs, and so support is vulnerable to being downsized in favor of AI: "SALES & SERVICE" has a bad tendency to devolve to "SALES".
DAYLOG WED 30 JUL 25: A few days back, Trump announced a trade deal with the EU, proclaiming a huge victory for the USA. Of course, that led to EU leadership, particularly EC President Ursula von der Leyen, being pilloried as suckers.
OK, anyone familiar with Trump knows what he says can't be taken at face value, and clarification is always needed. That was provided by an article from EURONEWS ("EU and US spin conflicting versions of trade deal, sowing confusion" by Jorge Liboreiro, 29 July 2025). To itemize:
DAYLOG THU 31 JUL 25: Trump has long been hostile to renewable energy, with a hatred of wind turbines above all. An article in EURONEWS ("Trump calls wind energy a 'con job': Here's what the data actually says", 30 July 2025) called him out.
Trump complains that "windmills" are an eyesore; they are "the most expensive form of energy"; they only last about 8 years, and are hard to dispose of then; "almost all" are made in China; they kill birds; and Germany has given up on them. In reality:
Trump is particularly upset at the oceanic wind turbines that can be seen from his Turnberry luxury golf resort in Scotland. He sued over them in 2013, with the UK Supreme Court shooting down the suit in 2015. Trump is not a reasonable person, but his crusade against "windmills" is particularly baffling. He seems to oppose them because he wants to turn back the clock against all things modern, which are automatically equated to "liberal". However, he can't stop wind power, or even slow it down much.
DAYLOG FRI 01 AUG 25: As discussed in an article from NATURE ("Google AI model mines trillions of images to create maps of Earth 'at any place and time'" by Jeff Tollefson, 31 July 25), Google loves mapping, and is using AI to make smarter maps. The latest innovation is an AI model that works as a "virtual satellite" to integrate vast numbers of observations from different sources such as satellite images and radar to monitor changes in land and shallow waters across Earth.
The model is named "AlphaEarth Foundations". According to Christopher Brown -- a research engineer at Google DeepMind in New York City -- it maps the world "at any place and time". It could be used, for example, to track the impact of climate change or find good sites for clean-energy projects.
Nicholas Murray -- a conservation biologist at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia -- leads research on the Global Ecosystems Atlas, an effort to map the world's environments. According to Murray, his team can spend months processing satellite data to turn it into maps. They're now using AlphaEarth, and believe it will substantially speed up the work.
Google says it will keep AlphaEarth up-to-date. The datasets it is based on are available through the company's Earth Engine, a cloud-based platform that is already providing volumes of Earth data. AlphaEarth provides an interface to make convenient use of the data. AlphaEarth's maps have a "pixel" resolution of 10 meters, with images generated via queries invoking times, locations, and significant attributes. An AI system will make errors and users will have to be aware of that, but Google is providing data to help users assess its results.
* New US job-growth figures show that employment is about at zero now. In response, Trump fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner. That the outrage of the day for Friday.
Trump outrages can be hard to swallow, but I had to think that this was absolutely no surprise -- people echoed BlueSky comments they'd made months ago to that effect -- and not the worst thing Trump has done. These days, days I tend to have that feeling like I've just walked out of a theater after watching a very effective horror movie, but I don't let the feeling push me around. I've accepted that things are going to be bad for a few years, and otherwise try to maintain my balance.
I know this is temporary. The USA survived four years of Trump 1.0 in one piece, if worn and torn; we can survive four years of Trump 2.0. Granted, Trump 2.0 is a lot worse, but he's also in a lot worse shape, and not so long for this world. The Trump Regime is wrecking everything, but wrecking itself as well. Over the longer run, we have fair cause for optimism.
BACK_TO_TOPDAYLOG MON 04 AUG 25: David Graham of the ATLANTIC ran an essay ("Fuzzy Math", 29 July 2025) that took a close look at tax cuts, and suggested they aren't the winners that they used to be.
That obviously refers to Trump's recent tax cuts, which polls show were opposed by over half of Americans. In a particular irony, Trump's 2017 tax cuts were almost as unpopular. Many Americans would have had reduced taxes with the 2017 tax cut, but the cuts were skewed towards the very wealthy, and most Americans concluded they were getting peanuts while being ripped off.
It was Ronald Reagan who got the tax-cut bandwagon rolling, pushing through tax cuts in 1981 and 1986. Reagan's successor, George HW Bush, promised "no new taxes" on the campaign trail -- but he raised taxes while in office, which was held to be a key reason for being voted out after one term. The GOP didn't forget that lesson.
Bill Clinton trimmed to the conservative winds, and was careful to only talk about raising taxes on the wealthy. Clinton managed to get balanced budgets, but they were then squandered by his successor, George W. Bush, with big tax cuts. Barack Obama also wanted to raise taxes on the wealthy, but the Republican Congress refused to let him. Trump of course recklessly cut taxes during his first term; Joe Biden raised them somewhat; and then second-term Trump came back with bigger tax cuts.
Now the tax-cut fever has run into diminishing returns. One reason is that, thanks to almost half a century of tax cuts, the tax burden is low. For example, the top corporate tax rate has dropped from a high of 52.8% in 1969 to 21% in 2024.
A more important reason is the proliferation of billionaires, while ordinary Americans have become increasingly impoverished. It is increasingly recognized that America's income inequality is not sustainable. Of course, Republicans have proclaimed from Reagan on that tax cuts would "pay for themselves" through an economic boom, but nobody really believes that any more, not even Republicans. Everyone knows it's a con job.
So can we see a future where raising taxes isn't such a problem? Alas, it's politically much easier to cut taxes than to raise them. However, if we can raise taxes on the wealthy, we can flexibly define "wealthy", and raise taxes in a graduated way: those at the low end of "wealthy" getting a small increase, with bigger increases going upward. It might be just a question of how the tax increases are packaged.
DAYLOG TUE 05 AUG 25: As reported by NPR ("As Trump's tariffs take shape, is America really winning?" by Rafael Nam, 4 August 2025), Donald Trump has been playing an international game of chicken with tariffs since he took office again, leaving everyone confused.
Trump has been continually changing his story on tariffs. When he first introduced them in April, it appeared they would be more 20% on average, but now appear to be about 18.3%. That is still about six times more than what they were under Biden, and US tariffs haven't been this high since 1935. Trump keeps saying that exporting countries will eat the tariffs, but it's the American consumer who suffers. Estimates suggest US households will have to pay several thousand dollars more a year, the worst case being clothes.
It seemed for a time that the tariffs were not causing serious economic problems for the USA, but recent economic data shows things aren't going well, with Trump reacting angrily to the data. US economists believe the tariffs will bring more of the same.
It is true that tariffs are bringing in a lot of money for the government, running to about $150 billion USD since the start of the tariffs blitz. However, they can't erase Trump's budget deficits, and also amount to a regressive sales tax on Americans.
Besides, by choking off imports, tariffs are inherently self-limiting. Since other countries retaliate with counter-tariffs, they also hurt American exporters. Trump has also used tariffs to bully other countries -- hitting Canada with 35% tariffs for talking about recognizing a Palestinian state, hitting Brazil with 50% tariffs for trying Bolsonaro for his attempted coup.
Other countries have to hit back. Alicia Garcia-Herrero, the Asia-Pacific chief economist for investment firm Natixis in Hong Kong, talks of "payback". There are no winners; everybody is getting hurt. Garcia-Herrero says of Trump's ignorant and counterproductive trade war: "There's no carrots, only sticks -- and this is very hard to swallow."
DAYLOG WED 06 AUG 25: There's been an outbreak of bad E. coli infections in Florida, which have been tagged to humans drinking raw (unpasteurized) milk. Raw milk is sold in Florida marked NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION, but some people don't get the message.
Raw milk fans claim that pasteurized milk lacks vital nutrients and beneficial bacteria, while raw milk has a range of health benefits. There's no evidence backing such claims, but plenty of evidence that raw milk is a bad thing -- carrying pathogens such as campylobacter, cryptosporidium, E. coli, listeria, brucella, and salmonella, with well-documented reports of breakouts.
Why, then, does the raw milk myth persist? It appears that its advocates align with the "natural health" movement, which believes that interventions like pasteurization have isolated humans from nature, and so made us more vulnerable ... or something like that, it's hard to say because they're dedicated to doubletalk (they call raw milk "fresh") and their stories shift with the wind. It makes no sense.
Of course, raw milk has become a far-Right sacred cow (so to speak), with a "Raw Milk Institute" making the case for it, getting into fights with the FDA -- or did so, since the Trump Regime is all in for raw milk, along with other quack science fads.
One Andy Logan commented on BlueSky: "Getting close to a cow on a working farm makes the infection problem immediately apparent. However, most people aren't ever getting closer to a cow than seeing one out of the car window as they drive by."
I replied: "I'm familiar enough with barnyards to know they aren't very sanitary environments." I'd earlier posted: "I cannot comprehend how anyone could believe it was healthy to drink unpasteurized milk. The idea disgusts me."
* The Trump Regime is now working to restore to a park in Washington DC a statue of Confederate General Albert Pike that had been trashed a few years back. Responses on BlueSky suggested it will trashed again soon enough -- I gave it a month. Incidentally, I wrote an extended Civil War history, and had never heard of Pike. He was a brigadier general, the lowest general rank; he saw some action in Arkansas, but resigned in 1862 over a dispute with his superiors.
DAYLOG THU 07 AUG 25: RWNJ troll Candace Owens has been making trouble for herself by insisting that Brigitte Macron, wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, was actually born a man and transitioned to female. Apparently, such trash has been floating around online since 2021 with zero honest evidence to back it up. Brigitte was supposedly born a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux, who is actually her brother -- they have a strong family resemblance, but his existence as a man is well documented. It appears that the crackpot claim is that he is actually Brigitte, cosplaying as a man.
Owens, who made other wild claims about the Macrons -- saying, for example, that Emmanuel was installed as French president by the CIA -- dared the Macrons to sue. They did so in July. Crackpots of course think that trial discovery will be in their favor, even when it obviously won't be; they just can't get a clue. As further proof of that reality, over a year ago Owens posted: "After looking into this, I would stake my entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man."
Owens does have a "professional reputation", but not one that gets her any respect. Incidentally, Brigitte is not the only target of "tranvestigations", with the trolls having long gone after Michelle Obama on the same basis. I will not repeat some of the things said about her, because it might get me in trouble with the content moderators.
* In somewhat related news, RWNJ troll Ammon Bundy of Idaho, who has long led noisy far-Right demonstrations on various dubious pretexts, got himself into serious trouble by doing so. The issue goes back to 2022, when Bundy backed up his friend Diego Rodriguez, after the grandson of Rodriguez was picked up by Idaho Child Protective Services and taken to Saint Luke's Health System -- Idaho's biggest health network -- for a checkup.
Bundy then wildly accused Saint Luke's of "kidnapping and trafficking children" for money. In response, Saint Luke's sued Bundy for defamation, and was awarded $52 million USD in damages -- Bundy didn't help his case by skipping court hearings, and also by persisting in his accusations against Saint Luke's.
Anyway, Bundy then tried to declare bankruptcy to get out from under the damages, but an Idaho bankruptcy court has now told him he can't do that. My question here is: are we seeing a trend of more defamation suits against RWNJ trolls? I hope so. Certainly, the trolls seem to be on the downhill slope these days.
Incidentally, proving defamation means showing the defendant acted with "actual malice". The defendant pigheadly insisting that the accusations are true is not good enough, if the defendant acted with "reckless disregard for the truth" -- which is normal for trolls.
DAYLOG FRI 08 AUG 25: There was a report on BlueSky yesterday of Russian police alerts about pickup trucks and motor homes launching drones. I was thinking that meant another clever Ukrainian sneak attack on Russian air bases, but it seems to have been a false alert.
More interestingly, Ukraine is fielding enough interceptor drones and other defensive weapons to increase the kill rate on Russian killer drones attacking Ukraine's cities. Typically, the interceptor drones are quadcopters with a streamlined fuselage, often like a bullet, and four rear-mounted wings, with a prop on each wingtip. They are, of course, designed for speed. Most seem to be one-shot munitions with a warhead; guidance systems are not clear.
However, the Ukrainian company KB Tekharni has developed a re-usable jet-powered drone, the "Mangust (Mongoose)", that appears to use an infrared camera to find Russian drones, and then take them out with a multi-barrel shotgun. It appears that drones carrying shotguns use "countershot" shells to nullify recoil. Countershot guns have been around for about a century: they are open at both ends, with the shell blasting a projectile out the front and a dummy mass out the rear.
It appears the Russians are increasingly fielding jet drones, and current interceptor drones aren't fast enough to catch them. Faster jet interceptors are likely in the works, fortunately. Ukraine is also fielding Czech-made Zlin Z-137 Agro Turbo cropdusters in the air-defense role, with a Z-137 carrying a single R-73 air-to-air missile under each wing. Using the R-73 to shoot down k-drones might be overkill, so they may be intended to shoot down cruise missiles.
* In drone news here in Loveland, Colorado, the local utilities office has been using quadcopter drones for over a year now, with one major task being to inspect power poles, looking for marks of arcing and using infrared imaging to spot overheating fuses. The drones can inspect power poles at the rate of almost one a minute. The drones also inspect forest-fire burn sites to check for erosion, observe construction projects, and check on solar panel arrays for damage after hailstorms.
BACK_TO_TOPDAYLOG MON 11 AUG 25: From early on in the Ukraine War, the Russians have been conducting sabotage operations against European nations supporting the war. As discussed in an article from EURONEWS ("Finland charges officers of Russia-linked Eagle S ship that damaged undersea cables" by Gavin Blackburn, 11 August 2025), Finnish authorities have charged the captain and two officers of the tanker EAGLE S with sabotage.
The EAGLE S is apparently part of Russia's "shadow fleet" of tankers used by Russia to circumvent international sanctions. On 25 December 2024, the EAGLE S cut the Estlink-2 power cable and communications links between Finland and Estonia. The charges stated that "the Eagle S, which left Russia's Ust-Luga with a cargo of oil products, is suspected of cutting five submarine cables in the Gulf of Finland by dragging its anchor on the seabed for about 90 kilometers [55 miles]."
Estlink 2 is 145 kilometers (90 miles) long, being 90 meters (300 feet) below the surface at its deepest point. It provides about half of Estonia's power needs in the winter. The damage did not disrupt service, though it did drive up energy prices in the Baltics. Repair costs were in tens of millions of Euros. The defendants pled NOT GUILTY, saying Finland had no jurisdiction since the cables were cut in international waters. Russia of course denies it is conducting a sabotage campaign.
* In continuing misadventures of Trump V Ukraine, Trump is now planning a one-on-one "peace talk" with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, with concepts of "territorial concessions" being floated by Trump Regime officials being firmly rejected by Ukrainian President Zelenskyy.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte slightly hedged on that, but said that "Ukraine decides on its own future, that Ukraine has to be a sovereign nation, deciding on its own geopolitical future -- of course, having no limitations on its own military troop levels. And for NATO, to have no limitations on our presence on the eastern flank."
There is of course much fuss about what Trump is doing, but Trump has been going in circles on Ukraine since he took office, and we can expect more of the same. As for the Alaska discussions, I commented to someone expressing concerns: "I suspect if you were a bug on the wall, all you would get out of Trump is demented ramblings, with Putin trying to nudge him here and there."
DAYLOG TUE 12 AUG 25: As discussed in an article from WIRED ("States Are Moving to Protect Access to Vaccines" by Emily Mullin, 31 July 2025), US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy JR, a long-time vaccine basher, is sabotaging America's health-care system with his anti-vaccine push.
The Federal government has long provided direction for vaccination efforts through the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), formed in 1964. ACIP recommendations are almost always adopted by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, and in many states these recommendations are tied to insurance coverage. That means: no recommendation, no insurance.
RFK-JR threw out ACIP staff in June and is now replacing them with anti-vaxxers. He said in an agency statement: "A clean sweep is necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science." First step of the new ACIP was to ban the preservative thimerosol from vaccines -- which was not much of a deal, because it's hardly used any more. However, that's clearly not going to be the end of it.
Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, says: "Where there's a challenge here is in states where there are legal requirements to follow ACIP recommendations." Osterholm's center founded the Vaccine Integrity Project in April in response to RFK-JR's anti-vax activities.
Colorado, a Blue state, passed legislation in April to safeguard access to vaccines even if ACIP recommendations change. Another bill recently passed in Colorado protects insurance coverage if ACIP recommendations change. Comparable legislation has been passed or is on the table in Maine, New York, and Massachusetts.
Not surprisingly, prospects for action are mixed in swing states, and nonexistent in Red states. Some state health departments are simply ignoring what ACIP says these days, and are making generally the same recommendations they always have. What happens if insurers balk in such states is unclear. In the meantime, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical societies are working together to assemble their own vaccine recommendations.
Incidentally, it appears RFK-JR only shut down mRNA research on vaccines. Use of mRNA in other medical applications is proceeding.
DAYLOG WED 13 AUG 25: Donald Trump has raised a huge fuss -- as he so enjoys doing -- by mobilizing the National Guard in Washington DC, after one of his low-level stooges got beat up by a gang of kids.
Blogger Jay Kuo, writing on Substack ("King of the Sandbox", 12 August 2025), says the move was Trump trying to divert attention from the Epstein files, and show off his strength -- but Kuo suggests it made Trump look weak instead.
As defined in the Home Rule Act of 1973, Trump as president does have the power to send in the DC National Guard by invoking an emergency -- even though there's no particular emergency there: Washington DC is not 100% safe, but it's not Haiti either. There being no emergency, the troops have nothing much to do. The law also only allows Trump to deploy the National Guard for 30 days, after which he has to get permission from Congress. The Dems will be able to filibuster any such legislation, giving them an easy win.
Trump might try to declare a second emergency, but that might have problems in the courts. Trump's earlier effort to send the National Guard into Los Angeles was a dud, the troops doing little and government officials saying there actually wasn't much they lawfully could do.
These interventions are typical Trump theatrics, with Trump attempting to bully cities with black mayors. He's also talking about interventions against New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Oakland, all very "chocolate" cities with black mayors. Since none of these cities have out-of-control crime problems, Trump might find intervention hard to make a case for -- one issue being that the military may get sick of the game and push back. Everyone knows that Trump likes to bark loud, but not good at getting anything done.
Kuo says Trump looks "pathetically weak" in sending in the troops. From a slightly different angle, I think that Trump can be very scary in principle, but in practice simply proves again and again that he's not a grown-up.
* In news of other threats to America's well-being, a case to shoot down gay marriage is percolating up towards the Supreme Court. Nobody can be sure how SCOTUS might judge on that, but legal experts are saying gay marriage is probably safe. Ending gay marriage would mean endless legal complications from breaking up families -- and, unlike overturning ROE V WADE, the courts couldn't ignore the consequences. There's also the big fact that the plaintiffs can't sensibly argue any injury from gay marriage.
DAYLOG THU 14 AUG 25: A number of American corporations backed Donald Trump in his re-election bid. As discussed in an article from NPR ("Trump is tightening the screws on corporate America" by Maria Aspan, 14 August 2025) some are having regrets.
Trump has never hesitated to go after US corporations, but now it's ramped up greatly, demanding the firings of company officials who displease him -- and just recently allowing Nvidia to sell its N20 AI chip in China, as long as the government gets a 15% cut of sales.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says more such deals are likely on the way. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL has compared the Trump policy to China's "state capitalism". Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale University management professor who often speaks with CEOs, says: "This 'Marxist MAGA' movement keeps expanding more and more, taking control without the resistance of private-sector decision-making. So that means we have winners and losers based on cronyism."
Calling it "Marxist MAGA" is off-target, however, since "crony capitalism" is normal to fascist regimes. There are obvious attractions for a company to win the favor of the "Supreme Leader", but the downside is that the company is now vulnerable to interference and exploitation. All along, Trump's high-tariff trade policies have had an aspect of extortion -- making life difficult for companies, until they pay him off to get a waiver. Some CEOs likely understood the Trump threat from early on, but in any case they usually meekly go along with the game.
Trump, however, is in continuous physical decline, with his behavior increasingly erratic. How long people can keep humoring him is hard to say. As inflation increasingly bites and the economy falters, compliance with Trump will become increasingly difficult.
* An article from ARSTECHNICA ("Is AI really trying to escape human control and blackmail people?" by Benj Edwards, 13 August 2025) offered common sense on why AI systems say disturbing, even menacing things on occasion. Edwards summed it neatly: "When AI acts up, it doesn't indicate some kind of awakening or rebellion -- it's showing symptoms of a poorly understood system, as well as engineering failures we'd recognize as premature deployment in any other context."
As he points out, if a robot lawnmower ran over somebody's foot, it was because of a bug, not out of malice. AI systems are hard to debug, and debugging often necessarily involves pushing them to give bogus answers -- with companies then proclaiming they fixed the problems when the bogus answers dry up.
DAYLOG FRI 15 AUG 25: Back in early June, Ukraine scored an impressive win with Operation SPIDERWEB -- in which "tiny houses" were built and sent around the country on trucks. They were parked near five Russian air bases, with the roofs lifting up to release swarms of drones. The drones hit bombers at the air bases, destroying at least ten bombers, damaging others. The quadcopter drones carried two-stage warheads optimized for their targets, as well as cellphone-based control systems linked into the Russian cellphone system for remote control.
The Ukrainian SBU intelligence service has released more details of the operation:
* In more recent news, Trump's thuggish ICE agents have been arresting American citizens and hitting them with felony accusations on flimsy pretexts. Now it appears they are having problems getting grand juries to hand down indictments.
I was wondering how that might work -- it turns out it's the court that puts together a grand jury, and the DOJ has little to say in the matter. Similarly, a Federal judge has blasted ICE for hanging around immigration courts and grabbing people who show up for hearings. The Trump Regime tries to make itself as scary as they can, but the reality is they're inept and clumsy. They're not nearly as scary as they pretend to be, and over time they look ever less scary.
BACK_TO_TOPDAYLOG MON 18 AUG 25: STAR TREK's George Takei, a big wheel on BlueSky -- 1.2 million followers -- cited Substack blogger Jay Kuo to point out Trump and the GOP don't plan to hack voting machines in 2026, they instead want to rig the system.
There's an ongoing frenzy about "hacked voting machines" in 2024, but there's no evidence to support it. Voting machines have to be physically hacked individually; they can be and are hacked, but it's like counterfeiting $1 bills: not worth the bother.
Voting machines generate paper printouts, and the machines are not connected online. The printouts are fed to a tabulating machine, which is also not online. The results are transferred via USB stick to a laptop PC to assemble them -- and the PC is not online, either. The results from the laptop PC are transferred by USB stick to a PC that then uploads them to a state central server. That could be hacked, but the results are doublechecked against those on the laptop after upload, so discrepancies will be spotted.
American elections are secure, with outright vote fraud being rare. In 2024, the Dems had, as always, poll watchers everywhere, and none saw anything seriously amiss. The government CISA online security agency saw nothing amiss. Kamala Harris, with access to all valid US intelligence on the election, said it was fair.
Those screaming ELECTION FRAUD! keep talking about gaslighting ramblings from Trump -- and bring up "new discoveries", but nothing there stands up after 5 minutes of checking with Google. Kamala is dismissed as, basically, lying. Many of those screaming FRAUD! seem to be focused on discrediting Kamala and the Dems for not screaming along with them. One suspects that the screamers are not necessarily on our side.
Kuo also dismisses the "hacked voting machines" claims, saying the vote in 2024 matched exit polls, to then point out that Trump and the GOP are currently trying to game the system by further gerrymandering Red states that have already been gerrymandered -- while working on a range of "voter suppression" efforts, and trying to discredit the electoral system. Trump has also been talking a revised census, and just recently renewed his assault on (well-established and secure) mail-in voting. These two particular efforts are unlikely to amount to anything.
Yes, it is obviously true that Trump and the GOP like to cheat, which makes "hacking the voting machines" sound plausible. However, in reality they cheat in plain sight and tell everyone it's OK -- which is what they've been doing all along. It's nothing new.
DAYLOG TUE 19 AUG 25: As mentioned here previously, Donald Trump promised in the election that he would end the Ukraine War in "24 hours". His quick solution -- in effect, that Ukraine capitulates -- was a nonstarter.
We are now stuck in a loop where Trump calls for Ukraine to capitulate, then gradually backtracks and tries various tricks. In the latest iteration, Trump tried to arrange a meeting between himself, Putin, and Zelenskyy, but Putin didn't want to meet Zelenskyy. The end result was a meeting between Trump and Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday the 15th. Putin literally had the red carpet rolled out for him, but made no concessions, again demanding that Ukraine capitulate. The event was widely seen as an American embarrassment. A photo of the two leaders shaking hands revealed a smirking Putin and a run-down Trump, suggesting Trump was not happy about the way things went.
Nonetheless, after it was over, Trump reverted back to his "Ukraine must capitulate" message. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy promptly suggested a meeting at the White House between Trump, himself, and many of the European leaders backing Ukraine, with Trump agreeing. Commenter George Conway suggested that the meeting might be followed by Trump declaring the USA would withdraw from NATO. Maybe so, but I thought that was underestimating how muddled Trump is. Besides, it would seem that, if Trump really wanted out of NATO, it would've happened by now.
The meeting took place, with unspecific talk at the end of Europe funding big buys of American weapons for Ukraine, and Trump saying Putin had agreed to a meeting with Zelenskyy. That sounded very dubious. Later, rumor had it that Putin wanted Zelenskyy to come to Moscow, meaning Putin wasn't serious; Putin has tried to have Zelenskyy assassinated several times, Putin knew perfectly well Zelenskyy couldn't accept.
I doubt Zelenskyy and the European leaders expected anything different: they came to the White House to keep Trump going in circles, and succeeded. There was a lot of talk about sending European "peacekeeping forces" to support a peace agreement -- with everyone suggesting the idea knowing perfectly well that Putin has no intention of signing a peace agreement. The talk was just to make things awkward for Putin.
It would seem Trump would get tired of going in circles, but he appears to be obsessed with winning the Nobel Peace Prize. He went so far as to call Jens Stoltenberg -- previously NATO secretary general, now Norwegian finance minister -- to lobby for the prize. Trump apparently resents that Obama got the Nobel, but he did not. He won't. A joker on BlueSky suggested the Nobel Committee give Obama the prize again, just for fun. Anyway, we're not done with this game just yet.
DAYLOG WED 20 AUG 25: Germany has been criticized for not providing Ukraine with the German Taurus air-launched cruise missile -- but it appears the Germans thought it wiser to fund Ukraine to build their own cruise missiles.
Makes sense: the EU was caught short by the war in Ukraine, not having the weapons stockpiles to fight against a serious Russian attack. Best to build up Ukrainian weapons production to help both the EU and Ukraine. Ukraine can build good weapons in volume, cheaply.
As case in point, see the new Ukrainian Fire Point "FP-5 Flamingo" cruise missile, now going into service. It's of simple configuration, having a cigar-shaped fuselage, straight wings, X-configuration tailfins, and jet engine above the rear of the fuselage. It doesn't look very modern, but the specs are formidable. Launch weight is like 6 tonnes (6.6 tons), with a 1.15-tonne (1.27-ton) warhead and a range of 3,000 kilometers (1,850 miles). Presumably the default warhead is "unitary", a one-piece big bomb, but it would make sense to have alternative warheads, such as a cluster warhead that could be scattered over a big "soft target" like a factory complex.
Flamingo has been used in combat, with talk of production of 50 a month by the start of 2026. Incidentally, it was named "Flamingo" because early prototypes were painted pink. Fire Point also is now mass-producing the "FP-1" prop drone, with a maximum range of 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) and a maximum warload of 120 kilograms (265 pounds). It seems max range implies a half-sized warhead. It's Ukraine's answer to the Iranian-Russian Shahed drone, being much cheaper to produce, and is currently performing about 60% of Ukrainian long-range drone strikes.
As of late, Ukraine has been heavily hammering Russian oil refineries, and by no coincidence, Russians have been suffering from fuel shortages. Flamingo stands fair to make things worse for the Russians.
* Speaking of the Russians, even Trump may be starting to come around to the reality that peace is not at hand, publicly saying: "It's possible that [Putin] doesn't want to make a deal." The European leaders all know he doesn't, French President Macron having said while leaving Washington DC: "Do I think that President Trump wants peace? Yes. I don't think that President Putin wants peace. I think he wants the capitulation of Ukraine. That's what he has proposed."
European proposals for a NATO "peacekeeping force" to enforce a peace deal were just to make things awkward for Putin, and in fact Putin has (as no doubt expected) rejected the proposal for a peacekeeping force, as well as direct discussions with Zelenskyy. Veteran diplomat Fiona Hill, now at the Brookings Institute, called the current discussions part of a "constant Trump management exercise for everyone, including Putin." There is nothing else to the conversation. Since Trump does not wise up easily, the exercise may not be over soon.
DAYLOG THU 21 AUG 25: The over-hyping of AI technology has been discussed here in the past. An article from FUTURISM "AI Is Failing at an Overwhelming Majority of Companies Using It, MIT Study Finds" by Joe Wilkins, 20 August 2025) expands on the theme. Yes, tech companies are taking a big bet on AI, with Goldman Sachs estimating about $200 billion USD to be invested in AI in 2025, on the premise that it will lead to massive growth in productivity.
Now a survey from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows that 95% of business efforts to leverage off AI are failures. Even the best AI system can't do the job more than 30% of the time.
Estimates have projected that AI tech would generate over $6 trillion USD to the global economy by 2030. In reality, it would demand exponential growth to get there from where it is now. Tech bosses seemed to jump on the AI bandwagon because they believed in the exponential growth of AI horsepower, not realizing AI seems more headed towards diminishing returns. It also seems many of the bosses just really wanted an excuse to fire people.
Piles of money are being pumped into AI, notably for building data centers that are straining the USA's electricity supply. In the meantime, people are not making much money with AI. When the AI bubble bursts, it may be an economic calamity.
* FUTURISM reports Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman saying that AI is fueling a "massive wave of AI psychosis", users falling in love with an AI chatbot or thinking it is a god. He suggests this is happening to otherwise mentally healthy people.
Having used chatbots quite a bit, I find it hard to understand how anyone could read much into them. I'm thinking there's some vulnerability in certain people -- maybe something like the "ELIZA effect", named after ELIZA, the ancestor of all chatbots. Conversations with ELIZA are obnoxiously dimwitted, but certain people were awestruck by it, it seems because they were astounded a machine could carry on a conversation, even a really lame one. Thinking a chatbot a god is taking that much farther, however.
DAYLOG FRI 22 AUG 25: While the current regime in the USA is working hard to suppress renewable energy, it's on a roll in China, with over 200 gigawatts (GW) of solar power and over 50 GW of wind power installed in the first half of 2025.
China is now closing in on a total renewable energy capacity of 2,000 GW, the majority of it solar. China's coal-fired power is declining, as are the country's carbon emissions, the state goal being "net zero" by 2060. Solar energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels, with China producing 80% of the world's solar panels -- though thin profit margins have led to an industry shakeout.
Solar has got so cheap that it sells, at least in sunny countries, even when carbon emissions aren't a big factor, and China is aggressively exporting solar panels. In 2024, Pakistan installed about 15 GW of Chinese solar panels -- that being about half of peak demand there. It is being purchased by individuals or groups for local installation, bypassing the national power grid. Just in May, almost two dozen African countries imported a total of about 1.57 GW of solar capacity from China. Some African countries with undeveloped power grids, such as Chad, have imported enough solar panels to replace all their pre-existing power capacity.
* Changing subjects: One Tamara Keel, commenting on BlueSky, speculated on what would have happened had Joe Biden run for the presidency in 2016. Given Trump lost the popular vote it seems Biden, more electable than Hillary, would have won, and Trump would have gone on to other scams.
The interesting thing said by Keel was: "Even if Biden lost a reelection bid to, say, Ted Cruz in 2020, the Cruz he would have lost to would be a very different creature from the Cruz brought to heel by Trump." She added: "Cruz would be wrong, but wrong within normal parameters." I replied: "Yeah. Absent Trump, Ted Cruz would have been a really bad president -- but not a calamitous one."
All that is speculation, of course, and I have to think that what we saw in the Reagan Era was the steady decline of the Republican Party, with its calamitous implosion under Trump; the GOP seems to have little future after Trump. Without him, might the struggle have gone on indefinitely? The Trump era appears likely to result in an American social revolution -- a clean sweep in which all he stands for will go in the dumper.
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