* 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 26 MAY: Five years ago, on 25 May 2020, Minneapolis police arrested a 46-year-old black man named George Floyd on suspicion of pushing a counterfeit bill. The police handcuffed him and laid him out prone on the street, with a police officer keeping his knee on Floyd's neck for nine minutes -- killing him by suffocation. That set off an international wave of protests against police brutality, loosely directed by Black Lives Matter (BLM), an activist group set up in 2013 to seek police reform.
The majority of the protests were nonviolent, but a number of them degenerated into riots and looting, in part provoked by the Troglodyte Right, exploiting the situation. Compounding the problem was the slogan "Defund The Police", pushed by BLM. What it meant was that municipalities needed to shift funding from the police to other entities that didn't use force to solve problems -- but it was too easily misinterpreted as "Disband The Police", and as such was loudly echoed by the Troglodyte Right. The TD Right also shot back at the slogan "Black Lives Matter" with the meaningless "All Lives Matter", pretending that police brutality targeting people of color wasn't a problem.
Five years on, where are we now? The four police who killed Floyd ended up behind bars, and there was considerable public discussion of the police brutality problem. Alas, police killings have actually increased in five years, and police reform seems stalled. The TD Right worked hard and effectively to discredit the BLM protests. The Trump Regime is doing all it can to roll back civil rights for minorities -- indeed, has a contempt for everyone's rights -- and would like to spring the four police from prison. Fortunately, they have state convictions that Trump can't pardon.
The lack of results of the protests is discouraging, yes -- but a total defeat? There's no reason to think so. The Trump Regime's drive to roll back civil rights is fighting the tide in America, and they're incompetent; the battle isn't over, and they don't seem like winners. Reform can take a long time -- it took generations for American women to get the vote.
One valid lesson of the George Floyd story is the counterproductive nature of violent demonstrations. Right now, we're in another era of demonstrations, this time against the Trump Regime. Demonstration organizers have been very careful to avoid violence -- but it's going to be hard to keep doing so over the long run. Online trolls are calling for violence; it's hard to know where they're coming from exactly, but they clearly aren't on our side.
DAYLOG TUE 27 MAY: On Saturday, Donald Trump delivered the commencement address to the graduating class at West Point. It was a rambling, incoherent speech that went nowhere in particular and was littered with stumbles.
Trump is obviously in decline, with Rick Wilson of THE LINCOLN PROJECT shining a light on it. The place to start is the fact that Trump has never been what could honestly be called an intelligent person. He had no grasp of any issues beyond his own short-sighted gain. He had a brief attention span. He didn't think anything out, there was no bigger picture, he made no real plans, he made it up as he went along. He was willfully ignorant, with a head full of a mishmosh of fantastical and contradictory ideas.
That said, there was a time when Trump had a certain unscrupulous low cunning in his actions; he had a game and knew how to play it. Now he is no longer able to make it up as he goes along. Trump is barely even able to coherently deliver his trademark sneers at his enemies. Myself, I was thinking before the inauguration of Trump 2.0 -- who was obviously badly slipping in 2024 -- that it would be revealing if he didn't go to White House briefings to snipe at reporters, like Trump 1.0 enjoyed doing. He doesn't now, because he can't pull it off any more.
The White House posts videos of Trump's speeches, but has stopped posting transcripts -- they're too embarrassing. He's not really in charge, he theatrically signs executive orders without necessarily knowing what he's signing. The White House is really run by a back-biting mob.
Trump is going to be a lot worse in a year's time. Senility runs in his family, but they also tend to live long; he might dysfunctionally linger for years. The question is: what happens when his inability to function can't be concealed any longer? Trump, it seems, is the only thing keeping the Republican Party afloat. His voters care about him; they don't care about the GOP. What happens when Trump goes away? Hard to really say, but it doesn't sound promising for the GOP. Apres Trump, la deluge.
DAYLOG WED 28 MAY: The Trump Regime generates a stream of policy proposals that, if they don't seem bad on the face of it, quickly become so on inspection. One is a push to "unleash oil production" to reduce the price of fossil fuels.
As discussed in an article from WIRED ("Trump's Policies Are Creating Uncertainty for Fossil Fuel Companies" by Molly Taft, 30 April 2025), the oil industry is not enthusiastic -- the fundamental problem being that the long US "fracking boom" is running out of steam. It's getting harder to extract more petroleum from the ground, which translates to higher costs -- and a reduction in fuel prices would make it unprofitable to "drill baby drill", particularly since the OPEC+ cartel is ramping up production and prices are already falling.
The Trump Regime wants to enable the fossil-fuel industry by greatly accelerating approval procedures for drilling projects. What the Trump Regime does not understand is that dodging procedures would be breaking the law, and immediately lead to endless lawsuits. The oil industry understands that perfectly well -- and since such drilling projects are going to take years to get rolling anyway, there's a strong likelihood that the White House will change hands, with a new administration saying: Not so fast.
Says one oil executive: "'Drill, baby, drill' is nothing short of a myth." Right now, the industry is idling rigs and financially retrenching.
* The Trump Regime is nasty, stupid, and ignorant ... but often what is easiest to see is that they are incompetent. As another case in point, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt recently said: "Electricians, plumbers -- we need more of those in our country, and less LGBTQ graduate majors from Harvard University."
Even ignoring the foolish swipe at LGBTQ people, Leavitt was not making sense -- one relevant reply being: "Maybe we could have both?" One "Driver9" posted to BlueSky:
QUOTE:
There are approximately 880,000 electricians currently employed in the US. There are approximately 480,000 plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters in the US. Approximately 3,500 students graduate from Harvard each year. Like Trump, Leavitt is too stupid to understand numbers.
END_QUOTE
The Trump Regime is definitely scary and dangerous -- but at the same time, it's hard to believe that a gang of people so inept has a future. Eh, we're stuck with them for the time being.
DAYLOG THU 29 MAY: I commented on Tuesday that Trump's mental decline is progressing. Yesterday, popular blogger Aaron Rupar -- 850,000 followers -- cited a White House conversation:
QUOTE:
REPORTER: When could the administration resume interviews for foreign students visas?
TRUMP: On what?
REPORTER: Foreign student visas
TRUMP: For the French?
REPORTER: All the foreign students
TRUMP: What are you referring -- foreign visas for what?
END_QUOTE
This is where I was thinking Trump was going to be in the not-too-distant future; it seems he's ahead of schedule. A reporter also threw the label "TACO" at Trump, relative to tariffs -- it means "Trump Always Chickens Out". He didn't take it well. It went viral.
Trump was obviously even less happy yesterday when the US Court of International Trade struck down most of his tariffs, saying he didn't have the legal right to impose them. Trump, as always, had claimed "emergency authorization", but the court didn't buy it.
Will SCOTUS rescue Trump on tariffs? I doubt it, but we'll see. Incidentally, the failure of his tariff war has led to another 4-letter acronym, "TWIT": "Trump Wants Illegal Tariffs". Alas, in the face of mockery on tariffs, Trump seems to be doubling down on them. We'll see how that works, too.
* Along parallel lines, I was thinking Elon the Musk Rat's statements about distancing himself from government were a smokescreen -- but Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling, writing in NEWREPUBLIC, he wasn't getting along with other Trump Regime staffers, getting into shouting matches.
The Musk Rat took a chainsaw to government agencies, without consulting with agency heads; the agency heads generally were for cuts, but didn't like how Elon went about it. He was described as "the most irritating person" staffers ever met, one telling ROLLINGSTONE:
QUOTE:
I have been in the same room with Elon, and he always tries to be funny. And he's not funny. Like, at all. He makes these jokes and little asides and smiles and then looks almost hurt if you don't lap up his humor. I keep using the word 'annoying'; a lot of people who have to deal with him do. But the word doesn't do the situation justice. Elon just thinks he's smarter than everyone else in the room and acts like it, even when it's clear he doesn't know what he's talking about.
END_QUOTE
Unfortunately, it is unlikely the departure of the Musk Rat will mean any improvement in the Trump Regime: Musk's DOGE was doing what Trump wanted them to do, with DOGE conveniently taking the blame for destructive actions that were going to happen anyway. The Musk Rat is not really going away.
DAYLOG FRI 30 MAY: Blogger Aaron Rupar cited Trump Regime Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as saying: "We want the US to be more like Florida and less like New York." Replies focused on relevant statistics highlighting the differences:
NY GDP per capita: $117K FL GDP per capita: $74K NY no med insurance: 4.8% FL no med insurance: 10.7% NY homicide rate per 100K: 4% FL homicide rate per 100K: 5% NY life expectancy: 80.7 years FL life expectancy: 79 years NY public school ranking: #2 FL public school ranking: #41
There were variations in the stats -- with one survey suggesting Florida had a high education ranking, which I found hard to believe since Florida politicians so love to bash education. Overall violent crime is much lower in Florida, but that may be a reporting issue.
* In other Trump Regime news, RFK-Q's Department of Health & Human Services released a scientific report justifying bad policy decisions. It appears they used an AI bot to generate the report, since it referenced scientific studies that don't exist.
Some call RFK-Q a "conspiracy theorist". I had to comment that I didn't use such terms, preferring:
And added:
* A week ago, I mentioned Trump's "Golden Dome" missile-defense system, to be based on a huge constellation of low-orbit sensor / interceptor satellites. One reader pointed a particular problem with the constellation: smash a few of the satellites, they will spread debris and make the orbital region "uninhabitable".
Yeah, that sounds valid -- though I had to reply there was a broader problem, defined by the engineering proverb: "If you didn't test it, it doesn't work." Testing is a significant part of technology development. Golden Dome is a particularly troublesome system in that respect, summed up with the corollary proverb: "If you can't realistically test it, you'll never know if it works."
BACK_TO_TOPDAYLOG MON 02 JUN 25: The Russians seem to have been getting an edge in their war against Ukraine as of late -- but Ukraine regained the initiative on Sunday, in a far-flung drone attack on five Russian airbases.
Ukraine claims that 41 aircraft were hit, with at least 13 destroyed, most of the targets being bombers. The airbases were all over Russia, some far out of range of Ukraine, but the drones didn't fly from Ukraine -- they were delivered by heavy-hauler trucks.
Under Operation PAVUTYNA (SPIDERWEB), conducted by the SBU intelligence service, quadcopter drones were smuggled into Russia via Kazakhstan, then assembled and placed in the roofs of "tiny houses", built to standard 20' container size for hauling on flatbed trucks. The trucks were parked not far from the targets, with roof panels pulled off to deploy the drones. The trucks then apparently torched themselves. The drones had AI-based automatic target recognition systems, having been trained to recognize aircraft -- and, it seems, not hit those already hit. At least some had video feeds, video said to have been delivered over the phone network. PAVUTYNA took 18 months to pull off; the US was not told in advance, though I'm suspecting the Pentagon still had a hand in it.
The US military knows Putin is an enemy and wants to help Ukraine against him -- though they have to do so carefully, because Trump keeps wanting to make nice with Putin. Trump is probably not too hard to fool, and he's sounding more pro-Ukraine as of late anyway.
What to make of Operation PAVUTYNA? Impressive, inspiring, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE stuff. What happens next? Impossible to say, the war goes on -- but at least it's clear that Putin had his whole day ruined.
DAYLOG TUE 03 JUN 25: Feisty Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett ("The Notorious JAZ") posed with Capitol Police cop (now political candidate) Harry Dunn -- with replies that either she was very tiny or he was very big. Dunn shot back: "Both things can be true."
* In further surprising Ukraine War news, following up Ukraine's strike on Russian bombers over the weekend, the Kerch Strait Bridge was hit again. Ukraine has repeatedly attacked the Kerch Strait Bridge, but it's proven a hard target; the support columns are big and sturdy, while the Russians keep improving its defenses. It is not clear how much damage was done, but it does appear that drone torpedoes were used in the attack.
Recent Ukrainian actions have renewed confidence that Ukraine can hold on -- and if Ukraine holds on long enough, Ukraine will win. How much more that will take remains to be seen. It will help if the USA backs Ukraine more convincingly. Enough of bogus "peace talks".
* Massachusetts Senator Liz Warren has now issued a Senate report titled: "Special Interests Over the Public Interest: Elon Musk's 130 Days in the Trump Administration" -- providing a trail of actions in government by the Musk Rat that "raise questions about corruption, ethics, and conflicts of interest." The report says that "not every action listed ... represents a violation of Federal law," but goes on to say that: "Musk has violated norms at an astonishing pace" while engaging in and supporting actions that are "hurting the American public." It labels this "scandalous behavior regardless of whether it subjects him to criminal prosecution."
That's right. Only limited things can be done to slow down the Trump Regime for the time being, but the regime is not forever. Everything needs to be documented for accountability in the era after Trump -- and the Musk Rat also does not like the idea that people are keeping his receipts.
DAYLOG WED 04 JUN 25: I started following Jess Piper, a Missouri Democrat and a director of the BLUE MISSOURI group. What got me started on her was a video in which she pushed back on people who say: Red states should be allowed to secede, good riddance to them.
That's long annoyed me. As Piper said, 40% of Missourans voted for Kamala Harris -- are we supposed to like the idea of Blue Missourans being thrown to the wolves? No, America has a GOP problem, and it has to be dealt with.
Anyway, relative to raids by ICE, Piper commented yesterday: "I think a lot of those folks dressing up like ICE are not even cops, much less federal agents. The way they carry themselves. The way they are dressed. Something is off."
The masking, the storm trooper uniforms and armament -- it doesn't take much thought to come to the conclusion that ICE is recruiting white militiamen, or even just casually deputizing them. Some photos show ICE sporting white supremacist tattoos.
Where does that go? Hard to say specifically, but definitely no place good. Recent videos show local crowds confronting ICE on raids, shouting them down, and it seems likely there will be more such videos. It appears almost as likely that there will be violence.
I'm thinking the Trump Regime wants the violence, to justify heavy-handed repression. It will be almost a miracle if it can be avoided -- but we have to remember that violence serves Trump's purposes, not ours, and should be avoided.
* In Ukraine War news, a US Congressional delegation traveled to Kyiv and got a briefing from AFU Colonel Pavlo Palisa of Zelenskyy's presidential office. Palisa stated that Ukraine needed US assistance and did want a meaningful cease-fire -- but felt confident Ukraine was winning:
QUOTE:
Ukraine will not lose the war. In 2024, the enemy captured only 0.5% of the territory, another 0.2% since the beginning of this year -- but at the cost of 167 killed occupiers for every kilometer. This does not look like a quick victory.
END_QUOTE
DAYLOG THU 05 JUN 25: NPR conducted an interview with Sahil Lavingia, a worker for Elon the Musk Rat's DOGE, in which Lavingia said he really didn't find all the "waste, fraud, & abuse" he was expecting to:
QUOTE:
I did not find the Federal government to be rife with waste, fraud and abuse. I was expecting some more easy wins. ... I do believe that there is a lot of waste. There's minimal amounts of fraud. And abuse, to me, feels relatively nonexistent.
... I think we have a bias as people coming from the tech industry where we worked at companies, you know, such as Google, Facebook, these companies that have plenty of money, are funded by investors and have lots of people kind of sitting around doing nothing.
The government has been under sort of a magnifying glass for decades. And so ... I personally was pretty surprised, actually, at how efficient the government was.
END_QUOTE
Lavingia said there was much room for improvement, but that was just a question of modernization. As I like to say, anyone who thinks big corporations are inherently efficient hasn't worked for one -- and small businesses can be worse.
Lavingia felt that updating government software systems had a lot of potential, there being no "better way to have a larger impact as someone ... designing and building products, web applications, iPhone applications than working for the US Federal government."
Alas, Lavingia decided to talk to a blogger: "Elon was pretty clear about how he wanted DOGE to be maximally transparent. That's something he said a lot in private, and publicly. And so I thought, OK, cool, I'll take him at his word. I will be transparent." The blogger published, and Lavingia was promptly blocked out of the DOGE system. Most of the USA knows the Musk Rat can't be taken at his word; it is surprising that anyone who knew him personally would be more trusting. Lavingia seems like a nice guy -- maybe too much so.
* The Musk Rat appears to be on the bad list with the White House; I was thinking the feuding was a smokescreen, but it seems not so. The WH is factional, and the Musk Rat's (many) enemies apparently got the upper hand. Trump is only loosely in charge. There's been a lot of glee over the feud between the two, but it has to be taken with a grain of salt: they are both evil and dangerous, will stay that way, and may well join forces again.
Publicly blasting Trump's big budget-busting bill appears to have been the snapping point. The bill is clearly in trouble; it remains to be seen if there will be a good outcome, or at minimum a least-bad outcome. I'm holding my breath.
DAYLOG FRI 06 JUN 25: One of the goals of the Musk Rat's DOGE has been to improve government by using AI tools. The title of an essay by one Ben Green in TECHPOLICY ("Using AI to Reform Government is Much Harder Than it Looks", 3 June 25), says it all. According to Green: "The problem isn't just that many AI tools are unreliable and depend on messy datasets, although those issues are pervasive. The deeper problem is a large gap between technical novelty and practical functionality."
Beyond the inherent unreliability of AI systems, there are two problems: AI systems that score high on structured tests typically don't do so well at messy real-world problems, and AI tools may not be well-tuned to user needs or easy to use -- they have no user empathy.
One Blake Reid, commenting on BlueSky, said that DOGE use of AI sounded like terrible software practice, with "an engineer hurriedly deploying an unfamiliar tool to meet an impossible deadline for a problem domain in which he has no expertise." Reid quoted Waldo Jaquith, who had worked on IT systems for the Treasury in the Obama Administration: "AI is absolutely the wrong tool for this. AI gives convincing-looking answer that are frequently wrong. There needs to be humans whose job it is to do this work."
In reply to Reid, I resurrected the saying: "If buildings were put together the way most software is, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization." AI only makes it worse.
I believe AI has big potential -- but as Green points out, it is heavily oversold, in this case being used as a pretext for simply "drowning organizations in the bathtub" as part of an anti-government agenda. In the era of Trump, AI has become another fraud, somewhat like cryptocoin.
The talk of "futurists" about "superintelligent" AIs is nonsensical. An AI's performance is dependent on how well it is trained -- and simply hoovering up data does not mean good training, with erroneous AI output hoovered up as well, leading to accumulated errors and "AI model collapse". Instead of "exponential growth" in capability, in practice AI is suffering from "diminishing returns", where the effort to improve doubles with every step. AI has long been like "climbing a tree to the Moon" -- rapid progress at first, that soon runs out of steam. It's always been that way: two steps forward, one step back.
BACK_TO_TOPDAYLOG MON 09 JUN 25: The big news this week is, of course, is that on Saturday ICE troopers raiding heavily-Latinized Paramount, California, in the Los Angeles metro area. Citizens spontaneously formed up protest groups to confront ICE, to be hit with tear gas and such.
The protesters were careful to remain peaceful, but rowdies and criminals started to exploit the situation, with LA police throwing in their weight, and Trump calling out the National Guard, on dubious authority.
People had to protest, while it was inevitable that the protests would get out of control to some lesser or greater degree, and Trump would exploit the situation. Of course he would, he created it. Will this strengthen Trump or weaken him over the longer run? Public disturbances tend to strengthen Trump's hand -- but on the other side of the coin, ICE and his thug deportation policies don't go over well with the majority of the public, even though a slightly smaller majority want the deportations.
In any case, there were bright points in the chaos. Early in the trouble, a lad with a skateboard confronted a line of ICE troopers, who threw tear gas at him. He calmly stepped back, turned around, gave them the middle finger, and left, in no hurry.
California Governor Gavin Newsom called for peace and denounced Trump sending in the National Guard. Trump threatened to arrest Newsom, who replied: "He knows where to find me. I don't give a damn. But lay your hands off four-year-old girls." No little kids being arrested by ICE, OK? Newsom sometimes gets it right.
Not incidentally, the state of California is suing the Trump Gang for the military call-up. How sympathetic the courts will be remains to be seen, but it would be nice if the courts blocked the move.
* In other news, Trump is planning a military parade for himself in Washington DC on the 14th. That's the same day the national No Kings rallies will take place. There's a faction that wants to monkey-wrench the parade, but the rally organizers want rallies everywhere EXCEPT Washington DC. Makes sense: Trump thrives on chaos and encourages it, but he hates to be ignored. He whined about his meager 1st inauguration crowd, he won't be happy to be stood up again.
DAYLOG TUE 10 JUN 25: Stepping back from the LA unrest for the moment, June is Gay Pride Month -- with Marlon Wayons of the Wayans Clan commemorating it on Instagram, by sitting in a bathtub full of a rainbow load of plastic balls.
Wayans said: "Happy Pride to my LGBTQ peeps. From my block to my schools to my cast and my crews to my friends to my family ... where ever you are or have been in my life, I wish you all love and support. You can be a straight man and still love gay people." His son Kai is transgender. MW says that he transitioned when his son did, going from "denial to complete acceptance" in a week -- realizing that "it would be a poor reflection on you" for a parent to reject a trans child.
MW is far more emotionally demonstrative than I'm capable of being, but he's right. The battle over transgenders can seem absurd -- but the absurdity is all on the side of the Troglodyte Right. They think it's the hill they want to fall on.
WHY? Apparently there are like 500,000 athletes in the US National Collegiate Athletic Association -- and maybe ten of them are trans. Noisy trans-hater Riley Gaines has been up in arms because ... she came in 5th in a swim meet, tying a trans girl.
Some people are born "intergender", and it seems they have little real choice in the matter. Suppressing their rights is wrong in the first place, doubly wrong because no one else is harmed by granting them their rights. It's just bullying the weak and marginal. It's a completely manufactured controversy. I've always been Left of center, but in my youth it was normal to mock transgenders. Not any more. It is a surprise to me, in my seniority, to be fired up about trans rights ... but here I am.
Jumping back to the LA demonstrations, "Never Trumper" conservative Bill Kristol commented on BlueSky: "You know when things were pretty quiet and peaceful in LA? Before ICE started arresting residents who were bothering no one and going to their jobs. And before DHS and National Guard troops showed up and made the situation worse. Of course Trump and Stephen Miller want the situation to get worse."
I replied it was "amazing"; I'd started out as moderately Left ... "Now I feel and talk like an approximation of a No-Compromise Left radical. And so does Bill Kristol. We haven't really changed -- it's the frame of reference, shifting way Right."
DAYLOG WED 11 JUN 25: The LA demonstrations are continuing and spreading across the country. I was thinking this was going evolve into a dreadful national crisis -- but now I'm feeling much more upbeat about it.
First, it appears the level of public fury in LA is being overstated by the Feds and the news media -- boosted by fake AI images and news images from years-old disturbances. We'd think the city was in flames, but Angelinos say thing are not far out of normal. Even the LAPD says the demonstrators themselves are well-behaved, the problems being caused by rowdies and criminals trying to exploit the situation. To the extent there are incidents, they're not worse than usually seen in a big city that wins a national championship. Trump calling in the National Guard was ridiculous.
California Governor Gavin Newsom tried to get the Federal courts to block the Trump order immediately, but the courts replied that the Trump Gang had to be given time to make their case. Incidentally, Newsom is giving a master class in counter-trolling Trump. Any time the Trump Gang mouths off against him and California online, he responds right away online, hitting back: Newsom should be arrested! ANSWER: So arrest me already.
So where are demonstrations going? David Graham, writing in the ATLANTIC, points to worries that the demonstrations can always get out of hand, that the optics are bad, and so on -- that they will end up being a WIN for Trump, who is indeed already trying to exploit them. In reply, Graham points out that in Trump's first term, public demonstrations didn't necessarily cost the Dems all that much, and often did get changes in behavior from Trump -- who in practice talks big, and then flip-flops when he finds out the big talk isn't flying.
For myself, I think the USA is in unknown territory: there's never been a US president like Trump before, so we don't have experience to say what will or will not happen. Will the demonstrations move the needle on support for Trump? Maybe, maybe not. The possible futures aren't really an issue: we just have to do what we think is right. As I said on BlueSky, if I were in LA, I'd have to join in the demonstrations, regardless of the possible consequences -- because I couldn't live with myself if I didn't.
The other thing that has to be realized is that, as nasty & dangerous as the Trump Gang is, they're also stupid and inept. Yes, they're scary, but we can't let the scare stop us. It is as big a military mistake to over-estimate an adversary as to under-estimate one.
DAYLOG THU 12 JUN 25: According to an article from FUTURISM ("CEOs Are Creating AI Copies of Themselves" by Victor Tangermann, 11 June 2025), a number of busy chief executives have created AI clones of themselves, the idea being to improve communications with employees.
That seems like a dubious idea, as underlined by a subtitle to the article: TALK TO THE AI, BECAUSE THE CEO ISN'T LISTENING. It becomes more dubious since the AI CEOs tend to hallucinate like crazy, even talking slick-sounding gibberish.
A survey of CEOs conducted in 2023 had almost half of them saying they expected their jobs to be taken over by AI. That's possible, but if so, it won't be soon. It's hard to know why CEOs insist on hyping AI, claiming it will revolutionize the nature of work.
OK, it will make big changes, but such claims sound like a mix of wishful thinking and promotionalism, underlined by a belief that AI is growing by leaps and bounds. However, as pointed out here before, it's really hitting the soft wall of diminishing returns.
As discussed elsewhere on FUTURISM, AI boosters like to talk about "scaling up" as the solution to better AI, but like 3/4ths of AI researchers aren't buying that. Grabbing more data from wherever to pump into more AI hardware just seems to make the models buggier, and there's the problem of blandly violating copyrights as well. Maybe the models need to trained better? Incidentally, some companies have set up AI phone hotlines, but to no surprise, they don't seem to be winners, either.
* California Governor Gavin Newsom has been giving at least as good as he gets in a war of words with Trump, pointing to Trump's obvious senility:
QUOTE:
He's lost it. I saw him trip on the steps today. I mean this is serious. He is not the same person that I dealt with just four years ago. He's incapable of even a train of thought. He's making things up and he's putting people's lives at risk.
END_QUOTE
Newsom got unpopular by running podcasts to make nice with MAGA clowns. It seemed bizarre -- I'm suspecting that it may have been from the notion, in fashion for a time, that the Dems needed to play up to Joe Rogan fans. That was a bad idea: Rogan is past his prime, and the Dems are unlikely to get many votes from his fans. It seems Newsom has realized it.
DAYLOG FRI 13 JUN 25: Yesterday, as is generally known, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem conducted a news conference in Los Angeles, relative to the disturbances there. She was not interested in helping to restore harmony, saying:
QUOTE:
We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.
END_QUOTE
Say what? Senator Alex Padilla of California was in the audience, and didn't like that comment. He called out: "I'm Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary." A squad of DHS goons immediately jumped on him, hauled him out of the room, threw him to the floor, and handcuffed him. The assault was fully caught on video; there was no real provocation. Padilla was then released -- but national outrage followed, notably with angry protests from Democrats in Congress.
Exactly how this plays out remains to be seen, but I'm doubting it will be a triumph for the Trump Gang. There's a tendency to think they have some evil genius plan -- but as popular BlueSky blogger Jamelle Bouie (674K followers) wrote:
QUOTE:
What I see is a White House whose ambitions outstrip its resources, who did not count on facing mass resistance, and which is scrambling to escalate the situation in hopes that a display of force will make people shut up.
END_QUOTE
At the time of the incident, the legality of Trump sending troops to LA was in Federal circuit court. Later that day, the court judged in favor of California, saying control of the National Guard needed to be handed back to Governor Newsom. That was not a surprise -- though also to no real surprise, a Federal appeals court then said more court discussion was required. The odds seem fair that, particularly in light of Noem's clueless statement, the appeals court will also judge against the Trump Gang.
If they get shot down, they will not be in a good position to try interventions against other Blue states. As far as the assault on Senator Padilla goes, it would seem the state of California would do well to press state assault charges. They would stick. Of course, they may have good reasons not to. There's also the question of what Republican senators will say about the assault, but I'm not expecting them to express much, if any, outrage. House MAGA have already spoken out -- to, of course, condemn Padilla.
BACK_TO_TOP