* Blog & notes for the current week.
DAYLOG 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.
