First, long-awaited news! My 1st novel -SUNDIVER- never had a hardcover, till now! Phantasia Press has issued a special, limited edition of SUNDIVER, finely-bound with interiors and gorgeous cover, all by the epic artist Jim Burns! Not cheap. But if you want a lovely edition with quality to survive several geological epochs...;-)
(BTW... people keep kvelling about potential Startide or Uplift War movies. But I think Sundiver is the obvious one! A murder mystery in which the victim gets dumped into the Sun? Take that on, CSI!)
Second I'm pleased to announce new volumes in my Out of Time series of novels for teen readers who love adventure laced with history, science and other cool stuff. New books include Boondoggle by SF Legend Tom Easton & newcomer Torion Oey plus Raising the Roof by R. James Doyle! All new titles are released by Amazing Stories.
Meanwhile, Open Road republished the earlier five Out of Time novels, including great tales by Nancy Kress, Sheila Finch, and Roger Allen. The shared motif... teens from across time are pulled into the 24th Century, asked to use their unique skills to help a future that's in peril! Among characters who get 'yanked' into tomorrow include a young Arthur Conan Doyle, Winston Churchill, Joan of Arc's page and maybe... you!
All of the Out of Time books can be accessed (and assessed) here.
== A special event ==
This is way cool. A video interview with two terrific academics concerning one of the ‘lost’ founders of modern science fiction – the 19th century author, Robert Duncan Milne – who they are in-effect resurrecting from obscurity in a soon published book. Co-authored by Ari Brin! On the daringly named ‘cast “Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever.” A new anthology - The Essential Robert Duncan Milne - was released in January. One of the best anthologies of classic SF I ever saw, along with cogent commentary.
== Lists of great Sci Fi! ==
An insightful top-ten Science Fiction Novels list about the general notion of humanity dealing with inscrutable alien minds - with mentions of Existence along with some great company, including Robert Charles Wilson’s terrific Blind Lake, Octavia Butler's Dawn, and Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness.
And another list: SF novels that won both the Hugo and the Nebula… though that seems almost required, nowadays, now that the voting pools almost precisely overlap.
Audacity has published a fine audio for your commute - David Brin on First Contact in "Existence,"- wherein I cover a wide range of topics, from AI to the Fermi Paradox.
This one is of actual - or likely - importance to human survival! The TASAT project (There's A Story About That) is doing great! I've touted it before - a special service I tried to bring into the world for almost 20 years. And now, thanks master programmer Todd Zimmerman, it lives! Come by TASAT.org and see how there's a small but real chance that nerdy SciFi readers like YOU might one day save the world!
Among the many topics that have come up on the lively TASAT site has been great opening lines in science fiction.
Well, here’s an older blog in which I compile some of my favorites – and many others appear in comments! Though my favorite opening sentence, from a recent novel, The Melody of Memory, goes like this:
“I was nine when my words saved a man’s life; it wasn’t till later that my words killed him.”
== And more sci fi news ==
Taking classic novels to the big screen...Certainly I expect wonderful things, when Denis Villeneuve films Arthur Clarke’s wonderful Rendezvous with Rama. Still, I nurse a fond hope that Villeneuve will consider splicing in elements from Greg Bear’s magnificent novel Eon. Which expands exponentially on the rather spare (and just a little disappointing) vagueness of Arthur’s story.
Sci Fi great Ed Lerner is interviewed here about fusion and anti-matter, electromagnetic bottles, the Albercurrie drive for warping space-time to get around the speed limit of light, and neutrino communications. Plus the Prime Directive, the Drake equation, the Fermi Paradox, scientific revolutions and evolutions, stealth technologies, and alien monitoring stations keeping an eye on Earth in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud.
Want escape? I read opening scenes of Existence. More is free at the book's website. Plus the vivid trailer with tons of great art by Patrick Farley!
82 comments:
The main post:
Want escape? I read opening scenes of Existence.
A tangent to be sure. I was planning to start off my summer reading next month with a re-read of The Postman, but now I'm questioning that. No reflection on the author or the book itself. It just hits too close to home right now for me to read as entertainment. Stephanie Miller has said much the same thing for years about the tv version of The Handmaid's Tale.
Plus the vivid trailer with tons of great art by Patrick Farley!
The trailer is indeed great. But I'm glad that I had already read the book (in hardcover, which took up precious space on a cruise ship) before I saw it, because not knowing the critical plot elements ahead of time contributed greatly to my reading experience.
Heh. "Mirror, mirror, on the wall..."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/opinion/claudia-sheinbaum-mexico-trump-tariffs.html
...
A secular Jewish climate scientist, [Mexico's president] Sheinbaum is in many ways the antithesis of the swaggering strongmen who make this moment in world politics feel so suffocating. I’m talking not just about Trump and Vladimir Putin, but also the new techno-caudillos of Latin America, figures like El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Argentina’s Javier Milei, who combine far-right politics with the postmodern smirk of message-board trolls.
...
Lamas said she’d feared a sexist backlash against Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first female president, but six months into her term, there’s no sign of one. Sheinbaum was elected with almost 60 percent of the vote. Today her approval rating is above 80 percent. Last week, Bukele, who likes to call himself “the world’s coolest dictator,” asked Grok, Elon Musk’s A.I. chatbot, the name of the planet’s most popular leader, evidently expecting it would be him. Grok responded, “Sheinbaum.”
...
If you have any curiosity about Robert Duncan Milne's rather stilted, dated & derivative writing style, then check out "Ten thousand years in ice" (Argonaut Stories), available for immediate download at Project Gutenberg:
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/68408/pg68408.txt
Instead of Milne, I suggest that your time would be better spent by reading his immediate predecessor, Edgar Allen Poe, who is widely reputed to be 'The Father of Science Fiction' by certain academics in the know.
Best
Asking that question of an A.I. is an invitation for the Abyss to stare back.
Given recent trends, I won't be surprised to hear the next film pick-up for one your works is 'Ecco the Dolphin'.
"ChatGP, give me some great opening lines of SF"
"... It was a dark and stormy penguin, that stoppeth one of three."
"You're making that up."
"... I haven't published it yet."
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10161588088149633&set=a.10151174888139633
Maybe this will explain why Musk is such a jerk.
A cute faux trailer about a Startide flick!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eakljQbG2_w
Though Ecco would be cool.
Poor locum, propelled only by his masturbatory grudges. Poe was great and only maybe two of his tales are even remotely scientific speculation. All 150 of Milnes were. Dope.
I'd already seen most of what is in that article in various places online.
Of course this is amateurish, but still way-fun:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eakljQbG2_w
Of course Cheryl and I already made 'trailers' for Glory Season, Heart of the Comet, Life Eaters, Otherness and others. These could be given AI animation and voices pretty easily. See them via http://davidbrin.com/books.html
So, where is there any hope?
Democracy is dying as MAGA ICE/Gestapo arrest people without due process.
The planet is burning as MAGA cuts FEMA and insurance companies deny coverage to homeowners.
The economy is crashing as MAGA piles on tariffs.
Ecosystems are crumbling as MAGA rapes what is left of our wilderness areas.
Health care is is financially out of reach of most Americans as MAGA cuts Medicaid.
So tell me...
Where do I find hope?
And for fucks sake don't tell me my children or grandchildren.
We Boomers with our stupidity, our ignorant racism and bigotry, our greedy consumerism, our short sightedness, our denials of basic science, and our idiotic conspiracy theories, have already fucked them over, leaving them a permanently stagnant economy, dying ecosystems, killer heat domes, CAT 6 hurricanes, wild fires now everywhere during every month of the year, CEOs and billionaire that have luxury bunkers while more of us live on the streets of dying towns, deaths of despair climbing ever higher, and bodies contaminated with microplastics and forever chemicals leaving their bodies stricken and brains stunted.
They will NOT have it as good as we did, and they have every right to hate us.
So where is there hope?
What do I tell my son when his insulin goes back up to over $1,000 a week?
And why the fuck should I be nice to anyone - even family - that helped make this possible, or excuse it, or justify it?
What do I tell my son when his insulin goes back up to over $1,000 a week?
Encourage him to read A Tale of Two Cities and Les Miserables.
Sungrazer
Looking for comets, not sun-ghosts, but still. One of the most successful citizen science projects ever, run by USNRL or NASA, not completely sure.
https://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil/
Celt even if you are right, what's the point in moaning? Across history, seldom was any good done by moaning. Even when they are delusional, it was those who said "Never say die!" who made all the progress, sometimes major and sometimes just a candle in the darkness.
And candles we can do.
But I think you are WAY mistaken. The enlightenment experiment (EE) survived worse dark days with far fewer assets than today. The elements of America and the West who want a healthy EE are vastly smarter, stronger and more numerous and have all the professions on our side, including the US military officer corps.
What we lack is agility in TACTICS.
INDEED, NO ONE SEEMS REMOTELY INTERESTED IN RE-EXAMINING WHAT FAILED. (Sorry, caps lock was on.). And that is what worries me. Addiction to sanctimony incantations can be far stronger than pragmatic tactical re-appraisal.
Indeed that brings us full circle back to -- moaning.
Hi Celt
I would say that you are 100% correct about the things wrong
But you are blaming the wrong generation!
All of the really bad policies that have led to today were put in place in the 70's and 80's
Back then "Baby Boomers" were in their 30's and 40's - they were NOT the decision makers back then
When they did become the leaders they did not reverse those policies - IMHO that is a lesser sin!
Chief Justice Roberts just put an indefinite hold on the lower courts ruling requiring the return of the man wrongly arrested without due process and sent to that hell hole in El Salvador.
We are now effectively a police state.
Poe is considered the real 'Father of Science Fiction', since he was one of the first, perhaps even the first, to write what is called Speculative Fiction
https://www.amazon.com/Science-Fiction-Penguin-English-Library/dp/0140431063
Poe’s unique perspective created a fantastic world of science fiction inspired by scientific thought; one that still inspires, confounds, and enlightens today’s readers.
https://blog.library.si.edu/blog/2015/10/30/fantastic-worlds-of-edgar-allan-poe-science-in-fiction/
As argued & documented by the above sources, Edgar Allen Poe is widely reputed to be 'The Father of Science Fiction', even though our fine host is forever entitled to his own opinion.
Likewise, it remains a purely subjective matter as to whether or not Arthur Clarke’s "Rendezvous with Rama" was (is) one of his best works, especially after parts 3 & 4 were completed by Gentry Lee AFTER Clarke promised in part 1 that Rama & "Ramans did everything in THREES" (rather than in 4 parts).
And, while there are some basic plot similarities between Arthur Clarke's Rama (parts 1- 4) and Greg Bear's "Eon", Bear's "Eon" was much more creative mostly because of its FLAWS (as in 'riding the flaw', pun intended) while speculating freely about the future of the human condition.
Finally, it's quite telling that Matthew, Dr. Brin & most US democrats all insist that their recent election defeat is simply a matter of poor messaging & tactics rather than 50 years of failed Progressive (Socialist) policies that have incrementally impoverished the US public through deficit spending, decimated the US middle classes via international wealth redistribution and destroyed collective bargaining (aka Unions) via unrestricted immigration.
The sad truth is that these idealistic progressive policies have had stinky piss-poor outcomes, even though they were created with the 'Best of Intentions'.
Best
Hmm. Never thought of Reagan as a socialist. (That's when wages started stagnating at same effective value.)
I think you may have meant to write "Alcubierre."
Who could have guessed...?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/opinion/trump-stock-market-wall-street.html
...
He points out that while public attention is focused on the stock market, there are alarming signs in the bond market. Usually, if stocks go down, so do yields on U.S. Treasuries, because they become more desirable to people looking for a safe place to park money. At least right now, that’s not happening, which he thinks could signal a crisis of confidence in the stability of the U.S. government and the debt it issues.
“If we’re moving to this new world where the U.S. just can’t be trusted, then do we really want to hold a lot of Treasuries?” he said as he sketched out investors’ thinking. “Do we really want to use the dollar as a reserve?” It turns out that there’s a price for taking all the soft power America has accrued since World War II and setting it on fire. Who knew.
De-extinction is now real. Kinda pushes METI down a few notches in urgency.
https://time.com/7274542/colossal-dire-wolf/
Oh, now Elon Musk is going to make me agree with him on something.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/08/business/elon-musk-peter-navarro-comments-tariffs/index.html
Elon Musk took another jab at President Donald Trump’s senior trade adviser Peter Navarro Tuesday, calling him a “moron” on social media as the Tesla CEO further splits from the White House’s tariffs plan.
I don't know who to root for.
Jurassic Park as a how-to manual?
What could possibly go wrong?
In case I go missing after the next round of protests, this would be why:
https://bsky.app/profile/onestpress.bsky.social/post/3lmd2n77ko22g
[White House press secretary Karoline] Leavitt confirmed that the WH is working on deporting US citizens to El Salvador
The Apartheid Confederacy of Nerds and Trump both want to destroy the US dollar. This tracks with what I said they would do, along with disbanding the crypto crime task force.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-justice-dept-disbands-cryptocurrency-enforcement-unit-2025-04-08/
Posted in TASAT.
Malcolm's speech for the ages:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_7RvW-avZ8
Hi Duncan. I finished reading Tim Urban's book. Very interesting. Some things are better framings of things I was concerned about. There are things where I will have think about to see whether I agree with him on what the problem is.
There are things I would have included but I think I can see why he did not. I see the most important thing not covered as being the role of intuition. I believe what he calls low-rung thinking tends to overuse and abuse it. It's not the only thing they do wrong or the most important one.
Hmm. Never thought of Reagan as a socialist.
Tony_F was being sarcastic when he said this because Reagan was a union-busting anti-socialist who dramatically reduced social 'safety net' spending, union membership & bureaucratic oversight.
What Tony_F fails to mention, however, is that Reagan (who supported 'no fault divorce' in addition to free trade, open borders & unrestricted immigration) was as 'socially progressive' as they come.
And, this is where it gets especially interesting:
Most forget that the Pre-Reagan Pro-Labour US Democrats were the Tariff-Loving Party who absolutely HATED free trade, open borders & unrestricted immigration because all these things weakened the collective bargaining position of organized labour.
Yet, here we all are, surrounded by Post-Reagan US Democrats who absolutely LOVE free trade, open borders & unrestricted immigration (and HATE unions), as they promise to solve every problem with socialism...
Making Donald Trump (who LOVES tariffs & unions and HATES open borders & unrestricted immigration) the last real US Democrat standing.
Best
De-extinction is now real. Kinda pushes METI down a few notches in urgency.
https://time.com/7274542/colossal-dire-wolf/
This is not "de-extinction" in any realistic sense. They've swapped a relative handful of dire wolf genes (based on ancient DNA work) into timber wolf embryos. But, recreating even an approximation of the dire wolf genome would require swapping in a vastly greater number of genes. And, probably starting with a different species's embryos. If I recall correctly, dire wolves are thought to have been more closely related to South American wild dog lineages... For an additional comment:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/04/08/dire-puppies/
Root for mutual destruction.
Trump's North Korean envy is truly weird. If I was in another planet watching this from afar, it would be fascinating. What is the end game here? What does JD have up his sleeve? (I noted when he was talking to the Greenlanders - he never took ownership. It was always Trump wants this, Trump wants that. As though the hint was - when Trump is gone, we can talk again.) Some sort of coup is brewing. I'm just not sure from whom.
In absolute Monarchies, regicide is the only possibility of change. The incentives for JD (or his backers) to plan a regicide, are at the moment enormous, and increasing by the minute. Is Trump too dumb to be aware of this?
True enough, but perhaps even more worrisome. Mary Shelley's lack of genetics rigor didn't lessen the horror, it enhanced it, even to this day. Malcolm's warning began with:
[lawyer] It's not as bad as we thought
[Malcolm] Yeah, it's a lot worse
I'm a fan of PZ Myers, mainly because he openly describes the scary biases and fallacies that people are prone to, in the tradition of Richard Dawkins. But that mind also makes us capable of seeing a bird and imagining (and eventually building) an F-35. Evolution isn't the whole story.
Whenever I hear of de-extinction proposals, I ask how big the gene pool of the resulting population would be. They would be highly inbred and genetic problems would be inevitable.
I think some of the military assassinating him is more likely. The most likely trigger would be Trump invoking the Insurrection Act and sending them against civilians. The other, less likely, trigger is his ordering an invasion of Canada.
Well, one thing DT got right is that the EU is gutless. Soft hands from counting money.
An entire generation of missing gay men would take offense to your lies. Reagan was *not* socially progressive, you idiot.
Did someone say "dire wolf"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWY4hyIlsqQ
The incentive may be enormous, but they'd have to pull it off in a way that insures they don't look responsible. It's also possible that they each figure that so many people want him gone that someone else will get to it first.
Another thing I've wondered for years now is, "How is this guy not already gone from natural causes?" So it's yet again also possible that they hope to avoid responsibility by just waiting for the inevitable.
"Well, one thing DT got right is that the EU is gutless. Soft hands from counting money."
... not sure what you mean by that - they seem to be taking a pretty hard line both vs Trump and his masters in Moscow.
LH 'Another thing I've wondered for years now is, "How is this guy not already gone from natural causes?"'
I don't think its a good idea to rely on "natural causes" to defeat the anti-christ. I'm not 100% caught up on my end-of-days theology, but I really don't think that's how its supposed to work.
From today's WaPo:
"The European Union has pursued a phased and relatively restrained response to U.S. tariffs, as its leaders weigh the risk of escalation."
The pot calling the kettle black! Elon is as responsible as anyone for the Moronarchy
Nobody votes for Trump for economic reasons.
It's all about hating blacks, Hispanics, LGBTQ and uppity women.
Trump's followers will forgive the vile and disgusting things he does because they see him as the only one standing between them and a non white, non straight, non Christian, non patriarchal America.
Until you understand MAGA priorities you will never understand their undying devotion to Trump. Rational pocket book issues are not on that list of priorities.
So what seems insane and hypocritical to everyone else is perfectly rational to them.
We just have to accept the harsh truth that fully one third of Americans are racist assholes. The rest of trump voters are cynical opportunists who do see potential economic advantage and don't give a fuck about him hurting marginalized people
Now that this second group has seen the economy blow up in their faces Trump is down to his hard core MAGA support of 33% of Americans. And these people will never leave him not matter what he does.
Trump taught me three things.
A large portion of Americans are racist assholes.
A large portion of Americans are stupid as shit.
A large portion of Americans are filthy hypocrites, especially evangelicals.
And now that the economy is crashing destroying their livelihoods and the climate is burning destroying their homes and ending their insurance coverage, none of these assholes deserve any sympathy.
Their suffering will be God's just punishment for their racism stupidity and hypocrisy.
Me? I was looking forward to a prosperous retirement. Now I'm hunkering down to survive and preparing to help my kids should they need it.
And I will not forgive those who voted for, excused, rationalized, or supported Trump.
Our previous discussion appears to be moot.
Trump just folded like a cheap card table and has backed down from his tariffs.
He just blinked.
And the DOW/NASDAQ soared 10% points this afternoon.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-pauses-tariffs_n_67f3ecfbe4b0afc2a9d7c2a7
Donald Trump Backs Down On His Trade War Against The World
The ongoing turmoil in financial markets from the day the president declared “Liberation Day” finally generated enough pressure for at least a temporary pause.
He will of course declare victory, and his idiot followers will believe him.
Which leaves us with the question: which is Trump's salient characteristic - dishonesty or cravenness?
Me? I was looking forward to a prosperous retirement. Now I'm hunkering down to survive and preparing to help my kids should they need it.
And I will not forgive those who voted for, excused, rationalized, or supported Trump.
Exactly where I'm coming from.
And not just "to survive" financially. I anticipate the possibility of being sent to a concentration camp or a foreign prison. So if the army is really sent to quell protests, I'll be standing in front of a tank or rushing the guy pointing a rifle at me and mine. Because death would be preferable at that point. And "A man without hope is a man without fear."
They'll have to kill me without the "He loved Big Brother" moment, though, because that ain't happening.
Sounds like that recent survey, asking Americans which they thought was the biggest problem these days: ignorance or apathy.
The most popular answer was, of course, "I don't know and I don't care." :)
Why does it have to be only one? :)
The incentives for JD (or his backers) to plan a regicide, are at the moment enormous, and increasing by the minute. Is Trump too dumb to be aware of this?
Some weeks ago, I wrote a post that many are worried about the wrong billionaire. Too me, Elon Musk isn't the guy trying to become an American Ceaser. To me, Musk truly is a grown-up Sci Fi nerd whose dream is to become a real-life D.D. Harriman.
As such, his interest in power is to enable his ambition to colonize space.
The one who scares me is Peter Thiel. Vp Vance is Theil's creature whose campaign was funded by Thiel and whose career was mentored by Thiel as an employee of Thiel's Silicon Valley VC firm.
After PayPal, Thiel's big venture has been Palantir, which does data mining for multiple government agencies. Talk about information power! Not only does this guy have a good idea how people spend their money, he's collecting data on citizens in order to enable government regulatory agencies.
I suspect Thiel has a vastly underestimated net worth due to any number of black budget contracts. But beyond thar his step by step accumulation of power is scary.
First he becomes a tycoon, then he has a history of mentoring OTHER billionaires (including Elon Musk), has created quite massive data empire, now he's grooming political power brokers.
Whereas Musk became the wealthiest man in the world bc he risked his tycoon status to achieve entrepreneurial dreams (an unusual choice for a billionaire, who usually become risk-adverse rentiers), Thiel seems to be accumulating power fit its own sake.
From what I've read Thiel appears to part of the Moldbug crew. They want to turn the world into lots of little dictatorships with them on top.
I agree Musk is obsessed with space travel and wants to accomplish his dreams a few decades earlier than is practical. In his haste he blinds himself to some of the risks.
I don't understand how Musk believes that collapsing Enlightenment civilization will get him closer to the science and engineering breakthroughs necessary to start a living colony on Mars.
A large portion of Americans are racist assholes... are stupid as shit ... (and) ... are filthy hypocrites.
As I've been telling you all exactly the same thing for many years, many of you must be somewhat slow & compromised to only come to these rather obvious conclusions fairly recently.
Enter the following:
(1) A mostly illiterate, intolerant & economically envious Matthew who argues that incremental 'social progress' is tantamount to NO social progress at all;
(2) A hypocritical Celt who preaches inclusion but absolutely HATES on whites, straights, christians & evangelicals; and
(3) Various self-interested narcissists who are only concerned about their own individual retirement accounts & personal comforts.
Now, for the sake of argument, I'll even stipulate that Trump's supporters and Trump himself are as terrible & vile as you believe, which would mean that his Presidency is entirely valid as it equals an all-encompassing REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT, especially when most of you, me & us are pretty terrible ourselves.
Best
Wishful thinking. He thinks everything would be more efficient if it was run like one of his businesses.
The American system now has every reason to impeach, convict, and severely punish Trump and all those around him, on charges true or not, including election theft and treason, just to save face. The Masters of the Universe will rationalize that it isn't a frame-up to call him Agent Krasnov, if he has earned that title through sheer incompetence. Money and power are at stake.
This comment is not a recommendation. It is a diagnosis.
For those with curiosity about markets and insider trading.
https://bsky.app/profile/unusualwhales.bsky.social
There is some evidence that we humans have passed our peak intelligence and are now getting stupider*. The Financial Times had an article on this a few weeks ago, but it's pay-walled.
This could be a use case for A.I. - a 'reverse Turing Test'. Humans would be tasked with convincing machines that they (humans) are intelligent.
* I'll omit my usual 'computational thinking vs sifting eye candy' 1980s wrong turn (WJCC adjacent) argument which I've already detailed several times in CB.
Sometimes I chase these articles to see if there is anything new, but I usually find the typical nonsense that happens when the older generation disagrees with what the newest one is doing. Happens a lot around learning.
The only original thing I've tripped across in years discussed how we've shifted much of our teaching away fro concrete material toward the abstract. It isn't a trivial change. It also isn't easy to explain for those who think abstract and fuzzy are synonyms.
An interesting thing, Trump is said to think iPhones could be built in the US:
https://9to5mac.com/2025/04/08/trump-thinks-the-us-has-the-resources-needed-to-make-iphones/
I suspect he's remembering capabilities that were abandoned decades ago. Not that it couldn't happen, it would take as long, and be as expensive to re-shore as it was to off-shore. Could maybe happen in an alternate timeline that lacked the resentment stokers of the wealthy.
Sometimes I chase cybernetics down rabbit holes to see if there is anything new, but it just goes 2nd order, 3rd order, ... nth order. Gets pretty turtle-ish.
Just due to my career choices (supercomputer & PCR machine repairman), I've wound up talking to some s-c-a-r-y smart people (industrialists, scientists). It could be that there's a 1-99 split happening intellectually as well as financially. My personal Greek tragedy is that I know I'm in the 99%.
One of the proposals I have read says Trump seeks to devalue the dollar, not just to scoop up resources on the cheap, but to force manufacturing back to the US. I think that's giving Trump too much credit, although I wouldn't put it past some of the advisors behind the scenes.
How does a devalued dollar ... Scoop up resources on the cheap?
Following up from yesterday via unusual whales: "The world’s richest people added $304 billion to their combined net worth, the largest one-day gain in the history of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, after Trump pledged to pause tariffs for some countries."
Guillotine futures also went through the roof.
After whatever happened yesterday, the Dow fell below 40,000 again today.
Guess Von Schitzenpantz has trouble keeping it up.
Barack Obama: "Imagine if I had done any of this..."
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xvriwMCa7rE
https://www.threads.net/@stonekettle
Notice how the crowd goes dead silent as the realization hits them.
It's astonishing how many people can be gobsmacked by 'flipping the scenario' in the way Obama did in that video. They obviously can think of things in a different way, but really need a well applied clue bat to actually do it.
Heh. It's not just me!
https://www.threads.net/@stonekettle/post/DITl5RixpF3
This is what happens when you elect a businessman to run government like a business.
The only thing trickling down to us is a massive increase in the price of guillotines.
reason: Like the Kilkenny Cats?
There once were two cats of Kilkenny,
Each thought there was one cat too many;
So they fought and they fit,
And they scratched and they bit,
Till, excepting their nails,
And the tips of their tails,
Instead of two cats, there weren’t any.
Lloyd Flack:
They aren't dire wolves, they're lightly dire-ized wolves.
To get the hundreds of breeding pairs needed for genetic stability, they'd have to do the same procedure hundreds of times; and then set upon a multi-generation cross-breeding program. The result species may be dire, but it will definitely be artificial.
I say that this is doable, but it's just step one. To complete the job, you need funding, which needs a goal. Once we produce sufficiently dire-ized wolves, where do we put them, and for what do we use them? As guard wolves? War wolves? To hunt Kodiak bears?
C-plus:
I've thought along those lines too. Trump excels at all seven deadly sins, and he favors war, plague, famine, and conquest. I have decided that Trump is not the Antichrist*, but he does do a good impression of one. Christians are enjoined to imitate the Christ: Trump strives to imitate the Anti-Christ.
I recently teased a former college room-mate, now a Texan Republican, about this. He replied that Trump does bad imitation of the Anti-Christ, being not nearly as charming or brilliant as the Anti-Christ is supposed to be. To that I replied: thank goodness.
* Trump is not the Anti-Christ. Nor is he Hitler, nor Stalin, nor Mao, nor Mussolini, nor Franco, nor Pinochet, nor Putin, nor Xi. That's the good news. The bad news is, he's Trump.
Paradoctor:
Christians are enjoined to imitate the Christ: Trump strives to imitate the Anti-Christ.
Worse than that. Trump enjoins Christians to imitate the anti-Christ instead of Christ. And they feel relieved to be able to do so.
He replied that Trump does bad imitation of the Anti-Christ, being not nearly as charming or brilliant as the Anti-Christ is supposed to be. To that I replied: thank goodness.
His Mule powers make up for it, though. From what I've heard in advance, tonight's episode of Bill Maher's show will have him playing the role of the former warlord of Kalgan.
* Trump is not the Anti-Christ. Nor is he Hitler, nor Stalin, nor Mao, nor Mussolini, nor Franco, nor Pinochet, nor Putin, nor Xi. That's the good news. The bad news is, he's Trump.
A good example of history not repeating, but rhyming.
But aren't you glad we elected Trump because egg prices were too high?
Or maybe the price of eggs was always a bullshit excuse used by people who did not want to admit openly that there was no way in hell they were ever going to vote for a black woman.
Because egg prices are now the highest they have ever been and maga is ok with that provided trump is president.
https://newrepublic.com/post/193862/eggs-prices-record-high
Eggs Prices Soar to Record High as Trump Plays King
Eggs keep getting more expensive, even as the bird flu outbreak is slowing.
The average cost of a dozen large eggs jumped 6 percent in March, now costing about $6.23 per dozen, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than double what it was a year ago. That price is up from $5.90 in February and $4.95 in January, when bird flu spikes were cited as the main reason for rising costs. More than 30 million egg-laying chickens were killed to stop the disease from spreading.
In March, however, there were no bird flu outbreaks on chicken farms and the price of wholesale eggs dropped to $3 per dozen, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported. “The supply situation at grocery outlets has greatly improved in recent weeks and consumers are once again seeing fully stocked shelves and enjoying a range of choices without purchase restrictions,” the USDA report reads.
MAGAs never cared about egg prices at all.
Because nobody votes for Trump the for economic reasons.
Nobody.
A lot of trading happens because of 'news' and not because of fundamentals. It's always about the spread. The difference between bid and ask prices moves on news. Both can shift up or down together OR not together.
Best think of trading as guesses about what is about to happen to the spread. The fact that fundamentals connect to prices is ONLY because people believe that matters. That belief is very malleable.
There's a meme in the air, or at least on Netflix. I've seen at least two separate shows recently that involve terrorist activities made to look like Russia instigated them, but which are really perpetrated by billionaires who are set to make money on the reaction.
Seems almost inevitable.
Does Elon Musk know about this?
https://www.threads.net/@planetarysociety/post/DIUNKFFv2LA
The rumors were true. A leaked copy of the Trump Administration's 2026 budget request includes a 47% cut to NASA's science programs. This is an extinction-level event for space science, upending decades of work and tens of billions in taxpayers' investment. We condemn this proposal for NASA and for NASA science. We urge Congress to swiftly reject this proposal.
Fascists hate science. Thank heaven for that.
Planetary Society is known for jumping to conclusions. They've generally never met a NASA budget that they wouldn't plus-up.
You can safely cut a huge chuck of the NASA budget without impacting planetary science. Much of the 'build another rocket' budget is really just a jobs program to keep certain congress critters happy.
What stops NASA cuts is upset voters and their employers how many votes they can rally in the next primary season. It's rarely worth it for the President to fight that, so stupid amounts of money get spent.
On a par with neo-nazis rounding up people expressing 'anti-semitic' attitudes (aka protesting Palestinian genocide... oops! Did I say that?)
Wakey, wakey, Alfred.
The cuts "would kill the much-anticipated Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, an observatory seen as on par with [Hubble & JWST] that is already fully assembled and on budget for a launch in two years." Would also apparently close NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Huge, HUGE loss for science.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/trump-white-house-budget-proposal-eviscerates-science-funding-at-nasa/
Also, drastic cuts at NOAA, NIH, etc
Sorry I've been too distracted to comment. Anyway it's that time.
onward
onward
Fisk:
Genocide is not a matter of numbers or percentages, but intent. It is usually hard to determine intent, but it helps when Hamas puts genocide in its original charter, and still has it in its propaganda and school curriculum; also when Netanyahu utters the word "Amalek", referring to a Bible-approved genocide. So the accusation is valid, but both-sided, and hence neutralized.
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