First off, although this posting is not overall political... I will offer a warning to you activists out there.
While I think protest marches are among the least effective kinds of resistance - (especially since MAGAs live for one thing: to drink the tears of every smartypants professional/scienctist/civil-servant etc.) -- I still praise you active folks who are fighting however you can for the Great (now endangered) Exxperiment. Still may I point out how deeply stupid the organizers of this 50 501 Movement are?
There’s always more about AI – and hence a collection of links to…
== The AI dilemmas and myriad-lemmas continue ==
I’ve been collecting so much material on the topic… and more keeps pouring in. Though (alas!) so little of it enlightening about how to turn this tech revolution into a positive sum outcome for all.
Still, let’s start with a potpourri…
1. A new study by Caltech and UC Riverside uncovers the hidden toll that AI exacts on human health, from chip manufacturing to data center operation.
2. And also this re: my alma mater: Caltech researchers have developed brain–machine interfaces that can interpret data from neural activity even after the signal from an implant has become less clear.
3. Swinging from process to implications… my friend from the UK (via Panama) Calum Chace (author of Surviving AI: The Promise & Peril of Artificial Intelligence) sent me this one from his Conscium Project re: “Principles for Responsible AI Consciousness Research”. While detailed and illuminating, the work is vague about the most important things, like how to tell ‘consciousness’ from a system that feigns it… and whether that even matters.
Moreover, none of the authors cited here refers to how the topic was pre-explored in science fiction. Take the dive into “what is consciousness?” that you’ll find in Peter Watts’s novel “Blindsight.”
…wherein Watts makes the case that a sense of self is not even necessary in order for a being to behave in ways that are actively intelligent, communicative and even ferociously self-interested.
All you need is evolution. And an overall system in which evolution remains (as in nature) zero-sum. Which – I keep trying to tell folks – is not necessarily fore-ordained.
== And yet more AI related Miscellany ==
4. Augmented reality glasses with face-recognition and access to world databases… now where have we seen this before? How about in great detail in Existence?
5. On the MINDPLEX Podcast with AI pioneers Ben Goertzel and Lisa Rein covering – among many topics - training AGI's to hold each other accountable, pingable IDs (using cryptographic hashes to secure agent identity), AGI rights & much, much more! (Sept 2024). And yeah, I am there, too.
6. An article by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei makes points similar to Reid Hoffman and Marc Andreeson, that the upsides of AI are potentially spectacular, as also portrayed in a small but influential number of science fiction tales. Alas, his list of potential benefits, while extensive re ways AI could be "Machines of Loving Grace,"* is also long in the tooth and almost hoary-clichéd. We need to recall that in any ecosystem - including the new cyber one - entities without feedback constraints soon evolve into whatever form best proliferates quickly. That is, unless feedback loops take shape.
7. This article in FORTUNE makes a case similar to my own... that AIs will improve best, in accuracy and sagacity and even wisdom, if accountability is applied by AI upon other AIs. Positive feedback can be a dangerous cycle, while some kinds of negative feedback loops can lead to incrementally increased correlation with the real world.
8. Again, my featured WIRED article about this - Give Every AI a soul... or else.
My related Newsweek op-ed (June'22) dealt with 'empathy bots'' that feign sapience and personhood.
== AI generated visual lies – we can deal with this! ==
9. A new AI algorithm flags deepfakes with 98% accuracy — better than any other tool out there right now. And it is essential that we keep developing such systems, in order to stand a chance of keeping up in an arms race against those who would foist on us lies, scams and misinformation...
... pretty much exactly as I described back in 1997, this reposted chapter from The Transparent Society - "The End of Photography as Proof."
Two problems. First, scammers will use programs like this one to help perfect their scam algorithms. Second, it would be foolish to rely upon any one such system, or just a few. A diversity of highly competitive tattle-tale lie-denouncing systems is the only thing that can work, as I discuss here.
Oh, and third. It is inherent – (as I show in that chapter of The Transparent Society) – that lies are more easily detected, denounced and incinerated in a general environment of transparency, wherein the greatest number can step away from their screens and algorithms and compare them to actual, physically-witnessed reality.
For more on this, here’s my related Newsweek op-ed (June'22) dealt with 'empathy bots' that feign sapience. Plus a YouTube pod where I give an expanded version.
== Generalizing to innovation, in general ==
10. Traditional approaches to innovation emphasize ideas and inventions, often leading to a losing confrontation with the mysterious “Valley of Death.” My colleague Peter Denning and his co-author Todd Lyons upend this paradigm in Navigating a Restless Sea, offering eight mutually reinforcing practices that power skillful navigation toward adoption, mobilizing people to try something new.
=== Some tacked-on tech miscellany ==
11. Sure, it goes back to neolithic "Venus figurines" and Playboy and per-minute phone comfort lines and Eliza - and the movie "Her." And bot factories are hard at work. At my 2017 World of Watson keynote, I predicted persuasive 'empathy bots' would arrive in 2022 (they did.) And soon, Kremlin 'honeypot-lure babes" should become ineffective! Because this deep weakness of male humans will have an outlet that's... more than human?
Could that lead to those men calming down, prioritizing the more important aspects of life?)
12. And hence, we will soon see...AI girlfriends and companions. And this from Vox: People are falling in love with -- and getting addicted to -- AI voices.
13. Kewl! “This tiny 3D-printed Apple IIe is powered by a $2 microcontroller .” With a teensy working screen taken from an Apple watch. Can run your old IIe programs. Size of an old mouse.
14. Paragraphica by Bjørn Karmann is a camera that has no lens, but instead generates a text description of when & where it is, then generates an image via a text-to-image model.
15. Daisy is an AI cellphone application that wastes scammers’ time so that they don’t have time to target real victims. Daisy has "told frustrated scammers meandering stories of her family, talked at length about her passion for knitting, and provided exasperated callers with false personal information including made-up bank details."
And finally...
== NOT directly AI… but for sure implications! ==
And… only slightly off-topic: If you feel a need for an inspiring tale about a modern hero, intellect and deeply-wise public figure, try Judge David Tatel’s VISION: A memoir and Blindness and Justice. I’ll vouch that he’s one of the wisest wise-guys I know. "Vision is charming, wise, and completely engaging. This memoir of a judge of the country’s second highest court, who has been without sight for decades, goes down like a cool drink on a hot day." —Scott Turow. https://www.davidtatel.com/
And Maynard Moore - of the Institute for the Study of Religion in the Age of Science - will be holding a pertinent event online in mid January: “Human-Machine Fusion: Our Destiny, or Might We Do Better?” The IRAS webinar is free, but registration is required.
== a lagniappe (puns intended) ==
In the 1980s this supposedly “AI”- generated sonnet emerged from the following prompt, "Buzz Off, Banana Nose."
Well… real or not, here’s my haiku response.
In lunar orchards
A pissed apiary signs:
"Bee gone, Cyrano!"
Count the layers, oh cybernetic padiwans! I’m not obsolete… yet.
119 comments:
Just noticed... 250 YEARS AGO ON THIS DAY, Minutemen opposing rule by tyrant inheritance brats fought at the Battle of Lexington and Concord, setting us down the path.
Heh. Well... we are going to be protesting tomorrow anyway.
Not much of an issue where I live, but I did warn my wife.
"Her" scenarios also discussed over at TASAT:
https://forum.tasat.org/t/human-alien-android-relationships/
Just noticed... 250 YEARS AGO ON THIS DAY
Heh. It's on my protest sign.
April 19,1775
The shot heard 'round the world
Don't make us re-enact it!
You wouldn't like us when we're angry
Not much of an issue where I live,
Here either. "There are some parts of [Chicago], Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade."
The main post:
Daisy has "told frustrated scammers meandering stories of her family, talked at length about her passion for knitting, and provided exasperated callers with false personal information including made-up bank details."
"We can't bust heads like we used to. But we have our ways. One trick is to tell stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville? I needed a new heel for m'shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say. Now where were we? Oh, yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones..."
https://www.threads.net/@stonekettle
It's 30 years today since the Oklahoma City bombing.
Timothy McVeigh was a violent white supremacist who hated government and wanted to tear it all down. So he built a bomb and became one of the most reviled terrorists in history. But, the ironic part is that if he'd just waited a few years, he could have voted for Trump, got himself hired on by Elon Musk and DOGE, and done far more damage to government LEGALLY all while being cheered on by of half of America.
We're seeing a gathering collapse of American science and curiosity.
In Canada, with all the external threats, the massive influx of brains, and the imminent election of a sagacious mayor, I suggest that we rename ourselves Terminus.
scidata: Canada as "Terminus"? rich meta-phor
30 years ago today.
He won. McViegh killed 19 kids and the GOP now embraces his ideals.
American conservatism is a radical evil movement.
And the DoJ is under orders to consider McViegh's beliefs as "patriotic,"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/19/timothy-mcveigh-oklahoma-bombing-far-right-1995
ps. The FBI came to interview me as part of the investigation into this attack. One of the more surreal moments in my life. It took me a while to realize they were asking about it. My interrogator was wicked skilled at working up to the main reason for the interview (which I thought was about security clearance stuff). I still have his business card 30 years later.
Accountability, human/machine AI, potentially augmented by a brain-machine interface, subject to either real or feigned self-interest, may respond to a (zero sum) negative feedback loop which simulates evolutionary pressures, the end result being increasing amounts of human/machine AI responsibility & reciprocity:
1) Accountability assumes Negative Consequences;
2) Reciprocal Accountability assumes Mutually Negative Consequences.
3) Reciprocal Accountability approximates Mutually Assured Destruction.
Transparency, aided by augmented reality glasses and a new AI algorithm that identifies deep fakes, appears to be subject to a (positive sum) positive feedback loop, resulting in ever more convincing & less detectable deep fakes, speeding the development of the simulated, false, fake & feigned, as in the case of AI girlfriends, AI companions & AI intelligences:
1) Transparency assumes simultaneous Falsity;
2) Increasing Transparency assumes Increasing Falsity;
3) More Transparency invariably results in LESS Transparency.
Yet, the worst is yet to come, as any & all AI intelligences, companions and girlfriends are necessarily 'simulated, false, fake & feigned' from their inception and their very UNREALITY means that they cannot be subject to increasing scrutiny or escalating punishment in any non-imaginary sense, as any negative feedback mechanism designed to potentially increase AI accountability presumes some kind of 'real' consequence:
1) Simulated Machine Intelligences are (by definition) UNREAL;
2) Unreal Items are not subject to Accountability & Transparency.
3) Simulated Machine AIs are not subject to Accountability & Transparency.
Best
_______
Reciprocal Accountability (aka 'MAD') is the word of the day:
Remember it as you set out in the pursuit of justice, revenge & your identity-specific group interests.
locum is just jibbering again. Capering-frothing nonsense.
But matthew is contributing to a conversation. Perhaps (I hope) exaggerating but we share deep concern. Consider checking to see if that agent is still in business? Even (especially) if he is retired, he might be worth a query.
Another successful "Hands Off" protest with no McVeighs in sight. This time, my wife and I stayed local in our suburb, so I don't know yet what the crowd was like in downtown Chicago. We did see someone's phone image of crowds in the street in New York. And projections on the Old North Church in Boston.
Some amusing signs said:
"It's so bad, even the introverts are here!"
and
"Not one for signs, but geez!"
One that I had to think about and wonder if it was right-side up just said:
"= > %" (that last character was a division sign, not a percent)
I asked the girl holding it whether people actually got the meaning, and she said that plenty of others told her that Trumpists wouldn't understand it. Sounds about right.
It was sad but understandable that the crowd was pretty much all white non-Latinos. It meant that the police were mostly friendly and encouraging instead of hostile. Being there seemed a good use of our white privilege. Also, since older white suburbans are supposed to be Trump-friendly, it was good to see so many who are not.
I fear that the chief effect of the protests - alas - is to cement in place as leaders of resistance the same snooty dem politico operatives who so bungled what should have been an easy Kamala win. Someone should publish a LIST of those top advisors and start the campaign to ensure they never again manage a campaign above dog catcher.
Still I am glad all seem safe... so far.
From what I've seen, the "Hands Off" protests are not particularly affiliated with the Democratic Party.
Alt Park Services notes on events are worth repeating:
Today, all of you helped shift the narrative. You can see it clearly in the wave of MAGA comments trying to drown us out, they’re rattled. Small towns across the Heartland drawing record-breaking crowds? That’s not something we’ve seen before.
But it’s happening now. There’s a shift underway in this country, and more people are starting to feel it.
Some of our coalition members shared that the most powerful moment today was hearing people say:
“The best part of this was realizing how much support there actually is in my town. I had no idea.” That’s the magic of showing up. You helped people feel less alone in places where they’ve felt isolated for far too long.
By the way, I thought of this too late to use on my sign, but next time will definitely have "TINY Hands Off!"
That’s the magic of showing up. You helped people feel less alone in places where they’ve felt isolated for far too long.
An elderly woman at my location said as much. Paraphrasing: You sit alone at home and think you're the only one, and then you see this...
So MS-13 is a Salvadoran gang. Why then is all the talk other than about Garcia all Venezuelans all the time?
I'm even more confused now.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/19/us/politics/trump-protests-nyc-florida-la.html
Trump officials have maintained that Mr. Abrego Garcia was a member of the Salvadoran gang MS-13; he denies the claim.
Because the Venezuelan diaspora is an ongoing threat to Trump friend Maduro. Send them back to be killed, hm?
Larry,
My wife had signs that covered that angle. Two of them. One was a cardboard cutout of Trump with his long necktie and tiny hands. The other sign just said 'Hands off' and had two partially inflated rubber gloves attached at the edge. They look pretty tiny when under-inflated. 8)
Dangers from today:
One guy ranting about abortion telling my wife she's going to Hell.
One guy filming his passage through the intersection looked a bit like he actually wanted to hit my wife. Maybe.
One distracted driver zipped through the intersection on a red and totaled three vehicles as their truck ricocheted. It's amazing none of the protesters were injured. It's not so amazing the people in the cars weren't. Cars and trucks are a lot safer nowadays.
My wife doesn't intend to be the safety person for any future protest. Half the people there didn't think she was protesting anything, thus their anger spilled in her direction.
One interesting thing of note. Some of the protestors were quite willing to be injured if it helped make their point. Martyr types I think.
More from alt parks (from the opposite end of the elephant to Larry and Alfred's):
We just wanted to keep you all updated estimates are now approaching 4 million. Incredible job pulling this off on a holiday weekend! It was tough to get accurate counts today because small towns showed up in force. Some states had record-breaking turnout we didn’t expect this includes:
Indiana, Ohio, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Iowa. Wow, we see you 💚! Huge thanks to local law enforcement for helping keep everyone safe. With their support, four MAGA individuals have already been arrested for assault.
Tomorrow, I gather we hear whether or not the National Guard is required.
OK, time to consider the main topic.
AI research may be worth pursuing, but the commercial side...
When every IT position advertised has an AI element shoved into it, Microsoft does not appreciate the irony of extolling the benefits of 'letting go and letting AI', while displaying a field of tulips on the login screen (or maybe copilot has developed a sense of humour?)
I did write a quick LLM (Little Language Model) a while back. Feel free to play with it. Real LLMs of course use thousands of such layers using much more sophisticated filters, but this will give you a taste of what results are possible.
alfred wow, yours was... eventful
An LLM in script - that's pretty. I once wrote an Expert System shell for the Palm OS in FORTH, so I get what you're saying about experimental good, commercial not so much. IMHO, big A.I. is a mega-grift.
Alfred Differ:
One guy ranting about abortion telling my wife she's going to Hell.
What did abortion have to do with anything? I guess there was some element of "Keep your (tiny) hands off my body," but from the rest of your post I didn't gather your wife had a sign like that.
One guy filming his passage through the intersection looked a bit like he actually wanted to hit my wife. Maybe.
A more charitable interpretation is that he wanted to make sure it wasn't his fault if he was forced to contact a pedestrian.
Though I wouldn't put anything past the MAGAts, and your interpretation may well be correct. Remember, in some states, it's now legal to run down protesters blocking traffic. In Texas, it's probably legal to hit them on the sidewalk too.
My wife doesn't intend to be the safety person for any future protest.
I wasn't familiar with the concept of "safety person", although I can guess from the context. Here in Chicago and in my suburb, the police kept the marchers safe, and the cross streets were blocked off to car traffic when we were on the move. In the suburban protest I was at yesterday, we only blocked traffic briefly while getting to the main road on which we lined the sidewalks, and thereafter did not block any streets. Even crossing the road to get to the opposite side, we went with the stoplights, and the police guided us.
Sounds like the Chicago authorities were more favorable than yours were. I wouldn't expect that from California, but then I know there are places like Simi Valley out there, and I have read The Grapes of Wrath.
Half the people there didn't think she was protesting anything, thus their anger spilled in her direction.
Anger from which side? I really can't tell.
One interesting thing of note. Some of the protestors were quite willing to be injured if it helped make their point. Martyr types I think.
I can see that. The point being made is that their side is the threatening and violent one, and that our side exhibits more courage and less cowardice.
If Von Schitzenpantz does start sending the armed forces against protesters, I can envision a time where someone might have to stand in front of a tank, Tiananmen Square style. At the moment, though, that's all hypothetical. Where I've been, the mood surrounding the events has been almost entirely positive, with pro-Trump pushback limited to a few cars giving the finger as they drove by. And the volume of that was insignificant compared to the number of cars who honked in support and some who even displayed their own signs.
One way that dictatorships fall is when the armed forces decide that they will not take the dictators side against the public. Trump and associates think they are safe from this because they have changed the very top of the armed forces. This is not enough.
...when the armed forces decide that they will not take the dictators side against the public.
A variation on that, noted in A Tale of Two Cities and in Ayn Rand's We, the Living, is when the armed forces realize that they are too outnumbered to take on the masses. Also somewhat comically presented in the climactic scene of the 1984 movie, Zorro, the Gay Blade.
To be clearer above, I should have said, "when the rank and file of the armed forces realize that they are too outnumbered to follow orders to take on the masses."
Seems like parody, but it's an actual Easter message from Von Schitzenpantz on his boutique social media platform. I'm seeing it "re-truthed" on the Rude Pundit's bluesky.
Trump actually only mentions people and things that he hates. Not "Happy Easter to everyone, even those I want dead," but rather a rambling litany of grievances against enemies, real and imagined, and nothing positive.
https://bsky.app/profile/rudepundit.bsky.social
@realDonaldTrump
Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane, and well known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters, back into our Country. Happy Easter also to the WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue, an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten! Sleepy Joe Biden purposefully allowed Millions of CRIMINALS to enter our Country, totally unvetted and unchecked, through an Open Borders Policy that will go down in history as the single most calamitous act ever perpetrated upon America. He was, by far, our WORST and most Incompetent President, a man who had absolutely no idea what he was doing -- But to him, and to the person that ran and manipulated the Auto Pen (perhaps our REAL President!), and to all of the people who CHEATED in the 2020 Presidential Election in order to get this highly destructive Moron Elected, I wish you, with great love, sincerity, and affection, a very happy Easter!!!
I can shed light on a tiny part of the mechanism of the corrosion of the enlightenment experiment. I don't see y'all talking about it much. The thing is scientific "progress" plays out in two orthogonal dimensions: evolutionarily and involutionarily.
the evolutionary component is the exponential accumulation of proofs, knowledge, and specialization of fields into established, contextually dependent disciplines. involution, otoh, comes from reconsidering understanding, connecting across fields, and outside-the-box creativity. evolution rigidifies understanding and "raises" the baseline of popular tech and science available, but for each apparently resolved field, dogmas and shortcuts make it harder and harder for society to pivot, to the point where involutionary development can utterly stagnate or be pushed out into loner crackpot "scientists."
with more involution we could've had a society that doesn't destroy its habitat or homogenize all significant lifestyle differences. more on this later.
Duncan O that is a lovely esthetic exegesis that seems logical... and is utter, utter hogwash. While I am best. known as what you'd call an 'involutionary innovator I have also done incremental science. While my mix may be differently weighted than most, I've seen both imperatives in nearly all of the working and reputable scientists I ever knew.
The what-fs of science fiction are attractive to most scientists, even as they slog along in some lab. Moreover today’s vastly innovative society is pushing both envelopes hard.
Will organic humans retain a usefulness in involutionary work, even when AI has propelled evo work faster? I imagine so, since that would benefit me personally. But as a sci fi author I can also imagine the alternative situation .
HOW can I? Because it is my friggin' job.
But the thing about involution is that it always has more directions and spaces available. our society has left involution on the individual level and never made an intensive effort of understanding it or cultivating it. by using personal volition to change objects of value and context of reference, "space" can be made where none had appeared forthcoming
Duncan Ocel
Your "involution" is made massively EASIER by the increase in the size and complexity of knowledge we already have!!
And it's the results that count - which means that society REWARDS people who do the "involution"
Hell they teach methods of doing just that!
Duncan O. Your assertion is absolutely untrue. I have been privileged to know and sometimes participate in many kinds of scientific institutions and ad hoc groups that have ecourged exploratory thought. Have a look at this one that advised for a decade. NASA's Innovative & Advanced Concepts program - (NIAC) - https://www.nasa.gov/niac-funded-studies/
Please consider that you seem to enjoy a smug assumption about stodginess of others... but while satisfying, it is also simply untrue.
Larry,
My wife brings a small red wagon full of signs people can use. There was in fact an abortion sign in there that doesn't get picked up very often. The guy probably triggered on that.
The anger that spilled in my wife's direction that she wasn't expecting was from protesters. Many of them show up itching for a fight or just expecting the verbal version of it. Since she was trying to keep them safe (relative to the traffic) they didn't identify her as being like them. (Easy enough to fix for next time, but there isn't going to be a next time.)
There were no police at the site until the accident happened. They mostly stayed away from the protesters, but when some Trump fans showed up the police who were still there DID step forward to be possible witnesses if fists started flying.
I didn't mention it above, but MAGA types did show up. Not many. Very vocal.
Duncan Ocel,
Sounds like a variation on Kuhn's view of how science is done. There is some truth to that POV, but one shouldn't take it as an actual explanation for what we do. It's more of a 'appears to fit' kind of theory. Philosophy is like that at times.
As for paradigms not being displaced... bah. I'm 63 now and I've witnessed two serious upheavals in physics alone. A third one is likely before my time is up.
As far as "paradigms not being replaced" - they are - but the changes are less visible - as we move towards a more accurate "description" of the real world the changes become smaller - which is as you would expect
Liz Truss meets Queen Elizabeth.
JD Vance meets Pope Francis.
... is there a trend here?
Alfred Differ:
The anger that spilled in my wife's direction that she wasn't expecting was from protesters. ...there isn't going to be a next time.
Sorry to hear that. My personal experience has been diametrically different, with much positive reinforcement from the protesters themselves and from those observing or driving past. If I was still single, I'd be going to these things to pick up girls, even though the "girls" are mostly older than we are.
The police in my suburb were much more affable than I expected, given that 30 years ago, where I live would have been solidly Republican. And the cops in downtown Chicago were not at all the Daley cops of 1968. To some extent, I attribute that to the fact that the protesters ourselves are not trying to appear or to be locally threatening. In our suburb, we did not interfere with traffic, and most of the comments from drivers passing by were positive. It sounds as if your protest inconvenienced local drivers, which I assume leads to a different interaction.
Cynically but understandably, I feel the friendliness of the police also has to do with the protesters being mostly white and skewing older. If it has to be thus, I don't mind taking up the white man's burden.
There were no police at the site until the accident happened.
I'm not sure you mentioned an accident previously.
I didn't mention it above, but MAGA types did show up. Not many. Very vocal.
While some drivers passing by gave the finger or shouted slurs, the overwhelming response here was positive.
Finally, someone besides me notices.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2025/Items/Apr21-1.html
One point that hasn't been addressed much (or at all) is where the deportees are being sent. Normally, deportees are driven or flown to their home country and released there. Now they are being sent to a prison in a third-country and given a life sentence. That is not how deportations are supposed to work, especially not for people who have not been convicted in court of any crime.
Tony, not sure, but perhaps primarily because I have no idea how to understand either Liz Truss or JD Vance. They are completely weird people to me. I can't imagine how either of them thinks about things.
@reason, I think Tony's reference was to the sequence of events:
1) meet with a deplorable
2) go to the great beyond
No, I do not believe that RFK Jr gave JD Vance a slow poison or infectious agent to use on the Pope. I do not believe it and I denounce such rumors. Spreading them would be irresponsible. Almost 0.01% as irresponsible as helping to spread measels or eating road kill weasels.
She has a core group of folks who are out every weekend. Same place. Same time. Those folks know here and the experience with them is mostly positive. The worst that happens is the old folks get annoyed at the number of texts they all send to each other in preparation for the next weekend. (First world problem, right?)
My place is technically in one city (Oxnard), but we go to the nearby one (Ventura) for most events. There isn't much point protesting in our own city as it is VERY blue and VERY wary of ICE. The locals do protest but it is probably just a segment of the population. We aim at Ventura as there are a few more red voters over there... and we look more like them.
LA cops are a bit different than they used to be in the 60's too. Thankfully. 8) Some of the suburbs still have some work to do in keeping their police neutral, but So Cal is a big place. Kinda expected.
Mmm... "Accurate Description" is a bit of an oxymoron to me. "Useful description" works, though.
The renormalization trick was found for gauge theories while I was young, so I didn't get to see it directly. I did get to see the impact it had over the next few years, though, because I chose theoretical physics in grad school. It doesn't sound like much to outsiders, but it is quite a shift at the deeper level. What IS gets hidden in a cloud of virtual stuff leaving us measuring these clouds when we thought we were measuring particles. Epistemological foundations moved in the early 70's.
I've also lived long enough to witness the impact John S Bell's entanglement work has had. The foundations under quantum mechanics have always been shaky, but Bell and those who dared follow him into the fog found a way to test our theories at a meta level. We now know you can have determinism or locality, but not both. It is experimentally proven. That is HUGE. (Most of us choose to retain locality [light cones limiting events], but it seems so far that the universe is ambivalent about that.)
I should add one more thing. 'Accurate' has always meant to me a result that holds close to the truth of things. 'Precise' has meant a result with many known digits beyond the decimal.
For example, when I was in school the Hubble expansion constant was known imprecisely, but well enough to put an age on the universe of between 10 and 20 billion years. Now it is known more accurate and the universe is 13.7 billion years old. That's precision. Whether the expansion rate actually informs us about the age of the universe, though, is a matter of accuracy.
I think it was a lab class I took in college that tried to hammer this distinction into my head. Definitely not the common uses of the terms in English, but that hammer worked. My mind kinda stops when people use one to mean the other. 8)
It's nice to know that our fine host can tell the difference between fantasy & reality when he wishes.
That said, the italicized paragraphs within my last comment were our host's own assertions in paraphrased form, so it follows that the only frothing nonsense (above) were our own host's fanciful notions about AI, summarized below:
(1) That 'Artificial Intelligence' (wherein the term 'artificial' means "ersatz, simulated, false, fake, feigned") is not only REAL, but it can somehow be made more real, truthful & transparent by the addition of an imaginary "soul"; and
(2) That 'AI Accountability' (wherein the term 'accountability' means "being subject to punishment, discipline & correction") can likewise be achieved by the imaginary infliction of real pain on a lifeless, inanimate & unfeeling mechanism.
Perhaps Scidata put it best when he surmised that the ersatz, artificial & fake intelligence of big A.I. "is a mega-grift".
It's a denial of reality, our host's take on AI, but it is rather noteworthy that the above 'reality denial' coincides so well with the false heroics of this weekend's protests, as it is equally moronic to engage mock battles against an absent opponent as it to use 'shame & blame' based discipline on a toaster.
Best
For example, when I was in school the Hubble expansion constant was known imprecisely, but well enough to put an age on the universe of between 10 and 20 billion years. Now it is known more accurate and the universe is 13.7 billion years old. That's precision. Whether the expansion rate actually informs us about the age of the universe, though, is a matter of accuracy.
Hmmm, I learned it a bit differently in high school science class.
"Accuracy" was how close an approximation was to the real result in relative terms. For how many digits is 22/7 or 335/113 the same as pi? That would be a question of accuracy. It doesn't matter whether the digits in question begin at the ones or the millions. How many digits is the important part.
"Precision" was a measure of closeness in absolute terms. 3.14159 approximates pi to the hundred-thousanth place.
Roger Berkowitz, director of the epically wise Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, offers this terrific and vital essay about the importance of civil disobedience. And he cites two Davids very near each other on the bookshelf!
https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/civil-disobedience-and-the-spirit-of-american-democracy-2025-04-20
And for yet another example, I once saw an example in a Physics book, 2 pictures of a bullseye. One had a cluster of shots loosely centered around the middle (accuracy), and another had a tight grouping some distance away from the center (precision), to further muddy the waters!
Just to clarify, I was calling today's half-trillion dollar deals around generative LLMs and vast, Earth-killing GPU farms a grift. I once offered Sam Altman a job and he didn't even have the courtesy to reply.
A.I. as a concept is a major theme of my life. Can't speak for OGH, but the competing/cooperating agents/centaurs model is the one I've worked on since the days of computer chess.
Yeah. I probably shouldn't mention what we thought of most HS physics teachers. 8)
If you are in a curved space it is possible that pi is actually equal to 4. You wouldn't know of the curvature because you are embedded in it. You could discover it, though.
If you assume Euclidean reality for that space, your experimental finding for pi could be very precise and very inaccurate. See the difference? One has an underlying assumption about Truth... or what one's paradigm says it is.
Anyway, I'm picking at nits again. I shouldn't. I get what Duncan was saying. It's just that I no longer believe in an underlying Truth we can know. I still walk around as if one exists, but I don't actually believe it.
I've seen the arrow cluster definitions before. Wonderfully descriptive. That distance between the two cluster is EXACTLY what experimentalists are after.
1. Theory says the result should be around here. (accuracy)
2. Experiment says it is around here. (precision)
If the measurement uncertainties for #2 happen to include #1... good enough. If not... gotchya!
We're in complete agreement, Scifi.
If & when 'A.I.' is described in the far less grandiose terms of Algorithms (branching, self-pruning, self-bounding), then A.I. has also been a major life theme as I helped test one of the first 1990's era medical decision tree on a portable e-device.
I can accept A.I. in that sense, but not in the transcendent error-free posthuman sense that our fine host is selling.
Best
circa 1990.
I attended three hands off protests in north san diego county (Encinitas, Carlsbad, and San Marcos) this past weekend. Each was 1.5 to 2 hours in length. I'm often a yellow vested peacekeeper at these events, but not this time. Our community prefers the term "peacekeeper" instead of "safety" as we see our primary function in de-escalation and redirection of the our protesters (don't feed the trolls, please walk away, etc.).
At Encinitas, we were keeping our eyes out for a recurring agitator to walks through the crows with a piece of metal connected to a metal connector and has labeled his device an "idiot detector". This individual tries to goad people into pushing him. As far as a I know, he did not make an appearance.
At the Carlsbad protest, there were reports of some pushing and the police were quick to respond (3 cars, 6 officers) and it was quickly resolved quickly. There was one pro-trump pickup truck that would spew black smoke at the crowd make several passes.
Both Encinitas and Carlsbad had police in attendance watching from a reasonable distance.
Crowds were large, a good mix of ages and genders. The number of young (under 30) and the numbers of families with children seem to be growing. Crowds seem relatively savvy in not feeding trolls, not falling for "what aboutism"/"just asking questions", making sure people have water, etc.
There are conversations about next steps, getting better organized (how to hear about the next protest), which leaders they like. Even some discussions about supporting a general strike.
If you are in a curved space it is possible that pi is actually equal to 4.
So the Indiana law had it right?
Well... I'm inclined to let Indiana do what they want to do within their borders. What's the acronym? FOFO? FUFA? FAFO?
Geometry is a blast. Define pi as the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter and then try to figure out what that means in other spaces. Must the diameter be composed of points actually in the space? Heh.
That does raise a point, though. When paradigms shift and none of the public understands the before and after versions, does the tree make sound when it falls over? 8)
Alfred Differ:
Define pi as the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter and then try to figure out what that means in other spaces. Must the diameter be composed of points actually in the space? Heh.
Heh indeed.
An easy example. Lines of latitude are circles on the spherical surface of the earth. Do the diameters of that circle penetrate through the body of the earth perpendicular to the axis? Or do they follow a line of longitude to the pole and back again?
If one goes with the first explanation, then it seems one must admit the "curved space" exists within a Euclidian geometry.
If one goes with the second explanation, then the circle has two diameters, one to the north and one to the south, which (excepting the case of the equator) have different lengths.
I like the peacekeeper label. I let my wife know, but I don't think it moved her enough to want to do it again. Reminded her too much of her job. She teaches special needs kids (mostly autism), so de-escalation techniques get used every day. She's good at them, but knows her limits. 8)
Non-Euclidean geometry is a wonderful example of a paradigm shift not at the level of science theories but in the language we use to describe them. Giving up Euclid's parallel line postulate and finding other geometries that were perfectly consistent was a BIG deal that penetrated into the public domain at least through fiction. That shift expanded the range of what we could think. (e.g. using great circles on spheres AS straight lines)
I like to think of our Enlightenment Civilization as one of those paradigm shifts. Doing so puts the reactionaries in the same group as flat-earthers. 8)
@Alfred,
It occurred to me after I posted that while a circle is a one-dimensional figure, a disc is a two-dimensional one. Were I to have looked for the diameter of a disc described by a latitude line, with the disk's interior also on the earth's surface, then it would be clear whether we were talking about one that included the north pole or the south pole.
Also, I would say that the diameter of a disk does necessarily have to include points that are part of the disk itself.
I like the peacekeeper label. I let my wife know, but I don't think it moved her enough to want to do it again.
I wish you and your wife could find your way to attending a rally here in Chicago. You'd be amazed how at home you'd feel.
Field workers had long reported n chimps seeking and sharing slightly fermented/alcoholic fruit in the wild. Lubricating social interactions with a slight buzz. Anyone recall my character Fiben and the dance-party scene in The Uplift War? ;-) Which BTW is just $2.99 (ebook) on Sunday. Hugo winner.
https://www.iflscience.com/chimps-filmed-sharing-booze-in-the-wild-shows-our-deep-evolutionary-taste-for-alcohol-78893
It keeps erupting like a bad pustule - the idiotic "Fourth Turning" cult that's only the latest version of long refuted "cyclical history," a teleology that sucks in millions of conservatives, going back to the Nazis and long before. Liberals have their own teleology-obsession of unlimited human improvability. But do look at how noxious is the disproved 4th turning crap. Slap silly any true believers you know.
https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2024/02/oh-those-idiotic-cycles-of-history-yet.html
A pernicious effect of cyclical history thinking is the dream of going back to a better time, thus making it all Great Again. It's like a Dead Head sticker on a cadillac (Don Henley). It's a mirage. The only way to get through and collapse it is to keep going towards the horizon.
Gosh I wish America would shake it off and resume its trek.
Well-well. Events like this - triggering 'could this finally be IT?' musings - certainly do draw attention. Other instruments will zoom in to have a look at the star. Alas, whenever there's a glimmer of a possible 'hit' in SETI, fools rush ahead and beam out unvetted "Yoohoo! messages"! And this time the chief fools - e.g. Top Fool in DC and his masters - will command preening declarations to be sent via giant dishes. Unless...
...well I already posit that our recent cultural manias can only best be explained by an alien stoopid-ray, already beaming down at us.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576525002449?via%3Dihub
scidata that's only part of the allure. People get a glum satisfaction sometimes out of envisioning it all tumbling dow, as proof their neighbors are decadent fooooools.
What's the over/under on when Pete Hegseth gets replaced? My guess is this Friday evening.
I thought they were sending out the layoff emails to the work addresses on Saturday night, effective Monday morning?
IOW, put me down for Saturday evening. :D
Consider that this might all be part of the trek.😕
As I've been quipping on social media: Aliens. It's always aliens. Until it isn't.
(Stoopid ray? I believe Stefan Jones was the mastermind behind the Illuminati's 'Orbital Mind Control Lasers' card.)
First, we get all the Muskovites to take the Golgafrinchan B Ark to Mars. Kinda like the Rapture, but with science instead of magic.
Then, the rest of us get on with it.
My assertion - that Democratic politicians - while often smart and honest - are polemical dunces - is demonstrated by their inability to nickname Pete Filthy Fingers Hegseth, who openly avowed he hasn't washed his hands in a decade. And now our chance may be slipping away as if through his slimy/germy hands. Before he goes away, shall we open the floor to suggestions?
Then on to Microcephalic Marjorie and Lindsey "Um duh why he's blackmailed" Graham?
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the 1990s. "The '90s were a special time for speculative fiction."
https://theportalist.com/best-1990s-science-fiction-fantasy-books?utm_source=AuthorContentNotification
The problem is that honest and civilised politicians don't call people names!
You need a second rung of politicians/commentators who are not "civilised" and who DO call people names
Or alternatively somebody needs to dredge through the records of parliament and discover how to creatively insult people without being petty
You, sir, will certainly either die upon the gallows or of a social disease.
That depends, sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.
Dr Brin,
"People get a glum satisfaction sometimes out of envisioning it all tumbling dow(n)...."
Not all. I've met people filled with unholy glee that they will be able to shoot all the *insert minority slur*, or yearn to trade living in the 21st century for returning to the 19th or earlier (1860 at most.) I've also noticed the explosion of isekai manga and anime, with an audience not limited to Japan. That genre is all about getting off the bus.
I want to see what humanity can do that it hasn't already done, but there's a lot of people standing in the road crying 'vade, vade, retro!*"
* OK, I'm not sure how many of them speak Latin, even at my limited, catch-phrase level
Pappenheimer
Best retort ever:
[woman] Sir, if you were my husband, I'd poison your tea.
[Churchill] Madame, if I were your husband, I'd gladly drink it.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/yall-hear-what-seth-rogen-said-right
For instance, did you hear what Seth Rogen said right to Jeff Bezos's and Mark Zuckerberg’s ugly little fascist faces? Of course you didn’t, because the cowards responsible for deciding whether Rogen’s remarks would be included in the official stream of the event edited out the parts where he spoke truth right to their ugly little fascist faces.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/arts/seth-rogen-breakthrough-prize-ceremony.html
...
Organizers of the 2025 Breakthrough Prize ceremony, sometimes called the “Oscars of Science,” cut Seth Rogen’s jokes about President Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services, from the broadcast it posted on YouTube.
Nearly 90 minutes into the event, which was attended by Jeff Bezos and the founding sponsors Mark Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin, Rogen and Edward Norton took the stage. But before giving out a prize to the Dutch theoretical physicist Gerard ’t Hooft, Mr. Rogen chose to make a few remarks.
“It’s amazing that others in this room underwrote electing a man who, in the last week, single-handedly destroyed all of American science,” Mr. Rogen said, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which was a media sponsor of the April 5 event. “It’s amazing how much good science you can destroy with $320 million and R.F.K. Jr. very fast.”
...
Is there a recent 'Whale poop' posting/article link that I could give to a couple of Marine Biologist friends? All I have is from 2013 and I can't get the William Calvin url to load:
https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2013/07/ocean-fertilization-redux-plus-politics.html
I agree. Nicely done.
I wonder if Arkansas MAGA voters have any regrets or buyer's remorse.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/24/trump-denies-aid-arkansas-tornados?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Trump denies aid for Arkansas after storms that killed more than 40 people
Latest denial of disaster funding comes as Trump has repeatedly stated he wants to eliminate FEMA
Trump denies aid for Arkansas after storms that killed more than 40 people
Latest denial of disaster funding comes as Trump has repeatedly stated he wants to eliminate Fema
Donald Trump has denied federal disaster relief funds to the people of Arkansas, which saw dozens of people die from a series of deadly tornadoes last month, as legislators plead for him to reconsider.
More than 40 people have been found dead after a series of tornadoes and severe storms hit Arkansas and neighboring states Mississippi and Missouri in March, according to CNN.
Given the scale of the disaster, the state’s Republican governor, Sarah Huckabee, requested federal disaster aid as a part of an emergency declaration. That request was later denied by the Trump administration.
Huckabee and other Arkansas lawmakers have since publicly asked Trump to reconsider his decision. Huckabee sent an appeal of the decision on 18 April.
Huckabee and the homeland security secretary, Kristin Noem, spoke on Wednesday about Huckabee’s appeal, the Arkansas governor confirmed in a Thursday interview with KFSM-TV, a local news affiliate.
“We expect this to be processed quickly, and we’ve provided additional and extra information that bolsters the need,” she said.
Huckabee added: “At the end of the day though, I’ve talked to [Trump], I’ve talked to Secretary Noem. We want to make sure that people are taken care of, and we’re going to continue to work to ensure that happens.”
The US senators Tom Cotton and John Boozman of Arkansas and the US representative Rick Crawford also followed up with a letter to Trump, asking him to “reconsider the denial”.
Sure, let's get rid of FEMA.
And the next time a CAT 6 hurricane, massive wild fire, or super tornado hits a Gulf Coast red state, the people there (who can no longer get insurance due to climate change) can live in tents the rest of their lives.
It's what they voted for.
So give it to them.
To my earlier: " ...well I already posit that our recent cultural manias can only best be explained by an alien stoopid-ray, already beaming down at us." Mike Gannis responded....
"Many years ago there was a Christopher Anvil story in which aliens discovered Earth in the late 19th Century ... and were alarmed. So they took steps to retard our technological progress. It's a well-known scientific fact that being immersed in a magnetic field that oscillates at fifty to sixty times per second dulls intelligence, so they influenced humans to make that the standard for household electricity.
"They checked up a few decades later and were appalled -- we weren't stupid enough yet! What to do? Aha! Visual stimulation with a fifty to sixty cycles per second flicker rate is the industrial-strength version of that method of inducing stupidity! ... It worked."
Well... cute... but those things correlate with our most productive era. What DOES start to correlate would be the mental simplification of seeing the world as a combination of three RBG colors that supposedly recreate the world's color span but still distill down to just three.
Heinlein blamed beam power in WALDO... but no, it's addiction. The most evil men on Earth are linked to the casino industry who pay $$$ to research addiction and have moved into video games. Hooking a generation worse than opium or heroin.
Feb 9, 2025 is as 'steaming' fresh as it comes.
Chang'e-5 Lunar samples going to foreign universities, including Brown and Stony Brook. Talk about throwing shade, wow. Geopolitical wax and wane.
https://www.science.org/content/article/huge-honor-china-reveals-foreign-scientists-awarded-rare-lunar-samples
Thanks Tony. I assume that's in CB.
Oh, I had my screen's blue light off, didn't see the link. Thanks again.
"Bowen Yang" called him "Pope-killer Hegseth." I still prefer Filthy Fingers.
Stephanie Miller's show uses "Kegs-breath".
So, the FBI never caught you?
John Christopher put it down to little caps that everyone taken in by a TV show took to wearing.
This seems to explain the evolution of Bill Maher. Emphasis mine.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/opinion/trump-woke-free-speech.html
...
Capitol Hill Baptist Church, a prominent church in Washington, sued the local government in 2020 after it continued to deny permission for the church to conduct outdoor, masked worship — even as restaurants were opening again for outdoor seating and even as the mayor of Washington had marched alongside protesters in outdoor protests against racial injustice.
In an alternate universe, the rise of the anti-woke right would have been the beginning of a constitutional renaissance. At the very moment when public debate was most necessary — to address some of the most complicated and emotionally fraught issues that divide our nation — was the moment when millions of Americans felt most afraid to speak.
This was exactly the time to double down on the Bill of Rights, to engage in a cultural and legal argument for the value of free expression.
But it was not to be. In the contest between a love for liberty and a hatred for the left, hatred won, and now the freethinkers of the anti-woke right have enabled the rise of the most speech-restrictive authoritarian president since Woodrow Wilson, who prosecuted his political opponents by the thousands.
...
LH that is the very best example of the kind of sanctimony bullshit utter sewer narrative that has turned today's US left into a canker on liberalism. Dig it. The election proved Maher correct on almost every count and utterly discredited the Left from deserving any further dominance of Democratic Party affairs.
I omit old fashioned leftists like AOC and Bernie, who had the sense to understand the importance of TACTICS that build COALITIONS and ALLIENCES. Their agenda to preserve and extend Rooseveltean endeavors to build the semi-socialist underpinnings that increase the skilled competitors for markets can sometimes be a little excessive, but that's their job and they compromised with Pelosi to get the miracle 2021 bills.
But what YOU call the Left is a crap pile of sanctimony symbolism bullies who UNAMIBIGUOUSLY drove away millions of blacks and hispanics and union members with their god-damned to hell DEI yowling and pronoun policing and insisting that hulking boys should be free to pound young women on the sporting field because they proclaim "Now I'm a girl!"
Dig it, pal. TRUMP IS THEIR CREATURE. They made him possible and now they are desperate to excuse their fault and blame for giving him this chance to end liberalism. They are NOT 'liberals'. They are everything Orwell describes in HOMAGE TO CATALONIA.
And while Maher is a snarking asshole who giggles over the stomach acid he can provoke... he is nearly always entirely right.
@Dr Brin,
Nothing you say contradicts the point of the article that I excerpted or the line that I emphasized. Yes, elements of the left* drove enough voters into Trump's hands, and yes also, many of those same people are now regretting what they have wrought because in the "find out" phase of FAFO, it's becoming clear that hatred of the left--justifiable as it may have been--was not ultimately more important than defending liberty. Or in reference to an earlier post here, maybe pronouns aren't actually worse than genocide.
The author of the article--much longer than the bit I quoted--says that he used to be on the side of the anti-woke right, for some of the same reasons you mention. But he came to realize that while their rhetoric defended liberty, their actions made clear that they meant liberty for themselves at the expense of others. "Cancel culture" isn't the province of one party or the other--the extremists on both sides really do that one. But it galls me that the right gets to claim that they champion freedom of speech at the same time they're deporting and renditioning people for their speech, and that the general audience seems to accept their Orwellian framing.
* I consider myself a liberal, not a leftist.
Dr Brin
A Doonesbury cartoon that is applicable
https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2025/04/06
How many trans athletes compete in college sport?
About TEN!!
Ten in the whole USA
I agree that the DEI fundamentalists have screwed the pooch big time
But it has never been as bad as is made out
That "hulking boys claiming to be women so they can beat up real girls at sports" is on a par with my dad's fantasy of "400 lb men (for some reason they always weigh 400 lb) dressing as women to invade the women's restroom" for unspecified nefarious purpose.
So...where should a trans girl, who is probably losing a lot of 'hulk' if she is on hormone therapy, play sports?
As for the blacks/hispanic/union member contingent oppressed by DEI, I have never heard anyone, in any workplace, corrected for pronoun use. I have seen minorities passed over for promotion for no good reason by non-minority bosses, and the current regime is trying to make that SOP rather than an HR offense.
Also, here's AOC on DEI, in her own words...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rrSR8oxdQI
Pappenheimer, father of a trans daughter and an autistic son whose name may wind up on a list like that compiled by Asperger, maybe for the same reason.
P.S. the Left aren't your enemies - at least, not the Left I know, and reckon I am part of. Became an ACLU member this month.
David, you just swallowed some of the right's anti-trans bullshit. If someone is taking feminizing hormones then their advantage decreases or disappears. The supposed danger is just another form of scapegoating by people who want enemies to attack. And of course, they ignore the consequences of forcing trans men to compete against cis women. It is funny how they react when they are confronted with the reality of female to male transitions. Gobsmacked!
Hal Sparks's show today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiMfjAKlTkw
It's worth listening to the show if that's the kind of thing you like, but that's not why I'm posting the link. It's for the title. Emphasis mine.
HSRPM - KEGBREATH SAGA
Heh. She's a California woman through and through. Just got her twin sister to move back here from Washington and they've both been getting more and more political.
I believe you, but it is amazing how many here in California don't realize that most Americans (USians) live on the other side of the Mississippi River. 8)
Alfred Differ:
She's a California woman through and through.
Well, yeah, I've lived in the greater Chicago area all my life*, but I've been to other states** and even a few other countries. In the 21st century, that's not hard to do.
* Except for my years 150 miles away at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, which some do consider to be a south suburb.
** Including California, both LA and SF. I just missed the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, flying out about an hour before.
I've roamed the USA quite extensively, giving me an outside yet experienced perspective. You are a good people. You will get through this. Because you're one of the few nations in history that values every. single. person.
To me - the big issue about trans sport, is that it should not have anything to do with the government. It is an issue of the governing bodies of the sports involved. In my view the key issue to ask, is why are there different categories for male and female - and it should be clear it is a performance issue (like weight categories) and not a GENDER issue. It is only really a serious issue at elite level. And the bigger problem is not trans athletes, it is intersex athletes.
LF sseriously? "If someone is taking feminizing hormones then their advantage decreases or disappears."
Jesus PLEASE be a rich person with the guts to bet on that? It is not just untrue but so spectacularly untrue that it is mind boggling that you would try to pass it here.
What we're asking for is some actual common sense plus willingness to accept that progress happens incrementally. Give the extremely tiny array of trans people the right to design their own lives (the American Dream) and be un-persecuted? They way incremental advances in the past feed much larger minorities?
YES!
But... Give a small clade the power to demand that the vast voting majority warp and laboriously revise their entire LANGUAGE? Overnight? Or give some 6 footer guy with wide shoulders the right to hack at your daughter with a hockey stick because he's taking a few F### SHOTS? And waves his arms crying "Now I'm a gerllll!"
You guys with your sanctimony purity won't even NEGOTIATE! No conferences. No surveys to see if there's middle ground or nuance. You rave "Bigot!" at anyone who asks a trans woman if she's actually committed and got snipped! I know some who have ! And I treat them as women and they should be! (Except in ridiculous cases like sports.)
But I'm not allowed to be curious if two girl scouts go into a tent on a camping trip and one of them still has dick-n-balls?
Again, anyone who asks questions and asks for meetings to define terms in a complicated and unprecedented topic is automatically a bigot! And you wonder why so many decent people fled to the GOP from such bullying?
LH Again and again. There are four types of goppers:
1. The masters who aim to restore feudal rule by inheritance brats. There is ZERO sign they are racist/sexists or have that as their agenda. Though they USE racism/sexism to rile their confederate masses, as the slavers did in the 1860s.
The masters hate civil servants and aristocracies of merit like science. And the ACTIONS pursued by their puppets (e.g. DOGE) verify that.
2. A minority of MAGAs who ARE RACIST BIGOTS... A small minority - though growing. NAZI/commies who are now empowered. I fear and loathe them and want allies in fighting them. And not the Far-Left idiots who empower them.
3. Category 3: The vast majority of MAGAs who watch inter-racial couples on Fox and admire Clarence Thomas and say "I don't FEEL racist!" and deeply resent the shrieking of that word (with spittle) in their faces. When the ones they hate (as taught on Fox) are actually the smartypants fact professions. Try actually TABULATING the FOX rants that preach racism vs hatred of fact-folks. I'll PAY if it's not >> 10:1.
4. New Republicans, many of them now suffering buyer's remorse, who were driven into Trumpism by the left yammerers' obscenely stoopid, sanctimony-driven howls.
Oh, and the fifth column of the GOP -- those sanctimony-yammerers themselves. They might as well be paid moscow agents, for the harm they did.
===========
BEST EXAMPLE is IMMIGRATION!
It has been a decade that Putin and other enemies of the West have herded poor, mostly innocent and suffering refugess to Western borders to flood across and receive generosity... knowing it will have the desired effect of pushing western voters to the right. IT HAS ALWAYS WORKED PERFECTLY... It worked in Europe and even DENMARK! And it worked here...
...and our leftists' inability to see that, account for it and adjust to it tactically, by prioritizing their generosity in practical ways, is the final utter and absolute proof that our Left is stark, jibbering insane.
They must not be allowed ANY residual power within the Democratic Party.
And no, I don't mean Bernie and AOC, who are great. THEY know all this. They are trying.
"So...where should a trans girl, who is probably losing a lot of 'hulk' if she is on hormone therapy, play sports?"
Maybe accept that in a transitional period each liberation movement faces incremental stages and ALL areas can't be opened at once or exactly the same time? WIll you guys f***ing finally, finally read HOMAGE TO CATALONIA and see how all-at-once!!! fanaticism destroyed the left on countless occasions.
I have zero sympathy for some dood who kept the bone structure that his balls gave him from 9 to 15 -- and maybe even kept the balls! -- demanding to shove those shoulders (and maybe balls) against my daughter. Find... another... interest!
Or start forming a new league! Like the incredibly admirable Special Olympics did.
@Dr Brin,
I'm not sure what you think we're arguing about this time unless it's specifically about Bill Maher. The excerpt I posted described someone who was basically agreeing with you on hatred of DEI and leftism who had come to realize too late that he had been misled by the anti-woke right (his own term) into believing that they were champions of the First Amendment instead of weaponizes of it.
Myself, I had been screaming to the heavens the truth about what would happen--the same truth that they are now admitting to recognizing. In what way do you consider it to be my fault--or Joe Biden's, or Kamala Harris's, or Chuck Schumer's--that voters tuned out assertions of the obvious because they detested leftists on social media more than they feared an autocratic dictatorship? As Jesus once sort of said, "The leftists will be with us always," and if they weren't, the right-wing would conjure them up with false flag operations anyway the same way that they break windows at BLM rallies.
You seem to blame the influence of the leftists on the Democratic campaign for losing the election. I didn't see that influence at work in the actual campaign. Liberals that I know were blaming Kamala for just the opposite--campaigning too closely with Liz Cheney and other anti-Trump Republicans instead of the working class Democratic base. Certainly the Dearborn, Michigan Arabs who abandoned "Genocide Joe" weren't doing so because they considered him a tool of the left. Neither was the head of the Teamsters union who supported Trump over the only US president to walk a picket line.
2. A minority of MAGAs who ARE RACIST BIGOTS...
3. Category 3: The vast majority of MAGAs who watch inter-racial couples on Fox and admire Clarence Thomas and say "I don't FEEL racist!" and deeply resent the shrieking of that word (with spittle) in their faces.
There are two kinds of racists*. Those who don't think there's anything wrong with racism and are actually proud of it, and those who know that racism as a concept is a bad thing, but believe that what they are isn't actually "racism". One can be racist and not be driven into hysteria by television images of mixed-race couples, but still not let their own daughter date a black man. One can be racist and admire Clarence Thomas, but I doubt they're looking at him and thinking, "There's an example of a black man who is as smart and qualified as any white man." Rather, they seem to admire Clarence Thomas for empowering their white nationalist agenda against other minorities. If people like that aren't racist, then that's only a semantic argument over the term. They're believers and facilitators of a hierarchy of rights and privileges based on how closely one conforms or does not conform to a white Christian male archetype, and they support the Republican Party in general and Trump in particular for that reason. That's the case whether or not "racist" is the correct term to describe it, and they would not have been swayed from that support if only we hadn't talked so much about abortion or trans people or DEI.
"Liberals that I know were blaming Kamala for just the opposite--campaigning too closely with Liz Cheney and other anti-Trump Republicans instead of the working class Democratic base."
EXACTLY. Idiots. Utter idiots who made this mess. If they had any money - as much as they have sanctimony poisoning - I would demand wagers from them over ANY of their assertions.
JESUS! Even your sentence makes it distilled and clear. NARROW the coalition! Drive away potential allies! Demand all-at-once and never prioritize, the way Pelosi did when she actually delivered real progress in the 2021 bills...
... only to be denounced and savaged by your Lefty pals. The fact that you are actually, actually unable to see how Kamala (who would've been a fine president) was betrayed by DEI shriekers is appalling to me.
But the fact that you fanatics won't even bother to ASK the Democratic constituencies who abandoned us in the election what drove them away?
That's fanaticism distilled and I am done with it.
Dr. Brin,
Here's where I part from your argument:
If it wasn't trans panic, it would be something else.
The rabid right will bite on nearly anything. The intelligent, evil right will manufacture something for it to bite on, and blow it far out of proportion. (what level sports does your daughter play? How many trans athletes are in her league? Has she ever even met a trans athlete in her league, and if so, were they actually taller/stronger than her?)
With the corporate media in full support, this issue will become a cause célèbre. I was new in the military when suddenly, gays in the military became the cause. It didn't matter that I pointed out there had always been gays in every military. They just weren't obvious about it - with some exceptions like the Sacred Band of Thebes*. And now there are openly gays in our military, no huhu, but apparently there will be no more trans folk in the military if this administration has its way.
If the issue is disappeared - if all liberal politicians shut up about defending trans people and let them be discriminated against; if all liberal politicians suddenly were all in favor of ignoring our treaty obligations re: refugees; if they adopted the 'permanent defensive crouch' that democrats have been accused of;
Then it would be something else.
I've read Homage to Catalonia and some history on the Spanish Civil War - don't rely on single sources for anything if at all possible - and the primary lesson I took is not to rely on Russians for your supplies. They'll impose their ideology and cut you off in a heartbeat if you deviate. rumpT apparently learned that lesson and is slavishly following it.
Pappenheimer
*there's good evidence that there have always been female soldiers, as well, but I'll leave that argument to Terry Pratchett and his 'Monstrous Regiment'. Mulan was a legend, but she certainly had real-life sisters in battle.
P.S. confused about the trans league option - would that be trans women and men in the same league, like the admirable Special Olympics includes all? Because I've been to a Special Olympics, good time had by all, but it's more about participation than winning.
P.P.S. Mrs. Pappenheimer and I had an argument over whether the Marvel Loki should be an Official Disney Princess, and she convinced me that he qualified, but I stated that Disney Inc. would let itself be carpet-bombed before he gets added to the list.
onward
onward
" confused about the trans league option - would that be trans women and men in the same league, like the admirable Special Olympics includes all?"
What is NOT confusing is the Left cult's long, long refusal to hold CONFERENCES to let a very wide array of experts and stakeholders actually contemplate facts and compare conflicting needs and NEGOTIATE pragmatic, positive sum ways to move forward, in stages that retain public support.
Go on. Show me one. One such negotiation and exploration meeting. Ever. Instead we have sanctimony yowlers suddenly DECLARING what must be the party line re pronouns or trans or immigration and denouuncing anyone who demurs.
" the primary lesson I took is not to rely on Russians for your supplies"
That conclusion, in the face of internecine relentless betrayals and ambushes and backstabbings among the Spanish left is utter proof that you have NOT read HOMAGE and you are lying about having done so.
Again, the Lefties (NOT Bernie & AOC types but the DEI howlers) absolutely refuse ever ever ever to actually interview the constituencies they drove out of the party. You haven't. They haven't. They won't.
"If the issue is disappeared - if all liberal politicians shut up about defending trans people and let them be discriminated against; if all liberal politicians suddenly were all in favor of ignoring our treaty obligations re: refugees; if they adopted the 'permanent defensive crouch'..."
go to heck! Seriously? You respond by painting critics as evil betrayers of all progress, a despicable lie! What I ask is that you notice that your damned TACTICS have led to Trumpism. The Putin tactic of driving refugees across borders WORKS and the result has been elimination of the liberal movement's power to do good. And do good for refugees!
YOURS is the movement hurting refugees. All the Trumpian horrors being committed right now upon immigrants would not have happened if Harris had won. And she lost because of you.
I know it's past the "onward", but I don't want to start the next thread by carrying an argument over. I'm not half-finished, though.
Dr Brin:
JESUS! Even your sentence makes it distilled and clear. NARROW the coalition! Drive away potential allies!
No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that either way has consequences--that seeming cozy with Republicans drives voters away too, just as seeming cozy with leftists does. And that many who were vocal about their disapproval for Biden and then for Harris--the Michigan Arabs, the Teamsters union, the black and Latino men--were NOT motivated by the Dem candidate being too far to the left. Quite the opposite. They thought Trump would be better for Palestinians, for working men, for minorities.
.The fact that you are actually, actually unable to see how Kamala (who would've been a fine president) was betrayed by DEI shriekers is appalling to me.
I do see that. I disagree with your implication that those lefty shriekers had oversized influence on the campaign itself. That was my point about Liz Cheney and such. Not that Kamala shouldn't have courted never-Trump Republicans, but that she did do that. I didn't see the actual campaign--not the after the fact one in your head--kowtowing to the left.
But the fact that you fanatics won't even bother to ASK the Democratic constituencies who abandoned us in the election what drove them away?
What "ask"? They've told us in their own words. Black men and Latinos liked Trump's swagger, and they didn't like being told to say "Latinx" (which neither Biden or Kamala ever did). Arabs in Michigan blamed Biden for enabling Netanyahu in Gaza and in some ridiculous fantasy world thought Trump would treat the Palestinians better. And yes, many people like yourself and Bill Maher are so maddened by the extreme rhetoric of the far left that they gladly cut off their entire head to spite that leftist nose.
I get that you're frustrated that I don't seem to get your points. You also don't seem to get mine, which are:
1) No matter how badly the leftist shriekers hurt us, it was NOT because the actual campaign was overly influenced by them. They were bomb-throwers at an otherwise peaceful protest, and you're blaming the actual protest.
2) Even if the leftist shriekers could somehow be contained, right-wing media would simply invent them and Trump supporters would do the shrieking, pretending to be leftists. The result would be identical.
Now, I'm...whatayacall...half finished.
onward
onward
"No matter how badly the leftist shriekers hurt us, it was NOT because the actual campaign was overly influenced by them. They were bomb-throwers at an otherwise peaceful protest, and you're blaming the actual protest."
Utter self-justifying baloney. Your reflexive dislike of Maher prevents you from looking past his putz-snarkiness to the fact that 98% of his crits of lefty TACTICS are absolutely correct. They are masturbations to sanctimony by splitters who trashed the last vestiges of the FDR coalition for the sake of purity jizz...
...and "Black men and Latinos liked Trump's swagger, and they didn't like being told to say "Latinx" " is so horrifically and horrifyingly patronizing that you NOW perfectly illustrate why they left. It is because of that. It is because of you.
I won't be back here.
onward
onward
I won't be back here.
Well, neither will Der Oger because someone drove away an ally out of sanctimony. It wasn't me who did that.
At the time, I posted an actual letter from an actual Latino man to the Chicago Tribune explaining his reasons for supporting Trump, and one of them was literally, "Don't tell me to say 'Latinx'. Stop trying to change our culture." So when you tell me that I'm just making that shit up, it's water off a duck's back. I believe my lying eyes.
I should bite my tongue and stop mentioning Maher because that drives you bat-shit, but other than the personal reference, the insults you keep hurling back at me have nothing to do with what I said in the first place. It is not "Utter self-justifying baloney" that the Biden administration brought inflation (including egg and gas prices) and unemployment back down and that he stood with unions on picket lines and that the Biden and Harris campaigns addressed helping people deal with the cost of living more than they ever mentioned lefty sanctimony like Latinx or trans women in sports. It is not "Utter self-justifying baloney," that the Michigan Arabs and the Teamsters and the black and Latino men who supported Trump were not abandoning Biden and Harris on account of Democratic positions too far left.
And it didn't matter, because the type of voter who proclaims, "Now we can say 'retard' again!" wasn't going to come over to the Democrats under any circumstances. They were not allies that any of us drove away.
OMG, the Latino Chicago man supports MY position, not yours. He didn't leave the Democratic coalition because he wanted a 'macho man.' He left because he felt bullied and abused and patronized by Lefty eirdos howling about pronouns and telling HIM what he should be called.
You 2nd para is also nonsense. I fought for Biden and Pelosi and the real Democrats. And hell yes Biden and Harris did tremendous things for America and Americans, as did Pelosi... and all of them savaged by our side's sanctimony junkies.
Ilaughed at the 'bat shit' line. You guys are unable to even begin to actually LISTEN to Maher who is the voice of a majority of actual democrats who share your strategic GOALS, but deem lefty POLITICAL TACTICS to have been utter garbage, shattering the coalition and what should have been an easy win.
And yes, it doesn't help that Mahaer is s smug, snarky asshole. He's still RIGHT about all that. Especially the inability of the Left to even ask questions like 'how did we fuck up so badly?' and maybe I should ASK women athletes about this trans thing and maybe ASK Litinos and Blacks why they deserted?'
No. Not ever. Ever.
And if you are defending the way Der Oger attacked me and my character personally, in utter-lying terms? Then you can get bent too.
onward
OMG, the Latino Chicago man supports MY position, not yours. He didn't leave the Democratic coalition because he wanted a 'macho man.' He left because he felt bullied and abused and patronized by Lefty eirdos howling about pronouns and telling HIM what he should be called.
Uh..., your position was:
...and "Black men and Latinos liked Trump's swagger, and they didn't like being told to say "Latinx" " is so horrifically and horrifyingly patronizing that you NOW perfectly illustrate why they left. It is because of that. It is because of you.
Do you at least see why I'm confused what our argument is about?
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