While I strive to finish my own book on Artificial Intelligence - filling in what I consider to be about fifty perceptual gaps in current discussions,* I try to keep up with what's being said in a fast-changing landscape and ideascape. Take this widely bruited essay by Niall Ferguson in The Times, which begins with a nod to science fiction...
...asserting that ONLY my esteemed colleague, the brilliant Neal Stephenson, could possibly have peered ahead to see aspects of this era... despite there having been dozens of thoughtful or prophetic SF tales before Snow Crash (1992) and some pretty good ones after.
Not so much cyberpunk, which only occasionally tried for tech-accurate forecasting, instead of noir-inspired cynicism chic, substituting in Wintermute AI for the Illuminati or Mafia or SPECTRE....
... No, I'm thinking more of Stephenson and Greg Bear and Nancy Kress... and yeah, my own Earth (1990) and later Existence (2013), which speculated on not just one kind of AI, but dozens....
... as I will in my coming book, tentatively titled: Our Latest Children - Advice about – and for – our natural, AI and hybrid heirs.
*(especially gaps missed by the geniuses who are now making these systems.)
Anyway, here's one excerpt from Existence dealing with the topic. And ain't it a WAIST?
== WAIST ==
Wow, ain’t it strange that—boffins have been predicting that truly humanlike artificial intelligence oughta be “just a couple of decades away…” for eighty years already?
Some said AI would emerge from raw access to vast numbers of facts. That happened a few months after the Internet went public.
But ai never showed up.
Others looked for a network that finally had as many interconnections as a human brain, a milestone we saw passed in the teens, when some of the crimivirals—say the Ragnarok worm or the Tornado botnet—infested-hijacked enough homes and fones to constitute the world’s biggest distributed computer, far surpassing the greatest “supercomps” and even the number of synapses in your own skull!
Yet, still, ai waited.
How many other paths were tried? How about modeling a human brain in software?
Or modeling one in hardware.
Evolve one, in the great Darwinarium experiment!
Or try guiding evolution, altering computers and programs the way we did sheep and dogs, by letting only those reproduce that have traits we like—say, those that pass a Turing test, by seeming human.
Or the ones swarming the streets and homes and virts of Tokyo, selected to exude incredible cuteness?
Others, in a kind of mystical faith that was backed up by mathematics and hothouse physics, figured that a few hundred quantum processors, tuned just right, could connect with their counterparts in an infinite number of parallel worlds, and just-like-that, something marvelous and God-like would pop into being.
The one thing no one expected was for it to happen by accident, arising from a high school science fair experiment.
I mean, wow ain’t it strange that a half-brilliant tweak by sixteen-year-old Marguerita deSilva leaped past the accomplishments of every major laboratory, by uploading into cyberspace a perfect duplicate of the little mind, personality, and instincts of her pet rat, Porfirio?
And wow ain’t it strange that Porfirio proliferated, grabbing resources and expanding, in patterns and spirals that remain—to this day—so deeply and quintessentially ratlike?
Not evil, all-consuming, or even predatory—thank heavens. But insistent.
And Wow, AIST there is a worldwide betting pool, now totaling up to a billion Brazilian reals—over whether Marguerita will end up bankrupt, from all the lawsuits over lost data and computer cycles that have been gobbled up by Porfirio? Or else, if she’ll become the world’s richest person—because so many newer ais are based upon her patents? Or maybe because she alone seems to retain any sort of influence over Porfirio, luring his feral, brilliant attention into virtlayers and corners of the Worldspace where he can do little harm? So far.
And WAIST we are down to this? Propitiating a virtual Rat God—(you see, Porfirio, I remembered to capitalize your name, this time)—so that he’ll be patient and leave us alone. That is, until humans fully succeed where Viktor Frankenstein calamitously failed?
To duplicate the deSilva Result and provide her creation with a mate.
A few ideas distilled down in that excerpt? There are others.
But heck, have you seen that novel’s dramatic and fun 3-minute trailer? All hand-made art from the great Patrick Farley!
And while we’re on the topic: Here I read (aloud of course) chapter two of Existence, consisting of the stand alone story “Aficionado.”
BTW, in EXISTENCE I refer to the US Space Force. Not my biggest prediction, but another hit.
Now... off to the World SciFi Convention...
84 comments:
A virtual rat, fascinating. Possibly safer than a blue jay? Consider an app that can leverage underused neural processors in a few 100K smartphones, possibly one critical breakthrough in knowledge of neural architecture away.
Heh. I remember the rat. I didn't remember the betting pool.
2013 was a rough year for me. Guess I should re-read the book. 8)
I read it in hardcover back in 2012. And I almost never buy fiction in hardcover. My wife and I were both very hungry for new Brin works at the time.
My in-laws celebrated their 50th anniversary that year, and they took the whole family on an Alaska cruise. Space is at a premium when traveling on a cruise ship, and that hardcover book took up a lot of valuable space in my backpack. But there it was anyway.
Cyberpunk isn't dead. In some parts, it is a warning. In some parts, it is the description of a future already coming into effects, or approaching fast.
Let's look at individual elements.
Megacorporations: The usual trope is that Corporations like Tessier-Ashpoole or Arasaka or Omni Consumer Products become states in their own right, with nation-states crumbling or already have been dissolved. In our real-life variant, they have become entwined with government, either through privatization and outsourcing of government responsibilities and power, or through corruption, transforming political representation effectively into shares. Deus Ex also foreshadowed much, the instruments of the War On Terror being used to give power to a shadowy cabal of billionaires in a powerless, fracturing US (and them in the end betraying and killing each other).
Transhumanism: We are already advancing in that regard. We already have the backlash against certain forms, like transsexuality and self-determination in that regard, foreshadowed in Deus Ex Mankind Divided. While Neuralink will be mostly nothing more than a grift, there are a lot of honorable projects underway. The merger of man and machine is in this category, too. Advancement in AI and Robotics will, in a few years, consolidate the power of the haves over the havenots. For a time.
Also, eugenics have been resurrected, which is also in this field.
Environmental Destruction: We don't have to discuss what will happen, and is already underway, or? Plus, in a world that has become sociopathic, you expect that people who plug the cable from the ventilation machines for monetary reasons care for cleaning up air, earth and water?
Film Noir Cynicism: With guys like Harry Lime running the government (or Jarrod Steele, or Bob Page, or Aldon Tyrell), the cynicism aspect is justified. Film Noir, as an atmospheric tool, forces you to walk through muddy waters in a foggy night, and that captures exactly the tone of the current society. The next horror, the next shocking relevation could be just behind the next corner. Also, it often has stark contrasts: Here, the palaces of the wealthy, there the slums of the rest. Here, a sterile corporate environment bereft of any individuality, there, the neon-lit chaos of streets crowded with anyone and anything imaginable.
Babylonic streets. Which are itself are a play on nationalism and xenophobia. Streets full of violence.
High Tech, Low Life. The concept that out of the refuse, defiant people will rise and fight the system on a David-Vs.-Goliath basis (very well used in the character of Adam Smasher, who isn't just a hulking, nearly undefeatable giant of a brute, a true cybernetic ogre, but also the symbol for Arasaka's might), using the tools their oppressors made.
I am quite skeptical of this last part, because, you need people who are willing and able to do that; I don't think that slums produce enough kids who can code or disarm highly sophisticated surveillance systems, and are not cowed by the authoritarian violence neofeudalists are able to exert. (The majority of characters with a protagonist role or created as a player character I have seen once was a player in the system, part of the oppression, and then turns his former employers for a variety of reasons, using what they tought and gave him. Not the kid from the gutter.)
And if a rebellion of slum child soldiers, hardened to death and misery before they turned ten, led by unscrupulous war lords, succeeds? How would that world look like then?
Putin will flatter Two Scoops, of course. But with no credible US witnesses, he will also threaten and control and give marching orders to his puppet.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/08/15/putin-trump-kgb-charm-summit/?
Re: Putin puffing/owning rumpT at summit,
I would use the words, "easy as taking candy from a baby," except that I have tried to take candy from a baby.
Pappenheimer
Even the Fox News reporter is of the same opinion...
Trump waiting for Putin on the airstrip reminded me of the dog greeting me when coming home.*
*Apologies to the dog for making this comparison. Unlike Trump, he's currently stretched out on his cushion, enjoying the Winter sunshine.
A good name for a tv game show:
"No Deal Until There's A Deal"
https://www.threads.com/@stonekettle
The only way Putin could have owned Trump any harder is if he'd shown up wearing a Я с тупым T-shirt
If you don't want to bother with Google Translate, that's "I'm with Stupid."
That said--and please educate me where I'm wrong--aside from Putin scoring some diplomatic points by being greeted by the current occupant of the White House on US soil--I don't see how this meeting was anything other than a big nothingburger. Even if they had agreed to divide up Ukraine, they don't have the power to do so without Ukraine's agreement and Europe's backing. Maybe Trump could have agreed to lift sanctions or allow Russia back into the G7/G8, but that didn't happen either.
To me, this was "Al Capone's Vaults" but even stupider.
https://bsky.app/profile/rudepundit.bsky.social
Trump's repetition of "Russia Russia Russia" is one of the most goddamned embarrassing things any American president has done. It's dumb as shit and infantile.
That said, Trump's "thing" is to insist on using the same dumb phrase to describe the same person/place/thing over and over again. "Crooked Hillary", "Little Marco", etc. Once he gloms onto a phrase like that, he never calls that thing anything else.
"Russia, Russia, Russia," is only a little dumber than the time during his first term where he wanted a budget bill to be named the "Cut, Cut, Cut! Act". This current congress would have done it, too.
For those who don't already know, "Russia, Russia, Russia," has to be a backhanded reference to a famous outburst from The Brady Bunch in which one of the other girls, sick of always being compared to her sister, screams out "Oh, Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!"
I was never a Brady Bunch fan, so it was only Trump's use of that phrase that got me thinking about the original. See, there's an episode of the Adam West Batman in which the villainess, played by Carolyn Jones of Adams Family fame, is The Queen of Diamonds. Only they also gave her a human name--unusual for the villains in that series--so she was Marsha, the Queen of Diamonds. And I was sure that the reason they gave her the name Marsha was specifically so that Batman could emote, "Marsha!...Marsha!...Marsha!" while falling under the effects of her chemical hypnosis. And he did actually say that.
A sneaky nod to the Brady Bunch? Had to be, right?
Only I just looked up the timeline. Batman aired between 1966 and 1968. The Brady Bunch didn't start until 1969, and the episode in question ran in 1971. So unless time travel was involved, Batman had the line first.
Some things just have to be true, and yet they aren't.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2025/Items/Aug15-8.html
...
For most of his career, [Judge Learned] Hand was well known to judicial branch and Washington insiders, but not to the general public. That changed on May 21, 1944, during New York City's celebration of "I Am an American Day." He agreed to deliver a brief speech to over 1 million people in Central Park, many of them newly anointed American citizens. Here's the text of the address:
We have gathered here to affirm a faith, a faith in a common purpose, a common conviction, a common devotion. Some of us have chosen America as the land of our adoption; the rest have come from those who did the same. For this reason we have some right to consider ourselves a picked group, a group of those who had the courage to break from the past and brave the dangers and the loneliness of a strange land. What was the object that nerved us, or those who went before us, to this choice? We sought liberty; freedoms from oppression, freedom from want, freedom to be ourselves. This we then sought; this we now believe that we are by way of winning. What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few; as we have learned to our sorrow.
What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned but never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest. And now in that spirit, that spirit of an America which has never been, and which may never be; nay, which never will be except as the conscience and courage of Americans create it; yet in the spirit of that America which lies hidden in some form in the aspirations of us all; in the spirit of that America for which our young men are at this moment fighting and dying; in that spirit of liberty and of America I ask you to rise and with me pledge our faith in the glorious destiny of our beloved country.
The address absolutely caught fire—went viral, if we may use modern parlance—and was widely reprinted. It made Hand into a celebrity overnight, and he remained so for the remainder of his life (he died in 1961).
Hand and his audience were, of course, watching events unfold in Europe and Asia. And what he decided is that, for America to be America, we must embrace immigrants. We must be vigilant about leaders who would deprive citizens of their freedom. We must think critically, and be empathetic when it comes to other people. And (in a clear allusion to the Gettysburg address), we must do these things to honor the sacrifices of those who were fighting and dying on the other side of the world. And the million people in his audience that day, and the tens of millions more who read his words in print, thought he was onto something. It's remarkable how relevant his words seem today, 80 years after he first delivered them.
Inspiring.
The repeated reference to men and women is lovely.
Larry,
Does it occur to you that Trump's repetition of "Russia Russia Russia" has worked.
Maybe it IS 'dumb as shit and infantile', but doesn't that characterise his base? The Right-wing media in the US now use the phrase as a shield, to deflect any suggestion of Russian influence over President Trump.
...A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few...
Yep.
Kinda reminds me of something sketched out by our host in his Transparency book. When I want a thing for me but not for someone else, I have to resort to measures that violate liberty. In the book it is all about cameras and the knowledge we gain from them. I want to see what others are planning to do... or admitting they've already done. I don't want others to spy upon me doing the same. Won't work... unless I'm willing to engage in savagery.
The rules by which we live HAVE to be agnostic as to who applies them to whom. That means we have to be willing to check ourselves. Many ARE willing, so the challenge becomes engaging us to check those who are unwilling without creating the monster we'd prefer was never born.
Greetings all from the World Sci Fi Convention in Chicago.
Does it occur to you that Trump's repetition of "Russia Russia Russia" has worked.
Yes, for the same reason that "The Emperor's New Clothes" worked.
I might have bought tickets if I had known.
Timothy Snyder referred to this "liberty in your heart" as "A Habit of Freedom". He said, because he was free in his mind and soul, Zelensky could not desert his place when Russia attacked. Had he done so, he would have proven that he is not free, being chained by fears of the oppressor.
That is the task. Try to find out (isn't that hard) what or whom tyrants want you to fear, don't back but double down. To be ready for it when you get there is the difficult thing.
Speaking of scifi, I predict that the Edith Keeler meme will blossom. It resonates with the right age group (late baby boom).
Yep, Edith Keeler is the exact metaphor for "Democrats must be against gerrymandering, no matter how much Republicans win by using it."
osajh:
...Trump's repetition of "Russia Russia Russia" has worked.
Oger:
Try to find out (isn't that hard) what or whom tyrants want you to fear, don't back but double down.
These two assertions resonate.
DJT's juvenile taunts work because while anyone else in a public position of responsibility would be ashamed to say the ridiculous things that he repeats ad nauseum, he himself has no shame and presents a facade of acceptability. Essentially, he bulls (or bullies) his way through and gives the impression that what he's saying fits into the accepted norms of debate, and gets others to go along through sheer force of personality.
At my old house, there was a neighborhood cat--a pet but he was allowed to roam--who operated in that manner. He acted so confidently as if he belonged in our yard or even inside of our house that our own pet cats just accepted that he must know what he's doing. Von Schitzenpantz* does the same thing when he repeats tropes like "Russia, Russia, Russia" or insists that the 2020 election was "stollen".
There's also an element of "calling a donkey a horse" at work with his supporters--that assertion of facts (election stolen) or terms "Russia, Russia, Russia" is a matter of signaling that you're on Team Trump. The truth or the stupidity or the plausibility of the phrases is completely irrelevant. What's important is that you display the team colors, so to speak.
"The Emperor's New Clothes" wasn't just about the scammers pretending they could see colors and fabrics. It was also their confident assertion that only people of low sophistication would fail to see what they saw--so that no one was inclined to admit seeing no clothing, and in 1984 style, many likely convinced themselves that they saw what everyone else was claiming to see. Only the small child who was too naive to understand the social pressure was free to invoke hard reality as the final arbiter of truth.
Invoking reality instead of groupthink (collective solipsism) is our job now.
As Hal Sparks puts it, "Trump has no shame, but he can be embarrassed."
Gavin Newsom tweeting in Trump's own style makes obvious to even the most obtuse that the style itself is ridiculously absurd. I'm not entirely sure that the pundits who tsk-tsk that Newsom's posts aren't appropriate for a sitting governor are really that naive, or if they're purposely playing to the joke. I hope the latter, but I doubt it.
Forgot about the asterisk.
* I love the fact that autocorrect not only accepts "Von Schitzenpantz" as an actual word, but notifies me when I've "misspelled" it.
The current craze is 'Vibe Coding' where Dunning-Kruger meets GenAI and script kiddies suddenly believe they're Master Programmers. It begs me to talk about FORTH and WJCC, but the room empties whenever I start doing that. So I'll just leave this here:
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."
- Richard Feynman
That is, his audience can be embarrassed.
I am brainstorming and making up names for sci fi religions for my Spaceport on the Border series and came up with...
Revangicals.
I can't be the first.
Channeling Clarke's '3001: a Final Oddyssey' (yes, he did)... "Hey, GenAI, write a Mandelbrot generation program."
(Hey, it worked on the Monolith!)
Oh, I'm not claiming that GenAI doesn't enable plebes to solve big problems. I'm saying that a sorcerer's apprentice shouldn't guide Humanity. That way lies enshittification.
"It's clever, but is it Art?"
- Rudyard Kipling
Mel Brooks knew the manner in which Putin wants peace:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VM6E4UAJ30
Oger,
I completely agree. I look for that during election cycles when paid ads aim to have me fear something. When I see them I feel like someone is inserting a ring in my nose so they can yank me around. Pisses me off.
Sorcerer Apprentices. We will be up to our eyeballs is animated broomsticks.
I deal with IT security at work. If I know the code got built by such apprentices, I move to uninstall it. There is nothing quite like motivated humans for finding security gaps and I don't believe for a moment the AI's get us well enough to foresee our tricks.
@Tony Fisk,
His audience too, although his base is even harder to embarrass than he is, because they apply no critical thinking to his utterances and simply accept them as Revelation from on high.
No, the sense of Hal Sparks's assertion is that while Trump has no shame--that is, he doesn't feel guilt or remorse or any personal debt upon his soul for any ridiculous and/or harmful assertion he makes, he can be embarrassed when he is made to look ridiculous. For example, President Obama embarrassed him at the correspondents' dinner. He hates being laughed at more than anything.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/08/18/us/trump-news#trump-mail-ballots-voting-machines-election
...
Mr. Trump has long opposed mail-in voting and falsely claimed it was a source of fraud during the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Trump has maintained his opposition even after Republicans in the 2024 election made significant gains in mail voting when the party encouraged its supporters to make use of the practice.
Writing on Truth Social on Monday, Mr. Trump said: “THE MAIL-IN BALLOT HOAX, USING VOTING MACHINES THAT ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER, MUST END, NOW!!!”
...
I know this is a rhetorical question, but has Von Schitzenpantz thought this crusade through? I mean, in the instances that voting machines have been rigged, it is always by and to the benefit of Republicans. Seems to me this outburst makes as little sense as would Trump actually insisting that Texas and Florida stop gerrymandering.
Mr. Trump also wrote that he wanted to get rid of voting machines, which he described as inaccurate and expensive. He claimed, incorrectly, that the United States was “the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting.”
It's been subsequently pointed out that many countries, Russia included, use mail-in voting. The example of Russia might well be why he thinks voting machines are necessarily rigged.
Doesn’t matter much. People can mess with ballots in many ways. Stopping mail ins is mostly about reducing the number of participants.
Some of these Shoggoths can design electronic circuits from a prompt. I've seen several. They range from silly to dangerous to horrifying. Floating inputs, wrong component specs and even types, inexplicable sections, etc. It's as if they were designed by probability tokenization instead of actual understanding. Oh wait...
https://www.threads.com/@stonekettle
More than anything else, the Founders feared Americans would elect someone like Trump and they wrote and ratified the Constitution SPECIFICALLY to restrict the power of presidents for exactly that reason.
True, though sadly so.
With Putin advising Trump to do away with mail-in ballots, I suppose it's no longer a conspiracy theory that Russia is interfering with US elections?
Wonder whats in the letter Olena Selenskaja wrote for Melania Krasnova, excuse me, Trump.
Any guesses?
Well... yah. I was taught that as a HS senior. We had different example tyrants back then, but the US has provided a pretty steady supply for a variety of elected offices. Some even got shot for it in the end.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2025/Items/Aug19-5.html
...
As a post-script, a few years ago, Austria passed a law that granted citizenship to descendants of persons forced to leave, or were prevented from returning to Austria because of fascist persecution. I applied for and was granted citizenship, including an Austrian passport. At the time, I did it mostly to vindicate my family's memory (all four of those immigrants had passed away by then), and to give the finger to the Nazis after over 80 years. But with the creeping rise of fascism here, I am also comforted that I can leave for the E.U. should the U.S. heirs to the Brownshirts start marching again (my wife and son also have E.U. citizenship through my Irish mother-in-law). It would be a terrible, bitter irony if the three generations before me were saved from Austrian fascism by the United States only to have me saved from American fascism by Austria.
Would that it were otherwise.
Some even got shot for it in the end.
Some even got shot for it in the ear*.
* And by "shot", I mean "splattered with someone else's blood."
Austria isn't exactly free of fascism, as no one in Europe is (the last government was formed with what is left of democratic forces), but yes, it still stands. Ireland has a lower living standard, but for safety, I'd probably go there. As far as I know, politics are far less dirty over there. If you haven't already, google "Ibiza Affair".
Also, the new brownshirt permutation focuses on Muslims, not Jews, and sees Israel as an ally and example. Mostly.
Austria isn't exactly free of fascism, ...
I think the article author's point was that once you've got an "in" to the EU, you can stay anywhere in the region. What happens in Austria doesn't have to stay in Austria.
Closest exoplanet system gets more interesting with the possible discovery of a gas giant within Alpha Centauri A's habitable zone. Also, it's a fairly stable system, not at all like the scary fictional Trisolaran system.
https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/evidence-found-for-planet-around-closest-sun-like-star
The announcement comes just in time for the next instalment of 'Avatar'.
What is the betting this planet (if confirmed) is dubbed 'Polyphemus'?
Habitable moons would be a good TASAT challenge. A short list:
Pandora (Avatar)
Endor (Star Wars)
LV-426 (Alien)
Anarres (Dispossessed)
Titan (Marvel Comics)
Isaac Asimov's novel Nemesis gets around the problem of a habitable planet orbiting a red giant. The problem being that any planet close enough to the star for warmth would have to be tidally locked like Mercury, so there would be a permanent day side and a permanent night side.
His solution was that it was a Jupiter-like giant planet orbiting the star, and a habitable moon orbiting the planet. The giant planet was tidally locked, but the moon was not.
my grasp of orbital mechanics is limited, but aren't most moons of Jovians tidally locked to their gas giant? If that's the case, the moon would see a day/night progression (a lunar orbit-long cycle) affected by extremely regular full or partial eclipse by the Jovian itself, rather than a normal diurnal cycle.
Pappenheimer, who read a book about stuff like this once. Memory retrieved - "What if the Earth had 2 moons?". It also includes other scenarios, some of them pretty horrifying.
I'm no expert on orbital mechanics either, but I think the point was that the moon would have some kind of day/night cycle to circulate temperature patterns rather than a static hot side and cold side.
A moon tidally locked to a jovian near a red dwarf would not just get eclipses. One hemisphere would get night from eclipses and the other would not see the Jovian at all but would see the sun rise and set across a 'day' equal to the orbital period.
yep, the author provided the different illumination cycles of the 2 sides and suggested that each side would develop different flora and fauna, even possibly different sentient species. Quite an SF hook.
Pappenheimer
Still can't believe no one is pushing the video and lyrics... and lesson of John Fogerty's song Vanz Can't Dance... about the eponymous thieving pig who stole Fogerty's fortune.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjpAYfCFmJ4
I just realized that the gerrymandering wars between Texas and California is what the first "shots" of a new Civil War look like.
The next shots might be when red states send their national guard into blue states they way they are doing in DC.
I think it is exactly what they plan: to create a situation in which somewhere, someone delivers a pretext for a self-coup.
I am somewhat surprised that with all that tension and guns available, it has not already happened.
And if they follow the playbook, they will soon try to criminally charge Newsom and other prominent Democrats with made up accusations.
(The new media strategy Newsom uses is in a way brilliant. Provocative , but the rights way forward. I wished our Greens or The Left would copy it.)
"There are some parts of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade."
They will try anyway, using National Guardsmen as sacrificial pawns to justify even harder measures.
The monetary judgement was reversed, but the corporate governance ban is still on the books. Most importantly, the judgement against Trump still stands. Second to that, the Judge's opening ruling that Trump was guilty of fraud wasn't overturned.
I suspect the shots will be fired in court if CA decides to alter our maps. Ours will be challenged in court in a way that drags on past election dates thus undermining the validity of our election. The next Congress can then legally decline to seat the CA delegation and THAT isn't so easily challenged short of shooting people.
The next Congress can then legally decline to seat the CA delegation...
There is no "next Congress" until they're seated in January. And the choice of speaker would likely be quite different with or without the California delegation's votes. So who would "legally" decline to seat them? The speaker they vote for or the speaker who is elected without their votes? The chicken or the egg?
Sounds like extra-Constitutional territory to me.
* * *
Your objection to Newsom fighting fire with fire is reminding me of the Roberts court assertion that the remedy for gerrymandering was at the ballot box.
* * *
Suppose you are right and the entire delegation from your state was refused representation in Congress. How would you respond? I mean, at what point is it no longer a question of whether or not to secede and is one of having been expelled? I'd expect something that begins with "When in the course of human events...".
The next Congress can then legally decline to seat the CA delegation...
I'm sorry, but this bugs the crap out of me. In states like Alabama and Georgia, when a court finds that a map violates the law or the state constitution, Republicans get to say, "Sorry, we've dragged this out so long that it's too late to redraw the maps. This next election, we're stuck with the ones we've got."
So why is it the case that if a Democratic map is being challenged in court past the election, then the election doesn't count? Why are only Republicans allowed to run out the clock and win, whichever side of the argument they're on.
Meanwhile, the Southern Florida District Court has ruled that the Alcatraz is to be let slide into the swamp within 60 days.
Hey, in other news, James Dobson's dead.
Donne wrote that "every man's death diminishes me" but in some cases, it's at worst a wash. He's the guy who recommended beating your kids for God.
Pappenheimer
Dobson had better hope there really is no afterlife, because otherwise, I think he'll be surprised at where he wakes up.
Pale Death beats equally at the poor man's gate and at the palaces of kings.
- Horace
John Bolton's Home raided by FBI.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/22/politics/john-bolton-fbi-search
Also this:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62wjjpxdq0o
A rainbow crosswalk honouring the victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Florida, Orlando, has been painted over by the state's department of transportation.
The crosswalk was part of a larger memorial to the 49 people who were killed after a gunman opened fire at the gay nightclub in June 2016, in what was then the largest mass shooting in US history.
...
Back when the Muslim terrorist shot up a gay bar, I wondered aloud which side the MAGAts would root for. I guess now we know.
https://www.threads.com/@stonekettle
...this administration has demonstrated a commitment to grossly illegal, unethical, and immoral behavior and if it has to happen to all of us, don't expect a whole lot of tears from me when those who willingly and enthusiastically paved the way for fascism get their comeuppance at the cold brutal hands of fascism.
No one deserves it more than John Bolton. He could have testified at Trump's impeachment, instead he had a book tour. Fuck him.
Not sure I'd go so far as to root for the Trump administration in this case, but I do see where Jim is coming from. There are only so many fucks to give.
In this particular case, foreboding over what the Trump justice department is capable of is what drives my angst, not sympathy for John Bolton.
I am with you, Larry. As much as I'd like to see him in prison, he deserves due process and a fair trial.
Over at Bulwark, they commented that this would be Trumps preferred method: Testing the waters with non-sympathetic people and gradually increasing the circles.
When it comes to court cases and seating a delegation, I'm asking you to think ahead. None of this is about what is legal or prior precedent. We ARE in conflict, so battles are fought for immediate advantage.
If they don't seat our delegation, that won't be cause for secession. That will be cause for guns.
As for the ballot box being the remedy... that's exactly what our Governor has to do to accomplish this. If the people decide to back him I don't have a leg to stand on. I think it is spectacularly dumb to do it this way, but they intend to put it on our ballot... and that should make it clear to impartial judges that the districts will be valid. If my horror scenario plays out (hope not) then it will be clear to the blue half of the nation why shots get fired.
None of this is about what is legal or prior precedent. We ARE in conflict, so battles are fought for immediate advantage.
If they don't seat our delegation, ...
I get both your passion and your willingness to think chess-moves ahead.
I do have a serious question, though. Who is the "they" who could refuse to seat a delegation when there is no new Congress until the seating takes place? Why, for instance couldn't "we" refuse to seat Texas at the same time? Is it a given that Republicans and only Republicans get to do whatever they want?
As for the ballot box being the remedy... that's exactly what our Governor has to do to accomplish this.
I agree. The difference between them and us is not that only one side gerrymanders. It's that only one side follows the law and accepted custom to do it. Also that only one side would voluntarily not do so if everyone is held to the same rules.
The "remedy at the ballot box" is legitimate in California's internal politics. When Roberts used the phrase, I think it was about Wisconsin, but would equally apply to Texas. He was mansplaining that if voters don't like their districts being gerrymandered to disenfranchise them, they should vote for change--exactly what the gerrymandering is designed to prevent.
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/RL30725
Tell me you don’t see a way for someone to ratf@ck this process that depends on officers from prior congress.
Hoping hurricane season is mild. ICE grabbed most FEMAs crisis shelters+trailers for illegal Swamp Alcatrazes. If FLA is hit hard, they may let current prisoners go with ankle bracelets and bus tickets, fine! We take care of Floridian refugees. Welcome to the swamp!
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/federal-judge-orders-closure-trump-020650576.html
Von Schitzenpantz wants to do away with mail-in voting because it makes it harder for Republicans to practice voter intimidation and suppression.
I don't get why he wants to do away with voting machines. When they actually have been rigged, it has been to help Republicans cheat. Like Elon Musk is saying out loud that he will do again in 2026.
Trumps preferred method: Testing the waters with non-sympathetic people
DJT might think that liberals and Democrats might be on board with harassing Bolton, or at the very least that we wouldn't know who to root for. The way he thought that he'd get support from us for firing James Comey.
Among Bolton's supposed sins, he was too much of a warmonger who salivated at bombing Iran.
This from the commander in chief who ordered the bombing of Iran and insisted took a victory lap for "total obliteration" of their nuclear capability.
In other news:
Yesterday, news broke that Police in Italy has arrested a 49yo Ukrainian man. He is allegedly responsible for planning and directing the Nordstream Explosion. Sources say he was a former intelligence officer and an entrepreneur or manager in the energy sector.
Our Federal Attorney General will ask for extradition and prepares to indict him in charges of Anticonstitutional Sabotage and Causing Explosion. At most, I believe he will face five years in prison (No persons injured).
I could even imagine he is released as a free man.
a way for someone to ratf@ck this process
Yes, the "officers from prior congress" is disturbing. I'm not sure that they would need California to redistrict in order to pull sh!t, though. In 2020, had the speaker been Republican, they would have refused to accept electoral votes from some states. This time around, they could alter the rules to Republican advantage, no matter what California done done or not done done*.
So while I take your point about considering what they might do, I don't see how voluntarily letting them cheat enough seats to actually control Congress is a better strategy than fighting fire with fire which might give them cause to find a way to control Congress anyway. You assert that refusal to seat California's delegation would be cause for guns (and I'd add gallows and guillotines). Armed resistance because of Texas's gerrymander allowing them actual control of Congress would be a harder sell. So if politics is a mug's game, at least let's make them work for their cheating.
* That's a "Li'l Abner" reference, a favorite of my late father's.
Hasn't Elon announced that he would found an own party? If so, he may rightfully fear him...and the allegations of tampering with the machines are true.
In the other hand, human vote-counters can be intimidated and replaced by MAGA loyalists, machines require more than that.
Elon recently backed off of that third party thing. I assume he realized it would hurt Republicans more than help them, the same way that RFK Jr fought to be on the ballot until he realized that doing so would hurt Trump, at which point he fought just as hard to remove his name from the ballot.
They're like that Monty Python sketch where a group of soldiers has to decide who goes on the suicide mission. "Dip dip dip. My little ship. Sails 'round the ocean, you are...no wait that's not right."
The first 20 or so minutes of this is Hal Sparks doing a "Mystery Science Theater 3000" narration of the crowd yelling epithets toward JD Vance and Pete Hegseth at the DC train station.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDcQrq2YhY4
Sorry I didn't announce earlier:
onward
onward
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