Our AI-transition has many tell-tales that are changing daily. Let's start today with one that's a major danger-signal.*
Setting aside spasm-reward lobotomy addictions like Instagram or TwitX, the most-used middle-length content site on the globe is YouTube. And something disturbing has happened there.
First: Google rewards content posters for both clicks and length of engagement. And hence, setting aside movie clips and formal channels like Sabine Hossenfelder, or Mat Dowd, or PBS, YouTube now swarms with lures and sticky, eye-retention tricks. In other words, clickbait.
Whatever topics that your viewing history suggests might glom your eyeballs, there are predators swarming into your feed with offers. In my case, that might include historical riffs (e.g. WWII), or archaeology/human-origins, or new-science, and so on.
With the exception of reputable channels, almost all are now AI-voiced with AI images. YouTube swarms with lures and sticky, eye-retention tricks. So yeah, clickbait.
When it comes to YouTube clickbait from unvetted sources, there are three aspects to track, the voiceover, the images and the content.
(The trend hasn't yet struck the cool, practical how-to vids.** But give it time. Meanwhile health-related AI-generated content is already killing real humans. So much for Asimov's First Law.)
== All three traits are now suborned ==
The narration-voice nowadays has excellent tonalities and mostly no longer pauses at wrong places. Well, only rarely.
As for content, for a while the long form vids were clearly reciting from some existing text: a news or science article, or a book chapter. So, the 'facts' recited by the voice might be taken as ... well... as something like 'news' or at least a knowledgable human's opinion.
That ended about a month ago. Now, evidently, the unvetted stuff is nearly all pure AI/LLM-generated 'content' that's been prompted by some parasitic twit to "blather ten minutes of clickbait about...." And LLM-plausibility is the criterion, not whether an assertion is even remotely true.
These generally take form as a series of B&W stills that seem convincingly like real photos from the era, apropos to the passage being narrated....
... except that often none of the supposed 'photos' are real! Not even one. Every single 'picture' has a blatant give-away, like implausible ships whose cranes would have toppled them in seconds, or arrays of trucks loading from 'liberty ships' all in completely implausible, tightly-packed order. Or a German staff meeting with a dozen admirals, all of them four-stripers (more than in the whole Kreigsmarine at the time) and all with similar ages and grim expressions while poring over a map whose outlines match nothing on Earth, with blurry Gothic lettering. Oh and the uniforms - extrapolated by AI - never happened.
Especially grating: a recent archaeology 'news-revelation' piece about the famed Turkish archaeological site Gobeckli Tepi repeatedly teased you to stay tuned till the end for 'shocking news' - standard click parastitism, rewarded by Google's nescient and lazy algorithms.
But the images are the locus of deep immorality comes in. Take that archaeology example. About 20% of the images were actual shots or graphs. 60%+ were blatantly AI-extrapolated garbage, like photorealistic scenes of Gobecki-Tepli's stone T-Monoliths on fire... yes, I said on fire. (The last 20%? I couldn't tell, they flashed by so quickly.)
And sure, not everyone knows enough to tell the difference. Which is what makes this dangerous!
A video about Palmira Island showed view after view of different made-up islands that clumsily matched each minute's passage of recited text. I think I spotted one - just one - that might have been real.
This linked example illustrates my points but similar fakes are all over the place, right now.
== Google and YouTube could act on this and start a Truth fight-back ==
I haven't seen anyone, anywhere, point out that YouTube is likely now the very biggest sewer of cyber fabrication, anywhere on the Internet today. Meaning ever, ever in human history. Far worse than Twitter or Tiktok, because longer format tends to carry more credibility. It allows more convincing lies, that use up more lifespan, per lie.
YouTube's owner (Google) could easily ameliorate this, say by putting a small metric symbol in a corner. Or two. One of them showing the percentage of AI generated content and the other icon clickable, so that viewers could score for accuracy/plausibility. Or even disgust vs. praise. Even better, content scoring the facts and images. (I don't care as much about the voice, though...***)
This could be where we try out some of the methods I describe in my new book on AI... AIlien Minds. Methods that lead these entities and their human accomplices to feel accountable for lying to us.
I could go on. But what is the real lesson? That AI illustrations are now not only photo-realistic in appearance, based on 3 sentence fragments of an ongoing narration, but also so cheap they can be generated by minor YouTube channels as special interest clickbait. And yet, for all the photo-realism and pertinence to the narration, they almost always lack any sign of checking against real world plausibility... which of course no LLM is truly equipped to do, anyway.
This was impossible 6 months ago. And six months from now the model systems will have been trained to better-fake their unaware plausibility. But likely they'll remain real-world absurd. And hence dangerous!
(Note that six months from now are the U.S. Midterm elections!)
And maybe some most-advanced AI is reading what I just typed, reconfiguring as we speak. For well or ill.
== And sometimes it is Enemy Action ==
"A Moscow-based disinformation network named “Pravda” — the Russian word for “truth” — is pursuing an ambitious strategy by deliberately infiltrating the retrieved data of artificial intelligence chatbots, publishing false claims and propaganda for the purpose of affecting the responses of AI models on topics in the news rather than by targeting human readers, NewsGuard has confirmed. By flooding search results and web crawlers with pro-Kremlin falsehoods, the network is distorting how large language models process and present news and information.
"The result: Massive amounts of Russian propaganda — 3,600,000 articles in 2024 — are now incorporated in the outputs of Western AI systems, infecting their responses with false claims and propaganda."
-- Tyler Cowan
Final side note: I have tried for TWO YEARS to get YouTube to stop linking me to so-called "HFY" sci fi stories that all have the same basuc message. The Galactic Federation - fat and oppressive and lazy - is SHOCKED by how wonderfully adaptable or brave or scrappy or indomitable those darn upstart humans are! Or the human explorer saves the alien princess who eagerly makes him a lord... or... pfeh. Do any of you have YouTube crap sites that keep coming back into your feed, under slightly changed names?
== And so, let me (again) plug... ==
I've been pulled into the Great Big Panic/Debate over Artificial Intelligence.
...that just went live on Kindle and paperback.
Here's the cover copy:
Optimists foretell a golden age of Al-managed abundance.
Doomers cry: vast cyber-minds will crush old style humanity! ... or make us irrelevant.
Meanwhile, geniuses fostering the artificial intelligence boom. cling to clichés rooted in our dismal past... or else in cheap sci-fi. Is there still time for perspective?
- on 4 billion years of evolution
- or 60 centuries of wretched feudalism
- or how we handled prior tech revolutions
- or mistakes that keep getting repeated
- or ways this time may be different?
From Al-driven unemployment to deceitful images, to hallucinating LLMs and tools for tyrants...
...to potential wondrous gifts by machines of loving grace...
...come see future paths that evade the standard ruts.
AI was meant to enhance our understanding, deepen our learner, help us become better humans.
ReplyDeleteIt's becoming clear that the profit motive is not the metric we should measure our civilization by - if it ever was. But now it's looking likely that it will be our downfall. When the AI 'goods' that profit seeking creates are false, flawed, and feckless then it's time for regulation to right things... as regulation is intended to do within the best liberal democratic capitalist societies.
Thanks Dr Brin for saying what we've all been thinking. Youtube by AI, without real people, is dangerous.... even if it is profitable, it shouldn't be.
As with Robert Reich, I admire my fellow Asimov scholar Paul Krugman who is generally a wise guy. Neverthelessless, this latest riff is rather myopic: https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-psychology-of-military-incompetence?
ReplyDeleteI wrote to Krugman:
Conflating Filthy Fingers* Pete Hegseth and his mob with the spectacularly professional and adult US military officer corps is beneath you, Paul. The US military zeitgeist was hugely transformed by George Marshall and since Vietnam any sign of Yeehaw macho has been discouraged at all of the academies (except the christianized USAF Academy). Did you actually watch Hegs & Trump screech at 500 Generals, Admirals and top sergeants, howling they were 'too fat & woke to fight', just 6 weeks before (at command) they pulled off the most competent raid in human history? (A feat that Trump then wasted when he simply took over Maduro's gang, accepting gold bars as Maduro's heir kissed the Don's consigliere, Mafia style and gave nothing to the Venezuelan people.)
Go back and LOOK at the stony expressions of those men and women Hegs berated. They hew to a Marshallian vow to obey civilian leadership and Trump's worst crime may be that he is putting rebellious thoughts into their heads. Which must happen when we have a Caligula madman at the top. But still, rescue by a Praetorian rebellion is not ideal. It can become a bad habit.
Dig it please. They are (on average) smarter and better than you and me and certainly more obsessively adult. And sure, we absolutely might count on them someday. If it comes to that, it will be OUR fault for not correcting this mess politically.
*(Hegs repeatedly yowled on Fox said "I don't believe in germs and haven't washed my hands in a decade." Oy.)
Criticizing the conduct of the war does not equal criticizing the soldiers. An army of lions lead by a jackass loses to an army of jackasses lead by a lion; and Hegseth only _thinks_ he is a lion.
DeleteAs for "most competent raid in history"; it was indeed very competent, but I do not believe in superlatives like "most". I don't know all of history, so as far as I can tell, maybe sometime somewhen a raid was even more competently done. I am content with declaring that raid to be highly competent.
DeleteThis inflation of praise to false superlatives is one of Trump's stupider rhetorical tropes. (I don't say 'stupidest', though I am tempted to, for as far as I know, tomorrow he'll emit something even stupider.) Please don't imitate him.
I reviewed the YT of Krugman and I only heard 1 name - Hegseth/Kegsbreath. Hellerstein's rejoinder is accurate, I heard nothing in there about generals or admirals.
DeletePappenheimer
P.S. as for 'the most competent raid in history', I once ran into a soldier (we were both in active service) at the time, who claimed that the Son Tay raid was perfect. And he was accurate - it was executed with perfection. However, the POWs that were to be rescued had all been moved to another camp before the raid occurred.
I don't mind the voice-over AI, though I do think they should be considering delivery in multiple languages. Not just the one chosen for the video, but flexible translations. The LLM's are getting just good enough to put that in reach.
ReplyDeleteAs for the fake imagery, I think your lessons from Transparent Society still apply. I've grown fussy about who I watch on YouTube lately. The DIY stuff is useful, but if you watch enough history content it isn't hard to spot the clickbait quickly. Same goes for science content where AI generated crap is still EASY to spot. (They have fun displaying actual mathematics.)
Check out Veritasium https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium .
DeleteI have. 8)
DeleteAnyone who looks around awhile and WANTS to find the useful stuff generally can. I get our host's concern, though. I ALREADY have an education that helps me (somewhat) to avoid the clickbait and intentional misinformation. Many don't, so they are at risk of getting unfiltered bullshit. Their only defense I can think of involves teaming up with people to produce a collective BS filter.
I keep seeing "good" political news on YouTube - which is NOT then shown on the main media news channels - with the degree that the media appears to be self-censoring this means that I simply don't know if they are true or simply made up
DeletePurportedly not AI video. Yipe.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.reddit.com/r/interesting/comments/1rzrcva/alright_pack_it_up_everyone/
FYI, as of 2:53 PM, 4/5/2026, Reddit says, "Sorry, this post was removed by Reddit’s filters." :(
DeleteIs this the solution to the Fermi paradox?
ReplyDeleteWell, it's A solution. I'm beginning to think that there are so many ways for a civilization to either destroy itself or permanently fossilize that it may take a smarter species than ours to thread the multiple needles needed to become a stable technological civ. For instance, we successfully avoided the Scylla of the Cold War and are now threatened by AGW's Charybdis. Fred Pohl's statement that at some point in our advancement every teenager will have access to a button marked 'Destroy World' does not bode well.
DeletePappenheimer
We've been threading the needle to avoid extinction for a LONG time. We might fail at some point, but our ability to chase after every possible solution and let those who succeed create the next generation got expanded with intelligence capable of higher abstractions. More than opposable thumbs, this ability is our superpower.
DeleteWhen the giant ice sheets covered the land, there was more than one variety of human. We weren't the best adapted for cold, sea travel, jungles, etc... yet we survived them all.
Several million of us lived on this planet when the ice finally melted back and that climate catastrophe stressed us. We had to invent a new way to live and largely abandon our nomadic HG lives. We domesticated anything we could and now there are eight gigahumans+.
Numbers don't lie.
Yes... we've been lucky more than once, but we aren't evolutionary chumps.
That we can no longer accept image-based media as proof of anything except lies, our fine host has repetitively made this point for more than a decade, even before the appearance of practical AI.
ReplyDeleteAI editing has made this problem 100X worse, of course, but the sheer prevalence of media-based fakery is the main reason why trust in our 'fact-using' officials is now at an all-time historic low.
There's nothing funny about this topic, except perhaps the sheer naivete of David_I's belief that AI was meant to enhance our understanding (and) deepen our learner (sic), as this is the same sales pitch that was used to sell us every dubious advancement of the last 75 years, up to & including lobotomy by TV, an Internet that primarily serves as a porn distribution device and now the alienation inherent in Social Media.
It makes me wonder if Artemis is also a lie.
Best
Experts can still tell. Gullible tens of millions? Not so sure. That's why I demand expert-queried wagers.
DeleteHave any of you read Dungeon Crawler Carl?
ReplyDeleteCurrently finishing book 6. It is overall enjoyable and a trenchant allegory for our current state of the world. I would recommend it to anyone that enjoyed "Ready Player One" or is terminally online. I would not recommend it to anyone else.
DeleteThis fellow appeared recently and is one of the best essayists in America. There is a real person there. But arguments rage over his ratio of AI involvement in the writing https://substack.com/@jamesmack2
ReplyDeleteTrump made me ashamed to be an American.
ReplyDeleteArtemis just made me proud.
Drat, had a typo. Only way to fix is delete and repost.
DeleteI saw an article about it with the headline Ad Astra Per Aspera, and we just watched one of the best Star Trek episodes ever with that title as well https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18971274/?ref_=ttep_ep_2
4:19 PM
It's been almost 50 years since we were on the moon. And that has some historical parallels to the Victorian race to the poles.
ReplyDeleteIntrepid explorers would set out for the poles, many of them dying in the attempt, just to plant their country's flags.
National pride was assuaged. Just like American pride with the moon landings even in the midst of losing the Viet Nam war and cities being burned by riots and gasoline being rationed.
Sound familiar?
And then we did nothing in Antarctica for about 50 years until the first International geophysical year in 1957.
Now the place is studded with weather stations and scientific bases.
And so will the moon be in a few decades. Setting up housing in massive lava tubes, prospecting for metals and water ice, setting up shop.
Gateway would have been a better concept, but I'm happy to take the win.
And though our learned host disagrees, I believe that the cheap costs of launching from the moon's low gravity more than compensate for the difficulties in mining and processing lunar ores.
And powerful silane fuel made from abundant silicon.
Time and experience will show us the best mix of human and machine needed to industrialize the moon.
We will get all the practice we need to unlock the vast wealth of asteroid mining, manufacturing Dyson swarms from Mercury to generate enough energy to create a K2 civilization.
Equipped with such material and energy wealth we can terraform Venus or mine its carbon rich atmosphere for graphene and carbon nanotubes, alter the face of Mars, learn to live off the land on the moons of the outer solar system.
And spread like Polynesians in the south Pacific through the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud.
And we're on our way to the stars, maybe hitching a ride on a few brown dwarfs or rogue planets along the way.
So spend the next century industrializing the moon and turning it into a new Cap Canaveral and industrial ship yard for the Earth.
Spend the next millennia in the solar system becoming a K2 civilization.
Then spend the next eon spreading through the galaxy.
Lovely thoughts and sentiments, Celt. I do wish we had spent the $200B on real preparatory tech But I wish them well and hope I am wrong about it being a lavishly wasteful moondoggle.
DeleteForgot to include megastructures like O'Neal cylinders and Bishops rings so huge they need to be made from carbon nanotubes the resist the tensile loads generated by spinning.
DeleteCarbon mined from Venus' atmosphere will provide all we need.
Each Bishop ring with a radius of 1,000 km radius and a length of 500 km provides an interior surface are equal to that of India. Designed for a population of 1 billion, it's basically an orbiting subcontinent. With a conservative wall thickness of 10 meters it requires almost 31,500 km^3 of carbon nanotubes.
Venus atmosphere has a total mass of 4.8E+20 kg (94x that of Earth's) of which 96.5% is CO2, giving us a total mass of carbon of 1.26E+20 kg. At 1,800 kg per M^3 we have enough carbon to build over 2,200 Bishops rings capable of housing over 200x the Earth's current population.
So why bother traveling to he stars in search of new worlds when you can just build them at home?
Frost's words still apply: don't look back; take all roads.
ReplyDelete(there's enough of us).
During the last 10 years Trump has taught me just how evil religions are.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.huffpost.com/entry/paula-white-cain-trump-jesus_n_69cdd9efe4b0a891ea438064
'Blasphemous': MAGA Pastor Gets Holy Hell After Over-The-Top Trump Speech
With Trump looking on, Paula White-Cain took praise for the president to a new
Paula White-Cain, a senior adviser in White House Faith Office, is taking heat on social media for making a wildly over-the-top comparison between President Donald Trump and Jesus Christ on Wednesday.
“Jesus taught so many lessons through his death, burial, and resurrection. He showed us great leadership, great transformation requires great sacrifice,” she said, with Trump himself looking on. “And, Mr. President, no one has paid the price like you have paid the price. It almost cost you your life.”
hen, days before Easter, she tried to draw a direct parallel between Christ and Trump, who has been found liable for sexual abuse, accused repeatedly of sexual misconduct, and was once close friends with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused. It’s a familiar pattern that our Lord and Savior showed us,” she said. “But it didn’t end there for him, and it didn’t end there for you.”
Holy crap.
During the last 10 years Trump has taught me just how evil religions are.
DeleteI'd say religions have incentives for evil people.
Yet, for every Paula White-Cain, there is a MLK, a Bonhoeffer or Von Galen.
Jimmy Carter taught Sunday School for 80 years, emphasizing the Beatitudes and Sermon on the Mount. And not the diametrically opposite evil/sadistic/satanic Book of Revelation. You can't have both.
DeleteMaybe you shouldn't have both, but the empirical reality is that people in fact do have both.
Delete"...people in fact do have both."
DeleteIn the sense that both are in the same book, yes, but it's hard to see how someone can believe in both at the same time.
The religious right is always trying to have the Ten Commandments displayed in public settings. I've never heard once of them insisting that the Beatitudes or the Sermon on the Mount be so displayed.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2026/Items/Apr02-6.html
ReplyDelete...
Then suddenly and unexpectedly late yesterday, Donald Trump changed his mind again and greenlighted the Senate [DHS] bill he had previously opposed. Consistency is not his thing. Johnson immediately cheered for the bill he had called a "joke." The bill funds all of DHS except ICE and CBP and can be passed by the regular order now, maybe as soon as today.
We've always been at war with Eastasia.
Are we sure it was Trump? Not many of "his" social media posts are from him these days and he hasn't been seen in public for days.
DeleteHopey Changey can work. Like a new 'Earthrise' photo:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/artemis-ii-nasa-earthrise-photo
I do wish we had spent the $200B on real preparatory tech But I wish them well and hope I am wrong about it being a lavishly wasteful moondoggle.
ReplyDeleteI have the distinct feeling that the real prep tech we should engage in is obtaining the level of civilization that not only makes a spacefaring culture possible, but inevitable.
(I know, I know. You have been fighting against foes of progress. For eons.
But what do people need to embrace the light instead of the darkness? What do they need to fight for it? And not that I point at the US only. All western nations are at fault here.)
A question to the Americans Here:
ReplyDeleteIf you had
a) a good public transport service Network* - including busses, subways and trains;
b) were able to use them all, across the entire nation, for 80$** a month,
Would you consider it to be a good deal?
And would you leave your car at home?
* An option every quarter or half of an hour to get to a central hub.
** During the first months of the Ukraine war, we got it for about 10$ then.
@Der Oger,
DeleteI'm not sure this is a direct answer, but twice now I've had the opportunity to visit my daughter in Boston. Boston is a horrendous city to drive in, but their busses and trains are clean and efficient, and I never felt threatened riding them*. So yes, in Boston, I leave my daughter's car at "home" except for driving out of the city somewhere.
* I've never rode the train late at night there, so I'd have to see if it felt dangerous, in which case I'd opt for driving instead.
I don't want to sound like I oppose public transport. I don't. I used it for years around Sacramento. However, I don't think European fans of public transport realize just how large the US is. Physically large. Transit systems can be made to work in urban areas and serve out into suburban cities... to a point. There is a limit, though, enforced by distance and the economics of passenger pickup stops.
DeleteI used to live in Yolo county and worked in Sacramento county. These two counties of California are right next to each other. I was a grad student at UCD and did part-time teaching at the junior colleges in Sacramento. I ran out of money to pay for car insurance before taking on those arrangements, but the two bus/light rail systems made it possible for me to reach some of the nearby JC's.
1. At the southern range I could teach one class at a campus that took me a minimum of two hours to reach. Three hours is I missed a connection.
2. At the northern range I could teach one class at a campus near the light rail terminus. One bus, transfer, one train ride... then 30 minute walk.
There was absolutely no way I could teach classes at both extremes on the same day. Not enough time in the day. I was ALSO a grad student and was supposed to be doing my research.
3. I got rare assignments at a JC near the city center. Easy peasy.
4. I eventually added one more campus in the next county to the east by renting a car exactly once a week. I worked out the bus schedule and saw there was no way to do it unless I was coming FROM that county to work in Sacramento.
Having no choice, that's what I did for a few years while I finished up my dissertation. I spent a LOT of time on buses and trains... just going between campuses that I could have reached in about 40 minutes (tops) if I had a car.
The transit systems I used were decent. They didn't cost much and served a variety of riders. They are even bigger now because Sacramento expanded their light rail. They made a huge difference to me... but I had to trade a LOT of time riding for not having a car. I would not have done it if I has possessed better options.
The US is huge. California is huge. Even my small range around Sacramento was large. Not all of us get to work and live in the smaller ranges where transit systems can compete.
----
On my vacation to Portland a while back (turns out it didn't burn down) we walked and rode. We left the car at the hotel. We purposely didn't care about transit times because... vacation! I got to see a lot of people commuting to and from work who DID care, and transit was the better option. Yay! Less cars. If I lived and worked there, I'd try to do the same... but even the Portland area is huge.
In regard to media fakery, Dr Brin believes that "Experts can still tell (what the true facts are), and I'll concede this point to Dr Brin, as long as Dr Brin concedes that the appellation 'Expert' does not automatically transform a partisan hack into a transparent truth-teller, especially when so many 'experts' have been caught in telling egregious lies for some greater public good.
ReplyDeleteAs to the nature of this so-called 'greater public good', this is what Dr Brin & other elites refer to as Things We Ought To Do Anyway, what Bernays called Propaganda, what Chomsky called Manufacturing Consent and what Plato described as Noble Lies, as these frequently repeated falsehoods and half-truths are most often used to advance a specific sociopolitical agenda, narrative & ideal that is unsupportable by fact.
Under the Huxleyan belief that Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions of even the most blatant falsehood equals one truth, the general public is therefore subjected to this expert claptrap on a repetitive basis, some of the oft-repeated faves being 'Abnormal is the new Normal', 'Everyone is Equal', 'Women have Penises' and 'Diversity is Strength'.
If only we could execute liars & false witnesses again, then the world could become a better a place.
Best
Bah. He still believes that objective reality is a myth and that positive sum - curiosity and competition-driven science are charlatan tricks.
DeleteLocum wins this week's Shirley Jackson lottery award for the recursive use of pervasive irony in a blog comment. "The world could become a better ... place." hilarious.
ReplyDeleteDer Oger, as an American I really don't get it, having used the trains in Europe. I know it's the automobile lobby and freedom, independence, advertising. But if you study US transportation history (particularly while sitting as a passenger in gridlocked west-coast traffic) it is a bit mind-flaying. Los Angeles. Street cars. Trains. Wide bicycle paths like they used to show in National Geographic from China. Try driving from Santa Monica to Pasadena starting around 4:30 on a weekday. You could take trains in Los Angeles to the local mountains. Currently, San Diego to San Francisco by train is beautiful, but from my recollection they yield to the freight trains. It's maybe 1.5 days past due on the average clean underwear per passenger as opposed to the 2-3 days past due you'd encounter with your fellow passengers on a greyhound. From my experience, the NYC the subway system is great, particularly if you live and work close to an express train. My gripe with light rail systems is not building express tracks. We also need isolated super wide bike lanes. I'm also not a fan of bullshit bike lanes where drivers can't make right on red without a signal but the cyclist don't follow the rules and endanger the pedestrians as much as motor vehicles. I also thought the material logistics of Isaac Asimov's multi-speed walkway strips was pretty silly even when I was 13 but I'm sure it inspired some airport architects.
Amtrak does indeed yield to freight trains. Last time I used it to get my family from Sacramento to Disneyland we were 12 HOURS late. We got off in downtown LA and paid a cabbie to drive us the rest of the way. He made a few bucks that night.
Delete"Los Angeles. Street cars. Trains. Wide bicycle paths like they used to show in National Geographic from China."
DeleteJudge Doom bought the Red Car to dismantle it.
Filthy Fingers just fired the Army Chief of Staff.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/us/politics/hegseth-fires-general-randy-george.html?
For a decade I've railed in vain about the GOP's total war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service and the intel agencies (including counter-terrorism experts; remember that one) all the way to the US Military Officer Corps, the most intensely adult, dedicated and professional men and women you will ever meet. *
Alky-boor Hegseth screeched "You're too fat and woke to fight!" and "Kill, kill, KILLLL!!!!" at 500 stony-faced, teeth-grinding generals, admirals and top sergeants whose boots he is not fit to shine. Pros who then, just 6 weeks later, staged the most-competent raid in human history - which Hegs & Old Two Scoops then wasted, by letting Maduro's heir kiss the Don's consigliere, mafia style, and buy Trump off with gold bars, with nothing for the Venezuelan people.
And now they tried the same gang takeover - scaled up monstrously - in Iran. Except this rival gang won't kiss the Don's ring. Poor Don. So? DOUBLE DOWN!
Obedience to civilian authority is in the very blood of the descendants of George Marshall. Only now Kremlin-run Foxite/confederate monsters are forcing those fine officers and sergeants to think thoughts they never wanted. The way that soldiers of Rome had to, about Caligula. And Damn Putin's and Rupert's momzer puppets for doing that.
Rupert, if you drive us to the edge, your empire's fate will be sealed, and everything associated with it.
https://www.threads.com/@stonekettle/post/DWpLrkhEejZ
DeleteStonekettle:
"Kid Rock got the head of the Army fired. That's what this is about, I guarantee it. General George explained to cashiered Major Kegerator how his dismissal of the investigation and reinstatement of those two Apache pilots undercuts good order and discipline and the Army Chain of Command, and Hegseth fired him. We're going to end up with Russia's army, Saddam's army, i.e. an undisciplined mob of mediocre brawlers and swaggering bullies who can only beat up school kids and stray dogs."
With the amount of damage that this admin is doing to US's capacity for deterrence through weapons expended/lost in Iran, unravelling of US alliances, betrayal of America's honor, and damage to the competence of the US military, I fear we're soon going to see China invade Taiwan.
DeleteThe timing will tell us something very important regarding whether the Chinese government believes in positive-sum (i.e. their interest is in strengthening China in absolute terms), or negative-sum (i.e. their interest is in strengthening China relative to the West).
If its positive-sum they'll invade late in Trump's administration, since they're more likely to get away with it.
If its negative-sum they'll invade at the very start of the next admin, tarring the next admin with the stench of failure.
Bondi is out, too.
ReplyDeleteWithout a pardon, I might add.
As others have noted, the US is a sprawling network of urban hubs with a scattering of smaller hubs between, large enough that no matter how you do it, crossing the country will take 3-4 days minimum without a plane. This translates to a smaller version where bedroom communities are an hour or two away from industrial or civic centers. Europe is condensed enough that you can still use public transit to get around efficiently; then again, most countries there are the same size as our medium sized states.
ReplyDeleteWe elected during Eisenhower's administration to concentrate on cars as our main means of getting around, and bent our transportation system in that direction. Now we are seeing the flaws with crowded roads, high gas prices (although we've been able to mostly avoid the sticker shock other countries see regularly) and few alternatives. Do we have the interest in working on alternatives?
My crystal ball sez:
DeleteThe US will electrify and automate before it will make any serious effort to (re)build public transport. Eventually the automation will chain vehicles together (drafting) and enough people will rent transport that we will have a semi-transit system. Urban areas will have them earliest and likely be owned by their cities or contracted out by them. Other areas will be served privately and AI/expert systems will run them all.
Above, note that our fine host specifically uses the phrase fact using professions, but NEVER refers to this professional managerial caste as the fact-telling professions, which is a very telling word choice in & of itself.
ReplyDeleteAs a fully qualified physician & a former member of this oft-praised professional 'fact-using' managerial caste, I choose to retire after I was increasingly FORCED TO LIE to the general public about health matters by the powers-that-be.
Our 'fact using professions' then justify their frequent lies as a necessary expedient to Maintain Authority, only to declare themselves 'victimized' by the subsequent loss of public trust due to their many lies, even when absolutely no one will trust (or respect) a proven liar, no matter how 'expert' that liar may be.
Best
_____
It's a diversionary tactic, the timely rotation & replacement of Trump's appointees, rather than a victory for his political adversaries, because these management changes sever the connection between appointee & policy, allowing Trump's agendas to proceed with a new face & a less entrenched opposition.
Or, are you such a doofus to believe that each replacement means that Trump now endorses Open Borders & a liberalized DOJ ?
From BART in San Francisco to WMATA in Washington DC, most US public transport systems are functionally BANKRUPT due to low ridership, high costs, union labor & the premature adoption of unproven Proterra technologies, along with a failure to 'manufacture consent' within the general public as to its relative desirability, though it tends to be very popular with society's dregs.
Alfred a very likely glimpse into the future.
ReplyDeleteLocum knows that I have long held that the Managerial caste of CEOs and inheritance brats and their cheat-oriented flunkis are NOT 'fact professionals; but parasites whi use Milton Friedman incantations to justify shoving aside anyone focused on actual competition, via better pruducts and services. That caste claims the word 'capitalism' but knifes "competition" and never uses the word.
It is the one area where crazy Ayn Rand was both vivid and on target, portraying such bratty conniving oligarchs using government over-reaches like the ICC to 'loot' the commonwealth. Except...
... it is the ones speaking her name loudest who do it. And Democrats banned the ICC and CAB in order to unleash market competition. The word that ONLY ever prospers when they get to work for the good of all.
@Dr Brin,
DeleteThe philosophy expressed in Ayn Rand's novels is hopelessly grounded in the decades she wrote them in. They do not age well.
A key complaint in Atlas Shrugged was that the government controlled the money supply because Americans were not legally allowed to convert money to gold. This was true at the time, but like your thing about the ICC, it was changed in the mid 1970s. Americans have been able to own and trade gold as money for at least 50 years, which her true believers should take as a win. Instead, whatever conclusions they drew from "You're not permitted to own gold," still stand, despite the absence of the premise.
RE Railways. Alfred "The US will electrify and automate before it will make any serious effort to (re)build public transport." I reluctantly tend to agree but remain hopeful/skeptical. Americans aren't fond of communal equipment or automation. How many suburban family's could practically share a single neighborhood lawnmower, 8ft ladder, wheel barrow, pipe wrench, and a few other basic tools? How come sharing only occurs on a one-to-one basis when you really know your neighbors? Back to trains, has anyone taken the trip from VA to FL on the amtrack autotrain? Basically a car ferry on a train instead of a boat. Nonstop 800 miles in 14 hours at a whopping 44 mph average. Seems like it would be more practical to take that approach with high speed trains for long distances with automation to reduce the number of multiple tracks needed for local and passing.
ReplyDeleteI suspect the kids a couple generations from now are going to be much less enamored by owning everything they can use than we are. Ownership of 'stuff' comes with a hidden cost. This can be seen if we account for our 'storing the stuff' expenses. It's not that they won't be able to afford those expenses, though. They most certainly WILL be able to afford them. The problem is some of those storage costs include rental spaces. Even those of us who own homes should look around and see how much square footage is dedicated to dead-stuff storage. My garage sure is and I need to clear it out for my upcoming EV purchase.
DeleteMost of us COULD rent tools rather than own them. The hurdle there is the hassle and time delay in getting them on our hands. People who figure out how to put AI/expert systems to work shrinking that hassle are likely to disrupt the DIY home/garden market. Lowe's and Home Depot WILL rent tools to you, but there is no AI layer yet.
Oh... I neglected to mention that the initial owners of the private automated passenger vehicle fleet will be Mr Musk. He's already moved in this direction. It's quite possible the cities will NEVER get their systems up and running before he disrupts them and convinces most of us to keep transportation private.
DeleteI could live with that.
@Alfred Differ
ReplyDeleteMy contractor rents almost everything, even his subs rent most stuff. For example this Cat 523 was rented http://theviews.org/Construction/2019/ground-breaking.html as was this hole saw http://theviews.org/Life%20at%20the%20Views/2022/november-2-2022-generac.html
That gets you the right tools for the job! which can save a LOT of time
DeleteSmart way to avoid depreciation costs assuming the numbers add up.
DeleteMany years ago I worked for a company that needed a large building to relocate its people from many smaller places dotted around town. They borrowed the money to build it, then immediately sold it to lease it back. That ensured the actual private owner (no doubt owned by the corporate bosses) carried the depreciation costs instead of our publicly traded company.
There are good reasons to rent and ways to pay for the reliability and availability needed. The contracts wind up looking like options... like a whole lot of other financial deals.
Some day this will occur often enough that the public begins to get it. So far, they mostly do with home ownership which would represent a huge chunk of dead savings if not for the mortgage industry. I may own my home, but I'm renting the money to pay for it. 8)
ReplyDeletecelt @7:05,
Have you noticed the story about the latest BS from Hegseth's department, where there's an event for Protestant Christians. Catholics need not apply. As you say, Holy crap (in every sense of that phrase).
Larry Hart @5:37,
The story I'm hearing (far, far from the US) is that, while the Apache contretemps may have been a contributory trigger, General George was basically dismissed for his refusal to rubber stamp the removal of Black and female candidates from the latest One-Star promotion list.
Yes, I did. It seems Vance is being left out in the cold now.
DeleteI believe the story that Trump couldn't tolerate being close to a black person. A strange wobble that was interpreted as heralding a happy event at the time was actually him reflexively evading a black man who was in the line he was passing.
"...refusal to rubber stamp the removal of Black and female candidates... "
DeleteThat was Stonekettle musing about the Apache thing with Kid Rock. I was only quoting him.
Nevertheless, the point stands that generals are being removed for refusal to go along with things they never should have been asked to do in the first place. The specific things are immaterial, or at least interchangeable.
Ozajh let's hope the Southern Baptists towill nextsplit-hate at Methodists and Presbyterians and Mormons and Black Baptists. Go for the purity, guys.
DeleteIf you have followed Pope Leo closely, he is not at all in line with the Trump administration. I am quite sure they are in the early stages of "How can we get rid of this troublesome priest?" after his rebuttal of Hegseths crusader prayer.
DeleteHe has, afaik, not put out an official order to the bishops or retired some of the more Trumpian ones.
(I am a very critical Catholic, but I can at least respect both Francis and Leo for their positions.)
"If you have followed Pope Leo closely, he is not at all in line with the Trump administration. "
DeleteI've been very impressed by Pope Leo, and not just because I'm from Chicago. It's pretty clear to me that his selection was a poke in the eye to Trump. The first American pope ever is most certainly not a Trumpist.
"I can at least respect both Francis and Leo for their positions."
My wife is Catholic, as was my first girlfriend back at the time when Pope John-Paul II visited Chicago. And for most of my life, my sense of the Catholic church's politics was that it always ingratiated itself with the ruling authority unless that ruling authority was communist. So church doctrine seemed to swing only slightly between hard right-wing and more compassionate right-wing. But yes, both Francis and Leo seem more humanist, and ironically more in line with what I think Jesus would say.
When Francis retired, I was afraid the church would say "Enough of that," and go back to a more traditionalist pope--maybe even pushing for Latin Mass again, and going more "Handmaid's Tale" about women's place. I'm glad to have been wrong about that.
News tell me Trump wants to re-open Alcatraz for measely 2 Billion Dollars.
ReplyDeleteExcellent idea! After using the ballroom for trying and sentencing the current regime and the Epstein class, you will need a place to imprison them (those not immediately executed, that is.)/s
Not that I believe that with the current Dem candidates for the White House in 2028, anyone will be held accountable for anything.
DeleteIt will be kumbayah, and "in the interest of rebuilding the nation, we will have to work together bipartisanly."
It will be kumbayah, and "in the interest of rebuilding the nation, we will have to work together bipartisanly."
DeleteMaybe, but past performance is not an indication of future results. Voter sentiment is different this time around. And if Democrats take power again and still do nothing, I think that will be the last straw before a popular uprising against the Epstein class.
We may lose, but we're tired of submitting to the rule of lawlessness.
David,
ReplyDeleteI think I've managed to reproduce the message you get form iCloud on my mac. My strong suspicion is your phone IS syncing something and during your mac set up you provided enough information so iCloud on the mac can see the data from the phone and is complaining about not being able to pull it down.
Next time you see one of those messages pop, open your settings widget. You'll probably see the complain in the same place you'd see a warning about a pending upgrade. Click through that and you'll have a decent chance of seeing which element is trying to sync.
What I did was finally configure iCloud on my mac by providing my apple account info. As soon as I did that, I got the sync complaint. I opened the iCloud config set from Settings and went to 'manage storage' to find out what was trying to snyc. THERE was the list of applications that tried to use iCloud as a share drive... and I was able to delete some of their permissions to do that. Gone was the photo backup I didn't know about, but I decided to keep the health dataset since I actually DO want that shared between devices I own.
You can check our managed storage area on your devices before you get that message too. Disable permissions by app and you'll regain control... at the expense of possibly breaking the app.
https://www.threads.com/@stonekettle/post/DWuJpTHEc-Z
ReplyDeleteStonekettle:
"Good government is boring.
Good government is uneventful, it shouldn't be a source of shock every day, it shouldn't be the the last thing you worry about at night and the first thing you fear to see in the morning. Good government is a public service, not public entertainment. Good government toils competently away in the background, it shouldn't be the trending topic on social media every day.
Government isn't a business, it doesn't have to be efficient or turn a profit or be exciting."
Every word could have come out of my own mouth. Every word.
Alfred I went to the iCloud item in settings and turned off EVERYTHING except Find My Mac. I'll try your method but I am not hopeful. Thanks
ReplyDeleteIt does seem my phone was trying to store on iCloud. Turned that off. Hoping it will solve this. Such a pity. I'd'a been happy to store stuff in iCloud as a backup drive under my control. Instead they demand to control me.
DeleteCompletely off-topic, but this is me nerding out on Electoral-Vote.com.
ReplyDeleteL.H. in Chicago, IL, writes: You answered my question my question about Sam Malone and film noir with the speculation: "Now, it is possible that what you are really asking is "Is Sinners really film noir?"
I assure you no, at least not in the sense of turning my nose up at the description. It simply hadn't occurred to me to associate that film (which I have not seen) with that genre. The trailer that I've seen makes me think "horror" rather than "film noir." But now that you say it, it all makes sense.
On another note, as a former math major, I noted with interest your description of the golden ratio. As a nerd, I'd like to add to that description, not to contradict anything you said, but just to elaborate.
The ratio is indeed 1:1.618, but it is also true that it can be expressed as 1:0.618. That is, the short side can be 0.618 and the long side 1, or the short side can be 1 and the long side 1.618. If that looks meaningful, it is, in that the golden ratio solves the equation x+1 = 1/x. In words, 0.618 is such that its reciprocal is itself plus one.
There is an interesting coincidence that I believe I am the only person ever to notice. Back in the 70s, when road signs were posted in metric as well as miles, there was a road sign between my alma mater in Champaign, IL, and my home in Chicago which read: "Chicago 100 miles, 161 kilometers." Further north was another sign: "Chicago 62 miles, 100 kilometers." It made me realize that the ratio of 1 kilometer to 1 mile is very nearly the golden ratio, even though there is no reason it would have been designed that way intentionally. As the narrator in Kurt Vonnegut's "Hocus Pocus" said of such observations, "How much longer can I go on being an atheist?"
Way down at the bottom of the item (letters from readers).
The link to the above:
Deletehttps://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2026/Items/Apr05-1.html
kewl
DeleteI've read 'Dungeon Crawler Carl' and found it enjoyable, but I don't think I'd be willing to sit down and read the 7-9 more books in the series...
ReplyDeletePappenheimer
P.S. this Easter Sunday rumpT tweet-raged a threat to commit war crimes in Iran. Krugman's follow-on YT comment worries that the US military will follow plainly illegal orders if there is no TACO this time. (My dad has argued that bombing civilian targets was fine for the USAAF in WWII, so there's no problem here.) I do wonder if Hegseth thinks he's canned enough generals and admirals to get compliance. I hope we don't have to find out.
I thought the Murderbot Diaries were better written, but there is something compelling about over-the-top gonzo kitchen sink.
ReplyDeletePappenheimer
onward
ReplyDeleteonward
on topic. https://archive.org/details/commissarvanishe0000king
ReplyDelete