Robert Reich doing a rant which I wish I had the time to have come up with, but I'll let him do it. Too bad he's a hardcore Democrat. And I rag on him for it.
A blog dedicated to the rational discussion of politics and current events.
Thursday, December 18, 2025
Saturday, May 31, 2025
An AI Goes Insane, Emails FBI Over $2
We need to revive the Luddite movement since computers truly will never replace humans, unless companies want to lose customers due to poor customer service. And we can't forget how bad AI and the blockchain are to the environment.
I would add that businesses need to take responsibility and not try to push it off on machines.
Then again, I would love to see the tech bubble burst bigtime. And it sounds like its coming soon:
AI is scaring both sides of the political spectrum. Both JD Vance and Cenk Cygur are pointing out how AI can go out of control.
Just remember that a market economy requires a market, which are customers. Businesses exist for customers, not customers for businesses. The Jevins paradox meets the Ai paradox.
Monday, February 3, 2025
Bad Hasbara on Bad Hasbara
It's nice to be able to laugh at a genocide, especially since that's pretty much what the world has been doing for over a year now. This is the show Bad Hasbara laughing at the Bad Hasbara bot.
Would you trust Siri with your life?
Friday, January 31, 2025
Artificial Intelligence--I told you so....
Israel likes to point out that it has a lot of "experts" in High Tech. Case in point, comes from this article in the Jerusalem Post:
I am back in Israel in search of the country’s secret, not-so-secret weapon: world-class software engineers...The Israelis puff their competence as a military force and as a technological haven. On the other hand, this shows that technology really is something that needs a human check. On the other hand, the Nazis used gas chambers for their genocide, the Israelis have developed Lavender to assist in theirs. The Zionists can use machines as well as their WWII allies.
Israel is the perfect place for an essential development center in this AI revolutionary moment. It is the perfect place for Modelcode, which is building AI for AI, the DNA source code for software that transforms every field on earth. Israeli engineers and Machine Learning gurus and Artificial Intelligencers are fresh off the battlefield, experienced in inventing and assembling novel applications, and rightly confident in their abilities to solve impossible problems. This is not the AI of theory and whiteboards. This is the AI of nailing real-world solutions, of shipping products, of saying when you see an intractable obstacle, "Ein Baya." No one does this better than Americans – and Israelis.
OK, if Zionism came about in the 19th Century, why did the Holocaust happen? a couple of hints Haavara and Kastner, but that stuff is now coming to light.
Now, the Zionist cause has its technology turning against it. Didn't they learn the lesson of the Golem?
Anyway, I definitely would not trust AI on a question of my survival.
Monday, February 20, 2023
I'm not afraid of artificial intelligence: it's easy to defeat them--just pull out their plug.
Yes, a computer can appear intelligent as can someone with dementia appear lucid. But as Alan Turing pointed out, a human can tell the difference. Where artificial intelligence appears superior is that it can process a lot of information quickly. But there'a another computer saying: "GIGO" or "Garbage in, Garbage out." I wouldn't trust a machine to make decisions without a human there to veto that decision. And computers need electricity or some sort of power. They can only run things as long as their batteries can power up. Otherwise they are just expensive paper weights. The reality is that they can only deal with what they are written to do. They might add some other variations to their data base, but it might confuse them since it's really just pattern recognition and not true knowledge. Or as this cartoon points out:
Of course, later versions of the Daleks could fly. The aliens in M. Night Shyamalan's Signs were able to achieve interstellar travel, yet were unable to deal with doorknobs. Or the fact that Earth is covered with water. I think Robots would have even more difficult tasks to deal with if they had to actually deal with the real world instead of their limited universes.
Monday, December 5, 2022
The Real Reason to be Afraid of Artificial Intelligence | Peter Haas | T...
I definitely agree with this: AI needs to be taken with careful skepticism. My car can pretty much drive itself, but I wouldn't trust it to drive anywhere without me having a veto power over what it does.
Lets toss in mistakes Siri and other voice recognition systems make. I used to collect them, but they became overwhelming.
AI cannot be trusted blindly, but it can help make life better when used WITH a human check on the system.
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
Unicorns exist ! (At least they do in French)
Imagine my surprise when I see that the President of France talking about increasing the number of unicorns in France. Is it April First?
économie – Jeune entreprise du domaine des nouvelles technologies qui, sans être cotée en Bourse, est estimée à plus de un milliard de dollars
That's "Young company in the field of new technologies which, without being listed on the stock exchange, is estimated to be worth more than one billion dollars" in English. Not to mention this is a really good term since some of these companies really have zero assets.
Their real assets are YOUR INFORMATION which they sell.
Maybe some of these companies actually have a product, but they sell airware for the most part.
Here's your unicorn.
Friday, January 1, 2021
The Duopoly is like Brexit
I would have thought that the culmination of all the past four years of Brexit negotiations would have been much more exciting than the footnote it appears to be for the past four years. It reminds me of how David Cameron's gamble on an EU referendum was like the "Democratic" party's trying to get Hillary Clinton into office. The big difference between Brexit and the past two US elections was that there was an escape clause of an election for the US.
No second referendum for Britain.
On the other hand, the 2020 US election was like the Brexit negotiations with the Trump presidency being Brexit and Biden being the escape clause. Biden's campaign was like the effects of the Brexit negotiations in that people would make assumptions about what a Biden administration would be. Biden was somehow "better" than the alternative.
The real problem was that neither Brexit nor the US campaigns offered anything of substance for the electorate to make a choice on. The only thing being voted on was the dissatisfaction of the electorate for the status quo.
Things were "wrong", but no one was really addressing them. It was easier to blame "them" whether it's the people in DC or the EU. On the other hand, the real problem isn't them, but "us". There is a drift in both US and UK politics which has led to trying to come up with differences where none really exist.
The US duopoly parties are pretty much the same. Despite certain people trying to make Hillary Clinton seem wildly radical, she was fairly conservative. And she couldn't run on the issues. Thus insane concepts such as "defund the police" can see the light of day instead of more bread and butter issues.
The past year was the best argument for a Sanders Administration with Medicare for All (M4A), Universal basic income (UBI), and general social insurance to make sure people can survive being forced to not work for the public good. No, these are not "free", but will require increased taxation. On the other hand, isn't taxing billionaires a good idea?
Especially when those billionaires are literally making money off YOU!
The people who are afraid of government, yet are willing to give up their personal information to corporations that are making big bucks off that. There is a reason I like the EU and its data protection rules. Not to mention that the EU has been going after these monopolies for some time. the US just hasn't caught up.
But remember that the US tech companies helped get Biden and Harris where they are now if we are going down that track.
The bottom line is that despite all this information out there, a lot of it is not really useful. There are a lot of reasons for that, but there seems to be a need for a true marketplace of ideas.
And the education to be able to use them.

