Monthly Archives: April 2023

Do you think you’ve thought through all the threats of ChatGPT? How about this one?

A recent study outlined the devastating and undisclosed water footprint of large artificial intelligence (AI) models like ChatGPT on the world’s environment. The impact of this would be a great concern for the future of the Middle East and North Africa, the world’s most water-scarce region.

This is a factor that companies like Dubai Electric and Water Authority (DEWA) — which said in February that it plans to use ChatGPT in its offerings — need to consider in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), one of most water-scarce countries in the world. Other highly water-scarce countries in the region plan to use ChatGPT on a large scale and face similar risks.

The amount of water needed to cool down computational processes of advanced AI-powered language learning models (LLM) like GPT-3 and GPT-4 is massive and also “kept as a secret,” according to the April 2022 report “Making AI Less ‘Thirsty’: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models,” by UC-Riverside and UT-Arlington researchers. [Salim A. Essaid, AL-Monitor]

I’m moving towards the viewpoint that AI should be restricted to limited tasks at which human performance is miserable.

WaPo’s Dana Milbank could be more generous:

Bolgia:

1. a division of the eighth circle of Hell, Malebolge, in Dante’s Divine Comedy [Wiktionary]

Noted in “Ukraine Update: Russia brings the (literal) big guns to Bakhmut,” Mark Sumner, Daily Kos:

For several days, the situation in Bakhmut was relatively calm. Relatively. Meaning that it only looked like one of the middle tiers of hell instead of the lowermost bolgia. Having reached the railroad station at the center of town, Russian forces seemed to reduce their pace and for nearly a week not only did Russia show little advance, Ukraine actually pushed Wagner forces back in at least two areas of the city.

WaPo presents a summary of the debt limit problem, particularly as it applies to the GOP. As I read it, I finally identified what’s been bothering me about discussions of the debt limit and the financial and political repercussions. But, first, a portion of that article summarizing the projected results if President Biden doesn’t accede to Republican demands:

A small group of conservative budget experts is cautioning House Republicans that brinkmanship over the nation’s borrowing limit could lead to economic disaster, warning of severe financial ramifications even as their own party ignores their advice.

In both public and private comments, a handful of GOP budget experts — Brian Riedl, who was an aide to former Ohio Republican senator Rob Portman; Michael Strain, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute; and Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office — have tried to counter the growing argument on the right that the debt ceiling can be breached with only minimal economic impact.

So are the Republicans engaging in motivated reasoning, or, as it’s more commonly known, wishful thinking?

Probably. The Democratic economists who predict disaster if the world loses confidence in the trustworthiness of the United States have a better track record than their Republican counterparts, who’ve been shrilling for decades about debt and deficits and imminent disaster, without confirmation from reality.

But: it’s my guess that there’s a key element missing from the Democratic messaging on this issue, and that is time. That is, the day we start defaulting on the debt is not the day the country falls into ruin. This will, instead, be a gradual process.

But I fear the extremists in the House will celebrate the day the defaults start, because disaster did not befall us.

Not immediately.

They’ll win re-election once, possibly even twice.

But within five years, we’ll see the results predicted by the Democratic economists, or something like them.

I think the Democrats should prepare the public through messaging that incorporates the time element. Not that it has to be accurate; it simply has to inform the public that over X years our financial position will degrade because of the failure of Republicans to raise the debt limit.

And probably, at some point, indicate that if the Republicans are all that excited about debt and deficits, despite the objective evidence, then there’s a simple way to begin attacking that problem:

RAISE TAXES.

It’s simple and virtually risk-free, at least as an element of the public business. It may imperil the seats of certain Republicans who’ve made the mistake of running where there’s a widespread belief that taxes are ruinous, rather than proper investments in the future of the country. But that’s just a consequence of insistent propaganda.

It appears that now Associate Justice Gorsuch, IJ^[1], appears to have committed a foul on the basketball floor of federal service, according to Politico:

For nearly two years beginning in 2015, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch sought a buyer for a 40-acre tract of property he co-owned in rural Granby, Colo.

Nine days after he was confirmed by the Senate for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, the then-circuit court judge got one: The chief executive of Greenberg Traurig, one of the nation’s biggest law firms with a robust practice before the high court. Gorsuch owned the property with two other individuals.

On April 16 of 2017, Greenberg’s Brian Duffy put under contract the 3,000-square foot log home on the Colorado River and nestled in the mountains northwest of Denver, according to real estate records.

He and his wife closed on the house a month later, paying $1.825 million, according to a deed in the county’s record system. Gorsuch, who held a 20 percent stake, reported making between $250,001 and $500,000 from the sale on his federal disclosure forms.

And …

Gorsuch did not disclose the identity of the purchaser. That box was left blank.

Unsurprisingly, Greenberg Traurig has had cases up before SCOTUS, at least 22. Any recusals by the good Justice?

The article doesn’t address that question in those terms.

So this is no guarantee of actual corruption, but failing to disclose the buyer is certainly a problem of appearances.

It’s worth stopping for a summary of corruption these days. Along with Gorsuch:

• Justice Thomas’ plentiful interactions with Texas real estate developer Harlan Crow have looked quite sordid.
• Rep Santos’ (R-NY) many lies and other social transgressions, such as possibly defrauding an Amish farmer of his valuable puppies, have been a revelation.
• Rep Ogles (R-TN), too, in support of his successful campaign for election to the House, has since had his alleged lies revealed.
• On the local level, several members of the Tennessee House have had mud daubed on them liberally, such as the Speaker of the House not living in the district he represents as required by law.
• U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, the judge trying to suspend mifepristone, has had this reported about him: “… lists his most valuable investment as a holding in a single stock worth at least $5 million. The name of the company, however, is blacked out.” He claims the Clerk’s Office has the information and will automatically recuse him if necessary. That may be a credible excuse, but why is the secrecy necessary? Is this major source of his wealth a company dealing in dishonorable causes? Would it perhaps suggest he’s a hypocrite?

Overall, regardless of the truth of the matter of Kacsmaryk, the behaviors of these individuals is going to be an open wound for the Republicans going forward into the next election. Add in the clownish behavior of a number of GOP House members, and a minimally competent Democratic Party should make inroads in the 2024 elections.

¹ For those readers who do not recall, “IJ” means Illicit Justice. Gorsuch sits in what might have been Merrick Garland’s seat, a seat held open by Senator McConnell (R-KY) neglecting his Constitutionally-specified duty to give advice and consent, in other words consideration, as to who should sit on the SCOTUS. Associate Justice Barrett, through no real fault of her own, also deserves such an appellation.

And, in the case of Fox News, Carlson is out:

Fox News and Tucker Carlson, the right-wing extremist who hosted the network’s highly rated 8pm hour, have severed ties, the network said in a stunning announcement Monday.

The announcement came one week after Fox News settled a monster defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million over the network’s dissemination of election lies. [CNN/Business]

No comment, as of yet, from Carlson.

But his continued employment over the years is really a stunning indictment of his management, right up to the top where the Murdochs live. I’m sure Fox News will live on, regardless of the status of Carlson and upper management and the ownership, but if Fox News doesn’t experience wholesale change, one of the most monetarily valuable news organizations in Western Civilization may slowly implode into a third-tier, Remember them? places that Chris Wallace and all the other quality, honorable former employees – vs Fox & Friends, Hannity, etc – get together and shake their heads over twenty years from now.

And if Fox News does implode, they’ll be an object lesson for not understanding that they were primarily a free press organization, a sector for which the best measurement isn’t money, but something along the lines of Pulitzers. (See Sectors of Society for a rambling meditation on this subject.)

Keep an eye on Hannity, and upper management. The rot clearly is widespread.

Polymath David Wolpert sits down for an interview with Abigail Beall of NewScientist (15 April 2023, paywall), and I thought this was interesting, if only for the sloppy thinking:

What are distributed systems and why are they interesting?

Think of the “flash crash” of 2010, an event in which stock markets fell by trillions of dollars in minutes before recovering most of their value in about half an hour. It was caused by a lot of bots that do automated trades. On their own, these bots are based on simple if/then programs, but they somehow interacted collectively to suddenly cause the entire market to nosedive. The market slowly crawled its way back to where it was, so this wasn’t like the much more protracted economic downturn that began in 2007. But to this day, nobody can understand what went on. No new regulations have been put in place to try to prevent a repeat, because nobody knows exactly why it happened. It is described in the scientific literature as having been like some kind of alien ecosystem that we don’t understand.

Now, imagine something like that, but with artificial intelligence systems like AlphaGo that are practising and learning across the whole web. What sort of vastly more complicated versions of the flash crash ensue when the bots are replaced by these kinds of machines? It’s not going to be some human-like intelligence any more, it’s going to be different. It’s hard not to believe that, in some ways, it will be vastly more powerful.

Between CRISPR [our currently best gene-editing technology] and distributed, interacting AIs, I can’t imagine that, by the year 2100, we will still be “the most intelligent creatures on Earth”. Our progeny will be here.

He forgets that the accumulation of wealth, prosperity, or a stable situation, is a driving force for much, even most, of humanity, and crashes of the sort he recalls represent potential and actual losses. After all, a drop in price posted to an exchange is caused by an actual buy & sell; it’s not a hypothetical or potential^[1]. Has there been another flash crash of that magnitude since?

Not that I’ve heard of.

Look, an intelligent creature will, in most cases, correct errors and minimize losses in order to stabilize a situation. All those algorithms that, running in concert, caused a crash?

I’ll guarantee they’ve been modified since.

Look, I don’t know how their behavior has been modified. Frankly, most of these are short-term trader algorithms, and, as a long-term investor, I don’t see needing algorithms to implement the long-term strategy. My interest would be only academic, and I haven’t tried to find what are probably proprietary algorithms.

But the lack of disaster since does suggest modification, not to mention the “short-circuits” installed by the exchanges. If Wolpert were brave, he’d suggest the entire species of algorithm went through an improvement phase, much like trilobite predecessors acquiring eyes. However, did they interact to do so, or was each one acting in isolation?

But his remark about … distributed, interacting AIs … reminded me of an observation I had a few months after smartphones began infiltrating the populace: the best distributed, interacting entities are … humans.

We’ve always interacted with each other; smartphones have enabled geography-free interactions with an efficiency on the order of face-to-face interactions, and all that may imply. So AIs can interact. Do we think we’re going to be overwhelmed?

I doubt it. I’m reminded of David Gerrold’s SF novel, Voyage of the Star Wolf, which posits creatures created by humans, that have decided that their superior physical and mental capabilities make them superior to humans. Too late, they discover humans, with their million years of predatory training, are far more deadly than, to use Wolpert’s terminology, progeny, that are only one or two hundred years (? it’s been a far while since I read this book) in existence, and have … savage temperaments.

Now, if you want to be unsettled, the following article in the print edition, The Hidden Extinction (by staff writer Graham Lawton), which covers how the number of microbial species seems to be falling precipitously, is a far better candidate. It suggests our ignorance combined with our avariciousness may lead to disaster. But that’s a topic for another post.

¹And that the crash was erased is reflective of the fact that good investing is based on fundamentals, not technicals, using these words from their investing context. The former evaluates the industry, potentials, and competency of a business, while the latter is little more than an ad hoc psychological profile of investor behavior, unconnected to the fundamentals of a business, and while occasionally yielding positive results, is quite vulnerable to failure when the fundamentals change.

Those looks of steely determination were necessary in the face of all the sulfur they encountered.

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) is one of a suite of films based on the Jules Verne novel of the same name, and it is, arguably, one of the best. I’m not saying it has the most fidelity to its source, as I’m not even sure I’ve ever read the classic Verne offering, but it has all the elements of an enjoyable science fiction/fantasy tale: a fantastic quest, monstrous egos masking horrendous character flaws, monsters designed to make the ego-clash seem small and insincere, a scene stealer, a miraculous, yet logical, escape, and an Olympic sprinter.

Oh, right. Strike that last one. In case you wonder, no, that’s not a necessary part of a classic science fiction tale. But an actor who did sprint in the Olympics is present. (No medal won, sadly.)

Not all of these ingredients are well thought out, as the romantic subplot is neglected here. But, truth be told, much of the rest is well done, the acting is more than adequate, I adored the scene stealer, and the monsters were surprisingly lifelike – these weren’t hand puppets.

You don’t need to be a completist in order to have an excuse to see this movie, just have an open evening and a taste for old movies and their somewhat archaic ideas about behaviors.

And popcorn! Don’t forget the popcorn!

From Richard Smyth in NewScientist (15 April 2023):

“We believe all species should be herbivorous” seems an ambitious mission statement. It doesn’t seem any less ambitious when it is followed by the declaration that “currently we use donations for… online promotion, and equipment needed for podcasting. In the future we would like to have enough to hire researchers.”

But this is where the “herbivorisation” project, an idea taking shape on the fringe of the fringe, is at. Headed by philosopher David Pearce, futurist Adam James Davis and ethicist Stijn Bruers, Herbivorize Predators aims to develop a way “to safely transform carnivorous species into herbivorous ones”, thereby minimising the sum total of suffering in the world.

“Tough On The Green Things” reflects the first thoughts of both my Arts Editor and myself.

But I have to wonder how earnest this sort of thing might be, and how much of it reflects MLK, Jr. Syndrome – the desire for being part of the Next Big Good Thing. A concealed self-glorification, if you will.

And, being a software engineer and not a philosopher, I have to wonder how much the various philosophical schools connect morality with Nature, or if they are considered unconnected, even antithetical. Perhaps a holdover from the glory days of the steam engine, where passengers on the steam engine considered soot to be a symbolic separator from the Evil Nature that deprived them of infants, children, friends, and their own lives prematurely.

In the end, morality must have an end, by which I do not mean a finish, but rather the secondary meaning of a goal. It’d be interesting to have Gallup do a poll on such an odd and abstract question.

Super bloom:

While it isn’t a formal scientific term, a super bloom is “a wonderful natural phenomenon where many annual wildflowers all bloom simultaneously,” said Naomi Fraga, director of conservation programs at the California Botanic Garden in Claremont.

“You have a great diversity, an abundance of many different wildflower species, all flowering, creating bright patches of color on the landscape where they become the dominant feature,” Fraga said. [“California’s ‘super bloom’ is underway. Here’s why it’s so epic.” Allyson Chiu and Naema Ahmed, WaPo]

Charming!

For those of us who thought Dominion Voting Systems vs Fox News was a proxy for justice, lawyer KeithDB has a pearl of wisdom:

… $787.5 million is a whole lot of mea, even if short a bit of culpa. The massive settlement speaks for itself. Fox did not pay nearly a billion dollars because it told the truth. [Daily Kos]

Some admissions are out loud, and some live between the lines.

And if you still watch Fox News, what the hell do you think you’re doing?

I was just about to remark that Dominion Voting Systems, during settlement talks and/or litigation with Fox News, needs to keep in mind that there’s no place for a manufacturer of voting systems in a non-democracy, which is the probable end result of a news source that consistently lies and twists the news; that, in fact, applies to all news sites. And –

They settled for $787 million. Fox News admits to lying.

I suppose details to follow. So much for the popcorn.

Pendency:

the time when something is pending (= waiting to happen), especially a legal or official process, or the state of being pending:

• He will be held in jail during the pendency of (= while waiting for) the trial.
• Very few people actually reconcile during the pendency of a divorce. [Cambridge Dictionary]

Noted in “Rumors Of Fox Settlement With Dominion? It’s Tougher Than You Think.” KeithDB, Daily Kos:

My settlement involved over 1,000 clients. Calculating the settlement for each was a daunting accounting issue. Once accomplished the specific monetary settlement offers had to be communicated to all of those clients, and their approval ascertained. Try doing that with 1,000+ people. Some of the client corporations (hospitals) had multiple changes in leadership over the pendency of the case with the new leaders having no idea the case even existed. I will say the calls to them were fun as I advised them of the surprise money coming in, but all that took time.

Imagine how many clerks something like that would have taken prior to computers.

Governor DeSantis (R-FL) may have been a competent lawyer who did honorable service while in the Navy, including time in Afghanistan, and that’s important. He has some competency.

But his domain of competency may not include power politics. His electoral career and its underpinnings have been lackadaisical: representing a heavily Republican Florida district in the House, then riding a Trump endorsement in 2018 to the governor’s office after being a solid middle of the pack candidate. Only in his 2022 run did he seem convincing.

And, in a State that really counts entertainment as a leading industry, he’s become rather famous for his antics. From anti-vaxxers as official medical advisors, to baiting the left by signing laws formulated by the far right, he’s kept those who adore entertainment voting for him.

But that doesn’t mean he knows what he’s doing. From RawStory comes an account of his latest antics:

The Disneyland resort in California will hold a new LGBTQ-themed event night, according to the company in a tweeted statement on Monday.

“The first-ever Disneyland After Dark: Pride Nite is coming to @Disneyland during Pride Month in June!” said the statement. “This separately ticketed event celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community & allies will have themed entertainment, Disney characters, specialty menu items & more.”

This announcement comes just hours after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) announced at a press conference in Lake Buena Vista that he would be pursuing punitive policies against Disney in an escalating feud that began over the company’s criticism of his handling of LGBTQ rights.

Among other things, DeSantis suggested he could authorize a state park, a rival amusement park, or even a state prison on the land immediately adjacent to the Walt Disney World resort complex.

And, as former RNC Chairman Michael Steele notes:

So you want to “analyze” putting a state prison next to Disney? When families stop visiting & Disney’s $75.2B economic impact & $5.8B tax revenues drop; its 75K employees face layoffs & 463K jobs are also imperiled what would your analytics say caused that to happen?
WTF, Dumbo

Trump and DeSantis

The point here isn’t his risible failure in this matter, or his entertainment value. Rather, he doesn’t seem to have a real competency for the executive of Florida, much less that of his ambitions: the Presidency. Between the odd, and perhaps sinister, way he’s run his State, reports of his personality being unengaging and even repellent, and his clumsy use of threats against corporations which form the backbone of his State, he doesn’t seem so much menacing as simply not up to the task of running a campaign against his fellow Republicans, much less a Democrat who, despite a lot of complaints and grumbling, has a mountain of achievements in his first term, and a connection with a lot of voters that comes from his old fashioned language and occasional stutter.

I’m not seeing a Presidential nomination in DeSantis’ short-term future. I think Trump will find a way to chew him up. I’m not convinced that “DeSanctimonious” is the key; I think it’s going to be in pointing at DeSantis’ clumsy, ill thought out threats. Making an adversary laugh doesn’t count as a successful threat.

Look for someone else to beat Trump for the nomination. I don’t think voters will see victory in DeSantis.

Sunglasses bright?

“It’s probably the brightest event to hit Earth since human civilisation began,” says [Eric Burns at Louisiana State University]. “The energy of this thing is so extreme that if you took the entire sun and you converted all of it into pure energy, it still wouldn’t match this event – there’s just nothing comparable.” [“The most powerful space explosion ever seen keeps baffling astronomers,” Leah Crane, NewScientist (8 April 2023, paywall)]

Makes me wonder. About a lot of things. Like, why bother with regrets when everyone would go away?

Erick Erickson has discovered, in the midst of this controversy over some trans-rights activist endorsing Bud Light, that, well, here you go:

It’s about the money. They do not care about you and your values. They care about the money. They expect you to grin and bear it because the company has thrown money in the direction of your preferred political party. They are not willing to hold their own accountable when their own can buy them, and you, off.

They, from unquoted context, are the National Republican Congressional Committee, not the Democrats.

Do you want to know how the left so easily advances in culture? This. MAGA is, it would seem, all about the benjamins, to paraphrase Ilhan Omar. The question is, are you?

Pay attention these next few days to see which of the loud voices against Bud Light from the online right suddenly fall silent. When one can send them money and have them go silent, perhaps professed values are not values but price tags.

Sure. That’s the point of the former President, the entire libertarian wing, the entire business wing, and much of the balance of the Republican Party. “Personal prosperity,” if you like polite talk, or “Unrestrained, drooling greed,” if you’re a more gritty sort of person, has been a part of the conservatives for a long, long time.

And folks who don’t like grinding poverty may be nodding right now. You do have to realize, though, that we’re talking about more than wishing to have a reasonable life style, but about the folks who’ve made their first $100 million, and are now working on their second hundred million bucks, because they think that’s the point of life.

But Erickson seems shocked, which is a bit of a surprise since he’s been around for a long, long time. But, then, MAGA is new for him, and if it seems just logical to me, Erickson has seemed a bit shocked by the whole MAGA thing.

But, still.

When the elements seem unconnected.

Oxygen-sucking battery rids mice of breast cancer

From the 8 April 2023 print edition of NewScientist.

Alaska continues to be in the vanguard of the expelling and repelling of extremists from electoral positions:

“There’s a lot of conservatives waking up this morning not happy about the preliminary election results,” Amy Demboski said during her morning talk radio show Wednesday.

The former Eagle River Assembly member and municipal manager spent the program going over early Anchorage election returns that disappointed many conservatives in the municipality, with progressive and moderate candidates pulling off a near sweep in six of seven races for the Assembly over right-leaning rivals. Bond packages and ballot proposals did similarly well, winning in all but one case, and typically by healthy margins.

“Not only are races being won by the liberal candidates … but in a much bigger percentage than most of us who do political analysis expected,” Demboski said in an interview Wednesday.

The one exception was in the conservative stronghold of Eagle River, where candidate Scott Myers, who ran with the endorsement of Mayor Dave Bronson, is poised to win by a double-digit margin.

“I was kinda hoping we’d pick up some more conservative seats, naturally,” said Assembly member Kevin Cross, who, along with Myers and South Anchorage’s Randy Sulte, is on track to be in a three-member conservative minority on the 12-person body. [Alaska Daily News]

Demboski’s comment concerning the margin of victory being greater than expected for the liberals is telling, and reminiscent of the 2022 elections in which Republicans badly underperformed their own forecasts, and this was signaled by special elections and other votes preceding the actual general election.

And I thought this was a hint about the future as well:

“There’s probably a little bit of frustration (among) Republicans about the effectiveness of local politics,” said Craig Campbell, a former Assembly member, lieutenant governor and now in a leadership position within the Alaska Republican Party. He’s also the manager of the Ted Stevens International Airport for the state. “It was a tough year for conservatives in fundraising.”

They don’t describe who failed to contribute, but it’s a fair bet that the small contributors failed to do so. Why? Well, go ask them – but, given the behavior, incompetence, and positions exhibited by Republicans nationwide of late, I’d say it was disgust with what has become of a Republican Party that still welcomes former Governor Sarah “quitter” Palin (AK) into its leadership ranks.

So far the Democrats have been pleased with election results since the 2022 elections, which have principally been special elections, but include the highly important Wisconsin Supreme Court election elevating Janet Protasiewicz, who was open about her belief that reproductive rights are a fundamental part of this democracy. As this continues the pre-2022 pattern, Republicans should take these elections as a warning.

Except they can’t. Politics is fundamentally different from playing a game, because the limitations on changing tactics and strategies in a game are resources, technology, and training, all of which can be modified, within limits. In politics, though, the limiting factor is, to a dominant degree, and even moreso for Republicans, the core ideology of guns, religion, and core positions, which are deeply negative, on taxation levels and regulation. As more and more independents become aware of the fundamental flaws in those and other positions, Republicans cannot change them. They’ve spent decades training their base to not question them. Now that they’re discovering that the majority wisdom is not in their favor, and that reality does not correlate with the predictions they make based on those tenets, they’re stuck with a big rock in their arms.

The fourth-raters who make up the vast majority of the leadership of the Party may soon begin sinking out of sight as elections go against them, as they decide to resign, as they’re arrested and expelled from Congress and other positions of power for corruption.

Keep the popcorn handy, and make sure Russia is on your bingo card, as I expect we’ll find some interesting connections between Russia and the Republican Party.

The ludicrous, according to legal experts, decision by US District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas, directing the FDA to restrict access to abortion drug mifepristone, might appear to have the potential to give independents and moderate conservative voters another reason to disregard far-right conservative candidates in upcoming elections. and the contradictory decision by Judge Thomas Rice in Washington (State), which directed the FDA to not change its approach to the drug, does little to mitigate any such anger.

But today SCOTUS, receiving an emergency appeal from the Biden Administration, may be moving, to continue the analogy, to throw this hand grenade in the river.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Friday extended a hold on a lower court ruling that would have imposed restrictions on access to an abortion drug, a temporary move meant to give the justices more time to consider the issue.

Alito said the order is stayed until 11:59 p.m. ET on Wednesday. He also asked plaintiffs to respond on or before noon ET Tuesday.

The case is the most important abortion-related dispute to reach the high court since the justices overturned Roe v. Wade last term. It centers on the scope of the US Food and Drug Administration’s authority to regulate a drug that is used in the majority of abortions today in states that still allow the procedure.

Alito issued a so-called administrative stay on the ruling while the high court considers an emergency appeal filed by the Biden administration and a manufacturer of the drug, mifepristone. The move does not reflect the final disposition of the case. [CNN/Politics]

What I’ve been reading suggests that the issue, faux or not, is whether or not the safety protocols were properly followed twenty years ago when the drug was introduced, and the idea that a federal judge can negate the judgment of the FDA, especially in the face of an excellent safety record, is appalling to those experts.

I suspect SCOTUS‘ conservative wing is looking to toss out the decision banning the drug on the grounds that a Federal judge is ill-suited for contradicting the judgment of trained and experienced drug safety experts.

And that’s the crux on which political strategists will fight the war. Conservative message shapers will try to convince independents that this is all that happened; their liberal counterparts will attempt to counter that an attempt to outlaw an abortion procedure is an attack on abortion access.

They might not be wrong.

But as conservative message makers have generally proven more effective than their opponents, it’s worth remembering that liberal message shapers labor at a disadvantage, if they’re smart, and that’s to avoid lying with more care than the conservative message shapers. I believe that, without that disadvantage, the conservatives’ message will win out.

Which is not to suggest that Republicans will be winning the Senate or the Presidency in 2024, or even retaining the House. Like forecasting the weather, in politics what happened before is likely to happen again. That’s what keeps incumbents in office. And the Republicans have a solid history of blundering foolishness, the mark of fourth-raters, in 2018, 2020, and 2022; the off-year election of 2021 is an exception, but so small that it’s only important in that it is not yet clear that the Democrats have figured out how they lost so badly in the State of Virginia.

The Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe, has incredibly long shirt tails, no matter how much conservatives, trying to savor their bitter, bitter victory in Dobbs, tut-tut and predict it’ll fade. They remain frantic to ignore the existential dangers of pregnancy, not to mention situations of exceptional injustice, and how that negates the feeble fantasy that a fetus is a person. In the end, it may be difficult to distinguish the effects of the Dobbs decision from whatever SCOTUS decides to do here.

But I think that, when elections come, this may not prove to be a major factor, assuming SCOTUS throws out Kacsmaryk’s decision.

Justice Clarence Thomas is known to have sworn vengeance on liberals in the wake of his contentious, yet successful, SCOTUS confirmation hearings, and in those decisions of the last 32 years – he assumed his seat in 1991, or thirty two years ago, making him the senior member – those that were split decisions usually have been irritating and outrageous to liberals – or, in the case of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe vs. Wade, so infuriating to the general electorate that independents and even moderate conservatives ended up voting against proposals and candidates who supported Dobbs, and in such numbers as to disappoint those who were anti-Roe.

But whether or not Thomas has been successful by his own gauge, it appears that he’s beginning to become a leading example, as unwilling as he may be, of the corrupt side of a political party that has an implicit worship of money. Yet another facet of his controversial relationship with real estate tycoon Harlan Crow has come to light, as reported by CNN/Politics:

Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose a 2014 real estate deal he made with a GOP megadonor, according to a ProPublica report published Thursday.

The deal involved the sale of three properties in Savannah, Georgia, that were owned by Thomas and his relatives to the megadonor, Harlan Crow, according to ProPublica, which said that tax and property records showed that Crow made the purchases through one of his companies for a total of $133,363.

That’s not the worst of it:

But Thomas “never disclosed his sale of the Savannah properties,” the report said, noting that ethics law experts told the outlet that his failure to report it “appears to be a violation of the law.”

I wonder if there’s a penalty involved, or if this is another toothless ethics rule. But CNN’s source might be a bit too literal:

“The transaction marks the first known instance of money flowing from the Republican megadonor to the Supreme Court justice,” ProPublica said in its report.

If you’re not familiar with the previous revelations, you should click through to see all the other unfortunate details – the ultra-expensive vacations paid for by Crow, the great friends they’ve become, the cases in which a Crow company came before the Court, etc. This is all beginning to acquire the flavor of a story told in a history book, fifty years from now, in which Justice Thomas becomes not only an example of corruption, but an embodiment of the foundational flaw of a pious, yet arrogant, political party that happens to worship money and power, and confuses that lust with morality.

That’s not to suggest I expect Thomas to resign. No, to do so would be to lose face to the liberals, and that’s the last thing he’ll do. And within the hermitage we call the SCOTUS conservative wing, he’ll retain his influence and prestige, because they share the same political philosophy.

But this continuing scandal will alienate yet more independent voters. The GOP may make big noises about 2024, but between intransigence when it comes to gun laws, the continuing inflammation known as the Dobbs decision, and now this scandal, GOP candidates in swing districts will have to consider disavowing at least one of these GOP positions, if not two or even all three, if they hope to persuade the power-holding independents to vote for them.

If you seek to change [anything] legislatively without changing hearts and minds, you risk the voters changing the legislature.  — Erick Erickson

Yeah, it’s buried deep in a message that tries to conceal the fact that some pregnancies will end in either abortion or the death of the mother by blaming a culture which, in reality, only differs in how much shame is dished out and for what. But, on its own, it’s absolutely true.

And both the Autocratic Left and Autocratic Right would do well to remember this central fact of liberal democracies.

“Are you upset that you broke a nail? Did you get so mad you busted a blood vessel? Here at K-TEL we stand ready and willing to ship you products that’ll make you all better! Order five or more LPs and we’ll send you a set of Ginsu Knives as well!”
And that’s when the trouble started.

The Suicide Squad (2021) is a goony, lurching monster of a movie, filled with head feints, bits of cute dialog, characters who really should wrestle with the question of whether or not they have a superpower, or a dragging weight of a psychiatric condition, and the dark side of the decisive personality.

I’ll say this: as disturbing as the extravagant violence was, the high powered personality spars, booms, mountains, and molehills were just barely enough to keep us watching all the way to the end. Let’s be clear: this is no gentle morality tale, unless Teamwork counts! is a morality tale. Maybe it is.

But rarely are such repugnantly psychologically damaged proponents used to push the proposition.

Reticle:

a network of fine lines, dots, cross hairs, or wires in the focal plane of the eyepiece of an optical instrument [Vocabulary.com]

Noted in “All About The XM157 Next Generation Fire Control System for the XM5 Rifle,” Jennifer Sensiba, The Truth About Guns:

Fortunately, Vortex thought about that and made sure to design an optic that’s actually an optic, not a digital screen. The “smart” parts only project information (including a self-adjusting reticle) onto a transparent display inside of a normal low-power 1-8×30 variable optic (LPVO) with an etched reticle. If the smart parts fail, a soldier can still use the XM157 like a normal optic and stay in the fight without needing to switch to irons.

Although this entry in this intermittent thread might be better likened to STARSHIP TROOPERS (the book by Heinlein, not the movies), it’s also clearly a step towards the killer robots that are the raison d’être of this thread. The source article from a year ago, “All About The XM157 Next Generation Fire Control System for the XM5 Rifle,” by Jennifer Sensiba, is in The Truth About Guns, a source with which I have no familiarity.

One thing that makes this optic really special is that it has a full display with pixels. It doesn’t just light up a few different spots to give different reticles. Where a pixel is lit up, you see something on top of the optical image from the scope. Where pixels aren’t lit up, you see right through the display.

This gives the shooter a lot of options. Ballistic drop, wind holds, the range to the target (as detected by a built-in rangefinder), menus, augmented reality (including ability to tag objects and see what other soldiers have tagged), waypoints, and basically anything else that the Army wants it to display.

The optic will calculate and adjust for bullet drop, windage, angle, etc. The optic has a number of sensors, including a compass, atmospherics, and a laser rangefinder to get the data it needs to make ballistic calculations and move the digital reticle automatically in fractions of a second to make it a true point-and-shoot system. That means people with less skill can shoot faster and more accurately at the longer ranges the 6.8x51mm round has the energy to work well at.

And more interestingly:

Perhaps more importantly, the optic networks with not only other XM157 optics, but computers, smartphones, and even augmented reality visors the Army is developing. Data can potentially come from commanders, satellites, UAVs, and military aviators. It can also be sent to all of those other people who are also in the fight. This gives everyone rapid access to a common operating picture and sensor fusion data, much like the pilot of an F35 or F22 gets.

While there is no self-agency reported, this is a step in that direction because the recognition phase is now arguably in the domain of the machines, rather than exclusively in that of the soldier, the entity making the moral decisions. Moreover, it’s networked between the various weapons. I wonder how much vetting security experts had in the design phase.

Give it full control of the weapon and a decision making capability, and it’s the “tip of the spear” for the killer robot.