Author Archives: Hue White

The speed of computers and the audacity of human greed may be multipliers, eh? I just barely saw it coming and now it may be blowing right by me:

On Amazon, you can buy a product called, “I’m sorry as an AI language model I cannot complete this task without the initial input. Please provide me with the necessary information to assist you further.” [WaPo]

Etc, on other platforms such as X (Twitter), Amazon, and various blogs, followed by:

Across the internet, such error messages have emerged as a telltale sign that the writer behind a given piece of content is not human. Generated by AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT when they get a request that goes against their policies, they are a comical yet ominous harbinger of an online world that is increasingly the product of AI-authored spam.

“It’s good that people have a laugh about it, because it is an educational experience about what’s going on,” said Mike Caulfield, who researches misinformation and digital literacy at the University of Washington. The latest AI language tools, he said, are powering a new generation of spammy, low-quality content that threatens to overwhelm the internet unless online platforms and regulators find ways to rein it in.

Spammy? Low-quality?

Heavens to betsy, our AI overlords are out to get us with … incompetence.

Here’s the thing: the only restraints on using AI are commercial. Governments can’t do much about this, and, worse, the AI overlords CEOs have enough money to throw the type of cash around that inhibits and even bans regulation, even by the Federal government.

In fact, Silicon Valley has already spawned political action groups in this election cycle, such as the anti-Biden Democratic PAC We Deserve Better^[1], which I rather suspect wants Rep Phillips (D-MN) in the White House because he’s a businessman and seen as easily manipulable. Biden is a big ol’ vat of experience and suspicion of business.

So don’t depend on government to make the Web magically wonderful via AI.

Instead, everybody who thinks money is more important than authenticity and quality will be trying to employ AI to do their work for them, even when it’s not sensible. But ChatGPT and many of its competitors are just party tricks, dependent on the Web to generate answers.

There is a reminiscent flavor to all this, but not one the hipsters will relish.

Remember the mad cow crisis? It was quite a while back, so I’ll summarize. Beef tainted with dangerous prions suddenly came on the market, prompting fears and a crash of the beef market. The source of the dangerous prions? The feed of the cows had begun to include … cows. Cows now inadvertent cannibals, the dangeous prions were concentrated and then flooded the cow population, and consequently the beef markets. People caught the illness and became dangerously ill. Some died, others became comatose.

This is a notable analog. The AIs party trick computer tools will generate text that will be posted to … the … Web, which will then be harvested by the party trick computer tools again for posting … to … the … Web …

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Goodness. I am all a-lather to see the nature of the Web in five years. If it even exists. Or if there’ll be required classes in how to discern good information from bad information. For more on this topic, see here on why you’re just not that smart.

Meantime, on a personal note, I’ve been trying to cleanup my writing, condensing by using better words, stay away from dangling participles, all that rot. Seeing these notes on people frantic to avoid actually writing their own copy is alternately distressing and deeply amusing. Do they really want reputations as ding-bats?

I use that last word as a tribute to the hipsters, of course. Of course.

¹ Yes, the name is ludicrous.

Slow cinema:

Slow cinema is a genre of art cinema characterised by a style that is minimalist, observational, and with little or no narrative, and which typically emphasizes long takes. It is sometimes called “contemplative cinema”. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “‘The End We Start From’: Slow cinema’s version of the apocalypse,” Michael O’Sullivan, WaPo:

You could also call [The End We Start From] — directed with a slack sense of urgency by Mahalia Belo, making her theatrical feature debut, and written by Alice Birch (“Lady Macbeth”), based on Megan Hunter’s 2017 book — slow cinema’s version of a post-apocalyptic thriller. Paradoxically, not juicing up the stakes with expensive effects and emotional baloney has the effect of making the situation seem at times more, not less, dire. Comer is especially good at conveying a sense of genuine, if weirdly relaxed, panic.

Bitcoin continues to take it on the nose, as NewScientist’s Matthew Sparkes (13 January 2024) reports:

The amount of electricity used to mine and trade bitcoin climbed to 121 terawatt-hours in 2023, 27 per cent more than the previous year. While other cryptocurrencies in the same position have made bold changes to cut their impact, bitcoin’s decentralised community of developers, miners and investors are showing little interest in changing course. If bitcoin cannot clean up its own house, should governments step in to shut it down?

It is the role of government to ensure society has an environment in which to function safely^[1],  even if that means that some activities are limited or banned. You’d expect that it would give a warning or guidelines, but this appears to be impractical because of the distributed nature of Bitcoin^[2]: No one is in charge^[3]. As it’s Internet-based, it’s difficult for, say, the American government to force it to change and stop consuming so much power.

There is little in the organic experience of Bitcoin to indicate its profligate energy and water usage, and, enhanced by its reputation as the first of the cryptocurrencies, this will blunt or eliminate any concerns by the ordinary user with regard to resource usage that is becoming more and more worrisome.

But artist/activist vonwong is aiming to change that with a found-object sculpture called the Skull of Satoshi, where the subject is a psuedonym for the person or persons who developed the original code of Bitcoin. vonwong has developed a video documenting how he and his team created this sculpture, which also painlessly disseminates information concerning the hidden costs of Bitcoin. Here’s the video:

All that said, and back to Sparkes’ article:

In 2022, another cryptocurrency, Ethereum, ditched this wasteful “proof-of-work” system altogether and replaced it with one where those who own currency control the network, rather than those who own and operate computing power. This slashed the network’s energy consumption overnight by more than 99.99 per cent. More than a year on, the experiment has proved successful, and Ethereum remains secure.

[Alex de Vries at VU Amsterdam] says the bitcoin community – a loose collection of miners, investors and companies – refuses to take the same step and remains wedded to proof of work despite its environmental impact.

I’m sympathetic to both sides. Bitcoin appears to be an unnecessary consumer of immense amounts of natural resources, BUT if it’s going to be around, the phrase where those who own currency control the network throws up red flags, at least to me. It’s a classic corruption scenario: how honest are the controllers? How can they be boosted out if they turn out to be corrupt?

Obviously, I’ve never used cryptocurrencies, and my studies are strictly casual. But, as an obsolete software engineer who has had to deal with the social aspects of computing projects before I even graduated college, these are the sort of things that catch my attention.

Having viewed vonwong’s video, which includes a description of the laser eyes phenomenon, I can’t help but wonder if paranoid conspiracy theories roam the Bitcoin user community, or if they’re blissfully unaware of how a government shutdown plays right into the creation mythos of Bitcoin.

Oh, now I’m wondering if there are any academic papers on the Creation Mythos of Bitcoin. Time to shut down this post.

¹ In all the meanings that can be imputed to that sentence.

² Yes, I’m aware that it should be bitcoin. It’s too damn cute for a computer project of dubious worth and serious resource usage.

³ Because Bitcoin was developed to be administratively distributed, at least in part and as a reaction to the high inflation rates possible through unrestrained production of fiat currency (paper money), as seen in pre-World War II Germany and various African companies saddled with excess debt, the description that no one is in charge makes sense.

The special election thread continues with an election in reddish Florida that resulted in a nasty shock for the Reds Republicans:

Florida Democrat Tom Keen flipped District 35 in the state house on Tuesday, beating Republican rival Erika Booth by 11,390 votes to 10,800. …

The victory is a major boost for Florida Democrats who suffered a dramatic blow during the November 2022 midterm elections, which left Republicans with a supermajority in both the state house and senate. Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, branded the win an “earthquake,” noting the GOP had won the seat in 2022. [Newsweek]

The article doesn’t provide an analysis, but Ben Wikler on Daily Kos suggests this:

The race had two central issues: property insurance (a big deal in Florida)… and abortion.

And that this explains a 13 point swing since 2022. I have no idea if Mr. Wikler is an authority on the electoral politics of Florida, however.

Combine this with improving consumer sentiment, a complete lack of interest in Biden’s intra-party rival Rep Dean Phillips (D-MN) from fellow Democrats, and likely Republican nominee Mr. Trump’s many legal troubles, and, despite the media’s insistence that Biden is in trouble, he may have only to improve his messaging concerning his high competence in most governmental matters to turn Trump’s frantic antics into the Dance of Futility.

From WaPo:

Donald Trump urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to ensure his name can appear on election ballots nationwide, warning of “chaos and bedlam” if the justices do not reverse Colorado’s top court, which disqualified the former president because of his actions on and leading up to Jan. 6, 2021.

This is one of those head feint arguments, unworthy of the lawyers filing it. While domestic tranquility is certainly a responsibility of government, including the judiciary, it is necessary to ask whether it is wise to be persuaded by such a claim, a claim that has no limit on the number of times it may be used, nor by whom^[1]. For example, the Democrats may claim bedlam will attend the next culture war decision^[2] by SCOTUS if the decision is unfavorable to the Democrats. Is this desirable? Does SCOTUS have to evaluate every decision with regards to how much violence it may provoke? Is this the purpose of the police, to become targets of those unhappy with SCOTUS decisions?

Second, it is a speculative claim. Implicitly, it threatens to bring the violence of the January 6th Insurrection to SCOTUS; yet, Mr. Trump has implored his followers to appear at judicial and other events to show their support, but his followers have made pitiful showings at those events. This weakens, quite severely, the argument that bedlam will occur. It may be what Mr. Trump wishes would occur, but his wishes translate poorly to reality, as those who followed his Administration’s actions are aware.

Another defense argument looks superficially persuasive, but, to this non-lawyer eye, ends up not:

The efforts to disqualify the leading Republican primary contender in the 2024 election, his lawyer Jonathan Mitchell wrote, “threaten to disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans” and “promise to unleash chaos and bedlam if other state courts and state officials follow Colorado’s lead.”

Consider this: If I had a 15 year old supergenius prodigy nephew or niece, I could not vote for them, either. Am I unjustifiably disenfranchised because the Constitution specifies a lower age limit on those who would serve as President?

No.

The Constitution is, to a large degree, the defining document of our democracy. We’ve put as much wisdom as we can into it, acknowledging our limitations at the same time through the Amendment process. If someone is too young to have acquired the wisdom that comes, to some, with age, then they are disallowed. Under the same rubric, banning people who’ve betrayed a sworn public office is a permissible disenfranchisement because those who wrote that Amendment to the Constitution foresaw such would-be office-holders not as well-meaning citizens who would do their best, but as those who would, again, and in all probability, betray their office in pursuit of their self-interest, which is a violation of the public servant’s remit.

This, then, and in some conflict with Mr. Trump’s claim #2, above, with regard to bringing January 6th violence to SCOTUS, leaves the Court with the problem of deciding if the Colorado Supreme Court is correct in seeing Mr. Trump as guilty of insurrection for trying to overturn the decision of the people, especially through force.

¹ With the trivial exception of pacifists, of course.

² Culture war decisions include such topics as abortion, funding of religious schools, charter schools, various gender rights and restrictions, etc.

On Wednesday I was listening to NPR on the way home from work, and they broadcast a report, less than ten minutes long, regarding the state of the Web.

I regret to say I’ve been unable to find it, because it actually had an impact on me.

To summarize, they claimed that, unlike ten or fifteen years ago, the state of the offerings of the big institutions of the Web, such as Google, and perhaps the digital news organizations, have declined. In Google’s case, for example, they said the searches one might enter no longer return current entries, but more likely those that are obviously commercial and of marginal relevance, or even dead links.

OK, so we know that without numbers it’s difficult to be sure this report is meaningful. Maybe the reporter(s) had some constipation that day, or the Google search engine was hiccuping, or whatever.

But, later, it did occur to me that this is congruent with a view of the Web as a Commons. Commons is a political economics term:

The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly. Commons can also be understood as natural resources that groups of people (communities, user groups) manage for individual and collective benefit. Characteristically, this involves a variety of informal norms and values (social practice) employed for a governance mechanism. Commons can also be defined as a social practice of governing a resource not by state or market but by a community of users that self-governs the resource through institutions that it creates.

Related to commons is the term tragedy of the commons, which is basically the plundering of a resource which lacks natural, enforceable restraints on its use while remaining valuable. This happens with many resources, from our atmosphere to fisheries to potable water.

And, I think, we can add the Web to that list. We’ve made access to the Web, as both consumers and creators, virtually cost-free; for example, this web-site costs me a couple of hundred dollars a year, if memory serves, which means I can author, to a potentially huge audience, for a pittance. We treat it like an unlimited resource. This combination makes the Web a commons. Another couple of hundred for basic access, i.e., consumption, and the investment is very cheap for what I get in return.

Except … if we believe the NPR report, it’s not as high as it was in the past. Services such as the Google search engine made the overwhelming problem of organizing our searches tractable – raise your hand if you remember Alta Vista, and how Google prompted cries of glee. But if our searches are beginning to return irrelevancies, is the Web still useful?

If news organizations are spewing more and more “sponsored content,” which is often commercials masquerading as news reports, are they as valuable as we like to think? Indeed, throw in the loss of traditional news organizations such as hometown newspapers, and now we have to ask: have we lost our most valuable public intangible resource, our news organizations, as we discover the digital news media is not nearly as useful?

My mind is flooding with metaphors, I fear. Along with the tragedy of the commons, I have to wonder if our thunderous rush for “free news” has been the equivalent of subsisting on pure high fructose corn syrup – oh so good for our taste buds, but oh so damaging to our health.

Back to my speculation focus. The Web has become a focus for damage: malware for our computers, attacks on our infrastructure, disinformation campaigns from Russia and other entities, development of certain AI techniques dependent on huge amounts of training data and ongoing energy consumption, cryptocurrency and its associated scams and energy consumption, deepfake videos, the violence endemic with online communities of violent personalities, and so many more that slip my mind.

My goodness.

I have to wonder: Who will walk away from the Web as it continues to degrade? Addicts to social media are faced with quite a mountain, and some commit suicide, but non-addictive personalities may begin to stream, if they haven’t already, away from the Web. There’s a lot more to life than sitting in front of a computer talking to maybe-people maybe-chatbots-from-Russia for hours/days/weeks/months on end.

Says the guy who’s been in social media for forty years.

I suspect the Web will turn into a resource where some places, like Wikipedia, will remain up and valuable, even when attacked, commercial entities will fight to entice the unwary into their webs, the dark Web will continue but not be a place for the naive.

And a lot of people will not otherwise use it. Some, like the hipsters, may even look to resurrect the institutions of a more stable societal time.

I look forward to see how this works out. Heavens knows the ice fishing hobby remains so popular that the ice fishers ignore the warnings and end up being rescued around here when the ice breaks up.

But rebuilding society around ice fishing during climate change might be a bit foolish.

For the independent voter uncertain of their preference in the upcoming Presidential election, many will be fundamentally uninterested, but uneasily aware that, to be a good citizen of the United States, they should vote in the election. But, of course, for whom?

To this voter, I offer an easily understood metric by which to measure Mr. Trump. The metric? What do the best people who have associated with him think of him?

Well, we can ask his hometown of Manhattan. How did Mr. Trump do in Manhattan in the Presidential election of 2016?

A seventy point loss speaks volumes, doesn’t it? In 2020, Trump made up ground, but still lost by 30 points or so.

OK, so how about the folks who has worked for him? His Chief of Staff & General John F. Kelly (US Marines-retired) would certainly seem close to him:

“A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law. [CNN/Politics]

Kelly doesn’t much care for him, both personally and professionally.

How about Cassidy Hutchinson, assistant to Mr. Trump’s final Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows?

“I think that Donald Trump is the most grave threat we will face to our democracy in our lifetime, and potentially in American history,” Hutchinson told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview Tuesday. [CNN/Politics]

That from a dedicated conservative.

In order to cover most of his other White House officials who had close contact:

No other presidential candidate in history has had so many detractors from his inner circle. His former secretary of defense, Mark Esper, told CNN in November 2022, “I think he’s unfit for office. … He puts himself before country. His actions are all about him and not about the country. And then, of course, I believe he has integrity and character issues as well.” [CNN/Politics]

There’s another group that has close contact with Mr. Trump, and that’s his lawyers. What do they think of him?

Donald Trump lost three of his lawyers in one day when attorney Joe Tacopina filed a declaration requesting the withdrawal of his firm’s representation of the former president in multiple lawsuits. [Newsweek]

This is not an isolated incident; it is, in fact, part of a long line, and inadvertent standing joke, of lawyers who worked for Mr. Trump, quit eventually, and regret the association. Whether it’s due to not being paid, or for not obeying their recommendations, or some other reason, they leave. En masse, sometimes. Other names include Ty Cobb and Jenna Ellis.

And, finally, what of his own family? His niece, Mary Trump, has condemned him on multiple occasions. His daughter is not participating in the campaign, nor his son in law, so far as I know. Nor is his wife. Only his adult sons, Eric and Donald, Jr., carry on as his proxies.

And how about those who do not condemn him? Well, sad to say, they tend to be characters who have, independent of their association with Trump, developed awful reputations. Their names include Roger “ratfucker” Stone, father of dirty tricks; Stephen Miller, arrogant anti-migrant fanatic and Trump advisor; Steve Bannon, Internet dirty trickster; Ryan Zinke (R-MT), at the center of many corruption scandals during his time as Secretary of the Interior; etc. There are more, of that I know because I know I’ve forgotten them.

In essence, to my doubtful reader I say this: Those who know Mr. Trump, and understand that an ethical Administration is essential to the efficient running and survival of the American state, speak very, very ill of him. So why should you vote for him?

Parasitosis:

A parasitic disease, also known as parasitosis, is an infectious disease caused by parasites. Parasites are organisms which derive sustenance from its host while causing it harm. The study of parasites and parasitic diseases is known as parasitology. Medical parasitology is concerned with three major groups of parasites: parasitic protozoa, helminths, and parasitic arthropods. Parasitic diseases are thus considered those diseases that are caused by pathogens belonging taxonomically to either the animal kingdom, or the protozoan kingdom. [Wikipedia]

As expected. Noted in “What Happened to Chemtrails?” Mick West, Skeptical Inquirer (January/February 2024, paywall):

Morgellons was a self-diagnosis that a few worried people sought out when their regular doctors were unable to cure their symptoms. It involved small fibers that were thought to emerge from the skin as part of the “disease.” In reality, the fibers people were finding were ordinary misidentified things such as hair, cotton, or paper fibers. But the visual confirmation of their suspicions seemed to be something people latched onto.

The Morgellons community was very diverse. While most had genuine symptoms of unknown cause, their fixation on the “fibers” as being related made their condition indistinguishable from delusions of parasitosis. It was a very eccentric community.

“What happened to you, man? Now you can’t remember your lines and you look old!”
“Oh, go away, Tommy!”
“My name’s not Tommy!”
“Well, it’s not mine, either! I’m Archibald Leach!”

The Burial (2023) is a retelling of the contract law litigation of Jeremiah O’Keefe vs. The Loewen Group in which O’Keefe accused Loewen of offering a buyout of certain O’Keefe funeral service properties, with no intention of actually fulfilling the contract. O’Keefe would be frozen, as it were, into inaction while awaiting money that would never come.

This drama, while a more or less conventional Hollywood treatment, is still effective, even if the last minute discoveries and actions are predictable. The actors are quite good at making a somewhat tired treatment affecting, and so if you choose to watch The Burial, I doubt you’ll be disappointed.

It is, in essence, a story of how one of the top 1% preyed on the poor sector of society, via its unavoidable needs, through misrepresentation, and how a middle class member who helped serve the poor, and believed in the original promise of America, fought back with the sharpest tools he could find: a lawyer who grew up as a member of the poor, and never forgot it.

But it does help that this is based on a real case and shows that the wheels of justice, as slow as they may be, can grind to a proper conclusion. For another treatment of the case, former funeral director Caitlyn Doughty did a half hour documentary.

Within its limitations, it’s quite good, even if it occasionally feels like it’s good for you. Enjoy – and learn.

Scampering about the hunting preserve we call RINO (Republican in Name Only) Country is … Wisconsin Speaker of the House and long-time far-right extremist Robin Vos (R-District 63):

Backers of former President Donald Trump filed a petition Wednesday seeking to recall Wisconsin Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos from office, citing Vos’ opposition to Trump and his not moving forward with impeaching the state’s top elections official. [AP]

This is just the usual symptom of a Party accelerating to the extremes, incentivized by the conversion of the Party from that of advocacy of principle to that of the advocacy of a particular person. The latter attracts the gadfly, the power-monger, the prestige-seeker, who places the idea of actually doing the job below that of the accumulation of whatever it is they seek. Thus, they feel free to call out their targets as RINOs, as failures, even as Vos skates near the legal precipice of what might bring disgrace, and possibly even legal jeopardy, down on his head. His persecutors care not for reality, only for their lust for power, prestige, and possibly wealth.

Nevermind that the neglect of the job will actually negatively impact, sometimes disastrously so, their object of desire.

Wisconsin seems to be a particularly afflicted State, and this will be exacerbated even more if the gerrymandering inflicted on the State is rolled back. A Party suddenly ejected from power, as already exhibited by the entirely bitter reaction to the election and re-election of Tony Evers (D-WI) to the governor’s seat, will lash out both externally and internally.

Look for Vos to not run for re-election; he may actually be expelled from the Party, and be replaced by someone like the Michigan GOP’s chairwoman, who was removed from the leadership just last week, presumably for ineffectual leadership and being a complete loon.

Lithophone:

The closing moments of the film feature a performance of lithophones, sculpted sections of rock that produce wonderful sounds and harmonics when they are hit by another, smaller rock – and put me in a meditative mood. Having also heard how stars are born and revelling in cosmic dust, I was feeling spaced-out. [“Celebrating dark skies at a festival in deepest Denmark,” Alex Wilkins, NewScientist (6 January 2023, paywall)]

For the curious:

In case you think there’s an economic case for electing Trump president, here’s former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich (Clinton Administration) with a rebuttal. I haven’t verified his numbers, but what he has to say is congruent with many other analyses I’ve read.

It used to be that progress was measured by civilization’s control over the evils of Nature. This was not some weird perversion, mind you, but rather a measure of our understanding of the world around us. I recall reading in a school textbook, long ago – someone wake the dude in the corner up, eh? – that riders of the old steam trains would be proud that their clothes were stained with the soot generated by the coal powering their locomotives, because it it was emblematic of the control of civilization over the Nature that so often robbed us of fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers, children, friends, through disease and the other vicissitudes of, well, being alive.

Beats me if it’s actually true, not being a historian, but it makes sense.

These days, I think, we’re in a dispute over the meaning of progress. Some cling to old definitions, such as how high we can build, or build farms, or build dams.

And then there are the new ways of measurement in which we try to comprehend entire natural systems and how to interact with them, not only for our immediate gratification, but how to also consider the needs of other members of our ecology, whether they be trees or wildlife – or rivers.

To the last comes the news that the dams on the Klamath River are not being built, are not being maintained, but are being dismantled. From NPR’s Erik Neumann:

The dam that was opened yesterday is the lowest on the river. It’s huge – 173 feet tall, made of earth and rock. And after a 16-foot-wide tunnel was opened at the base yesterday morning, a plume of chocolate-milk-brown water surged through, containing sediment that had accumulated over decades.

Link River Dam (1938).
Source: Wikipedia.

No doubt there will be immediate negative effects, and wildfires are mentioned in the above interview. These will be used by advocates of the old measurement systems to attempt to condemn this project, to spread gloom and despair among the affected, to build political power by those who have no wish to solve problems, but to hold power.

I hope they can be ignored. The fact of the matter is that the dams had many negative effects on salmon, and those entities who found them valuable, from killer whales to humans. This is far more important than having to move some folks to new communities and make them whole, something which we can easily do. But it does involve cooperation, hard work, and weighing alternatives — things foreign to demagogues.

This is all in order to shore up the environment which enables our survival.

Sometimes it just takes an article title to inspire some thought. There goes one now:

Popular AI Chatbots Found to Give Error-Ridden Legal Answers

This is from Bloomberg Law, and is, in fact, behind a paywall, so I have not read it. But just reading the title gave me a new way of thinking about Chat GPT-4:

These chatbots are actually thermometers, or, even better, an improved polygraph, if you will, measuring the accuracy of the Web on whatever topic you might like.

This does not take them out of the league of party tricks, an assertion I’ve made before. But I don’t see them as legitimate tools, because, as polygraphs, they indicate the patient is hardly trustworthy. Potential customers should be intellectually invested in honesty, in truth. That should go without saying, but, sadly, does not. Ask a tobacco company. And Error-ridden legal answers does not qualify as truth.

But it does qualify as a measuring stick.

A week or so back, Hunter Biden was subpoenaed by Rep Comer’s (R-SC) House Oversight to appear for a private hearing, a hearing from which the press and other news media is excluded.

Hunter declined, but offered to appear at a public meeting, one open to the media. He was perhaps undiplomatic in noting Comer’s inclination to misrepresent the findings of such meetings. Rep Comer (R-SC) declined this offer, which is to say he expressed outrage and made various claims of impeachment of the President over the matter, the heaps of evidence, and a few other trivialities.

Which leads to a joint meeting of the Oversight and Judiciary committees to begin the process of holding Biden in contempt of Congress a day or two ago in which … Hunter Biden showed up. Reactions reported by CNN/Politics:

On Wednesday morning, Hunter Biden entered the committee room, creating a tumultuous scene inside and outside the committee room as lawmakers debated what to do.

“You are the epitome of White privilege,” GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina told Hunter Biden from her committee seat. “Coming into the Oversight Committee, spitting in our face, ignoring a congressional subpoena to be deposed. What are you afraid of? You have no balls.”

It was quite a meeting according to CNN.

“I think it’s clear and obvious for everyone watching this hearing today that Hunter Biden is terrified of strong, conservative, Republican women because he can’t even face my words as I was about to speak to him,” [Rep MT] Greene [R-GA] said.

More likely, it was to keep from laughing. In fact, you know you’re in trouble when Rep Andy Biggs (R-AZ) is the reasonable guy in the room:

Reacting to all of the members interrupting each other, GOP Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona implored his colleagues “don’t act like a bunch of nimrods.”

But, seriously, as noted by others this is what happens when politicians trained to be publicity hounds are elected. They should be seen as object lessons on the attributes of who does not deserve to be elected. Far-right pundit Erick Erickson, in a paywall piece that he sent to unpaid subscribers like me, recognizes this was an entire room of preferably ex-Representatives:

I will not be surprised if, by this afternoon, Rep. Nancy Mace has out a fundraising appeal that she told Hunter Biden to his face that he has no balls. The GOP has a problem. This morning’s hearing about Biden turned into a clown show. I bet a lot of you loved it. But a lot of Democrats loved it too. Both sides get to rile up their base and fundraise. …

The Republicans, and to some extent the Democrats, believe that it’s now campaign time at all times, and worse yet that governing performance is not part of campaigning.

It’s going to be a rough time for Americans until they figure out that Mace, Greene, etc et al must be ejected before responsible governance will be possible.

This doesn’t sound good for the guy who wants to be Superman, invulnerable to everything:

Judge Florence Pan, a President Joe Biden nominee, posed some striking hypothetical questions to Sauer, to flesh out the bounds of his immunity argument. His legal theory claims former presidents are shielded from prosecution for official actions if there isn’t an impeachment and conviction by Congress first.

“Could a president order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival? That is an official act, an order to SEAL Team Six?” Pan asked. [CNN/Politics]

A question that clarifies the bankruptcy of Trump’s immunity assertions. Of course, some far-rightists and those who value money more than good sense will whine about Judge Pan being a Biden appointee, but that just marks them as fourth-raters. Pan’s question lays bare the issue at hand: is the President immune to common-sense constraints? Even Trump’s lawyer half-way conceded the point:

“He would have to be, and would speedily be impeached and convicted before the criminal prosecution,” Sauer said.

“I asked you a yes or no question,” Pan said.

“If he were impeached and convicted first,” Sauer replied, later insisting that the “political process” of impeachment “would have to occur” before any prosecution could be initiated.

But we are all equal before the law, and if we grant the President some deferrals in special cases, they do not include deferrals, much less exceptions, for what appears to be outright corruption.

It occurs to me that the district court might have declared that the question of immunity need only be decided if a finding of corruption or other law-breaking, as it would be otherwise moot, which is rather the reverse of Trump’s assertion concerning these prosecutions. By continuing the process of litigation, even if the former President is eventually given immunity, the voters will gain important, legitimate information concerning Trump’s guilt, or lack thereof, in these cases, and this is important for making voting decisions.

In the end, actions that benefit the President at the substantial expense and imperilment of the Union do not, in the least, deserve deferral nor immunity, and the suits dependent on the outcome of this litigation definitely fall into this category. Disregarding this facet puts the Country at peril.

Fantasizing about Carrie Fisher as a blonde, I guess.

Sharknado: The 4th Awakens (2016) continues the tale of Fin Shepherd, the terror of flying sharks everywhere, and his merry band of washed-up costars on what must be, for some, their final go-around, as names such as Hasselhoff and Busey, Tiegs and Chrisley and Guttenberg accompany Fin in his desperate play to keep the ravaging herd of flying sharks at bay. As backstory, Astro-X, a company and not the Godzilla co-stars, has manufactured and used its nuclear Astro-Pods to suppress the sharknados, but little did they know that the sharknados were growing stronger, and so the Astro-Pods are overwhelmed, embarrassing the CEO of Astro-X.

But who knew that sharknadoes can ALSO spawn? In a fit of rapid evolution, the sharknado that has been pursuing Fin all over the landscape now becomes a firenado, fueled by an oil field strike, and then a cownado, lavanado, and a hailnado, all accompanied by the endless supply of sharks. With more to come.

But the big surprise is the return of April, Fin’s dead wife. Or, from her point of view, the return of her entire dead family. Except her Dad, a famous Evil Doctor, who has done a bad thing.

And then it all comes together at Niagara Falls, where the end of this ‘nado has been achieved, but the next … is just beginning. And, in a fit of terminal sentimentality, everyone gets rescued. Except Fin’s son’s newlywed wife, who apparently really didn’t want to continue in all this silliness.

Folks investigating UBI (Universal Basic Income) screw it up:

If 100 homeless people were given $750 per month for a year, no questions asked, what would they spend it on?

That question was at the core of a controlled study conducted by a San Francisco-based nonprofit and the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work.

The results were so promising that the researchers decided to publish results after only six months. The answer: food, 36.6%; housing, 19.5%; transportation, 12.7%; clothing, 11.5%; and healthcare, 6.2%, leaving only 13.6% uncategorized. [Los Angeles Times]

Never mind the absurdly small study size. The fact of the matter is that one of the crucial variables that affects human mentality, which is the essence of the measurement subject, is time. That the study was limited to a year was bad enough; that it was cut off after six months is the mark of the partisan, not the seasoned scientist.

These results are liable to join the graveyard of ghostly results, never to be reliably reproduced, because maybe after a year the typical study subject could easily decide to return to whatever habits put them in the state of homelessness in the first place, assuming it was not some bit of bad luck beyond their control. The longer study might detect this, consigning this study to the curiosity bin.

Such a study is vulnerable to so many insidiously unrecognized variables, such as researcher impact, and then to cut it off short! I like the idea of UBI, and I fear this cutoff does a disservice to the academics of UBI.

Remember the mythical hoop snake? Here’s a small one.

More here.

Well, maybe it’s justified, since crime does seem to cluster; that is, crime is intensely local. But if you happen to live across a big area, maybe it’s not justified, or so suggests Jeff Asher:

Murder plummeted in the United States in 2023, likely at one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded. What’s more, every type of Uniform Crime Report Part I crime with the exception of auto theft is likely down a considerable amount this year relative to last year according to newly reported data through September from the FBI.

Americans tend to think that crime is rising, but the evidence we have right now points to sizable declines this year (even if there are always outliers). The quarterly data in particular suggests 2023 featured one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the United States in more than 50 years.

Murder is down 12.7 percent in our YTD murder dashboard as of this writing (December 7th) with a decline in 73 percent of the more than 175 cities with available data. The sample suggests either the largest or one of the largest national declines in murder on record occurred this year (both in terms of percent and absolute decline). [Jeff-alytics]

I know six months ago car-jackings in the Twin Cities, often by teenagers, seemed to be surging, while here in January of 2024 I can’t recall seeing a report in quite a while. Still, “a report” qualifies as anecdotal evidence par excellence, but as much as it’s important to understand that your feelings do not qualify as expert opinion on any quantifiable phenomenon, it’s also important to understand that our irrational, keep you alive part of your brain runs on internalized empiricism, or intuition aka your feelings. Keeping that in mind, it’s good to stay connected to the community through news sources, but, unless those sources include summations with time-series graphs, if you’re feeling panicky about trends, seek out authoritative sources of said graphs.

And then think about them.

For instance, if the per capita graph says a rate is going down, ask yourself if the population covered by the graph is itself growing. If the answer is ‘yes’, then that might explain why there are more incidents being reported even as the per capita drops.

So when I see a report that says murders are dropping, I wonder if that applies to the Twin Cities, and how growing population is interacting with a saturated new station and a dropping rate. I’m too busy or too lazy to seek out the actual data, but at least I know I should do it.

From “AI firms will face copyright infringement lawsuits in 2024 (print: Creators fight back against AI),” Alex Wilkins, NewScientist (30 December 2023, paywall):

“People say a lot of crazy things in a class-action pleading. There’s no particular incentive to be judicious, to only run your best arguments, to only say things that you can actually back up with facts.”
— Matthew Sag at Emory University in Atlanta

Linguist Philip Seargeant has something to say concerning the diversity of languages:

The Babel myth, which casts a long shadow over how we think about the topic, is based around the idea that linguistic diversity and multilingualism are flaws in the human faculty for language – that they are a problem, and thus in need of a solution. In reality, they are fundamental features of the system, which give language its flexibility, and upon which whole cultures and identities are built.

It is this inbuilt urge for diversity that is the main reason why all the schemes for universal languages never quite fulfilled their inventors’ ambitions. As communities shift and grow, so do their linguistic habits. And while language is, of course, a means for communicating with others, it is also a means for differentiating yourself from others. So technologies that find ways to bypass or render invisible this diversity will have significant ramifications for human society. [“Is artificial intelligence about to free us from the curse of Babel?” NewScientist (30 December 2023, paywall)]

His suggestion that languages differ because we like to have something which differentiates us from “others” is a bit of balderdash with nothing suggesting proof.

Here’s an experiment, which should be possible using computer simulators: Spread a human population speaking a single, relatively immature language over a geographically diverse area, with a slow transmission speed, meaning no electronic communications such as radio, and limited and even hazardous travel. Give the agents an urge to survive, propagate, perhaps even prosper. Give the population a few hundred generations to develop.

The varied geography will, one should hypothesize, lead to the development of differing vocabularies, because language isn’t only about communication, but also about the lens through which we view the world as modulated by our common but distinct interests.

Look at me: An obsolete software engineer. Show me a randomly selected seed and I’ll say, “It grows a plant, doesn’t it?” Show it to a farmer and they may identify it down to the exact variant of barley into which it’ll develop. I won’t even remember the words used to describe it. They’ll glare at me if I make a joke about, say, wavelet data structures using their words.

I dare to say that his suggestion may be more reflective of the individualistic mindset of today than anything else.

But his assertion that Babel, so to speak, isn’t a curse remains interesting. It may simply be inevitable.

And this is your film critic du jour. Mind the cilia.

Dune (2021) is one of the slickest examples of space opera ever made. A space opera, for me, involves one or more fictional empires based on one or more fictional planets, possibly in other galaxies or a fictional universe. Much like the Roman Empire, space operas involve empires, often autocratic, full of ambitious characters, filled with swirling rip-currents of politics, leaders whose view of their position includes little of standard morality with an inclination towards power and wealth and influence, existential enemies who are outside looking in, and many other titanic elements, and, at least in the better ones, how the individual copes with the many reasons to act in the worst ways.

And in most of these there’s a MacGuffin, a thing that promises to change the game.

Can’t think of any offhand? Try Star Wars (1977) and its various sequels, prequels, all in pursuit of the Force, along with imitators, from the last generation; a couple of generations prior to that there was Flash Gordon, featuring Ming the Merciless, and whatever it was (I forget) that would neutralize the evil Ming.

Dune pits House Harkonnen against House Atreides. The former has the rights to the planet Dune, from which the MacGuffin psychotropic travel drug called spice, is extracted, amidst various local dangers. The emperor has decreed these rights now belong to House Atreides. But it’s all a plot to cripple or even destroy House Atreides, it turns out, and soon enough Harkonnen returns in force.

Despite the slaughter, two members of Atreides survive, the wife and son of the Lord of Atreides, and it’s their journey into the power of the locals, the Fremen, and the local wildlife, that occupies our attention.

That’s Part One.

Is it good? Oh, it’s not bad, but it seemed to drag on and on. The personal battleshields were under explained, while the battle scenes can drag a bit. It can be predictable, and good characters die, perhaps too easily. My Arts Editor told me not to pause it when she headed for the bathroom during said battle scenes.

But if you have a spare three hours, it’s not the worst possible way to occupy those hours.