Unsightly Mental Blemishes

The crocuses are blooming.

Last night my Arts Editor and I saw Lettice and Lovage at Theatre In The Round in Minneapolis. This production was quite long, 3+ hours, so be prepared if you go.

The first Act was a bit stodgy, although it did end on a high note; the second Act moved along at a faster, more interesting clip.

The third Act was the best, as various loose ends and what we considered to be throwaway elements came back to haunt the characters. Although bits of it seemed forced, the actors do forget the necessary bonds between the other characters and the audience.

Definitely a mixed bag, as a few audience members disappeared during the intermissions; this production doesn’t appeal to all temperaments. But it may appeal to your’s! A bit of whimsy and an appreciation for characters who find society lacking in graceful aesthetics, and the consequences thereof, is necessary.

Good luck.

“How it got into the hotel bar, I’ll never know.” With apologies to Grouch Marx.^[1]

Sorry. Not really. What triggered some pleasant silliness in this time of shock & unhappiness?

Indeed, many AI scientists are increasingly of the view that LLMs aren’t a route to the lofty goal of artificial general intelligence (AGI), capable of matching or exceeding anything a human can do – a machine that can think, as Turing would have put it. For example, in a recent survey of AI researchers, about 76 per cent of respondents said it was “unlikely” or “very unlikely” that current approaches will succeed in achieving AGI.

Instead, perhaps we need to think of these AIs in a new way. Writing in the journal Science this week, a team of AI researchers says they “should not be viewed primarily as intelligent agents but as a new kind of cultural and social technology, allowing humans to take advantage of information other humans have accumulated”. The researchers compare LLMs to “such past technologies as writing, print, markets, bureaucracies, and representative democracies” that have transformed the way we access and process information. [“Should governments really be using AI to remake the state?” NewScientist (22 March 2025)]

I’ve expressed my opinion that generative AI is little more than a party trick for quite a while, as long-time readers may recall. Its use as a summarizer, however, may be of use in certain situations – although generative AI’s propensity for fallaciousness must give users pause.

But I also wonder why this took so long. Could it be caused by the marketing magic of the artificial intelligence industry? Ask most any AI researcher, and reportedly they will tell you that that what is popularly called artificial intelligence isn’t. It’s better known as machine learning. It even has a well-known acronym, which is ML.

In case you’re wondering, the mythical artificial intelligence is that which can pass the famous Turing Test,

… is a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to that of a human. In the test, a human evaluator judges a text transcript of a natural-language conversation between a human and a machine. The evaluator tries to identify the machine, and the machine passes if the evaluator cannot reliably tell them apart. The results would not depend on the machine’s ability to answer questions correctly, only on how closely its answers resembled those of a human. Since the Turing test is a test of indistinguishability in performance capacity, the verbal version generalizes naturally to all of human performance capacity, verbal as well as nonverbal (robotic). [Wikipedia]

Or, in other words, think of your friends and being able to depend on an AI to be as conceited and self-centered as them while spouting mathematical proofs of arcane propositions.

ML? Sure, here’s the Wikipedia definition, but I like mine better. Problem solving is the process of moving from state A (“my car won’t start!”) to state B (“my car started!”). If you know how to get from A to B, you don’t need ML (or AI, either). But if you don’t know how to get from A to B, nor does anyone else, then ML may be applicable. ML has proven reasonably good at discerning rules for taking a set of data (“This set of data represents a breast X-ray”) and discovering its implications (“You have breast cancer!”), if shown what similar sets of data implies.

I’m a bit off the beaten track, so let me get back to marketing. I’ve been somewhat fascinated by the thought that some of our current social chaos is caused by sloppy thinking. For example, those who want socialized medicine, aka single-payer healthcare, will occasionally make the argument that the citizenry deserves free healthcare. They make that statement with great sincerity.

And it’s just total bullshit. If my reader discards the well-meaning but lazy Well, I know what they mean filter, and turns on their literal interpretation capability, the “argument,” such as it is, collapses in a cloud of dust.

And if I continue on along this abstract track, I soon ask if such bad rhetorical devices are actually infecting their reasoning with bad consequences. Our example is certainly unconvincing, but rather than finding more effective arguments, it functions as a placeholder, a checkmark: I made an argument, one that is approved by my fellow enthusiasts. In that sense, the bad rhetorical argument binds together a disparate collection of individuals into a group, which implies social bonds, social hierarchies, and the whole bit of what Western Civilization pursues. It helps accomplish an unstated goal while actually hindering the putative goal.

As I said, it’s better to think of AI as ML, but if we call it AI, a phrase which comes with certain implications consequent of its parts, then certain expectations, beneficial to the patrons of the marketers, will come into play, while the limitations (or advantages, if you think about it) of ML fade from the consciousness.

And so the subtle contamination of the reasoning mind continues.

¹ Yeah, yeah, I know, mine doesn’t depend on the ill-advised lack of punctuation to bring forth the ambiguity; for me, of late, the odd, unrelated multiple meanings of many English words has been striking. Why they went on strike … English is all about confusion masquerading as communication. Yes, the cat tricked me into getting up early this morning, and I’m grumpy about it.

This time around we have Rep Victoria Spartz (R-FL) at a townhall:

“Will you demand the immediate resignation of Pete Hegseth, Michael Waltz, and the rest of the group chat”Spartz: No Crowd: Booo

— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) 2025-03-28T23:59:47.425Z

“Will you demand the immediate resignation of Pete Hegseth, Michael Waltz, and the rest of the group chat”

Spartz: No

Crowd: Booo

Only unspeakable, if understandable, loyalty to the President explains such a refusal to do her duty. She could have made a satisfactory answer out of I’m considering it, but she didn’t.

But long-term readers will be considering the possibility that voters of a conservative tilt, long trained to make judgments solely on issues, and not to pay attention to experience, competency, moderation, and ability to negotiate compromises – even to loathe such attributes – may now be reconsidering these metrics by which to judge Republican candidates. That’s a drum I’ve been beating for a while.

The fact that a candidate can do the abortion jig, the gun rights yodel, even the anti-tax howl, may soon become burdens for Republican candidates, rather than advantages. The more Congress sits on its hands as President Trump’s actions, whether by his mistaken view of the world or on purpose, convert the nation from the leading country on Earth to a quivering lump of sodden gelatin, the more likely there will be a mass replacement of Republican Congresspeople in 2026.

Not that the replacements will necessarily be Democrats. The Democrats, for all of their anticipation at the recent gains in elections since the 2024 Election, have yet to demonstrate significant attempts at reform, although efforts by Governor Newsom (D-CA) and Rep Moulton (D-MA) can be viewed with some optimism by those who are conscious of the errors imputed to Democrats – and their allies. Along with mismanaging the transgender issue, they need to deal with the charges of anti-semitism, the lack of a primary for VP Harris’ ascension to the top of the 2024 ticket after Biden left the race, a general sense of an autocratic inclination, and a few other issues, and, internally, their turn to identitarianism, and what to do about the DEI issue, which currently seems to have become a loser with the citizenry. Oh, and much like the Republicans, the arrogance.

I offer no solutions. I’m an independent. I observe that, against a pathetic group of group of pathetic Republican candidates, the Democrats lost. That observation, if they’re honest, and willing to kick out those who stubbornly cling to positions designed to preserve their positions in the power hierarchy in the Party, should help guide them towards success.

And if they can’t? Then both Parties deserve to be replaced, not just the Republicans. Both Parties are a discouragement.

Some more State level elections took place today yesterday, for those who try to predict the future. Over in Wisconsin, a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court was up for grabs, and WaPo projects a victory for the liberal candidate:

In a state as evenly split as Wisconsin, it’ll be tempting to read the tea leaves into confirmation bias.

Republicans may discuss, if only in private conversation, how this election was not in the context of a larger election. Only those with a special interest in it might attend. Wisconsin has a population of six million, though, so attendance of, guessing here, maybe two million 2.3 million is not a bad turnout; this point may be invalid.

Democrats may be excited if margins hold, but, truth be told, given the disaster in Washington and in State capital Madison, where the Wisconsin Republican Party has made an absolute joke out of itself, I think Democrats should have expected better results.

They may have to commit to self-examination, to listening tours, to understand why they didn’t absolutely cream the conservative candidate, Mr. Schimel. No offense to Mr. Schimel, but those who have associated themselves with him cast a pall over him.

Meanwhile, in Florida two special elections for US House seats took place in Republican-controlled districts, and were won by the Republicans, but a writer on Daily Kos points out that victory margins are going to have shrunk, considerably.

But it still looks like a definitive loss to me.

All that said, Rep Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who had been nominated for UN Ambassador, is no longer the nominee. Speculation has it that the Trump Administration worried that the race to replace her in the House would result in a Democratic win and decided not to risk it, and the cited link more or less officially confirms it. This suggests that the Republican epistemic bubble of old is leaking, that telling themselves they’re popular isn’t entirely working.

And I figure Rep Stefanik inadvertently dodged a bullet. It’s not hard for the President to fire a diplomat, but it’s well-nigh impossible to fire a member of Congress. Given the President’s misogyny and Stefanik’s former moderate positions, it’s not hard seeing it as a maneuver to put a man in her current seat.

Erick Erickson tries for that profound observation, but I think it’s hollow:

But the larger issue is that we as a people have abdicated our responsibility of taking care of the poor to the federal government. Instead of sending kids on “mission trips” to picture-perfect beaches in third-world countries, perhaps we’d be better off if they took a shift at the local soup kitchen or volunteered at the local homeless shelter. When Jesus references the poor, he undeniably puts the burden of support on me and you, not the federal government.

The problem? He’s bought into a long-time propaganda point of those who’d prefer to have more influence over there community and will obscure important points to get there. What is that? Let me state it as a negation of the propaganda point.

The federal government is us.

That’s the delight and glory of the United States of America. In monarchies and autocracies, government is thrust upon the populace by force, whether that force be exogenous or endogenous. I’ll leave the question of theocracies to the reader.

But not only do we pick our leaders, we can be those leaders. If we’re a citizen, we can put ourselves forth as candidates for positions from little town council member to President. For those who bang away with hammers and wedges to alienate the people from the very government we select, I say Cease! To demand the government change its goals, despite your opinion being a minority, is to not understand how our way of life works.

Are we subject to limitations when it comes to that participation? Of course; logistics demands it. But that doesn’t mean we, individually, cannot be part of the government.

So when Mr Erickson says feeding the desperately hungry is not the federal government’s responsibility, he’s ignoring one of the most important and fundamental truths of our Constitution, as well as a practical matter of feeding folks so we don’t have food riots.

We, not them, but emphatically we are the federal government. If you win an election with the purpose of stopping food bank support, you’re against Jesus. Says the agnostic.

During my unexpected but restful sojourn away from the computer, I did some revelating, and it was all banal. Nevertheless,

Writing is the process of moving from the complete ambiguity of the unexamined void to the precision of the nanometer.

Just something to keep in mind during your next composition. Since I haven’t time to compose myself.

From a donation solicitation from the Democrats:

→ 1. Early polling shows Democrats have a THREE-POINT lead in the race to control Congress.

→ 2. We only need to flip THREE seats to flip the House blue.

→ 3. Now that extreme MAGA Republicans know how close we are to defeating them, they’re holding big-ticket fundraisers to salvage their razor-thin majority.

Against that pack of fourth-rate clowns put forth by the Republicans, and it’s this close?

Just when will the Democrats get a clue that they are less popular than snakes and need to correct something?

30 hour ago we were snow-free. Temperatures in the 70s F.

Then we received nearly 3 inches of rain.

And then a couple inches of snow.

My oh my.

I took my computer to the repair shop, expecting to be out of action for a day or two.

That was a week ago today.

Apparently, keeping an old computer as your primary means repairs, such as finding a replacement CPU fan, takes a while.

Apologies.

When your typos are homonym-istic.

Thousands of years ago, Jews were bringing law and order to civilization. They inhabited the land of Canaan and created the Kingdom of David. They were conquered, disbursed, returned home, conquered again, and then ultimately driven out by the Romans in AD 136 after a series of rebellions. The Romans changed Judea, derived from the Kingdom of Judah, into Palestine. Now, disparate Arab tribes and antisemites use “Palestine” to lay claim to an area where both Biblical and historical archeological claims show the Jewish people lived before the Romans forcibly dispersed them through the Roman Empire. — Erick Erickson

Please pay only in American currency. Legitimate currency. No DitzCoin, please.

When applying archaeology to the intangible there can be some amazing results that can strain credulity. Try this on for size:

Today, COBOL is no longer the language of choice for computer programmers. It does, however, retain a small but important role in some software. [COBOL Cowboys founder Bill] Hinshaw estimates there are 800 billion lines of COBOL running today. [“The critical computer systems still relying on decades-old code,” Matthew Sparkes, NewScientist (8 March 2025, paywall)]

Worse yet, billion’s not even well defined in this context; the Wikipedia page for billion left me feeling like I needed a secret decoder ring, or membership in the Masonic Temple. I particularly like the references to milion^[1] in that page, as the milion page didn’t seem relevant. Or is this a systematic misspelling?

But that’s all irrelevant; we can all agree that 800 billion is a big number when counting lines of code, and I have my doubts that so many lines of code, in all the computer languages of the world, have been written by the human hand.

For one thing, the hospitals would be overrun by emergency patients suffering from psychoses, neuroses, neck injuries, and carpal tunnel.

I checked the next issue of NS but saw neither corrections nor errata nor complaints in the letters column.

This reminds me of the Soviet programmer a recruiter tried to sell to my employer of the moment decades ago. He made a claim as to how much code he’d written, and I think, to satisfy the claim, we calculated he’d have to write 10,000 lines per day for … his entire life? No weekends off. It was crazy.

So I think I’ll just be boggled.

¹ Nor had I ever encountered the word before, but there is such a word, presumably Latin or of Latin origin:

The Milion (Ancient Greek: Μίλιον or Μίλλιον, Mílion; Turkish: Milyon taşı) was a marker from which all distances across the Roman Empire were measured. Erected by Septimius Severus in the 3rd century AD in the city of Byzantium, it became the zero-mile marker for the empire upon the re-founding of the city as Constantinople in 330 AD. …

Its relevance to billion, however, is obscure to me.

That’s what struck me while reading Steve Benen’s summation of our top diplomat, Secretary Rubio, and his role, or lack thereof, in this Administration:

The lack of message discipline is an obvious problem, but just as notable is the apparent fact that the secretary of state, roughly two months into his beleaguered tenure, is struggling to remain on the same page as Team Trump.

I’m reminded anew of a recent Vanity Fair report, which noted, “Rubio is privately frustrated that Trump has effectively sidelined him. According to four prominent Republicans close to the White House, Rubio … has told people he is upset by his lack of foreign policy influence despite being, on paper at least, the administration’s top diplomat.”

The article from Gabriel Sherman added that Rubio “is often the last to know when foreign policy decisions are made in the White House.” …

It dovetails with a recent Politico report that noted members of Congress who believe Rubio “does not have the president’s ear.”

If you cast your mind back to the 2015 campaign, the tension between Trump and then-Senator Rubio (R-FL) was quite palpable, and their verbal exchanges were more the sort of thing that belonged in a wrestling ring than political debates.

I would not be surprised if President Trump, well known for his lack of political skills when it comes to running an Administration, decided to remove from Rubio the honor of being a Senator by luring him into a position where Trump can fire him at any time, and then letting him twist in the wind.

I don’t know if Rubio recognizes this possibility. Whatever you thought of him as a Senator, and he had, or has, a lot of political flaws, he is still an old-fashioned politician. Trump is not.

If Rubio should be fired, or resigns, in the near future, don’t be surprised.

Well, I can see that AG Pam Bondi is one of those folks with an inferior morality system. Consider:

“Tonight, a DC trial judge supported Tren de Aragua terrorists over the safety of Americans. TdA is represented by the ACLU. This order disregards well-established authority regarding President Trump’s power, and it puts the public and law enforcement at risk. The Department of Justice is undeterred in its efforts to work with the White House, the Department of Homeland Security, and all of our partners to stop this invasion and Make America Safe Again.” [Office of Public Affairs, DoJ]

And if the trial judge got it wrong, he’ll be reversed on appeal. But her protest, no doubt similar to protests utilized by Democrats as well, puts expediency above rule of law; the text following is a plodding attempt to justify ignoring the law. As just one of a series of action which attempt to reduce the importance of the law, this is quite concerning.

As AG, Bondi should know better. If only because when she becomes a problem, she’ll be expediently disposed of. Maybe she’ll end up on a plane.

Oddly enough, this has a correlation to the essence of what an election judge told me just a couple of years ago. The two major Parties send lawyers to ballot counting centers to monitor the count, catch any shenanigans or honest mistakes. In her opinion, and she was certainly a Democrat, if only in spirit, the quality of Republican lawyers sent on this task had been falling off dramatically.

Not reassuring. I suppose all the smart ones keep their distance.

Necrogamy:

Posthumous marriage (also known as necrogamy or ghost marriage) is a marriage in which at least one of the participating members is deceased. [Wikipedia]

Noted in this video.

President Trump may have his own preferences for the membership of this exclusive club, but in this case I’d say it’s all the surviving recipients of pardons by … President Trump.

The “Pardons” that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen. In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them! The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime. Therefore, those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level. The fact is, they were probably responsible for the Documents that were signed on their behalf without the knowledge or consent of the Worst President in the History of our Country, Crooked Joe Biden! [President Trump on Truth Social]

Caught in the Great Spider’s web, they are.

Why? President Trump asserts the right to void previous pardons on grounds considered specious by most everyone. But now President Trump has opened the season on persecuting anyone he feels like persecuting, and that means his successors, of any party, can also do so.

Including, say, the January 6th Insurrectionists pardoned by President Trump. Once again, they’re under the gun, but arguably it’s not their fault this time. Well, it is, but it isn’t.

The President and his supporters try to paint him as always punching back harder on his critics. In this case, the punch goes awry and hits his own supporters. The mark of the amateur.

Which I think is a fine headline for The New York Times or WaPo to use. The source?

Portugal is getting cold feet about replacing its U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets with more modern F-35s because of Donald Trump — in one of the first examples of the U.S. president undermining a potential lucrative arms deal.

The country’s air force has recommended buying Lockheed Martin F-35s, but when outgoing Defense Minister Nuno Melo was asked by Portugese media Público whether the government would follow that recommendation, he replied: “We cannot ignore the geopolitical environment in our choices. The recent position of the United States, in the context of NATO … must make us think about the best options, because the predictability of our allies is a greater asset to take into account.” [Politico]

Perhaps Pacifists For Trump will celebrate?

Puerile:

behaving in a silly way, not like an adult:
I find his sense of humour rather puerile. [Cambridge Dictionary]

Noted in “HOW SILICON VALLEY BOYS CAME TO RULE POLITICS,” Carolina A. Miranda, WaPo:

I knew that facing the end of constitutional checks and balances during Trump 2.0 would be bad; I didn’t realize it would be so relentlessly puerile. To some degree, we have Silicon Valley — and the broader tech business — to thank for this.

The problem with not making it important that the workers be actual grown-ups, adults who need to put their best judgment forward in order to safeguard the company, institution, or government, is that they then don’t make that transition; they often remain high school juniors, fixated on impressing their fellows in their class in their chosen field of being clever. It’s not computing, it’s being clever. There’s no associated learning curves, you just be clever and that’s how you achieve dominance over your fellows, because it’s a bother to learn to think outside of the box, unless it confirms your bias.

Compare to, say, an aerospace engineer, or a civil engineer. Lives are on the line; refusing to learn how to judge a problem along multiple axes, such as moral as well as technical, can cost lives, which in turn ruins your career.

In software, lives are rarely on the line, unless you work, again, in aerospace. When you lose a job, you just move on to the next of the Greedy and Needy, the group of companies who see riches in their future if they can just harness software to do something. Take their paychecks until they figure out you’re incompetent, lazy, immoral, or whatever. Rinse, lather…

Another consequence of worshiping wealth, a problem dating back to old Roman times, and I’m sure historians would point even further.

Sec. 4. Each day for the remainder of the first session of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day for purposes of section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622) with respect to a joint resolution terminating a national emergency declared by the President on February 1, 2025.

– H. Res. 211, 119th Congress, wherein those who vote ‘aye’ are violating common sense in their disgraceful rush to please the man-child President. The National Emergencies act gives the President the power to enact tariffs; this joke of a resolution protects the President from the disapproval of the House, or even filing such a resolution. The political point?

But this would force Republicans to go on record as either supporting or opposing the unpopular economic ideology Trump and Musk are imposing. So Republicans just passed a measure saying that for the rest of this congressional session, “each day…shall not constitute a calendar day” for the purposes of terminating Trump’s emergency declaration.

– Professor Richardson

Thus the Republicans match or exceed the Democrats in their frantic twistings of reality.

In the goat entrails department, those habitually out over their ski tips may over-interpret this result from earlier this week, but here it is anyways:

Iowa Republicans kept a seat in the state House in a special election today, preliminary results from the Iowa secretary of state indicate.

Republican Blaine Watkins, a legislative aide to a state House Republican, beat out Democrat Nannette Griffin. Watkins won 51% of the vote to Griffin’s 48%. [NBC News]

Republicans win by three points, Democrats lose, but Steve Benen notes:

Note, however, that Donald Trump won this district by 24 points in November, while Watkins won by three points.

But we need more context. The seat was vacated by an unexpected death, and the election before that death was last November. The late victor in that contest, Martin Graber (R-IA), won by a 2-to-1 margin and more, 67%-32%, so a drop from a 35 point margin to a 3 point margin sounds significant.

But.

14001 votes were cast in that contest. The special election? 5336 votes, or a bit more than a third. That’s the significance. Is that drop off in attendance a matter of disgust with the Republicans, or is that confirmation bias? The late Mr Graber had personal popularity? Bad weather? Simple disinterest?

Also, in a bit of non-news, a special election in my backyard was won by the Democrats. It was up for grabs in November, but the victor, Curtis Johnson (D-MN) was never seated due to not satisfying residency requirements. Dumb Democrats. The same Republican, Paul Wikstrom (R-MN), then ran again, this time against David Gottfried (D-MN), in this deep-blue district. Wikstrom lost the first contest by 30 points, so I figured he’d make up some ground in the second.

I was wrong. He lost the second contest by 40 points. Apparently his commercials accusing the Democrats of corruption didn’t go over well in the district. I know my Arts Editor hated them.

But, like I said, it’s a deep blue district. Going through Ballotpedia-provided history shows the Democratic candidates crushing the latest Republican candidates by something like 30 points.

For those forecasting electoral futures, it’s little more than a gnat.

Kevin Drum, a blogger who started early in this millenium and made it pay and so never stopped, has passed away from cancer, according to his wife. I always enjoyed reading his blog, because it was well-written and based on facts. Personal animus was not part of his game plan. In some ways, he was the ideal of a blogger.

Good travels, Kevin, if there are more travels. You left too soon.

So long as President Trump insists that tariffs are the way to mega-wealth, I think all the other countries should impose tariffs on the United States, using as an excuse, “But President Trump told us we’d get rich sucking the lifeblood out of America!”

American exporters would be doomed. All because of President Trump.

I previously mentioned that widely admired Iowa pollster Selzer & Co. was exiting the polling business. It turns out there’s more fallout from the last election.

First, this shocker:

Just because it made me laugh, if only in horror:

Lastly, I continue to be appalled by the people on the right embracing the Tate brothers. If you see someone on the right justifying, defending, or apologizing for the Tate brothers, you have found a moral cretin and you should be weary of that person.

Erick Erickson

The Tate brothers are reputed to be highly misogynistic.

So, so tired.