Edition #1160

Friday. And when you read the next edition, I will be back home…although all the world is our home, right? Sure.

“Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.” John Dewey, quoted in the Idaho Business Review. And education is what the authoritarian attacks first. Education, free speech, and critical thinking skills are all threats to the dictator. And while we have known this for a long time, and I cannot count the number of books, movies, TV shows, and plays that have revealed this truth to us, we humans are, well, too human to not continue to fall into the trap. So we will now wait for the benefits of democracy, with all of its flaws, to yet again be appreciated.

And in that regard, the world is facing many, many serious issues. We, as Americans, are facing many, many serious issues. And serious issues demand serious people to address them. And serious people do not just point fingers, assign blame, refuse to evaluate opposing views, and insist on the righteousness of their side. But we have no real serious leaders. Sure, there are some in the wings who will verbalize the right approach or show that they have a broader understanding of one or more issues, but on both sides of the aisle, there are too few who are really pushing back. Instead, we get tribalism, talk of the “big tent,” and excuses when we should be getting strong advocacy that actually incorporates dissenting perspectives in a coherent attempt towards resolution. I know. Many of you are wondering where this is headed, what “issues” am I focused on, and what do I want to advocate for. And the problem is that, in almost all areas, domestically and geopolitically, there are myriad issues where serious people are needed. And we do not have them. Certainly not in the cohort who are currently running our government, but I do not see much hope in whoever is hoping to replace them. Perhaps just more of the human condition. More of what should be expected of us. More reason to expect that, as millions of species have done before us, our time here on this planet is limited.

You all know how I feel about social media, or at least you should if you have been paying attention. For those of you who have not, I think social media is the most dangerous threat to society that is in current usage today. It is deforming entire societies, promoting ignorance and self-aggrandizement, and rendering truth, fact, and expertise obsolete. And then, when you add a popular social media platform tied to a foreign country like China that has the ability, the motive, and the willingness to use that platform to promote their agenda, the risk could not be higher. That is what made Congress, and Trump in a former iteration, demand that TikTok be either banned from the US or relinquish all Chinese ownership, in addition to moving its algorithm and servers to the US. In other words, it was seen as enough of a danger that it had to be completely out of foreign hands. And given that the majority of American youth under forty years old rely on TikTok for their daily news consumption, a no-brainer…until…a major donor of Trump’s who had a large stake in TikTok got his ear. Now the platform is still subject to Chinese interference, regardless of the vague and unenforceable restrictions that were supposedly agreed upon.

………………..The Censorship Leaks In –

And whether it is TikTok or other platforms, Chinese censorship is leaking into all of our AI-inspired outlets. In what seems to be an outgrowth of the way in which AI programs are trained, the expected clamming up of a program in China about such things as Tiananmen Square 1989 is leaking into responses from ChatGPT, Claude AI, and the rest. Asked to create a poster critical of selected Western leaders and zip-zop, it is done. Ask for a poster critical of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and you will see nothing. Now, I am not suggesting that this is intentional on the part of our tech-bro overlords, or that China has infiltrated these companies. But I am saying that we are rushing into this world where we will be more and more dependent upon systems that work in ways that are unknowable to us, and will incorporate values as they interpret them beyond the ability of anyone to even know it is happening. And while I rail against what I see as a truly unprecedented change in how we will operate in this world, I also understand that this is what is going to happen regardless of the known, the unknown, and the unknowable risks that lie ahead.

…………………Bill Gates on AI –

The AI industry is driverless. That is the basic take by Bill Gates on where today’s AI development is. No one is in charge, no one is being thoughtful about how this is being developed and deployed. It is just a game of throwing shit out there and hoping that “our” platform leads the others, makes us richer than rich, grants us the power to do…well, whatever we want. Will the potential benefits to medical research, the environment, energy production, engineering of all kinds, space exploration, and more, outweigh the downsides of AIs running rogue, hacking whoever they think they need to, including each other? Fuck if I know. But it would be somewhat comforting if we at least knew that someone with integrity and vision was driving the bus. And they clearly are not.

Not a secret in the least, but another platform and means of Chinese hacking into multiple US governmental agencies was uncovered and, for the time being, thwarted. This one was apparently by a Chinese group not specifically associated with the Chinese government, but what they did was, well, clever. They set up a host of sites that were used to hide in plain sight and open up the doors to these agencies in a way that just looked like the normal flow of internet traffic. They then sold access to this hacking network to whoever. Most likely mostly the Chinese government. Supposedly, no damage was done before the critical nodes of this operation were shut down by the US, but it had been developed over years without notice. Not comforting.

Property owners in many red states are confronting a dilemma that afflicted California many years ago. As more folk escape urban life and settle in more open and rural areas, they are finding that refuge in traditionally conservative, Republican states. And while I will leave any change in the politics of these moves alone, the impact on property values has been significant for many. And in a state where property taxes are based on an annual or other regular evaluation of property values, this can have a detrimental impact on existing property owners who cannot afford to pay based on a property value that they did not create. In California, we passed Proposition 13 long ago, which limited increases in property taxes by pinning them on the cost of acquisition by the current homeowner, increasing by two percent each year. But this caused a huge and growing deficit in the cities and counties that were reliant on that revenue. In addition, it changed the inequity from one in which a long-time property owner can’t afford to stay in their long-time home, to one in which one homeowner is paying much more in property taxes than a neighbor whose home is worth exactly the same. And now, many red states are trying to follow California’s lead into potential bankruptcy. That’s all I have to say here. Good luck to all.

Ok, so I have spent a lot of time criticizing the Chinese for various things. But since they will soon be our overlords, beholden to their tech-bro AI overlords, I should give some credit when it is due. So here goes. A group of Chinese space researchers came up with a plan to effectively protect the planet from a rogue asteroid if it were to threaten Earth. Kind of inspired by one of those movies with Bruce Willis (sad about him) or another, using a nuclear bomb to detonate the rock. But the problem with just slamming a nuclear weapon into an asteroid is that in a surface detonation, much of the energy blows directly out into space and is wasted. So these guys came up with a two-stage plan. A penetrator hits the asteroid first, creating a deep hole into the center of the asteroid, while a second one, with the warhead, hits directly into the newly opened orifice, and ka-blooey…no more asteroid. Or at least many small and less dangerous asteroids?

I hope you all have a good weekend. Much driving for me, but I really don’t mind, and Utah is such a special place to drive through…and continue through. Stay healthy and be good to each other.

Me.