Home Again

Grandparent duty

Whew. We’re back home after a week helping out with the grandkids. Good times. Good fun. Crazy exhausted. 

Catching them for extended periods about a month in between each tour of grandparent duty, it’s astounding to see how fast they grow. Most of my grandpa tricks don’t work any more. So, I’ll have to pull out a few new ones for the next visit. 

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links. 

U.S. Debt Tops 100% of GDP

So much winning.

So this headline popped up today.

An image containing text and a photograph from The Wall Street Journal. At the top of the image is the headline "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL." Below the headline is the text "U.S. ECONOMY" and the article title "U.S. Debt Tops 100% of GDP." This is followed by a short paragraph of text that reads: "Federal debt exceeding the size of the economy is a potent symbol of the gathering fiscal stresses on the U.S." Below this text is a photograph of people walking down a wide set of outdoor concrete stairs, with the dome of the U.S. Capitol building in the background against a cloudy, grey sky. A person in a blue jacket is in the foreground, and other people are further up the stairs. A caption below the photograph says: "The government is spending $1.33 for every dollar it collects in revenue. PHOTO: SAMUEL CORUM/GETTY IMAGES"

So much winning. My grandkids’ grandkids will be paying this off. And I’m guessing the Strait of Hormuz will be the world’s most lucrative toll. At least there will be a new ballroom.

But, hey, it’s only money right? (Actually it’s not. But that’s a story for another day.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links. 

 

Seriously Unserious

No more adults left in the room

We are a decidely unserious country acceding to the demands of a child.

An overhead photograph looking down at the numbers "8647" formed by arranged seashells on light beige sand. The number '8' is made with light brown bivalve shells, while the '6', '4', and '7' are made with darker, gray and black seashells. The sand is slightly textured with wave patterns. The scene is well-lit by natural daylight.

I’m spending the week helping with the grandkids who make completely unserious demands at the drop of a hat. It may not be fun to break a heart in the moment, but it’s better than not saying “no.” Of course the grandkids move on in the blink of an eye. Unlike the supposed adults who carry and act out on grudges.

Speaking of adults, the coverage of King Charles’ speech before Congress and apparent subtle digs at the President, shows just how cowering a people we’ve become. I found a moment to listen to the things said. The brief coverage I’ve seen is treating his treatise as if it was delivered from somewhere on high. We do still have this strange infatuation with British royalty that often resembles the love/momentary hate relationship kids have with their elders.

What Charles said may have been deftly couched in subtle political speak, skilled enough that I imagine those applauding might have entirely missed the simple message urging us to grow up.

Perhaps it’s time we retired the phrase “adults in the room.”

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links. 

When There’s No Truth To Set You Free

Truth and consequences

We’ve always had a problem with something called the truth. I say “something called” because it’s always been possible to twist and turn facts and debate what is true on some levels. But in the last decade we’ve turned what could at some points in history been reasonably called an accepted truth into a discarded relic of rumination and ruination. And we’re watching the ruin of quite a few nations because of it.

Text against a solid purple background that reads, "The assassination attempt is our latest demonstration that the news is just a perpetual mass Rorschach Test. Whatever happens, people will describe and interpret it according to their priors."

The above graphic is cribbed from one of friend Michael Markham’s social media feeds. I believe it to be true. As far as it goes.

But I think we’ve gone farther than any of us would like to actually believe. The concept of truth in public discourse has become a thoroughly devalued commodity. Yet we continue to trade in it while ignoring its decline. It’s a kid’s game gone awry, played by adults who all know better, but somehow think the spectators can’t see what’s up. Or rather don’t care.

Those who chronicle these things are just as mired in the mess as those they chronicle. I’m not sure what pisses me off most. I can stomach when someone lies or misrepresents the facts for some gain. However, the bile becomes overwhelming when those who know better regurgitate it without consequence like a herd of cattle chewing cud.

At the end of the day, they’re all standing in their own shit waiting to be fed.

This comes at a time when I’m helping my daughter out with the grandkids while my son-in-law is away for work, and we’re all in the mode of teaching consequences.

Watching the larger stage where those who know better act like toddlers developing and endlessly spinning out lies when things go amiss, it’s the same game. The instincts are the same. They always have been.

The only difference is my grandkids don’t yet have the excuse of falling back on priors.

Truth is expensive. It can’t set you free if lying costs so little.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links. 

 

May 1st General Strike Planned. Hope It Matters

I’d like to see more urgency

There is a General Strike planned for this Friday, May 1. Quite frankly, I think it’s just going to be another in a series that have featured No Kings themed protests in the past year.

I don’t mean to demean the effort. Glad to see it happening. That said, given how each day brings something new that’s quickly absorbed into the swelling sponge of sewage that is the zeitgeist these days, I just don’t see any potential for real impact.

One of the problems with this protest is they missed the marketing boat. I get and appreciate the approach and historical tie in of calling a general strike on May 1. But those historical resonances are there for some, unfortunately not for all. Old rules don’t apply.

Also, given what I believe is still an urgent moment, that urgency seems to be fading a bit. I think the promotional pitches should have called the event MAY DAY and played that for all of the contextual danger it implies. Even the “Hold The Line” slug feels like stasis compared to movement.

I can understand the lack of urgency. There’s a growing sense that the next big moment isn’t going to happen until the midterm elections. Perhaps that’s justified in the wake of no real movement so far. But that actually makes the struggle more challenging, at the same time ground continues to be lost on so many fronts that won’t be easy to change.

But even though these efforts feel like they have weakening impacts, they do keep up some pressure. So, in the end I guess that matters.

Here’s hoping it does.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links. 

 

Sunday Morning Reading

Sunday Morning Reading is on hiatus this weekend as we’re trading the chaos of what’s supposed to be the adult world for spending time with the grandkids. A chaos that’s easier to understand.

Enjoy your day.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affilate links. 

Artists Show The Way With Guerrilla Art In DC

Tell the stories

I’ve been attempting to hightlight artists that are standing and speaking up against the trauma being visited on us by the Trump regime, so this piece is worth pointing out even if it is in The Washington Post. 

Phillip Kennicott writes that Guerrilla Art Is Flourishing In Trump’s Washington. He highlights several artists and their efforts.

One day artists will tell the story of what we’re living through,including the artists standing up and using their art to speak out in the moment.

For those upset at The Washington Post’s complicity in these traumatic times, the link above is from the web archive.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links. 

 

Nilay Patel on Software Brain

“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Every now and then someone crystalizes a lot of the thoughts that spin around discussions, debates, and dialogues about a topic. When those topics are of great import, when the crystallization shows up, it is not only wise, but essential to pay attention. Call it a benchmark. Call it a new starting point for the conversation going forward. Nilay Patel has delivered just a benchmark to pay attention to with his monologue of sorts on his Decoder podcast. If you’re not up for a listen, you can give it a read on The Verge.

Artwork of The Decoder Podcast, featuring Nilay Patel

For the clear thinking presented there is a confusing array of headlines to choose from depending where you look, Including The People Do Not Yearn For Automation, and Why People Hate AI, but the one I think should stick shows up in my browser tab: Beware Software Brain.

Patel takes a well considered tour through the arguments and discussion that are scattered about and pulls them together nicely. If you ask for a core theme, I’d say that he argues that there are two schools of thought. One rushing to turn AI into what controls our lives. The other isn’t buying the sales pitch.

To me it’s always been a tough sell to foist this innovation on people if one of your selling points is that it will make their jobs unnecessary, let alone create environmentally hazardous data centers to run the machines that are going to eventually unemploy them. I know a few folks who, after training themselves up on AI to do what they do, only to be dismissed in favor of the AI once that training is complete. I  don’t think it’s going to be much longer before that predicament touches someone everyone knows.

Getting inside what makes the folks pushing AI’s thinking, Patel defines “Software Brain” as follows:

So what is software brain? The simplest definition I’ve come up with is that it’s when you see the whole world as a series of databases that can be controlled with the structured language of software code. Like I said, this is a powerful way of seeing things. So much of our lives run through databases, and a bunch of important companies have been built around maintaining those databases and providing access to them.

He later goes on:

Anyone who’s actually ever run a database knows this. At some point, the database stops matching reality. At that point, we usually end up tweaking the database, not the world. But the AI industry has fully lost sight of this, because AI thrives on data. It’s just software, after all. And so the ask is for more and more of us to conform our lives to the database, not the other way around.

You need to read or listen to the whole piece.

While I think “Software Brain” well defines the mindset of those celebrating and working towards an AI future. The crux of the matter for me, on perhaps a larger scale, is that for some reason, as ambiguous and arbitrary as we humans can be, we seem to shy away from our own ambiguity in favor of looking for a binary solution. On or off. Right or wrong. Correct or incorrect. We get angry with the shades and shadows of grey that muddy our yearning for black and white.

Perhaps a binary approach to everything seems like it would make life easier. It certainly helps avoid the danger zones of responsibility.

These are certainly early days of whatever Artificial Intelligence may or may not become. Even so, it appears to me it’s just going to be yet another way humans develop, market, and use to avoid facing the tough choices life tosses at us, or we toss at each other. I’m glad to see there is increasing skepticism.

I don’t build or code things with AI, so I can’t speak to that degree of what seems so exciting to so many. That said, the one thing I keep coming back to in my own, very rudimentary experiments with AI is this. At the moment it’s as error prone, and often as ambiguous and obsequious as any human in correcting itself. It seems to be a very human response etched into the code by its creators, knowing things don’t add up. Much like apparently, our DNA. The machines and the math behind them just don’t care.

I don’t think the humans running this race do either.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links. 

 

U.S. War With Iran Summed Up By Monkey With A Typewriter

Monkey see, monkey laughs at humans

This comment to an article in The Financial Times nicely sums up things currently in the Middle East, as well as in the muddled brains of those running the show here in the U.S.

An eye-level screenshot of a note on a light-brown background with dark-grey text and an outline of a bookmark and share icon at the top right. The text says, 'Monkey with typewriter. 11 hours ago. Saw this from a UN diplomat... amusing and yet hard to argue with. What a sad state of affairs we find ourselves in.' Following this is a block with a pink background and dark-grey text. It says, 'The Iranian navy, which has been destroyed eight times, closed the Strait of Hormuz again, because the United States for the seventh time won the war that wasn't a war, so the United States can open the Strait of Hormuz that was open before the not war. The not war that started to get the uranium that was completely obliterated, so that the Iranians can't build the nuclear bomb that they weren't building for the not war that the United States started. Then the United States which has nuclear weapons threatening to use nuclear weapons to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons because having nuclear weapons is dangerous. If the United States saw what the United States is doing in the United States, the United States would invade the United States to liberate the United States from the tyranny of the United States.'

Frankly, as darkly humorous as it is, it’s only dark and humorous because it’s spot on. Hat tip to fellow Mastodon user Julian Schwarzenbach.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links. 

 

Joanna Stern Launches New Things

Discover something new

Well it took her long enough. Tech writer and enthusiast Joanna Stern has launched New Things With Joanna Stern, her new site for delivering all the new things she discovers in tech. 

A headline and article byline above a fun, cartoon illustration. The headline reads, "It’s Time. Meet My New Thing." with a subheadline below that reads, "A new kind of independent tech journalism. Newsletters! Videos! Fun!". Below that is a small headshot of Joanna Stern and the byline: "Joanna Stern Apr 22, 2026 . 6 min read". The central image in the bottom half of the graphic is a large blue rectangle containing the text: "NEW THINGS WITH JOANNA STERN". It is surrounded by cartoon icons: a woman’s face on a phone, an arrow pointing right, a cartoon smiley face inside a square, a star, a speech bubble with three dots, a mouse pointer, a floating laptop, a speech bubble with parallel lines, another star, a lightning bolt, a microphone, an arrow pointing up-left, a battery, an arrow pointing up-right, and a search bar with a magnifying glass at the end.

I’ve been a fan of Joanna’s work since back in the days when we were all reviewing netbooks and followed her work on Engadget, The Verge, The Wall Street Journal and various other places including ABC News. 

I highly recommend you give her new site a look see, because not only does Joanna discover and report on intriguing new tech, she’s one of the most, if not the most entertaining in delivering the goods. I’ve subscribed and look forward to following along on this, her next new thing.

You can watch the introductory video below.

 

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.