Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Two Weeks and Pinky Promises

Promises, promises

Two weeks. We’re all more familiar than we’d like to be with Donald Trump’s announcing anything and telling us it will manifest in two weeks. It’s become a joke worth laughing at, but without a punch line. It’s become mundane.

Two hands joined in a pinky promised. Photo by Olivia anne snyder wT_BwKOeEik unsplash.

We’ve also become accustomed to hearing promises from tech companies, that a safer and perhaps smarter course of action is to look askance with a skeptical eye, or perhaps turn a deaf ear. Autonomous driving is one of those, (as is anything Elon Musk promotes) and so too are most of the promises about achieving some sort of Generative Artificial Intelligence that might lead us all into some future where we all don’t have to work, money becomes no object, and all of our problems are solved. Let’s not forget curing cancer.

If we’re standing in the “foothills of the singularity,” I’m guessing those enjoying that view drove there instead of climbed.

It’s one thing for politicians and anyone trying to sell a product to make promises. It’s quite another when the world’s economy turns on the hype, yet never seems to suffer ill effects when deadlines are missed, ignored, or just punted down the road again and again.

Apple caught much deserved grief over its Apple Intelligence promises in 2024, as of yet still unrealized. But that seems to be one of the rare occasions when failure actually left a mark. Even so, that gigantic mistake seems to be have been quickly forgotten. It certainly doesn’t seem to have affected Apple’s bottom line. Even a class action settlement between Apple and those who bought into the promise when they bought a new iPhone doesn’t seem to have caused much of a ripple.

Even when software products are released, it feels like we’re too often in a perpetual beta, always waiting for the next update. When it comes to AI, there are so many bets being made on it being our future, even with all of the products today warning us that they are imperfect and capable of mistakes. When will someone pushing that hype tells us that those warnings will one day be gone? I’m guessing never. At least if the lawyers have a say.

I guess I’m showing my age when I say I grew up in a time when if you announced a product you were judged on whether or not you delivered. If you didn’t, how you handled the broken promise mattered.

They say all good things come to those who wait. These days there are times when I wonder if any of it is worth any of the wait. The promises sure aren’t.

(Image from Olivia Anne Synder on Unsplash)

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.

AI Foes Are Getting The Terrorist Treatment

Quite a protection racket

I guess the AI models are predicting problems.

It’s obviously apparent that there’s an increasing sense of antagonism building around many of the issues associated with Artificial Intelligence. Data Center protests seem to be getting the most attention. The one thing you can say, is about AI is that it attracts detractors. Couple that up with the Trump administration’s policies to police speech and actions that they find unfavorable and it sounds like the interesting times we live in are about to become more interesting.

According to a report from Wired,

More than 1,000 pages of unpublished reports from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and fusion centers obtained by WIRED show a national shift taking place to surveil this new and worryingly broad category of people and activities deemed an emerging threat.

I encourage you to read the report. Not only do those of us who have major concerns about Artificial intelligence have all of the implications of the technology push to worry about, but apparently we may have to worry about expressing those concerns.

The chaotic atmosphere that may result from emergent AI technology in the next five years may fuel large-scale protests that devolve into civil unrest and anti-tech violent extremist activity, especially in large urban areas such as New York City.

On the one hand you can say that the backlash might be having the desired and necessary effect. On the other, it looks like concerned CEOs are calling in their chits after stuffing money into the pockets of the Trump administration.

Quite a protection racket. In the end, my guess is no one will be protected from any of this.

(Photo by Here Now on Shutterstock)

End Of A Crazy Wonderful Week

Too much fun was had

Well we survived. At least I think we did. We’ve spent the last week with the grandkids and to quote their father, “these two will run you into the ground.”

A side-by-side composite of two outdoor photos taken on a wooden deck.
In the photo on the left, an older man with short gray-brown hair, a beard, and a gray t-shirt smiles warmly while giving a young child a shoulder ride. The child, with shoulder-length light brown hair and a tank top, grins down at the camera while holding onto the man's head. The background shows the back of a house with large sliding glass doors and a hanging basket of pink flowers.
In the photo on the right, a young toddler with blonde, wavy hair smiles widely while sitting on a colorful toy ride-on scooter. The toddler is wearing a pink, sparkly Disney Princess dress. The front of the toy scooter features bright purple, green, and yellow buttons on the handlebars.

We met some ground. That’s for sure. But it was a delightful time that I wouldn’t trade for any other as bonds get stronger, laughs got louder, and they keep figuring out all my grandpa tricks.

Sunday Morning Reading

Wandering through the Internet, disregarding along the way

We live in interesting times. I’m spending a lot of my time being interested in watching my grandkids develop, and watching everything around how I thought they might grow up change. In my opinion, change not necessarily for the better. They won’t know what things changed from necessarily, unless they choose to look into it. That assumes they’ll be able to do so the way we can now. I have my doubts about that. Regardless, that’s tomorrow. Here are some links to share in this edition of Sunday Morning Reading.

A close-up photograph captures a bronze statue of a young boy sitting on a stone bench outdoors, absorbed in reading a book.

Terry Godier says the Internet is dying. I’m not sure if it’s dying, morphing, collapsing in on itself, or just in the midst of growing pains, but I take the point. Check out The Boring Internet. (That’s a link to the text version. There’s also an animated version here. Quite nicely done.

JA Westenberg believes Nobody Is Destined For Greatness. I happen to agree. Shakespeare gave his greatest comic villain, Malvolio, lines about being born great. I wish I could label our current day villains as comic. Perhaps one day.

Derek Sivers reminds us that Geography Is Four-Dimensional. How true. There’s a reason Shakespeare more often than not capitalized the word “Time.”

Stories about religion occasionally get shared here. Mostly they are stories about how it’s really not religion, but a cover for grift and abuse. This is one of those. He Remade The Southern Baptist Convention In His Image. Then Came The Abuse Allegations by Robert Downen chronicles yet another of those tales we seem to hear far too frequently these days.

For another take involving religion, check out Neil Steinberg’s Being Formed By Christians Does Not A Christian Make. He quotes Thomas Jefferson’s “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” I’m not sure we can say either of those things any more.

There was a bit of a funny fracas after Google’s all in on AI announcements this week at its annual I/O conference. Apparently for a short time after Google announced big changes to Search, you could not Google the word “disregard” and expect the usual quick definition. Google quickly fixed that. The root of the problem? “Disregard” is an AI command that you have to put in a prompt to keep the AI demons from you know, making a mistake. Check out Russell Brandom’s quick story, You Can No Longer Google the Word ‘Disregard.’

Speaking of Artificial Intelligence, the talk is all about agents. (Actually that’s been the talk for a while, the volume is just increasing.) Hayden Field thinks If Google Can’t Make AI Agents Useful, Maybe No One Can. FWIW, I think Hayden is spot on.

In an article The Economist credits as anonymous, someone thinks Vladimir Putin Is Losing His Grip On Russia. Perhaps that’s true. I don’t know about you, but I’m as tired of hearing about autocratic oligarchs losing their grip as I am about hearing all of the promises about generative AI and autonomous driving being just around the corner.

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.

Google Is Paving A New Information Superhighway

Getting from here to there is about to change

This is a feelings post. Meaning it contains things I feel, more than things I know or can reliably speculate about. It comes in the wake of Google’s announcements at its recent I/O conference.

An expansive aerial, high-angle photograph captures a major highway demolition and construction zone cutting through a dense, forested landscape under an overcast sky.
In the immediate foreground, an old concrete overpass bridge is actively being demolished. Several large excavators—colored in yellow, blue, and orange—are positioned around the rubble, using hydraulic breakers to smash the concrete structure into a large pile of grey debris, sending up small plumes of dust. Stripped brown dirt embankments frame either side of the demolition site, bordered by bright blue temporary construction barriers.

The way I’m feeling things, Google is essentially repaving what we’ve been referring to as The Information Superhighway, better known as the Internet.

Gone (or soon to be gone) is the Google most Internet pedestrians think of when they think of Google. Google has decided it’s ready to quit A/B testing and slowly spoon feeding us Artificial Intelligence, and chosen to bulldoze new paths ahead that will be all AI, all the time, everywhere.

From what I’m seeing if you want to use Google’s products, whether it’s on a Google device, Samsung or other Android device, or even an Apple device, you’re serving Google in larger ways, while serving yourself.

This has and continues to be a race that Google has always had the resources to win, and for the next few laps at least it feels like they will. Frankly, I don’t see the others being able to compete on that scale, for the simple reason that like it or not, Google is far more entrenched in users minds as a go to than any of the others.

Also, the other competitors may be good at creating code, but they appear far more incompetent at selling what they offer. Google has become pervasive enough, that it doesn’t need to care as much.

As to feelings, this does feel bad as it feels inevitable. I liken it to the days of Interstate construction that spread across this country. Entire generations have grown up not knowing how to drive great distances without traveling along an Interstate. Sure, there are folks who avoid them and take their time along more conventional routes, but that’s a very distinct minority.

Eventually there will be entire generations that will never know what the verb “Google” meant, the way those understand it today, just like those pre-Interstate generations of drivers. Even so, I’m guessing using it as a verb will probably mean the same to those down the road in the same way my grandkids don’t distinguish driving to grandpa’s house any differently than I do, when what today would take less than an hour, back then took at least two, often three.

But like many communities that slowly died out when Interstates and expressways bypassed towns, depressing changes will come to the Internet as Google owns more of the traffic and shares less, and essentially has to charge tolls to head down it’s superhighway, that used to be free.

I’m still digesting the news from this week, and I don’t think the story has been completely told yet. There’s also no way to know that if any of these promises will ever pan out. (Google is as famous for announcing what might never come to pass as it is for search.) That’s why this is a feelings post. Perhaps one of the most unsettling feelings I have about all of this is that Apple, by adopting Google’s approach to AI, in lieu of its own failing efforts, is helping create an Internet universe that for most users, will essentially be controlled by Google. Samsung is already all in, Apple as of this fall will be too. That essentially means that buying a smartphone from one of the largest two sellers, or any other that uses Android, is buying a ticket to travel on Google’s superhighway.

The various theories that suppose Apple is doing this as a stop gap until it can come up with its own solution the way it had to with Maps back in the day, don’t hold much water in the vessel that is my brain. There’s money to be made certainly, but there’s money (lots of money) that needs to be spent to construct all of whatever Google thinks it has going. My hunch is Apple will let Google spend the dough, take the credit and the blame, (there will be plenty of both) and happily collect a percentage as long as it can still sell iPhones and other hardware.

We live in interesting times.

(Photo from Rob J. Follet on Shutterstock)

Rare Moments of Stillness

Contemplating next moves

My two grandkids are usually in constant motion, so it’s rare when I have a camera ready when they aren’t.

A side-by-side composite image features two separate photographs of two young children with light brown hair, appearing pensive or downcast in different outdoor settings.

Somehow I’m more anxious when they’re still and thinking.

It’s been quite a week so far, and it is no way close to over.

One Button Only Apple When It Comes To Unwanted Spam Calls

Make it simple. Simple works.

I know from the many complaints I’ve seen around social media that far too many of us are receiving unwanted phone calls from supposed loan officers wanting to hook us up. I bet I’ve gotten hundreds of these since this wave of spam and fraud began earlier this spring. I’ve written in the past about the changes Apple made to its Phone app, (here and here,) designed to help with the avalanche of unwanted calls such as these. I’m not sure the new system is an improvement, though. As Cupertino gets ready for WWDC 26, I’m hoping Apple will actually take a much stronger step. Actually it should be the step to end it all.

One button. Just give us one button, Apple, to block, report, and delete any unwanted call and associated emails. Make it fun. Maybe license the “One ping only” line from The Hunt for Red October and put that on the button. Make purging spam fun, not tedious. One ping only, please.

At the moment in order to ban any trace of an unwanted call that leaves an AI generated voicemail you have to take three steps. There’s no third time is the charm here.

To get rid of that voicemail, you have to open the transcript and choose Report Spam And Delete to nuke it.

New Shareshot.

You then need to go to the Unknown Callers screen and Block and Report spam by swiping left to reveal a little orange hand that is the Block button, and then choose to Block or Block and Report Spam.

New Screenshot.

And then you need to delete the call itself from the Unknown Callers screen. Or you can Delete And Report Spam.

New Screenshot.

I don’t think a system needs to be artificially intelligent to know that if I choose to block a number in one place, I’m not that keen on seeing it anywhere else.

Bottom line, there should only be one button. No need to slide to find it. Put it right there in the Unknown Callers screen that will Block, Report, and Delete any trace of the offending call. Give us the options, sure, but in one place, from one button.

FWIW, the same could be said about Messages. One button, only. That’s all we need.

Make it simple, Apple. Simple works.

Looking Back On Simpler Times

Missing what may have never been

As chaos, criminality, and incompetence all in equal parts masquerade as something pretending to be the U.S. Government swirls us around like flotsam in a whirlpool destined to be dragged under, I’m missing simpler times when, upon reflection, I remember there were easier ways to stay afloat.

Life was always challenging, but I was younger then. Girded with the innocence of youth, I still felt like I could overcome whatever obstacles lay in front of me.

Given the higher costs of just getting around currently, I miss those younger days, when I lived in a part of town where I could walk to just about anything I needed to, or hail a cab if it was a longer journey not on a public transit route. Being younger, those trips included far fewer visits to doctors, and far fewer trips to help out older relatives. Again, mostly visiting doctors.

It was nothing to wheel a portable grocery cart a few blocks for a load of groceries and again back home. There also weren’t many thoughts about comparison shopping, as convenience outweighed whatever cost differences there were between competing grocery stores, pharmacies, and other merchants.

If I wanted to get out of town for the weekend, a car was easily rentable. Leaving and returning to the city was never a planning chore attempting to avoid whatever construction currently makes a joke out of the term expressway.

I miss the days when stupidly crooked politicians got their comeuppance if they tried to beat the rap, or had a sense of shame and the good sense to leave office on their own. Yes, things were still crooked. But there was a harmlessness about it, unlike in this moment.

In the neighborhood taverns, sports talk was sports talk. About the sport and real stats. Not about analytics, salary caps, and free agency. A trade was a trade. A hit was a hit, and no one knew the exit velocity.

Talk about politics was actually about the issues, and the political peccadillos certainly. But it all felt harmless compared to the blood sport it is today.

I visited one of those taverns recently. Felt like a stranger in my own town. Perhaps I am the stranger. Maybe I’m just strange. Perhaps it’s not my own town any longer. Today is not yesterday. Tomorrow won’t be either.

Pusillanimous Pardons and Immutable Immunity

The old rules no longer apply

When I check in on social media these days there’s a disturbing, yet comical, theme that runs through my feeds. Every time Trump or his toady enablers whips out some wide open act of corruption like a perverted exhibitionist my feeds fill up with naive anguish, hair pulling, and occasionally the gnashing of teeth.

Shutterstock 2574343845.

“Someone needs to stop this!”

“Congress must stand up!”

“How can they get away with this?”

What a waste of bandwidth and AI training.

In the first two instances there is no one left to stop any of this. Those folks have all gone home, or they’re cashing in after joining the circus. Congress doesn’t exist as anything other than a way to accrue vacation days, pensions, and fundraising opportunities.

As to “How can they get away with this?” One word folks.

Pardons.

Ok, two words.

Pardons and immunity.

When SCOTUS let Trump off the hook by conferring presidential immunity for official acts, he got permission to double down and do whatever he wants to do. Who knew gleefully committing crimes could be official acts?

Those following and enabling him, do so knowing full well that unless he dies before signing their pardons (he probably already has), they’re home free as well. Remember, accepting a pardon doesn’t erase the underlying crime, it just pardons you for criming in the company of a friend with pardon power and immunity.

For those who haven’t figured it out, it’s a risk free criminal enterprise.

It’s amazing how brave you might think you are, when you know you won’t be held accountable. It’s not bravery. It’s actually servitude.

It’s also amazing how naive we can be thinking any of the old rules still apply or that someone is going to ride to the rescue. No one wants to admit the jig is up because that ends the outrage gravy train, and is painful to contemplate.

But here we are.

(Image from Kelly Marken on Shutterstock)

The Grandkids Are Invading

Invasion of the smalls

The grandkids are coming! The grandkids are coming!

It certainly feels like an invasion as we prep the house, prep the fun and games, and prep ourselves for their arrival. They’re spending most of the week. We’re spending a small fortune.

But we wouldn’t have it any other way. Bring ‘em on