Dark Times – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Sunday Morning Reading

Optimism comes every Spring, but Winter always nips at the edges

Temperatures are warming. Every day brings more daylight, more blooms in the gardens and trees Yet on the edges of two of my interests, politics and tech, things continue to darken a bit. The common denominator between the two? Humans. But then again, humans are the ones who read this Sunday Morning Reading column. As well as the bots that scrape it of course.

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Some of the big news in tech this week was about a new AI product from Anthropic called Mythos. So fraught with potential peril that Anthropic gathered together the major tech heads to form a consortium to keep lid on it. Monica Verma has a good run down with her piece Did Claude Mythos Break The Cybersecurity Industry.

M.G. Siegler’s The Causal Catastrophe of AI takes a look at maneuvering around Mythos as well. Call me crazy, but I don’t think there’s anything casual about this development.

The reason I’m a pessimist on this is that I agree with a comment from JA Westenberg, “Being wrong about doom costs you nothing.” Check out Optimism Is Not A Personality Flaw. The piece walks a line. You should read it and walk it too.

Mike Elgan takes a look at Black Traffic: The Corporate Sabotage Technique You’ve Never Heard Of. Now you have.

Ng Chong examines The Echo Chamber In Your Pocket. Follow that up with this from Julie Jargon: Over 4,732 Messages, He Fell In Love With An AI Chatbot. Now He’s Dead.(That’s an Apple News lnk. This is an archived link.)

David Todd McCarty thinks one path to reclaiming power over information might be in The Return Of The Local Newspaper.You don’t know what you had until it’s gone.

This Is What Will Ruin Public Opinion Polling For Good. The “this,” according to Lief Weatherby, is something called silicon sampling. Yes, you guessed it. AI.

Coming back around to my comment at the top about not having faith in humans, OpenAI’s Sam Altman got his turn in the barrel (again) this week. Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz spent quite a bit of time putting this piece together. Check out Sam Altman May Control Our Future — Can He Be Trusted? FWIW, I don’t need much more time than it takes to put this column together every week to answer their question in the negative. And not just about Altman.

Mean while Altman responded on his blog, after someone tossed a Molotov cocktail at his house. He says “I have underestimated the power of words and narratives.” For someone who has scraped all the words he can off of the Internet and tried to turn them into something smarter than humans, you’d think his machines could have at least figured out that words have power.

Natasha MH sums up a lot of my lack of faith in humans in her piece, Stop Blaming The Chatbot. As she puts it, “AI didn’t make you stupid. You were already getting there.”

Sorry to be so negative this week, but that’s where I’m living., But to change the tone, Neil Steinberg turns around the Latin term, memto mori, (remember to die) around to memento vivere, or remember to live. A nice little bit of humanity to close out this week with Little LIfe.

(Photo from the author)

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.

Poisson D’Avril

Choking jokes

April 1 last year I posted about how much I miss the good old days when April Fools’ Day was a fun day. Memories of those days were fading then. I’m afraid they are only shadows now.

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As I said a year ago:

I guess the negative reactions started to take over when the Internet, home of more copycats than original copy, made the proliferation of pranks available to all including those who would do so for malicious reasons. Call it Internet gluttony. That joke is always on us, because while humans do enjoy a good laugh, we also seem to enjoy overdoing just about anything to the point of pointlessness.

Some would say we’ve grown and matured in the face of an overabundance and overuse of prepubescent humor. I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate.

I think it takes maturity, a sense of humility, and humor to face the challenges every day presents. Certainly in these dark times. It also takes strength, and increasingly, courage. It’s easy to shut down and turn away. That doesn’t diminish the darkness, nor does it brighten the day.

Perhaps last year’s post was an unintended start of a new April 1 tradition.

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.

No Kings Rallies: Build On It

So much wrong, so little cardboard

Today was No Kings Day in the U.S. and around the world with large crowds in large cities and smaller ones in small cities, towns and hamlets. Regardless of the numbers, (estimates are running as high as 9 million at the moment) what’s important is people showed up, stood up, and showed they still stand for decency and the rule of law.

Due to being completely under the weather I had to cancel plans to attend the rally in Chicago, but I did tune into the national live stream. I’m not sure if that will stay up after the day is done, but I sure hope it does.

What will be more important than the protest rallies will be what happens next. We all know weekend protests, as good as they are for building solidarity, are not enough and there’s still a big fight ahead. As the sign above says, so much wrong, so little cardboard. As wrong and dark as things have been, things are going to get more wrong and darker before whatever the end of this will be.

I’ve linked to Bruce Springsteen’s song, Streets of Minneapolis here before, and you can catch it there or just about anywhere. Below is the short speech he gave before singing that song at the Minneapolis No Kings Rally.

Sing and march on.

(Image from Bill Strait on Mastodon

Bette Midler Updates Woody Guthrie’s ‘All You Fascists Bound To Lose’

Let’s turn the screws, you perverts bound to lose

Add Bette Midler to the growing ranks of musical artists offering up protest songs for our current crisis.

Midler has updated Woody Guthrie’s classic, All You Fascists Bound To Lose, with new lyrics hitting many of headlines and moments we’re all living through under the current administration. Here’s a sample:

We’ll battle ICE together until they cut and run
Just like in Minneapolis and when the midterms come
You’re bound to lose, you fascists bound to lose

All you fascists bound to lose
All you fascists bound to lose
I said all you fascists bound to lose
You’re bound to lose, you fascists bound to lose

To hell with all the cowards who hide behind their masks
We’re gonna win the midterms, we’re coming for his ass!
He knows it too, that bastard’s bound to lose

Trying to distract us from the Epstein files
You gas and beat and murder us, protectin’ pedophiles
Let’s turn the screws, you perverts bound to lose

Give it a listen. Share it around. The fascists may be bound to lose, but everyone has something to gain when they do

Paying The Pump

Up, up, and away

We’re back home after spending five days and nights with the grandkids. We drive a well worn path out and back, always stopping at the same places for whatever fuel we need for the car or our bodies.

Thanks to the war that isn’t a war that’s almost over, unless it’s just beginning, it was not really a surprise what we were seeing for gas prices. These before (on the left) and after shots are from our stop on the way out of town and our way back in.

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That’s quite an increase in five days. We typically stop at truck stops for refueling, and listening to truck drivers complain in the restrooms this trip was a lesson in invective. Although that didn’t seem to have an effect on what felt like typical truck traffic.

For the record, on our last trip before this one prior to whatever we’re calling what’s happening in Iran, we paid $2.69 a gallon at this stop.

Flip Flopping In The Fuck You Fours

There’s zero harm when my grandson decides to turn on a dime from one story to the next. One emotion to another. He’s a kid. It’s cute. It’s funny. Often hysterical.

That said, at times his gyrations remind me of those of the idiot in the White House. Both know everyone is paying attention and crave it. My grandson will grow out of this. Most kids do. When adults stay stuck in that mode, it’s always trouble on scales large and small.

I can’t speak as to why the decaying sociopath destroying everything in his path, and those who enable him, seem to think this behavior is okay, beyond theorizing that there are more than I could have ever imagined like him to make me shudder. I’ve tried to understand it and can’t. I just know at some point what’s cute in kids is misery for the rest of us on this planet now that we’ve let this tyrant stay in his terrible two’s and fuck you fours.

It upsets me that I can’t enjoy these moments with my grandson without thinking about this.

Sunday Morning Reading

Epidemics of reading, opinions, and the wild ways of artists

Spending a few days with the grandkids this weekend and into next week, yet still managed to find some time for a little Sunday Morning Reading. It’s a lesson in learning, watching as they begin to put it all together, compared to so many of the adults trying to own the world who seem stuck and unable to grow, or suffer some sort of reversion. With kids, it’s innocence. The rest of us have no excuses. Just stories. Makes you wonder what turns that on and off.

In the large discussion around screen time and attention spans, Carlo Iacono says What We Think Is A Decline In Literacy Is A Design Problem.The section looking back to “reading epidemics” in the 18th and 19th century are more illuminating than any screen.

The First Casualty of Trump’s War In Iran Was The Truth. So says David Remick. That’s always true in warm even before the first bullets fly. But it’s become the truth in all aspects of how we try to survive together. Funny how we revert back to our early childhood ways of dealing with the world before disgarding the truth was supposedly trained out of us.

Everybody has an opinion about this war that we can’t call a war. Here’s one that I found interesting from Frida Ghitis. Check out What Everyone Gets Wrong About Iran.

David Todd McCarty tells us How I Learned To Hate AI. The more you know…

Chris Castle takes a look at The Great White House AI Copyright Dodge: Managed Decline, Global Spillover, And The Rise Of The Chief Personhood Denier.Hat tip to Stan Stewart for this one.

With everyone focused on The Strait of Hormus, Richard Bookstabler takes a look at our financial straits in I Predicted The 2008 Financial Crisis. What Is Coming May Be Worse. For the record, I didn’t predict the last one, but anyone with two nickels to rub together can predict the outcome of the one we’re heading into.

I did any number of odd (in all senses of the word) jobs in my early life supporting myself as an artist. Emily Watlington takes a look at The Wild Ways Artists Have Made Their Livings, From The Renaissance To Today.

Notes From A Burmese Prison is a comic by Danny Fenster and Amy Kurzweil. More than worth your time. Extrapolate the specific location and situation to any troublesome moment and remember whoever the guards are, you can’t trust them.

(Photo by the author)

The Potholes of the Internet

“Your Frustration Is The Product”

Some call it enshittification. I largely agree with that when it comes to the Internet. But that’s true in most endeavors that result in building something. Anything made for good, can and will be used in ways that turn it into a shitty experience.

I’m not just talking about advertising and how it’s junked up the web. I’m also talking about human nature, and how there’s a part of too many of us that see something wonderfully created to solve a problem, who then consequently turn it into a range of unintended consequences that leave us mourning our losses at the expense of somebody else’s gain.

Any one of us could run down a list of things in each of our lives that demonstrate that history, so I won’t even begin to spool one out. Have at it yourselves.

In the majority of instances the road to ruin is typically a path worn thin by greed and there’s never been a road we travel that doesn’t eventually fill with potholes. But back to the Internet and enshittification.

If this excellent post by Shubham Bose called The 49MB Web Page doesn’t make you yearn for a simpler age, I’m not sure what will, assuming you were alive and on the Internet before things went south. Remember, there’s a generation for which the way things are today on the Internet is the way things always have been.

Here’s Bose’s lede:

If active distraction of readers of your own website was an Olympic Sport, news publications would top the charts every time.

I went to the New York Times to glimpse at four headlines and was greeted with 422 network requests and 49 megabytes of data. It took two minutes before the page settled. And then you wonder why every sane tech person has an adblocker installed on systems of all their loved ones.

It is the same story across top publishers today.

The entire piece is worth your time if for no other reason than that misery loves company. We’re all in that same boat and there does’t seem to be any shoreline in view, given how the waters are being churned up anew by Artificial Intelligence.

As Bose puts it:

Your frustration is the product.

Back in the day I can remember getting a credit for complaining that my newspaper was delivered wet and unreadable. Good luck finding someone to express your frustration to these days.

(Photo by the author)

No Kings Rally Returns March 28

We’re protesting against desperate foes. We need to become just as desperate.

The windup for another No Kings rally is heating up for March 28th. As I have been for the previous No Kings events, I’m of two minds.

First, it’s good to see this happening. I encourage and support the effort. Certainly since last fall’s event we’ve been through even more hell to have plenty to protest. Protests do make a statement.

Secondly, as I’ve repeatedly said about the previous protests, until they spill over into the work week I’m not sure what ultimate effect they have. Again, protests are statements. Statements are important. Statements some times lead to action. But as we’ve seen in other countries, it isn’t until large crowds gather in force for successive days and nights that anything beyond demonstrating solidarity actually happens.

Don’t get me wrong when I say that. I’m glad to see these events organized and happening. I hope they continue. I hope the crowds grow. I’d just like to see the effort continue with a greater sense of desperation.

My sense is that too many take too much comfort from feeling they are not alone and that it strengthens resolve as they gear up to vote in November. We probably will get that chance to vote. Although if you’ve been paying attention, that’s not guaranteed. I’m also not sure the results or the chaos around the results are going to provide the answers we need.

These are a desperate bunch of folks who can’t afford to lose. They know what they’ve done, and the only chance to save their skins is to stay in power. They continue to rig the game and the pace of those efforts is quickening.

I believe we have to become just as desperate.

You can check out the information on No Kings Rallies planned for your area at the No Kings website.

Sunday Morning Reading

“The life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.” -David Hume

On the weekend when some parts of the world think they can alter time by simply changing the clocks, I’m reminded of the biggest lesson most learn in life: we’re each not the center of the universe. Most learn it. Some never do, or if they do, they continue to operate under that delusion. We pretty good at setting up systems and structures that reinforce and rely on that delusional thinking. Somehow that seems to be the theme running through the articles and writing I collected this week for this edition of Sunday Morning Reading.

Bronze statue of a child sitting on an outdoor stone bench with legs crossed, reading an open book that rests on their lap, a small bird perched on the top edge of the book, and a stack of books beside them, with a paved walkway, grass lawn, and buildings in the background. Kicking things off is the story of how Humanity Altered an Asteroid’s Orbit Around The Sun by Becky Ferreira. The article links to the ScienceAdvances abstract on the nudge that might be as good as a wink.

Last week the war in the Middle East had just kicked off as I was publishing this column. This week it continues. And, yes, it’s a war, regardless of the stupid debate. Jonathan Taplin looks at The Terrifying New Era of American Imperialism, and Jay Caspian Kang examines The No-Explanation War.

“Society grows great when old men plant trees who shade they’ll never sit under” and the opposite of that wisdom is how Scott Galloway kicks off his piece on Role Models.

Ali Breland takes a looks at those yearning for a return to McCarthyism in ‘We Need To Do McCarthyism to the Tenth Power.’ Turning back time only works as a song lyric.

JA Westenberg offers up a A Soft-Landing Manual For The Return To The Second Gilded Age. It’s tough to avoid the usual hard crashes.

The Dodgy Code examines The Great AI Arbitrage: Making A Killing Before Your Client Wises Up. The inevitable turnaround on this is going to be something to see.

Before we get to that turnaround, Mathew Ingram says The Danger Posed By AI Just Got A Lot More Real All Of A Sudden. Going to be interesting to watch AI bots fighting each other to be the center of the universe. If we’re around to see it.

David Todd McCarty is Searching For Originality In A Sea of Slop. Even on dry land that’s tough.

I’ve been revisiting a lot of Shakespeare of late, so this piece by Alice Cunningham caught my eye. Check out Author To Revive Shakespeare Club After 300 Years. We could all do with revisiting the his works.

And to conclude this week, James Verini brings us the wild tale of The Man Who Broke Into Jail.

(Photo taken by the author.)