Symbols matter. It’s why so many are upset that so many symbols are being desecrated and destroyed by despicable people. That’s certainly true in Washington DC given the current regime’s attempts to remake not only long revered symbols but also way of life.
Perhaps that’s why each time I see a picture of the algae blooms that are taking over the Reflecting Pool on the mall, I laugh and welcome the karma.
Maybe Mother Nature and her sense of humor will have a hand in the end of some of this. Wish she’d hurry up.
Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to this blog if you care to.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.
Time for a little Sunday Morning Reading. Sharing good writing is a normal thing to do. Maybe that’s abnormal. Don’t know. Don’t care. Defining normal is a tricky subjective thing. But then trying to define most things these days feels, well…almsot abnormal.
Just be normal. Is that a “new normal” or last week’s “old normal?” Do we crave normality? Does it matter? Normally, I’d have more to say, but instead check out JA Westenberg’sJust Be Normal About Things.
Mathew Ingram takes on the subject of consciousness, one of the latest discussions bopping around the bits and bytes surrounding AI, with his piece, Is Atlantic Writer Ted Chiang Conscious? How Do We Know? If you ask me, that fact that this is being discussed calls whatever the idea of consciousness is into question. Doesn’t feel normal. For that matter doesn’t feel abnormal either. Just weird.
David Todd McCarty calls his piece The Slow News Moment. I like his description better. “How we became terrorized by the 24-hour news cycle and what we might do to combat the charade of exigency.” Perhaps less is more normal.
“We are being robbed by the worst people in the world,” says Kelly Hayes in The Heist State. Spot on, given that blatant thievery is the new normal these days.
Everywhere you look life is a scam. That is indeed far too normal. Neil Steinberg takes on one that targeted him and other writers in We Love Your Book! Now Give Us Money. Funny stuff.
Protect The Weird, Slow and Inefficient.Natasha MH thinks AI might one day become as invisible a tool to the process of writing as the typewriter did in its day. But look again. The tools don’t matter as much as the desire.
Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe if you want. It’s free.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.
Well, that happened. Finally. Trump’s desecrating name was finally removed from The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after a judge ruled to make it so.
It took a while, thanks to some legal cry-babying from Trump’s legal bunglers trying to soothe his injured and fragile ego. The act didn’t quite meet the June 12th deadline, but eventually under the cover of darkness and behind a curtain, the name came down after the public, via live streams on the Internet, got lessons in erecting scaffolding. The photo above was captured by Cliff Owen of the Associated Press and so far is the only one I’ve seen with a worker’s hands removing one of the letters.
Of course the pedophile-in-chief’s name should have never been put there in the first place. It was a perversion. The removal is a small victory. Even if largely symbolic in a wellspring of atrocities. There’s no telling how long it will take to rebuild the damage he’s done to the Kennedy Center as an institution and the rest of what he’s destroyed.
But it is a bright moment in all of the darkness and hopefully breeds more anger and anticipation for ripping to shreds any of the other atrocious marks this less than human, but very real human monstrosity has visited on all of us.
I want to live long enough to dance in the street when that happens. Let there be bonfires to light the night skies.
Update: The photo above of the facade with Trump’s name removed is from pre-Trump days. Apparently the tarp that covered the removal is still there and may be for some time.
Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to this blog if you care to.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.
You can’t take humans out of the chain of responsibility
By now everyone is familiar with the caveats every AI company trots out like Surgeon General’s warnings on tobacco products. AI can make mistakes, so you need to double check. Great sales pitch. Better liability protection. Some lawyers obviously dreamed that up, but it appears there’s a chance they might need to dream again.
According to an article in Ars Technica, a German court has ruled that Google is liable for false statements in AI Overviews. Given how Google is reinventing Search and itself this might turn into a problem, and not just for Google.
Google tried the usual arguments to shield itself from liability for false statements in AI Overviews, such as arguing that most users understand that AI outputs aren’t always accurate and must be verified.
But the court found that, unlike traditional search engines that merely present lists of links to third-party statements, Google’s tool made “independent, new, and substantive statements” based on its own misinterpretation of links on the Internet.
That’s a problem, the court said, because while publishers may have been able to sue to stop third parties from publishing defamatory statements appearing in Google search results, only Google can correct the underlying algorithm and outputs displayed in AI Overviews.
The bottom line it seems to me is if an AI Overview or other result summary hallucinates something false and perhaps defamatory, someone somewhere, meaning a human someone(s), can held responsible.
I’m sure appeals are already being worked on for this preliminary ruling. So the story will continue to unfold.
As far as U.S. users might be concerned we’re already seeing other countries treating technology issues very differently in the European Union and elsewhere than on our own shores. Things are very different here in the land where bribery no longer masquerades as politics. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty strong statement that bears some attention regardless of where you live and where you search the Internet from.
Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to this blog if you care to.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.
The title of this post does not refer to the title of a streaming TV series that is one of the best examples out there of a show having a winning first season and then completely deteriorating in its second. But perhaps that show’s failure the second time around could be a metaphor.
The title actually refers to what is happening before our eyes with Donald Trump. He’s physically breaking down fast in this, his second term. I don’t need to know his medical condition to see it. Neither do most. He and his enablers he’s assembled around him are lying to us and themselves about whatever is ailing him. For some reason they think they can pull that off. They can’t.
Here’s why.
Too many people in their lives have been faced with an aging or sick relative and had to watch the deterioration first hand. It’s a saga of life that everyone but only the very young knows. In these cases, the parent eventually becomes the child again, to be cared for by the child they raised.
Difficult moments present themselves all along the journey. Drivers license and car keys are taken away. Financial and medical decisions are assigned to others. Houses get rearranged. Sadly at some point for some they get moved into some form of long term care, which is nothing more than a way station warehouse before the end eventually arrives.
And those are the lucky ones who have family willing to do the work and bear the burden.
I’ve lived through these situations more times than I would have liked. It’s challenging and changes everything for everyone it touches.
There are always moments of denial and deflection before rationality sets in and necessary steps are taken. That pushback comes from those suffering and those supporting them. The conversations and confrontations are never easy. Someone once told me that you don’t really grow up until you face these challenges with an elderly loved one. I think they might be right.
It’s so familiar that it’s one of those oft repeated situations in life that when the loved one and/or their families finally admit what they’re dealing with to everyone around them, everyone around them breathes a sigh of relief and delivers those painful looks that say they’ve known all along.
In and of itself, those moments are a part of life’s cycles we can’t seem to break.
That so many have experienced something similar in their families shows just how irrational and afraid those enabling Trump must be to pretend that what most can see with their own eyes isn’t real. Being politically astute and thinking you’re smart enough to survive are two completely different skill sets.
Perhaps if their pardons were already signed things might be different.
Set aside just how awful this old man has been for the world. I don’t mean to extend any pity or sympathy towards him by saying that. He deserves none. But as we watch him continue to whither away, dragging the country approaching it’s 250th anniversary down with him, it’s a damn shame no one had the courage to tell the old man his time was up, instead of letting him, and us, linger in a farce of fog.
Putting this on a political stage, we’ve seen ailing and dying leaders propped up before. So, that’s nothing new. I would just offer that the propping up is more about those doing the propping than the old man they keep lying to protect.
Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to this blog if you care to.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.
With so many things fundamentally broken during this second Trump administration there’s a momentary sigh of relief when it appears that something, anything might be put back together again.
This week U.S.District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that Trump’s appointed Kennedy Center board exceeded its authority when they decided to slap Trump’s name on the building and remake the building in his imagined image. Taking a look at any photo of the remade Oval Office and the plans for his ballroom, his gigantic arch, and the wrestling ring he’s built for his birthday beat down, which he somehow likens to the Eiffel Tower, is enough to make anyone with any semblance of taste in their mouth spit in disgust.
The ruling essentially says stop and take the offensive name off of the building. The Kennedy Center administration has already ordered employees to remove the sign and also strip all references from other signage, brochures, the website and to remove email signatures and letterhead by June 12th. The move is being hailed as a victory.
Cathartic and symbolic as removing the name may be, it can’t possibly make up for the damage done to the revered national center for the arts. It’s a start, and it certainly kindles hopes and dreams of doing the same to much of the defacing and defecating this one man wrecking crew has visited on Washington DC and the rest of the country.
Take for example the story of the National Symphony Orchestra. After many acts and organizations cut ties with the Kennedy Center rather than being associated with the madness, Trump closed the Kennedy Center for a two-year period of renovations, leaving the NSO without a home. Ben Folds, previous artistic advisor, (previous only because he stepped down when Trump took over), has released a letter calling for an “outpouring of public support.” Saying without such a push the NSO may not survive. You can read the full letter at this Instagram link. That will be a hard task and I wish them success.
I’ve said ever since Donald Trump came on the political scene that given the grifter and sexual predator’s previous life as a real estate developer we needed to understand that in order to construct something new a developer in his/her heart needed to also love demolishing something first. He’s certainly more than demonstrated a penchant for demolition and desecrating.
Here’s hoping one day we all get a chance to enjoying demolishing the things he’s touched in this horrible age.
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.
Scott Pelley was fired by CBS. By most accounts, except those from CBS management, he was fired for daring to speak the truth about what is happening under their new ownership that’s far too fond of kissing the ass of the president.
I have a couple of thoughts.
First, Pelley shouldn’t have been fired I don’t care how belligerent he may have gotten with his bosses. The world needs a little more righteous belligerence instead of the babble we get for show.
Second, the current management of CBS are idiots, which is easily proven by how ineptly they handled this entire episode. There’s not enough eggs to cover the faces of the feckless.
Third, while it’s right to be momentarily outraged at the numbskulls from CBS and those who play them like puppets, it’s time to move on.
For Pelley.
For most of us.
I’m not pointing specific fingers at Pelley when I say this, but he was part of a media establishment that largely has failed us since before the dawn of the Trump era and continues to do so daily. The 1st amendment put the press on a cherished and protected pedestal. The cringing cowardice and capitulation of those atop that pedestal these days has aided the current regime in knocking itself off it. The Fourth Estate is essentially a cliché that lost its meaning.
New horizons await. Hopefully with new voices and new approaches headed towards them. Time to open the floodgates and let the waters wash away a multitude of sins that helped bring us this ultimate sinner without par.
All around us venues like podcasts, YouTube, and TikTok are where many are getting their news and their entertainment. Given that there’s been so little courage and competence in the establishment media for so long, it’s no wonder kids on TikTok get higher ratings for reviewing school lunches in the cafeteria. Hell, YouTube is kicking the media’s butt from Hollywood to New York in ways that it’s almost hard to fathom, but increasingly easy to acknowledge. For anyone but the media.
Would I like to see some of the big names who’ve gotten the axe in this regime’s purges get second chances on different platforms? Sure. But only if they seek out these new approaches and find a little courage. Those new approaches might still come under fire from the cowardly bullies that cower and lash out at any criticism. But at least they won’t come under fire from capitulating corporate chieftains who bow and scrape to the bloviating bullshit artists, hoping they can survive until the chaos we’re surrounded by ends someday.
Like it or not, traditional media as an institution, revered as it is, and as holy as its acolytes hold themselves, shares a big part of the blame and is no different than anything else that’s been touched, tainted, and torched in this tumultuous decade plus. It took a while for what passes as journalism to dig its way out of the robber baron era of previous generations. You can argue that CBS was in the forefront of the leaders that helped wash off the tinge of yellow journalism. Those days are over.
What was is gone. Self-immolation. There’s no use pretending it can be rebuilt from any of the remaining ashes.
Kudos to Scott Pelley for standing up for what’s right. We need more like him. We’ve needed more like him for too long. I’m sorry what happened to him and so many others in the media, throughout government, and in other fields of endeavor. No one deserved what’s happening. But I have to ask each of them, what took you so long? Even the visually impaired among us clearly saw most of this coming. Certainly this second time around.
Mourn the losses.
Curse the bad guys.
Then move on and build something in the future that might have a hope of preventing these cascading catastrophes from happening to anyone else in the future.
Good night, and good luck.
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.
I read a lot. It’s so ingrained in me it’s become part of my DNA. Good writers and writing are like magnets. I’m drawn to it. I live to read something that strikes me upside the head, or cuts deep in the heart. Om Malik’s piece, We Are Living In Pinocchio’s World, struck hard and cut deep. Go read it.
Om is a writer I’ve paid attention to for quite a while. What he thinks and writes is alway informative. Typically his topics are tech related. But in this piece he’s done what I often attempt to do, (not nearly as well as he), weaving together the common threads about tech and politics, or more importantly the people behind them both, that bind one to another into a whole with the precision of a finely tuned instrument. In this case, a pen. You have to read it.
Here’s an excerpt:
Most people remember Pinocchio as a story about lying. The nose grows. You get caught. Lesson learned. But that reading misses almost everything Collodi was actually doing. The book is a close study of a society where deception has gone ambient, woven into every institution, every transaction. Courts punish victims. Authority figures perform competence without exercising it. Experts are decorative. Society holds together through spectacle and habit rather than accountability. Into this environment, a naive creature is released, constitutionally unable to resist a good story about easy reward.
The nose is the least interesting lie in the book. The interesting lies are the ones that work.
You need to read Om’s piece to discover which are the lies that work. If you’re a fan of the story you can probably guess or recollect, but the writing here takes you there in wonderful ways. Either way, you’ll come away thinking that they are as plainly visible as the nose on your face. Yet somehow our gaze always seems focused to look past that.
Pinocchio is a favorite story of mine. I’ve directed a play version in the past. Perhaps Malik’s piece hit me so squarely because I spent time with the book during my preparation for that gig. It was a production for young audiences. The kids always loved it. Their parents or accompanying adults always seemed a little agitated after the performances. Thought of as the children’s story it was originally written as, it contains truth we adults conveniently forget or choose to ignore. Even in the much reduced stage version for young audiences the theme reveals its mark as squarely as it hits it.
As Malik puts it “Pinocchio is a story about a society organized around deception.”
He’s dissected the story, originally published in serial form, and reassembled and animated the core of its humanity in ways that not only meet our moment, but distill the chaos into a sublime simplicity. Much the way any skilled wood carver and maker of puppets would be envious of.
I won’t say any more. I’ll just say again, go read it.
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.
Biker heroes, cheese thieves, and stupidity checklists
Sunday Morning Reading time with stories and good writing about crime, incompetence, technology, shifts and changes, and cheese. There’s also hope in and amongst the chaos. Add a slice of cheese to your morning repast and give a read.
Starting this week’s edition with a surprising feel good story that reminds us we shouldn’t judge books by covers. Marlon G. Baxter tells the tale of young hearing impaired child who was saved from being trafficked in a Walmart by what appeared to most as an unlikely hero. You need to read “Heroes Wear Leather Too”: How A Deaf Child And A Biker Stopped A Trafficking Plot.
UPDATE: This pisses me off. Apparently the feel good story linked above is fake. I and several others have looked into it and it’s not holding up. Pardon my swearing, but this is so goddamned frustrating. I’m leaving the link and my description in for two reasons. Pointing out that we can’t trust a damn thing on the Internet anymore. Secondly, that really sucks given we’re all in a posture of looking for hope whenever we can find it.
In the wake of what’s happening at the ICE Delaney Hall detention center internment camp in New Jersey, Josh Kovensky recounts the story of what happened in the courts after similar battles over humanity happened earlier in Chicago. Check out How The Broadview Six Fought The Trump DOJ—And Found Massive Wrongdoing In The Process. Tough to see hope in these horrible moments as they occur, and it’s hard to believe we have to rely on the incompetence of evil doers after the fact, but here we are.
On the arts and politics front, a court has ruled Trump has to take his name off of the Kennedy Center and not close it down for renovations. Sounds like a victory. In the long term it may be, but Janay Kingsbury tells us that in the immediate future the damage may already have been done in Trump Hasn’t Left Much Kennedy Center To Stay Open. So much of what’s happening these days hurts my heart, but this misadventure hits me where I live.
Everything is changing, like it or not. Sonny Bunch thinks Hollywood is standing on the doorstep of yet another pivotal moment. Check out Hollywood’s About To Change (Again).
As far as pivotal moments go, there are quite a few happening all around us. Especially regarding searching the Internet. Google is reinventing itself and the Internet, leaving an opening for companies like DuckDuckGo and Kagi. Doc Searls writes How DuckDuckGo Can Be A Hero. Let’s hope these search companies seize the moment that’s before them.
And while we’re on the topic of tech, John Siracusa has published The EV Stupidity Checklist, suggesting ways the EV industry might get back on track. John could and should publish one of these for so many things in the tech sector. Perhaps also for so many other sectors of our lives.
I’m a cheese fan, and I’ve been known to nick a slice or two off of the hors d’oeuvres tray before the guests arrive. Olivia Potts tells us how organized crime fell in love with cheese in The Grate Cheese Robbery. Who knew cheese was the most stolen food in the world?
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.
Several of my areas of interest seem to be tilting, leaning closer of late to the point when gravity might take over and bring the bad guys down. If you read anything at all here, you know I’m talking about AI and what passes for politics as practiced here in the U.S.
I wish I was in a position to help things along with a stronger push, but alas that’s not the case. If things do ever fall over it would certainly be destructive, but in my opinion, no more so than the destruction currently being visited upon us.
I mean the bad guys have tilted the pinball machine so far that it’s mostly beyond repair and I’m amazed you can still send the balls down the chute.
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.
Om is a writer I’ve paid attention to for quite a while. What he thinks and writes is alway informative. Typically his topics are tech related. But in this piece he’s done what I often attempt to do, (not nearly as well as he), weaving together the common threads about tech and politics, or more importantly the people behind them both, that bind one to another into a whole with the precision of a finely tuned instrument. In this case, a pen. You have to read it. 
Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3 