The Trump Bunker
Trump has bunkered up. Like other embattled wannabe emperors, the big orange clown has gone to ground, dug in, built himself a wall, all right, a wall between himself and Congress. A bunker made of red balloons has been erected in the center ring of PR Burn-em’s Two Party Circus. Come one, come all, to see the siege!
A mass of Blue and Red clowns surround the bunker. All kinds of shouting is going on. Let’s see what we can pick out from the clownish din.
Holy blowing clown-smoke, Batman! Nancy Pelosi thinks there’s a clause in the constitution allowing for “self-impeachment”. Her excuses for inaction grow lamer by the day.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/trump-impeachment-strategy-coming-together-pelosi-n1003981
The NBC article claims that independent voters don’t favor impeachment. Man, they sure never asked me! But the Hill says support for impeachment is rising in the public. 45% in favor, only 42% opposed. Too bad I’m not a great believer in polls. This one sounds good to me.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/443017-support-for-impeaching-trump-rises-poll
So, the people are beginning to favor impeachment. Then, of course, the Democrats are struggling to “contain impeachment fever”. Are you fookin’ kidding me? How democratic is that?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/impeachment-trump-impeach-pelosi_n_5cd4890fe4b0705e47d8e430
But let’s forget the noise and bluster of the Clown Wars for moment. After all, its Fridays for Future. And when we quit watching the clown show for a while, we might start to notice a strange thing is happening all around us.
The whole fookin’ circus tent is burning down!
Ireland seems to have noticed the fookin’ fire, and they have declared a climate emergency. Oregon should follow suit. The wildfires coming this summer could be mitigated by immediate emergency action now, before they happen.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48221080
But that’s not likely, since a new poll shows America leads the world— in climate denial. Good to know we’re number one in something.
https://earther.gizmodo.com/surprise-new-poll-shows-americans-lead-the-developed-w-1834613479
Greta Thunberg thinks we aren’t hearing the message on climate change. She’s right. But I’m hearing it, and passing it along as best I can.
And the climate kids are making a difference, according to USA Today.
Politico suggests that Climate Voters are becoming a rising force in American politics. Have I ever mentioned in this column that I’m a climate voter for 2020!
Someday, even the Republicans will realize they have to get on board the (electric) climate train. Perhaps Bill Weld can give a run against Trump in the 2020 primary.
Something truly frightening is happening in the Pacific Ocean. I previously posted about this whale die-off, but there’s another one.
These gray whale deaths are going on along the whole Pacific coast. 45 total this year, more than twice last year. No one is sure why.
https://katu.com/news/local/dead-whale-washes-ashore-at-harborview-park-in-everett
If Ecocide becomes a punishable crime, it would be good to know where to go to hunt down the murderers. My friend Sue shared this one with me.
But I’ve got an idea. Instead of changing our behavior, much less our actual relationship with the living earth. Why don’t we build a huuuge fookin’ machine that can fix everything for us? Instead of recognizing the Earth as a living thing and our actions as poisoning it, we’re going to try to “repair” it like a machine. With more machines! This is bad thinking, except maybe the carbon to fuel thingy. That sounds kinda cool.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48069663
From the side, it sometimes seems that our biggest enemies are not people on the other side. Our biggest enemies are bad ideas. The idea that the earth, or the body, or anything living is a “machine” is a bad idea. That is the idea, rooted back at least to old Descartes himself, that has put us into this mess. If we continue to view the world as a machine, we will never be able to heal it. It’s not a problem of repair. It’s a problem of relationship.
We need to build an ethical relationship with the non-human world. A “Land Ethic”. It is not the earth we need to repair. It is ourselves.
Speaking of the world as a machine, what about the digital machines that are so much a part of our life these days. A mind bending article by Timothy Snyder in the New York Review of Books is worth the read.
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/05/06/what-turing-told-us-about-the-digital-threat-to-a-human-future/
That is cool, Gary! It’ll take me a while to get through the whole thing, but I love what he’s doing. I’ve thought a lot about the Turing Test. But not like that! This is right up one of my many alleys of interest. Do you know who Hugo deGaris is?
Hugo deGaris — looked up on Wikipedia — interesting!
Curious if you are familiar with the new AlphaGo and AlphaZero AIs? These are AIs that are given the “rules of the game” but nothing else and end up playing better than any person or other more conventionally “programmed” AI.
I have thought that a real need for such next generation AIs is as “verification agents” for the Internet. Think of them as B characters in the Turing / Snyder description.
Yeah, I decided to learn Go a couple years ago. Just a month or so after I began, AlphaGo beat the world champ, which pissed me off a little since Go was the last of the old games to not be won by AI. Then AlphaZero came along. I watched quite a few game analyses. The pro Go players were literally in love with AlphaZero. I read up a little (or listened to some YouTubes) about the programming behind it, but not in great detail. I don’t really do programming any more. Especially not on AI.
But I could sure use a verification agent just to check on my facts for me. That’d be super handy when I’m typing out blog after blog! I’ve made a couple factual mistakes I regret already. Isn’t that kind of what Faces and YouToob are doing with their warning labels on sources? And, speaking of Turing, you can feel a computer’s style in their suggestion algorithms. Not what a human would suggest.
I had a college teacher who once came up with a different kind of Turing test for AI. When a computer could make and understand metaphors, then it would be indistinguishable from human thought.
Here’s a problem for your verification agent. As “C” I want to know if “B” is lying. So my internet search has to be for those statements which are “not true” or “not verified” or “too edgy for the powers that be” or something. In this case, a “truth only” AI is basically going to thwart my search. Because I need to know what’s not true, to prove what is.
I have already had this happen with Boogle. Try typing the word “conspiracy” letter by letter, slowly, into googs, and watch the auto-suggest frantically try to steer you anywhere but the dreaded ‘conspiracy theory’. Stupid AI. Labels are okay in my mind, especially if there’s some info about the reasons for the label. (label-labeling) I do not want anybody, AI or human, restricting my access to information and ideas. Even bad info. Even stupid ideas. That’s a really important principle to me.
Yes, that is a good point. Problem is that we are already, as per Snyder, victims of digital marketing that skews the truth, and when we are targeted by professional propagandists, I think it is hubris to think we are not influenced by these coordinated campaigns.
As I understand the policies at Facebook, they flag content with some kind of algorithm that then must be read by a human to get a final determination of suitability. But this is not exactly what I had in mind.
Rather “verification engines” would return a “judgement of veracity”, perhaps with a bibliography. Such AI are not necessarily censors. Rather they add to the “conversation.”