Category: Current Events

I’m Sorry Dave, That Was a Lie – Part 1

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Can AI completely change the world?  I don’t mean like Skynet nuking all the cities.  I’m not talking about terminators slaughtering humans and rounding them up for extermination.  I mean will the routine use of AI radically change human society?

Some people will say it already has.  I spoke to a hiring manager who said that three of the four applicants for a job he was trying to fill used the same wording in their resume for how their experience was relevant for the position.  And I spoke to a teacher who said he routinely failed sixty percent of the homework he reviewed because it was obviously AI.

In a sense those who say it already has, are right.  The children have stopped using anything but their phones to interact with the world.  Wikipedia and Chat GPT are the ultimate authority and the only way to learn.  This is a real problem.  And the only way forward is to extract the electronic devices from these kids and make them use the knowledge or lack of knowledge to show what they know in a test.  In future, test rooms will be shielded from wi-fi and teachers will get those wands that airport security use to search for weapons.  Only in this case the weapons will be iPhones.  But what other changes are we in store for?

One thing I’ve heard a lot lately is that music, books and movies will be created by AI.  And in a sense that will be true.  AI is an accelerant.  It can take an idea that it is given and flesh it out into a big flowery pile of mush that no one would call good.  But that pile of mush probably can be pared and reshaped and cleaned up into something the author could use and do it faster than he could write that much story on his own.  Is that a better way to do it?  No, it’s worse.  But will it happen?  Unfortunately, I think it will.  In fact, from all I’ve read it’s already happening.  Some woman bragged on-line that she used AI to write hundreds of romance/porn novels under dozens of pseudonyms and made over a hundred thousand dollars by doing this.  That’s a pretty bleak reality brewing out there.

And it’s kind of a shame.  It seems to me what AI should be doing is using all this power to assist humans to make a superior product.  I could see a writer wanting an AI to use only a small subset of good fiction to help a writer explore the techniques that great authors have used to draw characters and craft plots that appeal to intelligent readers and entertain them.  That’s a lot better than loading up a trough with slop.

Outside of entertainment and education I think AI will be enormously powerful.  It’s ability to research topics is amazing.  The problem is the lack of transparency about how AI makes mistakes.  Currently, the AI claims to be infallible and does not admit when some “fact” is actually false.  What is going to be needed is a testing procedure to give users of AI a way of finding dangerous errors in the information they’re being given.  That’s the world we will be living in.

SOTU Speech 2026

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SOTU Speech 2026

Trump had his State of the Union address.  I heard it was very long so I fast forwarded through the cheering and rigamarole.  What I heard was very good.  Trump highlighted the improvements to border security that have shut down illegal immigration and has curtailed the trade in fentanyl.  He talked about the fraud that was going on up in Minnesota with the fake daycare centers.  He talked about bringing down inflation and increasing foreign investment in the United States and then he had a bunch of feel-good stories like the US Men’s Olympic hockey team and he had stories of victims of crime caused by illegal aliens.  And he mocked Ilhan Omar and her cronies for their lack of patriotism and he criticized the Democrats for stalling his legislation and refusing to fund the government.  And he placed the blame for the problems that he is fixing squarely at the feet of Joe Biden and the Democrats.

I think he checked off all the right boxes and he spoke well and with humor.  I saw a report on CNN that showed that his speech was well-received by Americans and that after listening to his speech they thought that the country was on the right track by two to one.  Good.

I guess comparing this to Biden’s awful speeches and even Trump’s first term this was a very good effort.  It may have been a little long and there may have been a few too many guests but many of these people were worthy of having their stories told.  And Trump did a good job of portraying the humanity of these individuals who deserved to be acclaimed.

So now he has a little less than three years to make a difference in how this country runs.  And he only has until November when he’s guaranteed a Republican congressional majority.  It is my opinion that he needs to craft a real legislative agenda that will allow him to use those three years to the fullest.  I think he should push the Senate to abolish the filibuster and pass a republican platform including an actual budget for the first time in decades.

Many people object that if the filibuster is eliminated that the Democrats will ride roughshod over our country the next time, they get control of the White House and Congress.  I don’t think it matters.  They’ve done so much damage already that we’re kidding ourselves if we don’t give ourselves the tools to start fixing things now.  This is the opportunity to make things happen.  Three years of the White House in control of an agenda that the Republican Congress should enact will be plenty enough to fix a lot of the damage that has been done to this country.

Well, now I’ve said what I’d like to see happen.  Instead, we’ll get to see what really happens.  But give Trump his due.  He put on a very nice show and he tooted his horn justifiably and now he will have to pull a bunch of rabbits out of his hat to keep the Republicans in charge of the Congress.

Sometimes There is No Winning

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I mentioned the other day that we were getting a foot of snow.  And in the current political environment, that means the state is shut down.  Even First Selectman Cthulhu shut down the Dunwich government and spent the day eating the road salt that the state provides for town road clearance.  He really likes salt even though it’s bad for his blood pressure.  His doctor told him to keep it below 10,000 atmospheres over 6,000.  But what can you do?  He loves him some salt.

Now I decided not to start clearing the snow until today (Tuesday) because they said the snow could continue until 7am.  And even though that turned out to be incorrect (it was a cloudless sky this morning) I was undismayed.  I had nowhere to go today (everything is closed) so I had all day to blow the snow off the top driveway.  I had a leisurely breakfast at 7am and by 9:30 am I sauntered out and started up the snowblower.  And it turned over like a champ and I put it in gear and moved it to where I wanted to start the clearing.  Then I turned the chute in the direction I wanted it and squeezed the trigger to start the auger.  And horrible noises proceeded from this possessed contraption.

Long story short; my snowblower is on the sidelines.  And so, what started as a leisurely day of snow removal became the Bataan Death March.  A foot of snow is kind of a lot when you have as much area as my driveways and other areas add up to.  In the words of every action hero that reaches that golden age, “I’m getting too old for this crap.”  I performed a mental triage of what did and didn’t have to be cleared to allow us to get out on Wednesday morning.  I cleared the area in front of the garage.  I cleared a path from Camera Girl’s car to the upper driveway and I cleared the whole upper driveway including the thirty inches of compacted snow and ice that the plough trucks sealed my driveway in with.  That last part was rough.  I abandoned the lower driveway altogether.  I left snow sitting close to the front door and I didn’t even clear the area around the shed (other than a path to get in and out of it).  And even with these omissions I didn’t get finished until an hour after sunset.

And now I ache in every joint and every muscle.  The piles of snow have gotten so high that I had to pitch each shovelful with all the force I could generate by rotating the shovel in a long arc.  If there were an Olympic event in snow tossing, I might have broken the world record.  So, I got in and there was a very nice dinner waiting for the “conquering hero.”  But then Camera Girl mentioned that the forecast had changed and now they’re talking about snow in the morning.  And more snow on Thursday.

Sometimes there is no winning.

Snow and Sales and the Death of Cities

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A very interesting day.  We got about a foot of snow and the wind has been pretty wild so I decided to wait until Tuesday to move the white stuff.  Wednesday I’ve got to bring Camera Girl’s car to a new mechanic and then go to work so it’ll be a quiet day on the site.  The price reduction on the e-book of “The Sniper” is starting to have an effect.  I reached 500 on the techno-thriller list and got below 100,000 on the Amazon overall book sales list.  I know it’s not something to write home about but it was a big jump.

Hans G. Schantz, a science fiction author I correspond with kindly reposted my announcement on X about the e-book price drop on his X feed.  And since he has orders of magnitude more readers that I do I got hundreds of people looking in and one fellow not only reposted but also bought a copy of the book.  So that was fun.

I was looking around on YouTube and my feed included a video from someone called Sophia Miller entitled “Mayor Mamdani ERUPTS After BlackRock OFFICIALLY Exits New York For Good!”  Well, I watched that video and then I watched one about Chicago and then one about Illinois and two about California.

And you know, it occurred to me that the blue states are getting ready to either implode financially or confiscate the value of the homes of their citizens to pay off the public sector pension plans they’ve underfunded.

That’s a remarkable situation.  The blue states have driven away all of the corporations that used to pay the taxes that allowed them to buy the votes of municipal and state employees who now are ready to retire on gold-plated pension plans.  Things are about to get very, very ugly.  Chicago doubled the property taxes on some working-class Chicagoans.  Mamdani is talking about raiding the New York City workers pension plans and raising property taxes by 10%.  But along with that increase will come extremely frightening revaluations of homes.  Couple this with the flight out of the city of many of the Wall Street banks and financial companies like Black Rock and JP Morgan and what is coming up is a New York City budget gap in the billions of dollars.  And that will begin the death spiral for New York as the financial capitol of the world.  Without Wall Street, New York is a basket case with eight million people living in a crime ridden environment that suffers from expensive, crumbling infrastructure that it can no longer afford to maintain.

Well, maybe that’s why Mamdani is mayor.  Maybe they needed a stooge to absorb the punishment.  This will be an awful crash for the people living there and horrible for the people who didn’t vote for this idiot.  But it has to be done.  My only worry is that Trump will try to step in and save the idiots from themselves.  This needs to be allowed to play out to the final iteration.  Because the sinking of New York City will also sink New York State, Kathy Hochul needs to be destroyed in this disaster too.  All of them deserve it and their downfall will provide a powerful lesson for idiots all across the country.  Stupid kills.

 

 

 

 

 

O Canada!

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Alberta is taking a page from Quebec’s separatist campaign and the way things look there will be a referendum in October.  The exact wording of the referendum question will be “”Do you agree that the Province of Alberta should cease to be a part of Canada to become an independent state?”  This wording was selected because it adheres to the phrasing in Canada’s federal Clarity Act.

Will the referendum succeed?  The polls I’ve seen say no.  Only about a third of voters want independence.  But then again, I remember how many polls said Hillary and Kamala were way ahead of Trump in their presidential races.  So, we’ll have to see.

But even if it fails this time I can see how a day will come when one or more of the western Canadian provinces will secede.  I was watching a video from a fellow in British Columbia who was of the opinion that if Alberta secedes, BC would not only secede but it would fragment into three separate parts.  I don’t pretend to know the details of provincial politics in Canada but I’ve heard that if Alberta leaves Saskatchewan and Manitoba are also very likely to follow suit.

Whether any seceding Canadian provinces decide to apply for American statehood is an interesting question.  I think there’s a good chance that they won’t.  They might feel their best option is combining with each other to form an alternative to Canada.  And that raises another question.  Without the western provinces would Quebec want to remain with rump Canada?  After all, Quebec decided not to secede because they know they receive much more from the federal government than they pay.  But that might no longer be the case when all that is left is Eastern Canada and the Arctic.  So pretty soon Canada becomes essentially Ontario and the Maritime provinces with the Yukon and Hudson Bay thrown in for ice fishing.  Now that is a different reality from the current situation.  But I think it’s a definite possibility in the next decade or so.

And why do I think all of this is important?  Because Canada is an extension of the same cultural and political environment that the United States inhabits.  Because of Quebec, Canada had to provide self-determination to their provinces to show that they weren’t ruling an empire.  Well, now it’s going to bite them on the butt.  And when Canada implodes, it is going to provide a spectacle for the Americans south of their border.

It’s funny how the Left always points at Canada as the template they approve of.  Well, maybe they would go along with adding a constitutional amendment allowing for secession referenda.  After all, if Canada does it, then it must be progressive and therefore good!  Well, anyway, it’s a thought.

The world is changing.  The globalist agenda has shaken things up and it will continue to change for the foreseeable future.  Where it ends up is anyone’s guess.  But I think it’s as likely to get better as it is to get worse.  So, I’ll keep my eyes and ears open and see where the opportunities open up.  O Canada!

Cultural Pep Talk

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So, what’s the deal?  Are we reaching the end of the American Century and should we abandon all hope, we who enter?  Or is there any other way to approach the situation we are in?  Well, I would be accused of being a hopeless optimist if I didn’t admit that western civilization has fallen off a cliff at this point.  Looking around and seeing what passes for leadership and competency it’s impossible not to see a step change down from what existed a generation before.  Even the crooks are a couple of standard deviations below the level that used to operate in the last century.  Everything is diminished.  It’s undeniable.

Where do we go from here?

A few years ago, I read a book by a culture critic named Rod Dreher called “The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation.”  Now Dreher is a man of the right but he has had lots of fights with many other folks on his “side of the aisle.”  If I remember correctly, he’s not very fond of Donald Trump.  Oh, well.  But there was much in his book that I found interesting and helpful.  He talked about how our era had commonalities with 5th century A.D. Europe during the fall of the Roman Empire.  The Benedict in the title refers to Saint Benedict who at that time founded the Benedictine monastic order that began the slow painful process of restoring civilization to the human wreckage that existed after civil authority broke down after the barbarian hordes knocked over the Roman government.  Dreher’s point was that we no longer live in a society united under a common culture or religion.  But that doesn’t prevent us from forming our own communities to preserve the things we value and pass them on to our descendants.

And he’s absolutely correct.  Now admittedly, the left is doing everything it can to infect all areas of civil life with their Anti-American, Anti-European, Anti-Christian, Anti-western-civilization, anti-white propaganda and agenda.  But giving up because it’s difficult is the very definition of weakness.  If the things we want to see endure are worth saving then they are certainly worth fighting for.

So, I see this as the alternative to despair.  Look at the current state of affairs as a test of fitness for people and ideas.  If you’re not willing to fight for the things you value then maybe you don’t actually value them that much at all.  It certainly is a shame that the elites in this country valued the monetary advantages they could gain from globalism over the patriotic loyalty they owed to their fellow citizens and drowned our culture in third world “diversity.”  But just giving up is weak and defeatist and now that the globalists have been exposed it’s incumbent on us to support all individuals and organizations that work toward preserving the best parts of our traditional culture and do everything we can to reconstitute that culture and allow it to flourish again in this country.  Start rebuilding.

Who Will Inherit the Earth?

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Jesus told us that the meek shall inherit the Earth.  But he didn’t say when.  Maybe the meek have to wait until God disenfranchises the current owners when the Trump of Doom sounds.  But what we know for certain is that progressives mean to disinherit the Americans that were Americans before the great replacement was begun.  The globalists have decided to get rid of us.  Or more exactly, they want to get rid of our children and grandchildren.  And their plan is to drown them out with immigrants.  Bring in people who will work for less of everything; less money and less rights.  You can see the cultural trappings of it in every commercial and every social message.  Immigrants are the real Americans and they will replace these evil white people and they’ll do it right now.

But will it work?

Well, it’s a fair question.  Trump is providing a mechanism for slowing down and even reversing the flood of aliens.  And he’s challenging all of the DEI justification for the plan.  He’s declaring DEI anti-white discrimination and that is a very compelling argument and even the supreme Court has backed him on several points of his programs.  So, there is a counterweight to the Left’s push and plan.

But is it already too late?

Some people say that there are already too many aliens born her to undo the replacement.  Well, I’m not a purist on who is an American.  If I were to restrict the definition of American to even full European ancestry, I’d be leaving a whole lot of Texans out who are pretty sure they’re Americans.  And I’d agree with them.  My definition of American is a little looser.  If you came here legally, speak English, respect the people who were here before you, know who George Washington was, prefer football to soccer, believe in the Bill of Rights and hate Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton then you might convince me you’re an American even if you just got your citizen papers and were born outside the country.

My people only came here about a hundred and fifty years ago.  We were the wretched refuse at that time and I’m sure most Americans thought we should be sent packing.  But my family has always been highly patriotic and loved this country as the greatest country that has ever existed on this planet.  And when I meet legal immigrants who love this country and never show any disrespect for those who were here before them, I accept them as equals; as Americans.

And it is my belief that once the borders are secured and the great bulk of the invaders are deported we will be able to Americanize the children of immigrants that remain.  In our history immigrants wanted to assimilate.  The Left has declared that a dirty word.  But it’s exactly what needs to be done by all of these new people.  We need to make a point of requiring assimilation.  And the first order of business is eliminating the accommodation of other languages than English.  English needs to be made the official language of this country and all government business must be transacted in it.  That includes voting and all other government programs.

Well, anyway.  As far as who will inherit the Earth (or at least America), the jury is still out.  But I wouldn’t assume we’re doomed.  Far from it.

16FEB2026 Marketing Update

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I was going to review another science fiction movie tonight (Her (2013) but about fifteen minutes into the movie I couldn’t get over my dislike for the protagonist (Theodore played by Joaquin Phoenix) so I turned it off.  Once again that “best of” list doesn’t really match up perfectly with my taste.  So far, I’ve had three bombs; Repo Man, Dark Star and now Her.  On the positive side I liked Dark City, Wrath of Khan and Dredd.  And soon I’ll watch Dune which I’ve already seen and liked.  So, this guy is batting slightly better than .500.  To be fair there were other movies on the list that I also like but have already seen.  But the point is I’ll have to make my own version of “The List.”

So, there’s about another ten days or so left in my marketing contract for my book and I have learned a lot about how Amazon Ads work and also what they can and can’t do.  You’re basically buying visibility on Amazon.  The ratio is about one person in a thousand who sees your ad will click on it.  And about one person in ten (approximately) will buy the book.  But you pay money for every click (something like a dollar a click) and so you actually lose money on the sales you make.  It’s quite bizarre.

The next stage in the campaign includes giving away five books on Goodreads to people who signed up and dropping the price on the e-books for two days to $2.99.  And then there will be ads on Bookbub and hopefully this will provide the recognition in the algorithm to boost the books visibility.  And of course there will be some reviews that hopefully entice buyers.  Well, the fate of a self-published author is a lonely one.  But I wanted to write a book and now I know how that looks.

On the positive side I have gotten pretty favorable feedback from some of the readers whose opinions I highly value and that is actually the biggest pleasure of the whole process.  Several people have demanded that I produce a sequel immediately.  Which is kind of a problem.  But I have several different stories that I’ve been toying with and one of them will take the lead and become book two.  It is interesting to me how differently men and women approach the story.  Some of the women wanted to know how Bogey does with the waitress from the end of the book.  Well, everyone has their own way of reading a story I suppose.

Anyone who’s purchased the book and would like to put a review up on Amazon I’d encourage you to do it right away to help me with the push for sales during the upcoming sale.  I’m told that verified purchaser reviews are actually one of the most important marketing factors.

Well, there’s my update.  I’ve been disavowed of my dream of best seller status (sniff).  But I hope that with the rest of the program to come it will spark enough interest to produce a burst of sales.  Excelsior!

Trump Decriminalizes Carbon Dioxide.  photog Claims He Never Inhaled

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Trump, you magnificent bastard.  You did it!!!

Read this Headline:

Trump’s EPA revokes scientific finding that underpinned US fight against climate change

Do you hear that sound?  It’s the sound of rejoicing as sanity is restored to the American economy.  And probably also the sound of a million climate activists crying as their funding disappears.

“The Trump administration on Thursday revoked a scientific finding that long has been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, the most aggressive move by the Republican president to roll back climate regulations.”

“President Donald Trump called the move “the single largest deregulatory action in American history, by far,” while EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called the endangerment finding “the Holy Grail of federal regulatory overreach.””

He’s right.  There is such a thing as too much winning.  But it’s too late I’m addicted to it now.

“Trump called the endangerment finding “one of the greatest scams in history,” claiming that it “had no basis in fact” or law. “On the contrary, over the generations, fossil fuels have saved millions of lives and lifted billions of people out of poverty all over the world,” Trump said at a White House ceremony.”

Can’t you just feel the leftist rage boil?

“The endangerment finding “led to trillions of dollars in regulations that strangled entire sectors of the United States economy, including the American auto industry,” Zeldin said. “The Obama and Biden administrations used it to steamroll into existence a left-wing wish list of costly climate policies, electric vehicle mandates and other requirements that assaulted consumer choice and affordability.”

The endangerment finding and the regulations based on it “didn’t just regulate emissions, it regulated and targeted the American dream. And now the endangerment finding is hereby eliminated,” Zeldin said.”

This will have so many effects on lowering the cost of living for Americans.  Gas prices and fuel prices will decline as regulation will be lifted over many parts of the production cycle.  Automobile prices will decline as all the regulation can be stripped out of the process for selling cars with regular gasoline engines.  When Trump ends the CO2 emissions requirements for power plants, the cost of electricity will also decline.  Well, except in places like California and New England where they punish fossil fuel plants just for the sake of virtue signaling.  This is despite the fact that places like New York State have recently admitted that their citizens just cannot afford to pay the energy bills their state has mandated in the absurd goal of eliminating everything but “renewables.”

And most importantly, Barack Obama will be sad.  This monstrous law was his baby.  He foisted it upon us and trillions of dollars were wasted in trying to fulfill the insane dream of powering the world on solar panels and windmills.  Hopefully this revocation will help revive this country and educate people about how a modern industrial civilization works.  It’s based on power density and not virtue signaling.  Boy, I can’t wait for summer to fire up the grill and broil some rib-eyes.  Man, those are good.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 12FEB2026 – LOR OR VOR

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There are 3 basic strategies to get to the moon. Direct is the is the first, the ship/capsule takes off from Earth goes to the moon, lands and then some part of that capsule/ship takes off from the moon and returns to earth. Because you’re carrying LOTS of weight you don’t need at various points (e.g. the reentry shield on the capsule is dead weight as you land on the moon) the whole thing is VERY heavy. The rockets to do this are immense (e.g. the early NOVA concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_(NASA_rocket) later repurposed but never used for mars exploration). The other two alternatives are Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR) or Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR). In EOR, you go up to a waiting lunar specific lander board it and use it for the earth to moon trip land and return to your Earth/space vehicle. This is the Von Braun/2001 model. It’s one weakness is it usually requires in space refueling of your lunar transit/lander vehicle. This is kind of what I suspect the initial SpaceX model SEEMS to be headed for with a combination of Dragon Crew, Starship cargo/fuel ferry, and Lunar Starship for transit and landing. The Apollo (and current Artemis) use LOR, with Apollo sort of used a mixed model to keep the LEM as light as possible (for a great dramatiztion of this find episode 9 of From the Earth to the Moon, also good discussion of LOR vs EOR). I think SpaceX/Musk have realized lunar Starship is overkill for the task presented, thus making EOR more feasible. They also know Starship overall depends on refueling; if they can’t do that it is kind of game over for Starship for any purpose other than LEO delivery of cargo/ satellites.