The Dominoes Seem to Be Tumbling

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In the last couple of days Pennsylvania and Georgia have flipped toward the Republican candidates.  Nevada and Ohio have gotten stronger for the Republicans and only Arizona has stayed in the Democrat column and that one is right on the edge.  Even places like New Hampshire and Connecticut are showing signs of danger in the Senate races.  Will I have to believe in this mid-term race?  It’s a nice problem to contemplate.

28OCT2022 RCP Senate Polls

28OCT2022 RCP Senate Polls

The Metaverse?  Really?

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I read today that Meta (Facebook) is tanking on Wall Street because the Metaverse (Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of a virtual reality existence for his customers on the internet) is meaningless nonsense that nobody would waste his time on.  So untold billions of dollars of corporate value has evaporated as supposedly one of the most valuable corporations in the world had thousands of highly paid computer scientists playing around with Oculus 3D headsets and video games.

I don’t know about anyone else but I have to wonder whether these geniuses maybe aren’t really all that bright.  I’ve always suspected that the federal government has used its seemingly inexhaustible supply of fake money to make Amazon, Google and Facebook horribly rich monopolies in exchange for the data that they mine from us.  Amazon was allowed to drive their brick-and-mortar competition out of business and Google strangled newspapers, television and every other advertising outlet.  And Facebook was allowed to get a piece of that action, as was, to a much smaller extent, Twitter.  But I think in the back of his mind Zuckerberg has always thought that eventually the jig would be up.  Google takes care of all the ads.  What is Facebook for?

So, he tried to answer that question by imagining a new world that was so flashy and fun that everyone would be glad to waste all their time just being CGI versions of themselves and flying around.  The only thing is it turns out it’s really just boring and ridiculous.  Who wants to sit around all day with a 3D headset on doing basically nothing?

Maybe the good news about all this is people are starting to wake up to the limits of living on-line.  What is accomplished by staring through a headset for hours at a time.  Is anything being produced?  Is anyone benefited?

It’s probably time for on-line companies to concentrate on a subscription model for services that people actually want.  Amazon at least sells stuff and ships it to you very quickly.  What does Facebook do besides spy on you?  Really, not very much.  At least when they weren’t suspending and banning conservatives, they had some rationale for saying they were a social networking medium.  Now they’re some kind of nanny state surveillance bureau to stop normal people from communicating with each other.

So, I’m interested to see what Elon Musk starts doing with his new domain after tomorrow.  Right now, Twitter is even more pathetic than Facebook.  But at least it knows it.  It doesn’t make enough ad money to show a profit and mostly it doesn’t seem like there’s anyone actually there watching.  Although it’s hard to tell because anyone I’d be interested in is shadow-banned by definition.

I’m hoping Musk starts out by unbanning everyone and eliminating the algorithmic bias against normal people.  Just starting with that might cause some interesting things to happen.  It might not make any people on our side suddenly stars but it might turn off the spotlight that currently shines on the Left.  I’d enjoy that.

But long term we might find out whether someone smart could make money running a town square for real and without a big government subsidy to pay the bills.  Somehow, I’m still hopeful that the idea of on-line communities can have some value.  Maybe all that’s needed is an honest broker allowing likeminded folks to form communities that can benefit each other.    Or maybe that’s a mirage and only government money keeps these things like YouTube afloat.  But it’s time to find out.

One thing I know for sure is that the Metaverse as Mark Zuckerberg imagines it, as some kind of free floating Holo-deck on the cheap isn’t an actual thing that millions of people will pay to inhabit.  And the idea that people will pay money to purchase virtual land in this absurd dreamscape is beyond ludicrous.  To me this exposes the juvenile sensibilities of the people running these companies.  The industry is deeply in need of adult supervision.  Maybe Musk will show himself to be in that category.

RoboCop (1987) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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Paul Verhoeven directed this sci-fi adventure movie.  Strangely he made it to be a satire of the violence of law enforcement during the Reagan administration but audiences liked its anti-crime message.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

 

RoboCop opens up on a police precinct in Detroit (Metro-West).  It’s some kind of futuristic present (1980s) where the dystopian crime-ridden Detroit is being addressed with the introduction of robotic police.  The first prototype is being demonstrated at an executive board meeting of OCP, a technology company that surprisingly also has links to the underworld.  Unfortunately, the robot gets a glitch in his programming and kills one of the officers of the company during a demonstration.  This reflects poorly on Dick Jones, the senior vice president and also secretly, the contact for the underworld figures involved with OCP.  The failure of the prototype allows Jones’s competitor, Bob Morton to steer the company toward a different robot cop concept.  Morton’s version is a man whose brain has been destroyed in an accident and whose body can then be retrofitted with robotic limbs and an electronic brain.

Enter Alex Murphy a young cop with a wife and young son.  He’s just been transferred to Metro-West where he’s paired with street smart woman cop Anne Lewis who, of course, has a heart of gold.  They head out to do good and get involved with a criminal gang headed up by Clarence Boddicker (played by Kurtwood Smith, who played Topher Grace’s father, Red on “That Seventies Show”).  Boddicker is Dick Jones’s criminal partner.  He’s also a sadistic maniac.  When his gang captures Murphy, Boddicker personally mutilates him by blowing his limbs off with a shotgun.  Then his men finish him off with their guns.  Lewis escapes and goes for help.

In the next scene Murphy’s body has been converted into a cyborg that has been named RoboCop and assigned to Metro-West.  He has four prime directives

  • Serve the public trust
  • Protect the innocent
  • Uphold the law
  • Never arrest an officer of OCP

Of course, the last directive is a secret one built in by OCP to allow them to break the law with impunity.

Now RoboCop begins to discover the link between Boddicker’s gang and the murder of Officer Murphy.  Although RoboCop is not supposed to have any memory of his former life it does start to creep into his consciousness.  During this time, he captures several of the gang members and discovers the link between OCP and Boddicker.  At this point in the story Dick Jones has Boddicker murder Bob Morton.

Finally, RoboCop manages to arrest Boddicker and his gang but Jones has them released.  Identifying Jones as the OCP link to Boddicker, RoboCop attempts to arrest him but discovers prime directive four prevents him.  Now RoboCop is attacked by the OCP SWAT Team and escapes after being damaged.  Officer Lewis hides him in a factory where she assists him in repairing himself.

The final showdown against Boddicker’s gang includes the use of rocket powered grenades that OCP has provided to Boddicker.  After a drawn-out battle RoboCop kills the whole gang.  Boddicker offers to surrender but RoboCop tells him “I’m not here to arrest you.”  And so, he kills Boddicker in cold blood.  Apparently, his restored memories have superseded some of his programming.

Finally, RoboCop shows up at the OCP board room to expose Dick Jones as a criminal.  When Jones takes the Chairman of the Board hostage RoboCop reveals to him that he cannot arrest any OCP executive.  The Chairman says, “Jones you’re fired.”  And RoboCop immediately dispatches Jones with a full clip of bullets that drive him through the window of the skyscraper penthouse to his death on the pavement below.

RoboCop is a cartoon of a movie.  The villains are cartoon characters.  The hero is a robot almost completely devoid of personality.  Even the good guys are cartoon sketches of cop movie stereotypes.  The violence and weaponry are both over the top.  It’s definitely a 1980s action movie.  But within its genre and its intent it’s an enjoyable cartoon.  Everyone is waiting for RoboCop to finally kill off the sadistic psychopaths that murdered his alter ego who once was a husband and father.  I recommend this movie to fans of the genre.  If you liked some of Schwarzenegger’s movies from that era, like Predator and Terminator you’ll probably like this movie too.  If not then maybe not so much.

Democrats Admit the Fetterman Debate Was a Disaster

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It’s sometimes hard until later on when you look at things in perspective to tell who “won” a political debate.  But when even your opponents admit something went terribly wrong (see article attached below) you can trust your instincts when feel it was a train wreck.

And that’s what happened last night on stage to John Fetterman.  The six foot nine, heavily tattooed lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania took off his hoodie, donned a poorly fitting business suit, covered his tattoos and engaged with the moderators and his opponent “Dr. Oz.”

But to say it was bad is an understatement.  Fetterman has serious neurological damage from a stroke he suffered some months ago.  He can’t understand the sounds that he hears.  His brain can’t process the signals coming from his auditory center.  So he was provided with a closed captioning feed on his lectern to allow him to read the spoken questions and comments.

And if that were the end of his problems maybe that wouldn’t have been that bad.  But Fetterman obviously has lost some of his other faculties.  His sentences were fragmented and sometimes ungrammatical or even confusing.  And sometimes he just refused to answer the questions and just stuck to some former statement that ignored the question.  It was a terrible performance.

It is true that he was a sympathetic character.  Your heart goes out to someone struggling to communicate through a barrier.  That said, this was not the performance that would inspire confidence in Fetterman’s abilities or allow him to score points off of his opponent.  This was a resounding defeat for Fetterman on the eve of the election so to speak.

Now of course Pennsylvania is now infamous for being able to fabricate over a half million fraudulent ballots overnight back in 2020.  That kind of capability goes a long way to allow a bad candidate to overcome a lack of voting support.  So who knows?  Maybe Fetterman is destined to be the next senator from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  But if he is then it’s a stunning indictment of the post-democratic nature of our present republic.

Democrats in second-guessing mode after Fetterman-Oz Pennsylvania debate