Footnote

 

And another Note.

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  Conflicted identity and media image woes By now we know if you’re a Democrat, getting elected isn’t about who you are, what you’ve done or haven’t done. It’s about how people see you. The factors that can do in a candidate are often more subtle than the pundits of the professional wrestling circuit called the mainstream media. Why we think it’s time to help the world’s most uninformed voters about who to elect as their next nominee for President. We’re not going to get all racist and sexist about it. The decision points we’ve discovered are all based on the individuals involved, not the immaterial fluff like experience or political philosophies. We’ll start right at the top and give you one simple thing to bear in mind before you try to pick a winner for 2028. Kamala Harris Not about the word salads or the escort thing. Too Desperate. Gavin Newsom Too Lyle Waggoner. Times change. Bernie Sanders Too ‘Little Big Man’ AOC Too prematurely passé  Gretchen Whitmer Too Lily-White J...
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The AI Challenge

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Did the District Attorney of Philadelphia propose blowing up Trump’s White House Ballroom and auctioning off pieces of the rubble to cut the deficit? The Answer Provided by Google’s AI Assistant:   Yes . Our topic today is Larry Krasner and his record as the District Attorney of Philadelphia and apparent higher political aspirations. Our purpose, though, is not purely political. It is to provide a demonstration of how Artificial Intelligence applications can be used in personal research that goes deeper than the media ever do. It is also to show the pitfalls of relying on such applications without a dogged determination to be thorough. The programmers behind the computer “intelligence” are always there, and they are just as human and political as, well, the elitist geeks who write the code. There are always two big questions to answer before undertaking what will be a long and complicated post on a complicated topic. First, Can I do it? And second, Do I really want to do it? This t...
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The Real Sword of Damocles Hanging Over Western Civilization

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Bad Max as a challenging lesson

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  Mad Max as you’re supposed to want her Having finished my Mad Max post yesterday, I realized I had confined my discussion of the ‘Instant Gratification’ problem to the MAGA fainthearts. Their inability to look far enough forward to envision consequences is far less than that of the whole half country full of  Democrat apologists and Trump haters. Shouldn’t I address that fact in some comparable terms to what I just wrote? I guess so. The easy answer is referencing the two recent Mad Max sequels provided to us by Woke Hollywood. But I haven’t seen them. I had no interest in paying to see them in a theater. At one point I did put one of them, Furiosa I think, on my IMDB watch list. I received a notification that it would be briefly available on one of the streaming services and I did tune in to watch. Lost interest about 15 minutes in, by which time the old rules had it a good movie should have you hooked. I was not hooked. It was just the same cinematic backdrop as the Road W...
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Lady Gaga-cum-Barbie-cum-AI/T&A/Autotune-cum-softporn-cum-girlieboys…

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 …and a weird dose of nostalgia, as for something half remembered. What did you do for your Memorial Day remembrances?  We watched the laying of the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns and the President’s speech. The audience was large, and the people there looked amazingly normal. Attentive and respectful. The way our parents taught us to be at solemn events. We heard the fireworks begin after dark and put the Thundershirt on our terrier Tommy, who isn’t entirely sure that fireworks aren’t an approaching thunderstorm. All we needed of that timeless ritual, since we’ve both been to many such occasions, including the field a mile away where the Salem event is always held. It was only at bedtime that I tried something new. In my constant search for background sounds that facilitate the hours of sleep I get before the inevitable wee hours summons to the keyboard, I try different things, usually intended to be monotonous and therefore soporific. British crime documentary series are...
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