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More on the Existential Danger of DJT

• I’m with Brian Klaas on this one – he talks about how we have so normalized DJT’s unhinged ravings (and fear amplifying them) that little media attention is given to how much of a threat he is to democracy, the rule of law, and social order.  Read his essay The Case for Amplifying Trump’s Insanity.   An excerpt:

“Bombarded by a constant stream of deranged authoritarian extremism from a man who might soon return to the presidency, we’ve lost all sense of scale and perspective. But neither the American press nor the public can afford to be lulled. The man who, as president, incited a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol in order to overturn an election is again openly fomenting political violence while explicitly endorsing authoritarian strategies should he return to power. That is the story of the 2024 election. Everything else is just window dressing.”

2023-11-25T19:12:42-05:00November 25th, 2023|HomeRecommended|

Wallace-Wells on McLean and Nocera’s The Big Fail

David Wallace-Wells does a pretty good takedown of some of the theses presented in Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera’s“The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind” – especially the ones in the clickbait-titled, New York Magazine excerpted “Covid Lockdowns Were a Giant Experiment. It Was a Failure.” Wallace-Wells often disagrees, and has data to back up his arguments.

2023-11-20T16:26:02-05:00November 16th, 2023|HomeRecommended|

Read if you’re anxious about AI…

• Timothy Lee tries to reduce your AI-induced anxiety in his substack post Why I’m not afraid of superintelligent AI taking over the world.  Basically, he posits that preexisting knowledge, not tokens/training data volume, is a limiting factor, both because of its finite, non fungible nature.  It’s definitely worth reading, though I found it only mildly reassuring. Someone will eventually allow AI to test hypotheses in the real world ad lib, and then it will likely generate its own new knowledge based on empirical results.

 

 

2023-11-16T17:14:58-05:00November 16th, 2023|HomeRecommended|

Tr**p is DANGEROUS

When someone tells you who they are, over and over, in words and actions, BELIEVE THEM! DJT is an abomination who openly talks about how he will dismantle our democracy, violate the Constitution, and take vengeance on his perceived enemies using the apparatus of a government filled with cronies he installs.  See:

Jamelle Bouie in the NYT : “And Donald Trump is telling us, loud and clear, that he wants to end American democracy as we know it.”

Eric Foner in the NYT: “President Trump announced that he plans to issue an executive order ending birthright citizenship, the principle that everyone born in the United States, with a handful of exceptions, is automatically a citizen of the United States.“It was always told to me,” the president declared, “that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don’t.””

Catherine Rampell, WashPo, quoting DJT: “If I happen to be president, and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them,’” he said. “They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election.”

Heather Cox Richardson in her Letters From an American, also quoting the weirdly bronzed one: “In honor of our great Veterans on Veteran’s Day [sic] we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Racists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream”

David Graham, writing in the Atlantic: “In fact, much of what Trump is discussing is un-American, not merely in the sense of being antithetical to some imagined national set of mores, but in that his ideas contravene basic principles of the Constitution or other bedrock bases of American government. They are the sorts of ideas that would have been shocking to hear from any mainstream politician just a decade ago.”

2023-11-14T20:28:06-05:00November 14th, 2023|Home, Musings|

Small Reactors

A reasonable summary of the state of the small nuclear reactor industry by Brad Plumer and Ivan Penn appears here in the NYT .  I support development of this industry as an adjunct to other carbon neutral sources, since wind and solar’s intermittent availability, combined with the inevitably increasing demands of electrification (as well as the inefficiencies and inadequacy of out transmission grid), make achieving net zero otherwise nearly impossible.

2023-11-13T10:17:28-05:00November 13th, 2023|Home, Musings|

Kristof: We Are Overpaying the Price for a Sin We Didn’t Commit

• I think Nicholas Kristof’s commentary on the Israeli-Hamas conflict in the NY Times is worth reading: We Are Overpaying the Price for a Sin We Didn’t Commit.  An excerpt:

“Israel faces an agonizing challenge: A neighboring territory is ruled by well-armed terrorists who have committed unimaginable atrocities, aim to commit more and now shelter in tunnels beneath a population of more than two million people. It’s a nightmare. But the sober question must be: What policies will reduce the risk, not inflame it, while honoring the intrinsic value of Palestinian life as well as Israeli life?”

 

2023-10-29T15:46:01-05:00October 29th, 2023|HomeRecommended|
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