Month: February 2025

Suppose we ask the same questions that we asked yesterday, but we use only audio to annotate the objects in our daily lives. Will that be useful?

Suppose, for example, when we walk into a grocery store, we can choose to hear other people’s ratings of each product, with some sort of audio indication of upvotes and downvotes.

When we go to a museum or art gallery, we can choose to hear the thoughts of other art lovers who have been there before us. For example, suppose I want to know what works of art in some museum were of particular interest to computer science professors. And then will I be able to listen for directions guiding me to those pieces?

And maybe, after I have brewed a fresh cup of tea, my cup can tell me, at just the right moment, when the tea has cooled enough to drink. That would be nice.

In the future, when we’ve all replaced our smartphones by those future blended reality glasses, will we annotate the objects in our daily lives? And if so, how and why?

When we walk into a grocery store will we see other people’s ratings of each product, with some sort of visual indication of upvotes and downvotes?

Similarly, when we go to a museum or art gallery, will we see annotations telling us which art other people liked? And will we be able to filter those results?

For example, suppose I want to know what works of art in some museum were of particular interest to computer science professors. Will I be able to be directed to those pieces?

Will there be a rating of the quality our tea? Or perhaps there will be a bit of text floating over the cup to tell us when it is just the right temperature to drink.

The possibilities are endless.

Tonight I was reminded again. There is nothing like live theater.

And that’s a good thing.

In an editorial in today’s New York Times James Carville suggested that Democrats simply sit back and let this pathological version of the Republican party shoot itself in the foot. It won’t take too long, he points out, given what is currently going on at the Federal level, for the economy to crash and for voters to turn against the people who are crashing it.

He may be right, but I worry that there is another angle to all of this. These people don’t seem to be even slightly interested in governing. What they do seem to be focused on is removing all checks and balances.

This view is supported by the recent removal of government watchdogs, experienced and ethical military leaders and large numbers of the experienced staff who actually enable the executive branch to function in service to the public interest. On top of this, the installation of pointedly unqualified cabinet members seems to be designed to break their respective Departments.

We are already seeing extensive damage inflicted on various Departments, including Agriculture, Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, and the Attorney General. So Mr. Carville, for all of his wisdom and experience, may be missing something.

The recent moves by the White House don’t seem to have anything to do with running a government. Rather, they seem to be focused on executing a Palace coup. The goal seems to be to efficiently lay the groundwork for installing an autocratic regime inspired by Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin.

And if that effort succeeds, then it really won’t matter how bad the economy is. Once it becomes illegal to vote for the opposition, voters will no longer have the option to vote for the opposition.

I’m starting to think that when Sartre said “Hell is other people,” he might have been discussing politics.

Some quotes from Orwell’s 1984: “War is peace.” “Freedom is slavery.” “Ignorance is strength.”

These quotes represent Orwell’s concept of “doublethink” whereby a government manipulates reality by forcing people to believe blatant lies and contradictions, effectively eroding their ability to discern truth.

For example, suppose we all know, because we all witnessed it while it was actually happening, that Russia launched a brutal military invasion of Ukraine. Then suppose that our own government assures us that Ukraine started that war.

This is a perfect example of Orwellian doublespeak. What our government is actually doing is conditioning its citizenry to lose the ability to discern truth.

If you are an American citizen, how much you are bothered by this particular example of doublespeak might depend on your own family’s history. For example, if you are a Korean American, it might remind you of the assurances by the Japanese during the Korean occupation that it was all the fault of the Koreans.

Similarly, if you are Jewish American, it might remind you of the assurances by the Nazi government that the extermination of the Jews was justified because, well, they were Jews.

If you hail from any group that has historically been the victim of this sort of thing, maybe you should be worried. Once a government realizes that it can get away with doublespeak, it will feel emboldened to discover new “enemies” to rouse the populace.

And then it will generally choose “enemies” that have been successfully demonized in the past. So do you happen to be black? Hispanic? Gay? Female? Don’t think for a moment that you are safe.

The firing of General Brown, and his replacement by a yes-man, seems to be a precautionary step. The military would be an important defense of democracy against any move to declare martial law and turn the U.S. government into a replica of Hungary or Russia. Which seems to be the plan, based on the evidence so far.

Since the midterms are coming in Nov 2026, and the economy going to get a lot worse between now and then, we can expect the Republicans not to maintain their majority in Congress. So a declaration of martial law may be coming soon.

I already feel sorry for our future U.S. President Janet Mills. This will be a big mess for her to clean up four years from now. If we are even still allowed to vote by then.

There are mechanisms in place in any self-sustaining organization to prevent corruption. The government of the United States of America has traditionally been that kind of robustly self-sustaining organization.

Alas, a remarkably effective way to take down such an organization is to remove those protective mechanisms in the name of efficiency.

What’s really clever about this approach is that it is indeed efficient. But of course, what it is efficient at is the destruction of the organization itself.

When the organization in question is a functioning representative democracy, the end result is tragic.

The new administration got into office partly because voters were angry about the high price of eggs. I’ve got to admit, that is the one area where we’ve seen change under the new administration.

Yesterday I went shopping at the Whole Foods on Union Square. As those of you who have been there will know, they have a huge egg section.

Yesterday there were no eggs at all. The big wall of refrigerated shelves in that section was completely empty.

So let’s give the incoming administration credit where credit is due. We no longer need to worry about the high price of eggs.

Yesterday the President of the United States openly identified himself as a Russian agent. I can think of no other interpretation for his repetition of Putin’s lie that “Ukraine started the war”.

Of course we are not meant to believe the lie — the assertion was ridiculous by design. He knows that we know that he is gaslighting us.

Rather, I think his message to America is this: “By making it clear that I am Putin’s puppet, I am effectively showing that there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.”

When I first saw The Manchurian Candidate I had thought it was just a fantasy. Who could have predicted that something like that would actually happen in real life?