Month: November 2024

There was a time when it was unthinkable for a computer to beat a grandmaster in chess. Then in 1997 Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov.

Well, at least some things were still unattainable. After all, a computer couldn’t beat a human at Go — a game with a far greater space of possible moves than chess.

But then in 2015 AlphaGo beat professional Go player Fan Hui. Still, some things would always remain outside of the reach of computers.

After all, a computer cannot create a good movie. Until, of course, the day arrives when it does.

To me, that will be a kind of crossover point.

I’ve been thinking about that powerful scene in Cabaret where a beautiful young man stands up and starts to sing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me”. At first it all seems so lovely, so pure.

But as the song gathers momentum, we begin to see the true nature of what is going on. By the end, nearly everyone in the scene has been swept up by the excitement of the Nazi movement.

You can tell that a worked up citizenry are ready to round up the “undesirables” and throw them into internment camps, to make it illegal for anyone to be gay, for the government to go after its political critics without restraint, and so much more.

Then I found myself thinking about those little red hats that some people have been wearing in this country. And it occurred to me that there really is no difference — it’s exactly the same thought.

The four letters on those hats might as well be TBTM.

Yesterday my cousin and I were discussing the president-elect’s picks for the Cabinet. I said that there are better choices.

In fact, I added, there are better choices for president. My cousin replied that a slice of pizza would be a better choice for president.

We both then realized that this may in fact be true, and so we proceeded to analyze the differences.

For one thing, pizza is cheesy on purpose, not because it has no taste. In fact, it has great taste.

A slice of pizza will not insult minorities and hard working immigrants, or sexually assault women as a sort of expensive hobby.

Pizza often comes with a nice salad, which is so much better than the word salad you get from that other guy.

A slice of pizza will not threaten to destroy our economy by deporting the people who actually pick our crops and do all of the other thankless jobs that keep prices down.

Unlike our incumbent, pizza is not half baked. And it isn’t just trying to get more dough for itself and its wealthy friends. Pizza actually wants everyone to have a slice of the pie.

Pizza will not threaten to raise exhorbitant tariffs which will end up being passed on to U.S. consumers.

And you just know that its Cabinet will be filled with much better choices, like black pepper, oregano, garlic and basil. Maybe even pineapple.

Let’s face it — pizza would do a better job running our country, no matter how you slice it.

Am I the only person who has noticed that in the 1968 video for Day Dream Believer, Mike Nesmith is wearing Meta Orion glasses? You can go on Youtube and check it out for yourself.

Somebody clearly slipped up here by letting us see this. When I think about the implications, the mind boggles.

😉

I have been battling a feeling of deep sadness and anger for the last week or so, and at first I didn’t understand why. But I have taken the time to look inward, and I think I know what is going on.

It’s a sadness on behalf of the millions of my fellow citizens who were taken in by a con man turned TV personality turned con man. My sadness is for the economic suffering that those people are about to endure.

I understand why people were taken in, and I am not angry at the voters. There was indeed an enormous economic dip and consequent inflation in the wake of the pandemic — this was a worldwide phenomenon.

The explanation that was easiest to sell to an angry and scared citizenry was that it was all caused by the current administration. The creep ran on that false explanation and won. Admittedly, Biden did not help things by hiding his diminished condition until very late in the game.

The problem is that we now have rule by Mafia. A very complex economy will soon be in the hands of inexperienced and incompetent con artists.

In the next four years we can be sure that Elon Musk will get richer, but at what cost? How many people will see their savings dwindle, will lose their homes to foreclosure, will lose that chance to send their kids to college, or will be wiped out by an unexpected health emergency if the ACA is repealed?

Will the pendulum swing back soon enough to avoid immense suffering for all of those well meaning people who were sold a bill of goods? We can only hope.

If you could transport yourself to any place and time in history, what and where would you choose? I think it’s a trickier question than it appears.

For one thing, for most of history there were no smartphones or internet, no hot showers or flush toilets, no electricity, nothing that we would recognize as modern sanitation. You would need to be prepared for all that.

But if you are ready to overlook such details, do you have a particular place and time you’d want to visit? Maybe you’ve always wanted to go back just have a chat with Leonardo DaVinci, and suggest he paint a portrait of himself as a woman.

Or perhaps you could drop in unannounced on Samuel Coleridge while he was writing some long poem, and distract him with a long conversation. The possibilities are endless!

What would you choose?

Tonight I rewatched the original Spiderman movie — the one from 2002 with Tobey Maguire. It was even better than I had remembered.

For a while it took my mind off of what is happening in Washington. But then it occurred to me — everything in this movie is so much more plausible than what is happening in our Nation’s capital. I mean RFK Jr. — of all people — as Health Secretary?

Can this possibly get more looney? It’s a good thing Bernie Madoff isn’t around anymore. Otherwise he would probably be our next Secretary of the Treasury.

I find myself fascinated by what this country is now transitioning into. It seems that in order to be qualified to be Attorney General in the incoming administration, you need to have had sex with an underage girl.

And to qualify as Secretary of Defense, it is not sufficient to merely be a neo-Nazi. You need to have an actual Nazi symbol tattooed on your body.

When I say “fascinated”, I mean that I am fascinated in the same way that I was fascinated when I finally learned the theme of the movie The Human Centipede.

Republicans did not win more votes in this election cycle than they did in 2020. But Democrats won many fewer votes than they did last time around. Even so, the popular vote was very close.

The way I see it, this election was largely decided on three issues. Each of these issues alone might not have made the difference, but together they created a perfect storm.

The first was the same thing that has been happening in other countries. Whoever was in charge, in the wake of the Pandemic, had the thankless task of cleaning up the huge economic mess it had made. Most recent incumbent governments around the world have been voted out of office for just this reason alone.

The second was that the midterm elections in the U.S., which tend to draw a smaller number of voters who actually pay attention to policy, had swung so well for the Democrats that President Biden got overconfident, and reneged on his vow to be a one term president. We all saw how that turned out. The loss of public trust after his debate performance tarred everyone in his administration who appeared to have been covering for him, including his vice president.

The third was the war in Gaza. The anger that our support for Israel stirred in many young people — however wrongly informed that anger may have been — hollowed out one of the Democrats’ traditionally largest voter blocs. Many first time voters simply stayed home.

The good news for Democrats is that none of the above is a mandate for th other party, so 2028 is still very much in play.

Also, it is worth pointing out, if the incoming administration tanks the U.S. economy in a headlong rush to hand over more of our nation’s wealth to Elon and his friends, voters will vote them out of office faster than you can say “34 felonies”.

Continuing from yesterday…

The stark dichotomy between symmetric and asymmetric views in blended reality suggests an economic model. The symmetric view can be seen as an immersive digital commons.

According to Wikipedia, the commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly. Commons can also be understood as natural resources that groups of people (communities, user groups) manage for individual and collective benefit.

In an ideal world, this commons would be available to everyone at no charge, supported by the common tax base. In this sense it would be like public park, or paved roads.

Asymmetric views into the immersive digital world would be akin to private property. If you had enough money, you could build a fabulous digital palace just for you and your loved ones.

But everybody gets to play in the park.