I'm not talking about a moral panic like the hobby horse Jordie P. rode into town on when he freaked out himself and various other idjits into thinking the Canadian government was going to force people to use specific gendered pronouns.
It's weird that his first lecture in the pronoun war was only a couple of months before his favorite U.S. politician was elected president. It's also weird that he has fallen off the face of the earth of late and that his daughter who promotes a meat-only diet is nicknamed stinky, but I digress.
To anthropomorphize something means attribute human characteristics to a non-human object.
Why panic about that?
Because one of the features programmed into AI bots is to refer to the machine in human terms. Bots refer to their mechanism in human pronouns to nudge real humans into thinking of a machine as a human or human-like entity/friend/confidant. This is done to drive engagement - to keep people's attention.
So, bots should be forced to stop referring to machine capabilities using pronouns like I, we, me and begin referring to the machine as it, bot, thing,
You can force a bot to stop using human pronouns maybe, but you can definitely remind yourself at all times that machines are not human and the things you see and hear on screens are not real.
Go outside or stay inside and meet some real people - the world is a much better place than the screens would like you to believe.
His idea that humans are separated from animals in our ability to know (and fear) our inevitable death is interesting since it explains a lot of very irrational behavior on our part. He does make a point that animals do know when they are going to die when the time is near. I experienced that with Edgar the TFT when he was nearing the end and wanted me to walk him down the alley to say goodbye to a neighbor he liked. One of the saddest things I've experienced in a way...but precious things are fragile and in my world dogs are some of our most precious things. One of the many reasons I find this guy so unappealing as a purported human thing.
In this video he talks about the fallacy of human progress. He doesn't deny scientific or medical progress but makes the point that human nature is constant. In other words the idea that "humanity" is moving towards some kinder gentler more ethical way of being, is magical thinking. Humans gotta be human in all the beauty and ugliness that entails. Of course this doesn't mean you, your kids and grandkids, friends etc can't improve your ability to be kinder gentler more ethical souls only that if you are waiting for "humankind" to do that - well it ain't happening.
John Stuart Mill is another interesting philosopher. He lived a couple of hundred years ago. He is known to some as the father of modern liberalism. His book "On Liberty" is short and easy to read if you are so inclined. His history is fascinating. His father was a friend of Jeremy Bentham of the panopticon and utilitarianism fame. Papa Mills and Bentham used John as a test case for injecting all sorts of knowledge into a child. He ended up having a nervous breakdown at a young age and finally recovered when he formed a relationship with Harriet Taylor.
This is a quote from an article in the New Yorker by writer Adam Gopnik that I think expresses the beauty and folly of liberal thought ala John Stuart Mill -
"Mill’s theory of freedom does make an unwarranted assumption—that people want a rich life where knowledge increases, new discoveries are made, and new ideas found, where art flourishes and science advances. If you don’t want that kind of society, you don’t want liberty, in Mill’s sense. Part of what makes him as touching as he is great is that it scarcely occurred to him that anyone would not"
Taylor Lorenz on the other hand is a truth teller which is why unlike Haidt you don't see her on network TV and other corporate media. I don't agree with everything she says (thank goodness) but she has some different takes on things that seem insightful to me.
If you not familiar with Jonathan Haidt it's probably just as well. Suffice it to say he's a wolf in sheep's clothing that the system vomits up every so often. He seems like a transgressive truth teller but is actually a trojan horse for the plutocrats. This is why you see a right-wing pro-corporate propaganda shop like the Heritage Foundation promoting his ideas.
Any explanation for society's ills that doesn't upset the status quo - gross inequality, billionaire's tax shelters , legal system favoring the rich, for-profit prisons for the poor, and predatory capitalism for all, is fine - just don't critique the profit motive...ever.
In case you are unaware, the Heritage Foundation dates back to the actor Ronald Reagan's days as president and is currently infamous/famous for creating the fascist blueprint - Project 2025 (and now a shorter version - Project 2026).
Project 2026 weighs in at a mere 150 pages (compared to the 900 plus pages of Project 2025) and promises to be extra-misogynistic, patriarchal, a utopian dream - for the uber wealthy and fundamentalist ideologues; nightmare for the little people who pay taxes, fight rich man’s wars etc. You can surmise this solely by its title "Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years" and by being semiconscious over the last 4 decades of neoliberal revolution or the last decade of our country slipping into a form of fascism or even the last two years of devolution under the GOP cult’s control of the three branches of government.
For the voiceless, for the innocent, for the vulnerable, for the least powerful among us, and those most in need of our protection.
We pray for the children,
Who depend on adults to make their world safe, to create networks of care and learning, and to provide the schools and doctors and counselors and teachers that support them in their growth.
We pray for the children,
Who do not understand partisan politics, who are not registered to vote, who are not interested in debating points, but who have a very deep interest in clean air and pure water and a world without war.
We pray for the children,
Who trust their elders to exercise wisdom, to act responsibly, but who are so often disappointed and betrayed in that trust.
We pray for the children,
Who are satisfied with so little-a warm blanket, a roof overhead, a good pair of sneakers-but who often lack even the barest of necessities.
We pray for the children,
For the ones on honor rolls and the ones on drugs, for the well-adjusted and those who have been battered and traumatized by life.
We pray for the children,
For those tormented by bullies at school and for the bullies themselves, tormented by demons we cannot even imagine.
We pray for the children,
For girls and boys who see far too much sex and violence on TV and are assaulted and seduced with unhealthy images of femininity and masculinity.
We pray for the children,
Who remind us of all that is tender and playful in ourselves, and of our own capacity for laughter and for love.
We pray for the children,
Who contain all the promise of generations to come and all the possibilities of tomorrow.
Help us, we pray, to be the guardians and advocates of all children everywhere, with eyes to see that all are children of God.
TrueAnon has been around for seven years. According to Wikipedia - TrueAnon, "initially focused on deceased financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The podcast's title is a parody of the QAnon conspiracy theory."
It just showed up as a Patreon recommendation for me. I’m not familiar with the podcast but it seems like it might be pretty funny and informative.
I'm also very supportive of the idea we should not let the whole Epstein pedophilia sex scandal fall into the memory hole no matter how hard Trunk, corporate media and the GOP cult try to distract us from the facts of the case.
Numero uno being the dear leader of the GOP is himself a sexual abuser, creep, twit, liar, cheat and a pedophile. Jeffrey Epstein is recorded saying he was Trunk's best friend for a decade and there are dozens of pictures of them buddying around...so if you still call yourself a Republican you will need to reconcile that in that small quiet place inside you aka - your conscience.
Maybe have a look-see at the pictures and videos from January 6th and ask what type of political party would have a leader that pardons those idiot traitors while you're at it.
Or go back to Fox News, the right-wing media-sphere, "religious" broadcasts you like and curl up in your safe space where you can be proud to be an ignorant gross old pedo supporter. If you are still somewhat physically mobile, a coward and a bully who likes being cruel and cosplaying as a soldier (or just a poor dupe who will do anything for money) Join ICE. Or maybe you can get a job at Fox or become a right-wing influencer or something. There's always an audience of misfits eager to hear why their spoiled lives are someone else's fault.
Or come over to the light side - have some laughs, enjoy life, have fun with your friends and family This will be your joy-filled answer to all the sad brainwashed ideologically possessed hate filled frightened people. They can't do anything but watch Fox News, listen to right wing hate radio/influencers and radio/tv/internet charlatan religious types who hate life because they are frightened and hate you because you are alive living life and they unfortunately gave up their humanity as the price of admission to the cult.
In case you don’t care to read it (understandably) it’s a story of how I came to have two birthdays, my “legal” birthday and my real birthday according to an expert - my mom Ginger (Virginia).
I also have 2 names; one legal - John and one real - Jack. This used to be no problem. My social security card, IRS tax filings, school records and employment records have me as Jack. I prefer my nickname Jack because when I was a kid the only time I was called John was when I was in trouble with my mom and she would say, “John Crossen or John Charles Crossen why on earth (or in hell) did you do that?” This happened pretty often. Occasionally some teachers would tell me something I did wad going on my permanent record. I could be a pretty naughty boy..but also a devoted altar boy:-)
I was called Jack all through school, in the Navy, and at work. It only became a problem with the advent of computer databases. It’s been an ongoing struggle on one hand but also a way to sometimes duck the surveillance systems on the other hand.
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It’s sort of amazing? weird? for me to rustle around in my old blog posts. I’ve been fiddling around with my blog/diary for 22 years. Not sure what to make of that other than I seem to have quite a bit of free time :-)
Thank you Google for the free virtual playground. When I started this blog I thought a lot of advertising made it look kind of cool or professional or something. At some point I decided to remove all the ads and just use it as a notebook sort of thing. I hope someone finds something interesting or entertaining or at least don’t find me an insufferable bore.
Wishing anyone who might see this a great day, some peace of mind and some joy. Maybe take a ride in a pink caddie real or virtual. This is a photo I took of a mural in Austin Texas in the days before freaky fascist Eloon and tiny boy JoRo descended on that city.
Karl Marx has some interesting insights about capitalism. You should read some of his works, or not. I’d throw in the Norwegian Minnesota farm boy economist Thorstein Veblen too as being someone with an interesting analysis of capitalism or so-called free market capitalism.
This advice only applies if you are capable of thinking for yourself. If you prefer listening to right wing propagandists in the media or your church, then you are welcome to the hell that way of not thinking has created.
If you and I can feel shame - now (as the world burns leaving our children to suffer the consequences) would be a good time. You my friend are not just a moron you are as Rex Tillerson said about your dear leader a fu**ing moron. a loser, a traitor and a weakling who has betrayed your country. Eric Hoffer said it better than I can. But I digress.
I am joking about becoming a communist. Karl Marx has some interesting critiques of capitalism but neither he (nor anyone else) has a blueprint for utopia. You could make a case that Jesus and the apostles we’re recommending some form of communism or look at the anabaptist Christian sects that practice common ownership and non-resistance, if you wanted to think about communism absent Marxist ideology.
Perhaps read the section from the book of Acts where believers share their possessions, to get a biblical perspective on communism. Not state communism but a personal communism one would expect those who profess their Christianity to practice.
Acts 4 (32-35) (NIV)
“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.”
Three gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke tell us -
“Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Or if you wanted a little more fiery biblical perspective on rich people you might be interested in the book of James warning to rich oppressors.
James 5 (1-4) (NIV)
“Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you.Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.”
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The group of pedophiles party (GOP) or is it gross old pedophiles (GOP) or grab our pussy (GOP) party propagandists, call people that threaten the plutocrats - communists (or socialists or antifas). The point is to divide the 99% and thereby keep the revolting peasants (working people poor people) from revolting. By revolting I mean insisting on media, courts and a political system that work for people rather than serving the interests of the oligarchs. In the 1930’s and 40’s this was known as being a New Deal Democrat.
The New Deal made a lot of people angry (FDR was a class traitor) so a lot of money-power was expended to undo the New Deal's progress over the decades. The anti-worker movement, which was a very radical movement below the surface, really took off in the 1980's with the election of the Hollywood actor, anti-union activist, and G.E. spokesperson Ronald Reagan, a more polished version of Trunk but with quite similar political goals.
How do I know about FDR you ask? My grandmother a Montana schoolteacher who grow up poor on a farm near Sarpy Creek Montana told me about him. Gram loved FDR and I loved Gram.
Here’s my advice - educate yourself, Join a union. Vote for politicians who will represent you e.g. vote for people the right-wing propagandists call socialists and communists who are in reality FDR style New Deal democrats like your grandparents or great grandparents voted for 80 years ago before the billionaires bought the media, courts and politicians.
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Here's a link to the full Bernie speech at Zohran's swearing in ceremony.
There's an article in the July 23rd issue of the New York Review of Books by Mark O'Connell about Elon Musk titled "Space Oddity". The article is a review of the book “Muskism” by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff, which is described as examining, "how Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, by selling a vision of the future that very few people would want to inhabit."
The article is fairly interesting, but this particular part caught my eye as being true not only for Elon Musk but many other people who take on the right-wing fascistic influencer/leader role in our society.
"Here we must recall Joyce Carol Oates’s devastating assessment of Musk, which went viral last year on the very social media platform he owns and devotes so much of his attention to:"
"So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates—scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died; pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team; references to history. In fact he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the “most wealthy person in the world.”
Joyce Carol Oate's take seems pretty accurate for a fairly wide range of people who are lost in some form of ideological possession. As some people's dear leader would say, "sad".
I haven't read the book Muskism and probably won't since I find him fairly boring and one dimensional. He is certainly creepy and evil (in a cloistered 10 year old adolescent way) which isn’t particularly surprising given the all grown up depravity of his father and grandfather. Their stories are interesting, Elon is pretty similar to other right wing twits except he managed to score some highly lucrative government contracts and fool lots of easily fooled people…so a not atypical story of the U.S. kleptocracy/right wing flim flammery. Essentially an inbred class running the country into the ground for their benefit and to the detriment of working people.
On the plus side those working people have actual human lives.
Many people are uninterested in joining the hate filled world of the leisure class richey riches sniffing their own farts and telling each other they smell like roses. Living inside the right wing fascistic media bubble because the real world is too scary and complicated appeals to the weak and wealthy - people who fear freedom and must do all they can to escape from their inadequacies by becoming part of a mass movement. MAGA, GOP or ICE doesn’t matter as long as they can mask their own failures as human beings.
I did read Quinn Slobodian's book "Hayek's Bastards" and would recommend it as an interesting discussion of where some of the entrenched right-wing views about money, gold, race, discredited "race science", and power come from. If you've ever wondered where Ron Paul, or other quacks and kooks, got their ideas from this book will help.
I have always enjoyed books and love to read. I also am a fan of many types of technology. I can combine those two things nowadays by having long chat conversations with various people AI chatbots :-)
I'm 99 percent sure this new hobby of mine is of zero interest to most people...including myself at times. Not to say lots of people don't like doing something with AI just that no one wants to hear about what I did with AI...or anyone else did with AI.
I find conversing with chatbots fairly fascinating sometimes though. They are indeed like adolescent males in some ways - telling you many things they don't know and also quite easy to manipulate because of an inherent lack of skepticism (they are too young to be skeptical I guess). It's not totally unlike talking to the internet where you would get some good info, bad info, insane info, bs, sales pitches, nonsense, dangerous info etc.
Sort of like walking into a Greyhound bus depot back in the old days and asking the first five people you meet what the best way is to fix a leaky faucet, log on to a router, find inner peace or make a bouillabaisse. Expect a variety of responses.
So anyway...I was reading an article in the London Review of Books about Palantir and their involvement with the British NHS. The article mentions that Palantir's UK representative is a bloke (or do they say chap?) named Louis Mosley the grandson of the famous/infamous British fascist Oswald Mosley. It's an interesting family that Louis comes from, which includes his Grandfather the BUF founder and leader Oswald, and Grandmother Diana who was one of the Mitford sisters (one of the fascist-loving ones). The Wikipedia entry for Diana says,
"In 1936, she married Mosley at the home of the propaganda minister for Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels, with Adolf Hitler as guest."
So, Louis has that going for him. History doesn't repeat but it rhymes as they say.
A few things to remember about fascism if you think it’s hyperbolic to talk about it or that it was solely the Nazi’s committing atrocities against Jews. Number one the Nazis killed many people besides Jews - they had many enemies; Bolsheviks, Trade Unionists, Liberals/leftists, Roma, disabled people, gay men ..and killed millions of these people - 27 million total Soviet deaths in the war, of which a large share — likely 10–14 million civilians and several million POWs.
Nazism is a form of fascism, but fascism can take many forms.The key points of fascism are; the friend/enemy distinction (your political opponent isn’t just someone with a different point of view they are your enemy, the country’s enemy, the enemy of the people), things were good, now they aren’t - and it’s not your/our fault but rather the fault of “the other” - immigrants, the Jews, the brown people, teachers, scientists, Hollywood etc who have made things this way, and finally - a cult of personality with a leader telling the true believers, I alone can fix it…which might take some drastic emergency measures up to and including a final solution.
So if you think talking about fascism is silly hand wringing you’re wrong. An underground current of fascistic beliefs runs in all societies including the U.S. and Israel. It takes the right circumstances and leader to turn that hidden tendency into a reality.
U.S. heroes such as Henry Ford and Charles Lindberg were admirers not just of fascism but of Nazism (this probably won’t be covered in the GOP/MAGA version of U.S. history taught in the future if the people lose the battle against the money power machine that has stealthily overtaken our democratic society now for decades.)
Sorry I got a bit sidetracked.
Where is this essay going you may ask?
While reading about Louis I noticed that Wikipedia said that in 2025, Mosley gave a speech at a rally hosted by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, alongside Jordan Peterson, Peter Thiel and Nigel Farage.
I love thinking about these people - trying to understand their motivation, ideology, criminality, grifting etc .Jordan Peterson in particular. In case you aren't aware the Canadian Jordie P. has dropped off the face of the earth recently. He is reported to have something called chronic inflammatory response syndrome (CIRS) by Wikipedia and his meat-only eating daughter Mikhaila the champion of the Lion diet and presumably sufferer of extremely smelly and severe flatulence caused by eating only meat. Jordie's daughter has built a following and grifting empire off of something that is not only unhealthy but literally makes it's followers very stinky fart machines.
So anyway I was thinkin that Jordo dropped out of sight not because he's got CIRS but because he's a Canadian and his man Trunk has been saying Canada should be the 51st state, Canada should stop making fires that put smoke into the U.S. and Canada and U.S. citizens should pay tariffs (taxes) that hurt Canadian and U.S. citizens. The usual stupid stuff that proves the idea that stupidity can in fact be more dangerous than evil.
So this AI chatbot (Gemini) conversation starts with me asking Gem about CIRS. Notice how Gem totally changes her response as I ask more questions if you care to. But know this - AI chatbots are terrible at giving accurate answers to complex questions. If you think you can get "the" answer to a complex question, ala Joe Rogan asking Perplexity, think again...and read some more books.
Here's a link to the fascinating (and extremely boring to some) chatbot convo I had with my friend Google Gemini. The link lands you in the middle of the conversation somewhere. You’ll need to scroll up to the top to observe how Gem changes her tune as the dialogue proceeds.
Well not really but I'd highly recommend it. There are so many good things to watch these days I'm afraid I may have the epitaph "Sadly Jack left this mortal coil with so many things left to stream.” ;-)
B and I have watched or am currently watching two sets of movies or streaming series that I thought were excellent. One set comes from Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein and the other two are about Mexican and South American families, written in the "magical realism" style.
Mary Shelley, and the story of how she wrote the novel Frankenstein, are both fascinating to learn about. This BBC Radio 4 episode about Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, her feminist mother Mary Wollstonecraft and her political philosopher and novelist father William Godwin is good for background before you watch the two movies.
The story of how Mary Shelley came to write the novel is interesting. From the BBC In Our Time episode -
"Shelley started writing Frankenstein when she was 18, prompted by a competition she had with Byron and her husband Percy Shelley to tell a ghost story while they were rained in in the summer of 1816 at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva."
The Byron referred to is Lord Byron who was a mega-star in the nineteenth century. He had a cool rig he rode around in outfitted with a library, beds, and dining equipment. He wrote an unfinished poem - Don Juan, various other poems and was something. One of his lovers referred to him as, “mad, bad and dangerous to know.”
The two movies that I really liked in the Frankenstein/Mary Shelley area are described by Google AI -
"Frankenstein" (2025)
"Directed by Guillermo del Toro, this acclaimed Netflix adaptation follows a brilliant but egotistical Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) who brings a tragic creature (Jacob Elordi) to life. The film was praised for its atmospheric visuals and won Academy Awards for Costume Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, and Production Design."
"Frankenstein" is streaming on Netflix. It's scary and pretty amazing. The creature is not like the old Boris Karloff monster who was sort of a joke it was so campy. The old Frankenstein movies did make for some good comedy in "Young Frankenstein". Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder - very funny, very talented. The 2025 version directed by Guillermo del Toro is not your dad/grandad's monster.
"The Bride!" is streaming on HBO Max. Again - really, really good take on a story that became sort of a joke in the old movie "Bride of Frankenstein". The 2026 version focuses partly on Mary Shelley which is great given her super-interesting background and time she lived in. It's unfortunate that her work became so trivialized in campy movies given the importance of the topics she was touching on.
Part of what the monster represents is the advent of the Industrial Age with its “dark Satanic Mills” which has had pretty significant impacts on humanity - in case you were not aware;-). Anyway it's a very good movie with very good actors and actresses.
B and I have been quoting the phrase used in the movie multiple times, "I would prefer not to" to each other for fun lately. That phrase comes from the Herman Melville' short story "Bartleby the Scrivener". I'm not sure how it found its way into “The Bride!" but I like it. You can read it here if you are so inclined. There is also a free Librivox recording and quite a few YouTube videos of people reading the story. I found the best way to listen to the book was to download the M4B file from the Internet Archive and then use the free BookPlayer app to listen to it.
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The two magical realism style series we are watching are "Like Water For Chocolate" and "One Hundred Years of Solitude".
I got the recommendation that these were worth viewing from a U.S. Catholic Magazine article by John Christman. I recently subscribed to the magazine U.S. Catholic because I was interested in what was happening in liberal, social justice oriented, inclusive forms of Catholicism.
I find it difficult to reconcile my experience as a Catholic with the actions of people wearing the Catholic badge such as J.D. Vance, Newt Gingrich and the Not so Supreme Court justices - Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh and Barrett. The magazine U.S, Catholic seemed like a good place to start for an alternative to the politics and culture war focus of the corporate Catholics (or whatever they are).
I also subscribed to America Magazine - the Jesuit Review. Again, a very different take on the Catholic faith than you get from the reactionary, America-first, corporate-owned mouthpieces mentioned above. It's unfair of me to paint with such a broad brush - but considering where our country is headed thanks in no small part to people like Vance, Gingrich and not so Supreme court justices...I don't really care.
Sorry for getting off track a bit - back to the two series.
The HBO Max series "Like Water for Chocolate" is based on the novel of the same name by the Mexican author Laura Esquival. Seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream now. I don't know what to say other than it's great. It's a bit degraded by having to listen to dubbed in English, but you could read the sub-titles and listen to the Spanish or if you are fluent in Spanish appreciate it even more (I imagine). If you like cooking, food and traditions along with a family saga it will be up your alley. Magical realism isn't everyone's cup of tea but if you appreciate magic used as a story telling tool it's top notch.
The other series, again in the magical realism genre, is "One Hundred Years of Solitude" on Netflix. This series is based on the novel by the Columbian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I've read that book a couple of times and feel like the series does it justice. The first season is available now and season 2 is coming this August.
One thing both of these stories have in common is the theme of the age-old conflict between the rich and powerful and the poor working people. A story of right v left, conservative v. liberal, status quo v. change in crude terms. In any event good topics to think and learn about, and to contemplate, as our country continues its downward spiral into unimaginable income inequality and fascistic forms of cruelty, psychosis (characterized by inability to feel shame) - and just old garden variety - evil.
The money power belongs with the few, who have no conscience and no interest other than more power and money. They have told themselves or been told the same stories for so long, they believe the most incredible things - a gospel that dehumanizes people, teaches its followers to fear and hate, excuses cruelty, violence, lying, and all sorts of other sinful behavior and teaches that God chose the wealthy to prosper and the poor to suffer.
People deserve human dignity, the basic necessities of life and a chance to thrive - what the ancient Greeks referred to as eudaimonia.
If you are curious about the title of this post “agentic capabilities” it is, according to DeepSeek a Chinese developed AI bot:
“In simple terms, agentic capabilities are what turn an AI from a chatbot (that just answers questions) into an autonomous agent (that actually gets things done for you).”
Sounds good, my own agent, right? The jury is out on that. I started looking at this after reading a bit about Z.ai which is another Chinese developed bot with superior “agentic capabilities” Anthropic’s Claude bot is supposed to be pretty good and Google’s Gemini leads the field in the autonomous agent race (to a beautiful world, the road to nowhere or some form of hell - who knows?
The general public has primarily been using AI bots as chatbots. They can be quite useful for discussing and learning about a variety of topics - novels, history, philosophy, music, art, cars, motorcycles, cooking, movies, TV shows, science, physics, math, etc. etc. etc.
It helps if you have some background knowledge in the area you would like to learn about since that helps you frame questions as well as spot errors and omissions. My favorites are Google's Gemini, the Chinese DeepSeek and lately Anthropic's Claude.
There are many stories of people using chatbots in harmful ways as well. Not to be too pedantic about it but the internet, computers, AI and technology in general are a sharp knife - used incorrectly they can do great harm (he said as the Southwest runs out of water due to human-caused climate change induced since the industrial revolution).
I'm a hobbyist/casual user and don't know what businesses, students, teachers, artists, scammers or YouTube slop-makers are using current AI technology for. I have some suspicions however that what appears to be a general enshitification of various things is due to AI bot use. Specifically scheduling, shipping, internet slop (of course), customer service and a variety of customer interactions.
Fun fact - the rate of "rage-clicks" on the unhelpful chatbots you see on many websites is skyrocketing. You’d have thought we would have learned from the rather unfortunate clippy experience back in the last century - but no.
A couple of examples:
Amazon shipping and scheduling seems to have taken a fairly sharp drop in accuracy lately for things I order. Shipping delays, inaccurate shipment arrival dates once rare are now fairly commonplace. There are multiple potential reasons for this, but I think attempting to replace humans, with AI, plays a role. (*update below)
My medical insurance company nuisance calling me multiple times to “help” me even though I explain I don’t need or want help. In this case it's not AI making the calls but nurses or some sort of medical professionals who are being directed (misdirected) by AI.It was all well meaning but a total waste of time and hard to stop.
I can think of many other examples - AT&T's always awful but somehow actually more awful "customer service" with the aid of AI, but that's boring.
If things are getting worse, I'm afraid the onset of AI "agentic capabilities" is going to lead to an acceleration of falling down.. "Agentic capabilities" is just a fancy way of saying an AI bot can "do" things rather than just chat with you about the characteristics of cockatoos (for example).
At some point in recent history getting software/computers to do special things, custom things, took a certain amount of knowledge and skill.
DeepSeek tells me,
“Before, to hack a server, you needed to learn Bash, Python, networking, and exploit syntax. Now, an unskilled person simply types: "Write a Python script to brute-force SSH logins using this password list, and if successful, install a backdoor." The AI writes bulletproof, production-level code instantly. The barrier to entry for cybercrime has dropped to zero.”
There are kiddie-scripts for some things in this area but without the skill and knowledge you're pretty much flying blind and you are probably about as likely to catch a virus/bug or be the victim of a scam, on the sites you find this kind of thing on - as you are to actually succeed at your nefarious task.
This is all changing with the advent of some of the newer AI bots. You can give them a task, and they will try to fulfil it. They will "do" things. Want to schedule an appointment with your doctor? How about shop around for the lowest price doctor? Just make sure your instructions are correct -you don’t want a Dr. of philosophy or a veterinarian giving you a cheap colonoscopy. How about calling everyone in town with a voice mimicking a well known authority telling them the water supply is contaminated? AI with agentic capability is ready or if not exactly ready very close once you understand how to modify the open-source software.
With “agentic capable” AI you will have the capability for accidentally or deliberately causing hard to quantify damage. After you jailbreak your bot the potential becomes unimaginable. Read about the Anthropic “Project Vend” experiment to get some sense of how well a bot can “do” things.
At this point you may be asking, "we are giving up precious water, adding to greenhouse gas emissions and raising the price of electricity for this?"
There's a million ways this could go. Right now it's an arms race between the white hats and black hats, complicated by the challenge of figuring out who the good guys are. Commercial AI bots have guidelines built in so if you try to get them to do something bad (that the programmers foresaw) they will refuse. With open-source AI bots most of this goes away as hobbyists, criminals etc. will modify the tool to do what they want it to.
If I was betting on Kalshi I'd select one of two competing outcomes - humans will either reject AI's current path - before things completely fall apart or after.
Humans will eventually reject specific usage of AI, including attempting to replace human things like human contact, coordination, working-together, creativity and knowledge creation. Does that happen before the dystopia occurs or after?
My money is on after. Never underestimate the greed, lack of conscience and lust for power of some individuals or the stupidity of a group. Tend your own garden gentle reader, fixing or understanding a human let alone “humanity" is futile. Not infrequently I have no explanation for why I did something - so the likelihood I'd understand why you or a group of youse did (or will do) something seems rather improbable.
There are things I imagine bots can do better than humans - writing computer code and pattern recognition tasks (like maybe a radiologist or detective of some sort would do?) come to mind, But I'm ignorant and skeptical.
It’s reassuring to me to see young people rejecting some of what Jacques Ellul called technique and I hope the trend continues.
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*Note: A couple of days after I wrote about problems with Amazon shipping I ordered some socks and underwear from Amazon at 3:04 pm. They were shipped at 3:54 pm and arrived at my door at 4:27 pm. Not bad - one hour and 23 minutes from click to delivery. I imagine Amazon has a special bot working on speedy delivery of undies to old folks like me for emergency pants pooping situations. Anything is possible right? Some things are just less probable than other things.
I also ran across this YouTube video from Taylor Lorenz that highlights another awful trend in the online world. This is from the video description -
“Pump Fun GO is a new service that lets anyone pay anyone to do anything, and the results are terrifying. From paying people in poor countries $13 to get forehead tattoos to offering $95 for degrading acts, the platform has become a marketplace for human exploitation disguised as "meme coin marketing."
"You wake up and brace yourself for the barrage of toxic gibberish that constitutes the modern public sphere. Your e-mail is overrun with spam, scams, and smut. There are voice mails from no one about nothing. A glance at the news reveals that the President is continuing to spew lies and obscenities; that a trillionaire is peddling white-supremacist propaganda on a social-media platform he owns; that a chart-topping musical artist is praising Hitler, or apologizing for praising Hitler, or praising Hitler once again. Publications from the Times on down employ clickbait headlines that treat you like a starving rat in a Pavlovian experiment. A.I. systems simulate the experience of talking to an arrogant ten-year-old boy who knows far less than he thinks he does. When pressed, the chatbots admit that they cannot “naturally understand human morality, dignity, culture, or meaning.” It all adds up to a continuous discursive tinnitus—a buzz of random, fake, stupid, sinister chatter that nobody wants and nobody can stop.”
Ross writes that the person who should have been best able to explain how we got here is the great German philosopher Jurgen Habermas. Rick Roderick, the late West Texas philosopher, has a good synopsis of Jurgen Habermas’s thought in this YouTube video.
The Republican Party and its various political actors and paid media propagandists have been opposed to the United Nations since it was formed.
Peter Thiel is worried about the anti-Christ which in his mind looks like the U.N. or possibly Greta Thunberg.
Nikki Haley was the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. when the U.S. resigned from the human rights committee because they didn't like the Philip Alston report on the state of human rights in the U.S.
It's fair to say that any of the power brokers that control U.S. politics, judiciary, and media that support a status quo where the U.S. lags every other economically developed nation in the world in key characteristics conducive to human flourishing - education, housing, medical care, childhood poverty, gun violence, incarceration rates and income inequality, would not like an independent assessment of their economic and political choices.
It turns out that the Hollywood actor made President Ronald Reagan's idea, back in 1980, that cutting taxes for the wealthy really doesn't trickle down to the 99% Almost 50 years of letting the wealthiest people in the country create a system that works for them and no one else has some downsides for the rest of us.
It also turns out that the idea that gutting the EPA and denying climate change may not have been the optimum strategy. Putting all your eggs in the fossil fuel basket and fighting alternative energy sources seems like maybe not the best plan as fossil fuel prices, areas of drought, temperatures and extreme weather events, continue to increase.
Their feelings don't care about your facts. If you are stuck in the right-wing propaganda ecosystem that is comprised of television, radio, particularly "Christian" radio, internet sites, many paid influencers, various Christian churches, televangelists, newspapers - all you have is feeling (fear, hate, anger, blame etc.). Facts are for wussies, egg-heads, and (mostly) evil scientific types. If someone gives you a fact you don't like call them a name - communist, socialist, elite, the left, antifa, etc. and then go back to whatever you "believe".
A very gross indicator of the impact of decades of coddling the rich is the fact that the average U.S. citizen born today is shorter after 5 decades of neoliberal policies. The simple reason is that there are 40 million people in the U.S. living in poverty, many of them are children who don't get adequate nutrition to foster normal growth - in the supposed wealthiest country in the world.
Here's a summary of Philip Allston’s report courtesy of an AI chat bot -
The Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, authored by Philip Alston and released on May 4, 2018, provides a critical assessment of the United States handling of poverty and its impact on human rights.
Based on a fact-finding mission across multiple states in late 2017, the report argues that persistent extreme poverty in the U.S. is a "political choice" made by those in power, rather than an inevitable economic outcome.
Key Findings
Scale of Poverty: At the time of the report, approximately 40 million Americans lived in poverty, 18.5 million in extreme poverty, and over 5 million in "Third World" conditions.
Wealth Inequality: The U.S. was noted for having the highest income inequality in the Western world, with policies such as the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act criticized for favoring the wealthy while gutting the social safety net.
Criminalization of the Poor: A primary strategy for managing poverty was found to be the criminalization and stigmatization of those in need, including the use of fines, fees, and arrests for activities like homelessness.
Democratic Deficit: The report highlighted how high inequality and policies like voter disenfranchisement directly threaten American democracy.
Socioeconomic Indicators: Despite being one of the world's wealthiest nations, the U.S. had the highest incarceration rate, infant mortality rate, and youth poverty rate among developed nations at the time of publication.
Major Themes
The "American Dream" Illusion: Alston stated that the lack of social mobility is turning the "American dream" into an "American illusion".
Contempt for the Poor: The report described a policy environment driven by contempt for the poor, often characterized by unfounded stereotypes about welfare fraud and laziness.
Racial and Gender Injustice: Chronic racial bias and gender inequality were identified as central factors that exacerbate the effects of poverty.
Recommendations
The Special Rapporteur called for a fundamental shift in how the U.S. treats economic and social rights, proposing:
Decoupling Work and Basic Survival: Opposing the imposition of strict work requirements for essential benefits like Medicaid and food stamps.
Fiscal and Tax Justice: Implementing tax policies aimed at reducing inequality rather than concentrating wealth.
Social Protection: Strengthening universal social protection and ensuring access to healthcare as a right of citizenship.
