I Read A Lot

 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. 

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, stop making fires that put smoke into the U.S. and pay tariffs 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.

Someday and I hope it's soon too he said in a hard machine-like voice filled with dread...we will All Be Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace 

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.

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You Have to Watch These!

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.”

Percy Shelley is a famous romantic poet He had lots of interesting ideas about among other things - nonviolence, free love, and vegetarianism, Percy was also an aficionado of laudanum a tincture of opium and alcohol.

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."

"The Bride!" (2026)

"Directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, this highly anticipated film is set in 1930s Chicago. It follows a lonely Frankenstein who seeks a doctor's help to create a companion. The twist turns into an explosive story of a radical social movement, starring Christian Bale as the monster, alongside Jessie Buckley, Annette Bening, and Penélope Cruz."

"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.

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Agentic Capabilities

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."

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In The Year 2026

The introduction to this June 16, 2026 New Yorker article “The Dream of Reason - Jurgen Habermas- Defending Reason in a Darkening Age”, by Alex Ross, has an interesting (and in my mind accurate) description of American life as we know it in 2026.

“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.

Get The U.S. Out of the United Nations! Now!

One of the John Birch Societies favorite hobby horses is to demonize the United Nations. Who cares what the those weirdos think you ask? 

Clarence Thomas's wife Ginni Thomas's parents cared since they were Birchers. 

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. 

Mike Pompeo and the Trump administration also attacked Philip Alston's fact-based report because it didn't fit their American exceptionalism delusion.

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. a 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. 

For further detail, the full text of the report is available through the UN Digital Library or the OHCHR website.

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How Many?

This is a quote from Adin Ballou's pamphlet "How many Men are Necessary to Change a Crime into a Virtue?" as it appears in Constance Garnett's translation of Tolstoy’s “The Kingdom of God Is Within You”:

"One man may not kill. If he kills a fellow-creature, he is a murderer. If two, ten, a hundred men do so, they, too, are murderers. But a government or a nation may kill as many men as it chooses, and that will not be murder, but a great and noble action. Only gather the people together on a large scale, and a battle of ten thousand men becomes an innocent action. But precisely how many people must there be to make it so?—that is the question. One man cannot plunder and pillage, but a whole nation can. But precisely how many are needed to make it permissible? Why is it that one man, ten, a hundred, may not break the law of God, but a great number may?" 

Tolstoy was not a fan of the so-called just war theory. His pupils Gandhi and MLK carried forward his beliefs.in non-violence. The GOAT for non-resistance to evil by force is Jesus. Of course, if that guy shows up again, we will have to burn him at the stake as explained by the Grand Inquisitor.

In case you were wondering why the Grand Inquisitor ends his speech to Jesus, where he tells Jesus they are going to burn him the next day, with the word Dixi. 

Dixi is a Latin term for “I have spoken” often used to signify an argument is concluded. I think I'll start saying it when I pontificate my wise know-it-all thoughts in the future.

Dixi

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MMA

Mixed Martial Arts?

Nope a less popular reference to MMA comes from a 19th century book by a Russian novelist. In this case MMA is an acronym for Miracle, Mystery, Authority. 

“Nothing has ever been more unendurable to man and human society than freedom!”

So says Dostoyevsky in the story “The Grand Inquisitor” from his novel “The Brothers Karamazov”. 

For what it’s worth, Sigmund Freud called “The Brothers Karamazov”, “The most magnificent novel ever written.” 

Christ returns to this world and gets a lecture from a Jesuit Inquisitor who tells him his message is wrong because he expected too much from humans. According to the Priest, Christ was wrong to reject the devil’s temptations of “miracle, mystery and authority”. 

These temptations are described in Matthew 4:1-11. They break down to this - The "miracle" is for Jesus to turn stones into bread, the "mystery" is for Jesus to cast himself from the Temple and be saved by angels, the "authority" is for Jesus to rule over all the kingdoms of the world"

Jesus rejects the temptations because he wants humans to be free to choose between good and evil not to bow down (give up their freedom) to a supernatural boss. Perhaps Jesus overestimated the capabilities of humans - you can answer that question for your homework ;-)

The Grand Inquisitor thinks humans need miracles, mysteries and authority to survive this world of inevitable suffering, sickness and death. 

Who or what will you bow down to?

The book “The Brothers Karamazov” is amazing and amazingly long at 985 pages so you need copious amounts of free time and some will. to get through it. 

If Dostoyevsky isn’t your cup of tea the Buddhists have some alternatives for dealing with the pain of being.

Let’s Talk About Beavers

Or let’s let Google Gemini talk about what Montane would be like if all the beavers hadn’t been trapped in the early 1800’s so fashionable folks could wear beaver hats.

This question occurred to me while reading the book “Montana an Uncommon Land” by K. Ross Toole. It’s an excellent book. 

I recently finished the book “The Crazies” by Amy Gamermon. It’s interesting. Amy Gamerman praises K. Ross Toole’s book in her book. After starting “Montana an Uncommon Land” it’s clear to me why anyone interested in the settlement of the West, and Montana in particular, would want to read Toole’s book. 

It’s really a shame that some teachers make history boring. I’m very thankful to have had some teachers who showed me history can be be fascinating, exciting, interesting and ultimately mind expanding.

Biblical Worldviews

When Mike Johnson became Speaker of the House he said, 

“I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, 'People are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?' I said, 'Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it.' That's my worldview. That's what I believe and so I make no apologies for it."

The phrases, Biblical worldview or Christian worldview, are known as empty signifiers or Humpty Dumpty words. Ideas about signs, symbols, words, signified and signifier, and the cultural heritage or specialized knowledge required to interpret them are interesting to learn about. I'm pretty sure Wittgenstein was onto something in talking about the limits of language when he said, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." 

Mike Johnson is trying to communicate something with his statement but only he knows what that something is. Members of his tribe with their specialized knowledge and cultural heritage perhaps know what he's pointing at - but for the average Joe or Jane he could be saying anything or nothing. 

Mike Johnson makes another interesting comment in his "biblical worldview" interview with Hannity about how the two political parties used to want to do what was best for their country. According to Mike this is no longer the case for the "Democrat" party that wants some form of European Socialism, which of course we all know is a terrible idea. 

You can smell the Schmittean fascist ideology of the friend vs. enemy distinction here. It's of some interest to note the rhetorical use of the phrase Democrat Party, rather than the grammatically correct Democratic Party as Mike provides another signifier for his tribe of billionaires and those owned or fooled by billionaires. Some people disagree and would like a new game instead of the current one where a tiny group owns all the Monopoly properties (and politicians, and media outlets, and Supreme and other judges)..

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Moses Mike represents the great state of Louisiana, which ranks at or near the bottom of all states in education, healthcare, and childhood poverty. 

It's interesting to note that Mike's state of Louisiana, along with Texas, Oklahoma, Utah, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and West Virginia have passed laws allowing (or requiring) the use of the Bible as a textbook in public schools.

Saying the Bible represents your worldview while ignoring the plight of the people you represent may seem odd to Christians familiar with the Gospels but as history teaches us religion can be used to justify most anything - slavery, genocide, capital punishment, war, torture, misogyny, patriarchy, greed - but most of all hate not for the sin but the sinner. 

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Which brings us to Genesis19 the Biblical Story of Lot’s Daughters described by Wikipedia as,

"The daughters of the biblical patriarch Lot appear in chapter 19 of the Book of Genesis in two connected stories. In the first, Lot offers his daughters to a Sodomite mob; in the second, the daughters have sex with their father, without his knowledge, to bear him children.”

Lot is living in Sodom and Gomorrah in this story, so this must be a story of corruption - but I have no clue. It's almost like a person could spend a lifetime studying the Old Testament and still not understand it ;-)

Two angels come to rescue Lot and are in his house which draws a crowd. Before Lot offered his daughters to the crowd, the Bible tells us -

"Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”

A little later Lot's wife, Betty - looks back at the city and turns into a pillar of salt - which just goes to show you, it's always something.

If you have ever read the Bible, you know this is just one of many incomprehensible stories it contains. 

There’s a weird story a little earlier in Genesis about Noah getting drunk and falling asleep naked. One of his sons, Ham, walks into the room backwards to avoid embarrassing Noah but it still ends up with Noah putting a curse on Ham’s son Canaan. This was before America’s Funniest Home Videos and before today, when kids say about most anything - That’s On YouTube. The story unsurprisingly is called “The Curse of Ham” and its meaning has been debated for a couple of thousand years.

The Bible also contains some beautiful ideas, poetry, good advice and wisdom. You will be missing out on a lot if you don’t become acquainted with the Bible. 

I need a guide to help me with the Bible. In some ways I think the Catholics are correct in leaving the Bible-reading and interpretations to the priests. 

Protestant theology is more oriented towards a personal connection to the Bible. but you still find parishioners leaving the interpretation to the minister to present in the Sunday sermon or Bible study class, which works fine as long as the minister isn't a nut. Unfortunately leaving the Biblical interpretation to a minister who is a nut - that is a grifter white Christian Nationalist, or a shill for billionaires causes all sorts of problems.

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This is a poem by Andrea Cohen that was in the April 23, 2026, issue of the NYRB.

Lot’s Wife
I always get confused.
I think it’s Lot’s
turning back that turned
her to salt. A whole
pillar of it. I always think
he’s an Orpheus of sorts,
though Orpheus was
gorgeous and a knockout
on his lute. But Lot?
There’s not a whole
lot we can say in his favor.
I have to think his wife
had a name other than
Lot’s wife, that she
might have looked back
to glimpse the life she
had before him, before
he offered her daughters
to that mob, before
what lay ahead—
Lot himself with their
daughters, Lot telling
everyone how blameless
he was. And her conversion?
You can see why a woman
might opt for what she did—
a mineral goats or camels
could lick, a stinging Lot
could do nothing with.
—Andrea Cohen

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I'm more partial to a Christianity, or other religion or no religion, that celebrates the beauty of the world and the creatures living on it. Like Kierkegaard I’m not particularly interested in going to church. More of a Thoreau/Emerson point of view, perhaps some form of Transcendentalism with a little Isaiah Berlin Pluralism and Thich Nhat Hanh Buddhism, a bit of Dorothy Day Catholic Anarchism and a hodgepodge, or should I say tapestry, of ideas from various philosophers, thinkers and religions.

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An Easter Message

About 85% of Ukrainians are Eastern Orthodox Christians. This year Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrated Easter on April 12. It's heart-warming to hear the President of Ukraine and his wife, who are both secular Jews, provide a hopeful message for all people. 

Obviously quite a departure from the criminal divider in chief currently in power in the USA who spreads a message of hate, fear, division and resentment. Of course, he doesn't stand alone with a compliant GOP and their billionaire owners too weak morally and ethically to stand up for the people - for justice, honor, the rule of law or any of the things we the people have sacrificed so much for. 

Hopefully the people of Hungary voting Viktor Orbán out of office is a sign that the times they are a-changing worldwide away from the Putin, JD Vance, Trump, MAGA-GOP kleptocracy to a government for the people. I have hope that a younger generation is taking power that is more informed, more ecologically conscious, and more human than us baby boomers who have managed to screw this world up so very much for our children and other living things. 

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The Story of the Jewish Bund - Molly Crabapple

Sam Adler-Bell interviews Molly Crabapple about her new book "Here Where We Live is Our Country - The Story of the Jewish Bund"

 Sam Adler-Bell article in the Guardian "For Leftist Jews the Bund is a Model - The radical history behind one of Europe’s biggest socialist movements". 

Book review from the New York Times "What Does Judaism Look Like Without Zionism?"

I Resemble That Remark

The introduction of Eric Hoffer's book "The True Believer" has these two quotes - 

"Man would fain be great and sees that he is little; would fain be happy and sees that he is miserable; would fain be perfect and sees that he is full of imperfections; would fain be the object of the love and esteem of men, and sees that his faults merit only their aversion and contempt. The embarrassment wherein he finds himself produces in him the most unjust and criminal passions imaginable, for he conceives a mortal hatred against that truth which blames him and convinces him of his faults."   

Blaise Pascal, “Pensées”

"And slime had they for mortar."   

Genesis 11-3

 

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It could be argued that Eric Hoffer, Blaise Pascal and the author of Genesis were pointing at something akin to the "deplorable" conversation that caused so much consternation among some in a recent U.S. Presidential election. Who are you calling deplorable? We are exceptional people in an exceptional country with God on our side and fyi our God is bigger than your God. 

For Christ's sake the Secretary of Defense, and former Fox & Friends weekend co-host, Pete Hairdo Hegseth, has asked the American people to pray “every day, on bended knee” for a military victory in the Middle East “in the name of Jesus Christ.” The Pope, as well as anyone familiar with the New Testament - disagree.

My inability to recognize I am broken, ignorant, cruel...fallen - leads people like me to create all sorts of problems in our world. All the bad things I so easily recognize in others - are, if I only had the courage, or perhaps psychoanalytical help, to examine my self - also within me. 

Rather than trying to fix myself, I blame the world, society, culture, the other - for my brokenness, ignoring Voltaire's advice to cultivate my own garden, 

My project of making the world a better place while ignoring my own failures, requires I erect some sort of shield(s) between what I truly am and how I'd like to think of myself. I can't imagine the number of ways we humans manage to escape self-reflection. One could write a book on that topic and that book would be big enough to stun an ox to paraphrase Laurie Anderson. 

We avoid the examined life to avoid shame as we realize that whatever "bad" we see in others....in some way resides in us. 

The primary difference is not that you don't have an inner murderer/abuser/thief/liar/sinner it's how you manifest that in the world. 

Coming to the realization that we are all fallen broken slime would require taking some kind of strong medicine and giving up the easy alternatives that we use to escape our broken selves - endless consumption, intoxication, entertainment, blame, denial, etc. etc. etc.

I believe based on my own experience that Christianity in some forms allows humans like me to come to the realization of how broken we are and why we should be begging God for forgiveness constantly...some days, other days I prefer to just be another flawed human doing my best.

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Lots of people have told us we can't handle the truth or at least too much truth - Jack Nicholson, James Baldwin, Madame du Châtelett, Vico, T.S. Eliot, Nietzsche...I'm sure there are many more.

Having determined some humans can't handle the truth I can then pat myself on the back and keep that lil smug! attitude us know-it-alls have. I am what I am as St. Paul and Popeye said.

Anyway...the thing that got me thinking about this topic this morning was an article in the April 9, 2026 issue of the NYRB by Robert Pogue Harrison, titled - "Interminable Ignorance - Why has the will to ignorance become so virulent in our time?" I recommend reading it.

Finally...speaking of ignorance, or possibly more accurately stupidity, I read somewhere recently that in law enforcement it can become difficult to separate stupid from evil. Mull that over for a while and then think about Plato saying something similar about 2400 years ago.

Readers will rule the world of the future as the masses choose whatever AI oracle has the most divine knowledge to save them the effort of thinking for themselves.

Keep the fire - read books. 

Good night and good morning. Wishing you a good one.

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We Will Hold Our Large Heads High

Dana Lyons, from Bellingham, sang this song at the No Kings Rally yesterday in Everett.  

 

This is Dana Lyons Bio from his Cows with Guns website. The Bellingham Herald calls him "a current day Pete Seeger" and there's a picture of him with Jane Goodall...so pretty cool, I think.

The drone videos from KOMO TV were taken before the full crowd showed up. It turned out to be an impressive group of pedestrians lining Broadway and people in cars driving on Broadway honking horns and waving signs to show their support.

I was at the protest when Trump showed up in Everett back in 2016. The mayor was there and various people I knew from school functions and church. In 2016 there were agent provocateurs wandering around the crowd trying to incite violence. 

In 2016 it was obvious someone had put money into the MAGA "supporters" roaming around in the crowd, as well as the ones who came in big pickup trucks wrapped in MAGA propaganda...pictures of Trump looking like Rambo etc.. Wrapping a pickup truck can run to $6000 for custom images and messages...so somebody had some money to burn.

Yesterday's No Kings rallies were a bit of hope in this sometimes not so Beautiful World. We have given way to much blood and treasure fighting the fascists to give up now. 

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Something is very very wrong in a country that elects a President who is a draft dodging felon, the son of a racist evil father, and grandson of a draft dodger.

Of all the negative impacts that this cult of personality has had on our country one of the most troubling is economic. 

In countries where people are not subject to American-style propaganda, it is obvious that our great country is slipping into an authoritarian kleptocracy.

These people, who are not subject to the most sophisticated propaganda American oligarchs money can buy, are aware of how far America has devolved. They are deciding not to come to school here, visit here, work in our hospitals or research facilities, orchards and farms. They don't want to start businesses here or invest here. That's a problem.

If you happen to be captured by the right-wing American media system it’s probably best to stay home lest you be shocked and ridiculed for being a dolt with no clue what is happening in your own country let alone the rest of the world.

Rave On

 

This video appears to be a compilation of videos from different places. I like the Buddy Holly version of Rave On that this video compilation is set to. There is a bit of a Benny Hill vibe to it that is slightly off-putting but whatever...it looks fun. This is the original British Pathe video. I don't know what the song is they are dancing to in the original video but I like this version with Rave On better. 

It's always good to not confuse what you see on a screen with real life because "videos aren't real".

Or as this guy said about the treachery of images,

"The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture "This is a pipe", I'd have been lying!"

 René Magritte

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Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Decade to Stop Sniffing

Classic.

I thought wrong decade would be more apt for the title of this post given the upside-down world 🌍 we face these days. 

Here is another version of sniffing that may appeal to anyone who likes goofy humor and is sort of an Mmm adult baby, or if you prefer something a bit edgier perhaps you'd enjoy keeping up with some proper internet comment etiquette?

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🌍The title of the book I linked to above is "The World Turned Upside Down - Radical Ideas During the English Revolution" written by Christopher Hill an English Marxist historian. It's an interesting book where you can learn about radical groups such as the Diggers, the Seekers, the Ranters, the Quakers and the Levellers. 

I found out about this book by listening to smart people talk on BBC Radio 4 "In Our Time" with Melvyn Bragg. If you are ever stranded on a deserted island I'd recommend bringing the series with you. It's become easier to listen to all the episodes on Apple podcasts than on the BBC player. You can reverse sort by date and add as many episodes as you like to your queue, so you listen to the episodes from when the podcast began. It's also nice to have something not current events oriented to listen to. I find it a great educational, and sleep, aid ;-)

Navy, Army, Air Force, Army

This is a plaque I received for being a plank owner on the USS Belleau Wood LHA-3 an amphibious assault ship. I've written a little bit about my time in the Navy on this blog. If someone is interested you can use the search box to search for posts about ships, Navy, LHA-3.

I was on that ship from October 1978 until January 1981. 1 had to leave because I injured my back working under an elevator. I ended up at the Naval Hospital in Bremerton for surgery. That wasn't the greatest experience since I almost died from a pulmonary embolism. I ended up with a partial VA disability and a lifetime of taking warfarin to prevent blood clots. I enjoyed being in the Navy a lot  and my time being out of the Navy - even more :-)

The Navy sank the USS Belleau Wood (LHA-3) on January13, 2006. I imagine it's sitting on the bottom of the Pacific somewhere making a nice reef for fish. I found this clip of a Harrier VTOL jet coming in for a landing on the LHA-3. When I was on board we were testing Harrier's, and had assorted helicopters, and numerous amphibious assault vehicles in the well deck.

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These are pictures of my father's grave markers in Forsyth Montana. If you expand the second one you will see "BSM" an abbreviation for Bronze Star Medal. My father was a sharpshooter fighting on Okinawa during World War II.

This is a picture of one of my father's Purple Hearts.

We were living in Noxon Montana when my father was killed while plowing a county road with a road grader in deep snow and the grader slipped off a steep embankment (it's hard to figure out where the road is when the snow gets deep). I was a little over two years old. 

I don't want to get too far down in the details, and sound like a whiner, but my stepfather was killed while piloting his airplane near Absarokee when I was 12. He clipped a sheepherder's monument (a tower of rocks piled up by a sheepherder). Hugh was a good pilot and wanted to fly as low as possible to complete his work, but the sun got in his eyes. Hugh and his brother Jack served in the Air Force. in Thule Greenland. 

Sooooo in my family we have Navy, Army, Air Force and one more person who served their country in the Army during World War I. My Grandfather John came from Norway to this country when he was a teenager. He served his country as an Infantryman in the Army during the first World War. He later worked as a sheepherder and eventually bought his own dryland sheep ranch near Ingomar Montana. He moved to some irrigated land near Huntley Project Montana. When he sold his place in Huntley he moved out here to Kirkland Washington. He was pretty lucky (like me) to live in beautiful Montana and then move to another beautiful place that reminded him of his home in Norway with it's fjords and beautiful mountains. 

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I'm proud of my family history and thankful to not have ancestors who were cowards. Here's a snippet from the Wikipedia page for Dongold Trunk's (aka cadet bonespurs) grandfather -

"He (Trunk's grandfather) was also approaching the age of eligibility for conscription to military service in the Imperial German Army. He decided to immigrate to the United States, later saying, "I agreed with my mother that I should go to America." 30  Years later, his family members said that he departed secretly at night, leaving his mother a note,  As a result of Trump fleeing mandatory conscription required of all citizens, a royal decree was issued banishing him from the country."

You see the thing is - some rich twits like Dongold think they are genetically superior to us poor people which makes them too good to serve in the military, follow the law or pay their taxes. Like billionaire hotel owner Leona Helmsley said "We don't pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes." Other Richie Rich people think their God chose them to prosper and the rest of us poor people to follow something called "natural law" and be poorly paid servants (or slaves depending on where we are in history) of the Richies.

Man - if Dongold and his ass kissing minions could only feel shame; we would be a lot better off as a country. I'd tell him and his idiot supporters to go to hell but I'm afraid they have already created their own personal hell on earth. Don't let them drag you into it. 

Money can't buy you happiness but if you look at greedy people whose main goal is to amass more money, like Eloon, Peter Tile, Dongold, Leona, Scrooge McDuck, Alax Carp, Henry F. Potter; Ebenezer Scrooge, the Kock boys, Mr. Burns, Marq Angreasin (also known as the evil Mr. Potato head), Jayred's DaDa the extortionist. 

Money doesn't buy these twits happiness but it sure as hell buys them a life of hell on this earth. 

More gold-plated (gilded) crap in the White House anyone? It almost like someone is sending us peasants a message telling us we are again living in a new gilded age where the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer - remember that's what God or genetics wants for you - you loser poor person.

Perhaps it will always be that some rich men start wars that make them richer while poor courageous honorable men fight and die.

I feel the need to post one more picture below of a future twit billionaire. A twit billionaire is one who inherited money or was lucky to be in the right place at the right time and cashed in on some software project sometimes stolen from a university or the actual creators. I'm sure there are hardworking billionaires who aren't twits but the bottom line is we don't need any billionaires.

Why? Because once a society has a cooperating group of uber-wealthy greed-heads they buy everything; politicians, judges, TV and radio stations, newspapers, houses, trailer parks, water supplies, prisons, ad infinitum.

There is also that truism that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely and its corollary money=power. 

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