Thought For The Day - 27 March 2025

Well... yet another, sorta kinda, slap at AI. But it doesn't get at the kernel of failure: AI, as currently implemented, isn't intelligence. Any more that winning at Jeopardy! is intelligence. Yeah, there's all that "Ken Jennings is sooooo smart!" bullshit. It's just prodigious memory (churned through a correlation exercise); some people have it, most people don't. Having prodigious memory doesn't make you smart, it might, in the end, make you kinda dumb. While the current count is 86 billion little grey cells, that's still not an infinite number and some will be dedicated to memory and others to, among other things, logic. It's logic processing that makes intelligence. That's how Einstein figured out special relativity just by sitting in a tram and watching a clock tower disappear in the distance. Can your AI do the same? Call me when it can.

This is where we, the people, are apparently failing AI. Because in addition to being humans with jobs and social lives and laundry to fold and art to make and kids to raise, we should also learn how to tiptoe around the limitations of large language models that may or may not return accurate information to us.

Where's the logic in all that? Nada, zip, nil. It's all a galaxy sized correlation matrix, and as we all know, 100% correlation belongs only to God.

And, for what it's worth, I've not been hit with a hallucination from the wiki. Ever.

Party Like It's 1829 - part the first

Well... what is it that Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) keeps blathering? Oh, yeah. Let's get rid of them damn illegals and the sub-GED crowd will have better wages and lifestyle. Yeah, that's the idea!

Well... not so much, at least in Florida. As you might expect from a fascist state (both versions of the word).

Florida has been working for years to crack down on employers that hire undocumented immigrants. But that presented a problem for businesses in the state that are desperate for workers to fill low-wage and often undesirable jobs.

Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state legislature have a potential solution: children.

Are you surprised? I sure as shit ain't.

The number of child labor violations in Florida has nearly tripled in recent years, according to US Department of Labor statistics.

And, I expect, such data will soon disappear thanks to the Office of Data Integrity. Can't have those Blue State Wokers bitching and moaning about our sovereign right to exploit our kids. Now, can we??

Pyrrhic Losers - part the third

Well... some times I manage to get it wrong. Not a robot, I suppose. The series of No Fucking Way essays speculated that Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) would go all out to protect the MAGAnauts from his ministrations. At all costs to the Blue States. It appears, not so much.

He's about to cut the nuts off FEMA!! Who wooda thunk it? Figures are hard to come by, "everybody knows" that regular, damaging weather disasters happen mostly in those southern Red States. Blue states get some snow now and again, but nothing like the hurricanes, tornados, hail storms, and (what used to be as rare as hen's teeth) winter freezes (hellooooo Texas). See ya!!

It was one of the worst years for disasters declarations in the last three decades (1995-2024), according to a new analysis from the International Institute for Environment and Development, or IIED, shared exclusively with CNN. Ninety major disaster declarations in a year is nearly double the annual average of 55 declarations, according to the London-based think tank.

Here's the 2024 tally from NOAA. Better go and look before the Batshit J. Moron orders it removed. And, yes, not much on the Blue coasts, and almost all in the Red South and Midwest.

On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order that outlines his desire to shift more responsibility for disaster response and recovery to the states.

Some state officials and even Republican lawmakers have raised concerns about Trump's plans to slash FEMA, expressing worry that it will weaken responses to future disasters.

All those Red State MAGAnauts were just dupes and pawns in Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor)'s effort to be the next Orban/Erdogan.

Have a nice day.

Erasing History

Ah, some news. One of the first thing that a dictators does is to erase any history which contradicts his authority. Been done before. Here's an update on Mad Dictator Don's effort to remove DEI from every nook and cranny (or, crook and nanny) in HIS gummint.

"Of all the things they could be doing, the places they're putting their focuses on first are really things that just don't matter ... This was literally a waste of our time," a defense official said. "This does absolutely nothing to make us stronger, more lethal, better prepared."

On a related note, we get this report which, I suspect, relates to the one just above

"We will not tolerate politically motivated efforts by the Deep State to undercut President Trump's agenda by leaking false information onto the pages of their allies at the New York Times," Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement on Friday. "The Alien Enemies Proclamation is supported by fact, law, and common sense, which we will establish in court and then expel the TDA terrorists from this country,"

I'll bet you a tall lemonade that the stupidity of the DEI purge will be 'classified' as a national security breach, and all those involved will be poly-ed.

Dictators can't be too careful in protecting their hindmost. In due time, only Mad Dictator Don dick suckers will be left in the Damn Gummint. Just like it was in Mad Andy Jackson's day. If you're up there God, strike this asshole down.

You Go Don

You knew something like this would happen. Those nice Canadians (or Canadiens from the east) just gave the finger to a Downeaster:

The owner of the Point of View Inn tells CNN's Randi Kaye he's had so many cancellations that his business may not survive.

And more to come. Lots more.

The Greatest Threat - part the tenth

An interesting piece on CNN website, about where Trump-phobic geezers might escape to. The piece does a high-level primer on each of five countries. Some obvious, others likely not so.

Of course, Mexico is on the list, last, as one might expect. Given all the news we get about drugs and gangs and so on.

Mexico ranks among the least peaceful countries in Latin America. According to government statistics, there were 31,062 homicides in 2023, about 24 per 100,000 residents (in the US, that figure was about six per 100,000 people in 2023, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation data).

So, the Office of Data Integrity is caught between a rock and a hard place: which way should they slew the number? If they push it down, the MAGAnauts will be disgusted that our own FBI can't find the Real Danger to Our Precious Bodily Fluids from criminal migrants, Okies, Arkies, and Darkies ravaging the Homeland. If they push it up, the MAGAnauts will be disgusted that our own FBI can't find the Real Danger...

What's the American Goebbels to do?

Minority Report - part the seventh

There continues the argument as to whether shitler and muskrat^©dugugotw have a 'mandate' or 'landslide win' to justify destroying Federal governance. On the face of the bare fact, they don't. Batshit J. Moron won less than 50% of the popular vote, so he is, by definition, a Minority Ruler. He's crowned himself King, of course.

But, how common is the Minority President in our history? Common? Rare? Somewhere in between? The wiki has the answer, but I'll save you the effort. Let's skip Washington, who ran unopposed and likely would have gotten 100% anyway.

Less than 51%          Less than 50%
Madison/2
                       J. Q. Adams
Van Buren
                       Polk
                       Taylor
Pierce
                       Buchanan
                       Lincoln
                       Hayes
                       Garfield
                       Cleveland/1
                       Harrison
                       Cleveland/2
                       Wilson/1&2
                       Truman
                       JFK
                       Nixon/1
Carter
Reagan/1
                       Clinton/1&2
                       Dubya/1
Dubya/2
                       Trump/1&2

That's a lot of Minority Rule for a democracy.