Article recently published lists the metro Detroit intersections with the most crashes during 2022. I live near, and thus frequently drive through, numbers six and nine on the top ten list. Both of these intersections are rounds, which I like but note that nearly everyone drives through the rounds too quickly. If they really wanted to decrease the crashes at these points they would install cameras with automatic ticketing.
Apparently writing and maintaining a list of apps that one uses is a thing. Some folks are even publishing this info via RSS, although I am not sure that makes sense to me. A while back I created a page of technology that I use that has a section I call Every Day Apps that maps to this use case. I see that I never completed that list nor put in links, so perhaps I’ll spend some time updating.
I think this says that I am boring.
Is it just me, or does there seem to be server problems in micro.blog land today? Seems like external app access is available, I am able to access via lillihub.com but not the micro.blog domain.
The posts that I write here are hosted on a platform known as micro.blog that hosts my feed (in RSS format) and a network of feeds to which members of the platform contribute. The feeds are rendered in a timeline format accessible via web and mobile applications developed and maintained by the platform founder Manton Reece and his colleagues. Micro.blog hosts each member’s feeds rendered in a web site that can be accessed by a domain name owned by the member, such as mine at https://frankmcpherson.blog. The feeds are open such that other people like Loura can write their own web applications to render the feeds in a timeline format and make it usable by other members. Alternate mobile applications are also available. Finally, one can write and publish posts from alternate applications like Drummer, which I am currently using. In summary, micro.blog is an example of a successful, open platform built and maintained by a handful of people, enhanced by a community of members, and is affordable.
Never before, in my life time, have I seen a person who ran for President of the United States and lost be nominated again by their party for the next election. Practically, once a person has proven to be a loser the power of the dollar moves on to a different person. In this context one can understand Trump’s continued insistence that he won the 2020 election, or at worst Biden stole it, for the sake of being relevant and gaining the money needed for him to run again. It appears many past Republican donors are holding out, probably because they really don’t want to waste their money on a loser. Pragmatically their decision will be on whether they become convinced Trump is the only person who can replace Biden, right now it appears they are not so sure.
I’ve come to the belief that religion may be the most dangerous of our instincts because of how it is used by those in power to gain and grow that power. Slavery was justified by religion. The Klu Klux Klan used religion to terrorize, Hitler used religion as the basis for genocide, and we see this cycle through out history onto the present. The “fight” over and the emergence of Artificial Intelligence is all about power, derived by wealth through religion. What I fear most about the religions of effective altruism and effective accelerationism is that their adherents are already extremely powerful, which makes them extremely dangerous. It’s not the technology of AI that scares me, it’s the people and the religion of those who seek to own it that scare me.
What OpenAI Shares With Scientology:
“The OpenAI saga is a fight between God and Money; between a quite peculiar quasi-religious movement, and a quite ordinary desire to make cold hard cash. You should probably be putting your bets on Money prevailing in whatever strange arrangement of forces is happening as Altman is beamed up into the Microsoft mothership. But we might not be all that better off in this particular case if the forces of God were to prevail, and the rationalists who toppled Altman were to win a surprising victory. They want to slow down AI, which is good, but for all sorts of weird reasons, which are unlikely to provide good solutions for the actual problems that AI generates. The important questions about AI are the ones that neither God or Mammon has particularly good answers for – but that’s a topic for future posts.”
The basis of my concern about AI and the saga that unfolded weeks ago is the knowledge that humans see the world in the simple binary of winners and losers; this is the true original sin that leads to the biblical story of Cain and Abel. The primary basis of our survival has been laws of restraint of our demons, but our demons fight against these laws and they are winning. Liberty is being taken from us out of sight and will close faster than we can react and without a shoot fired. We are simply unable to not do something, even if we can do it, and that will lead to our demise.
My first walk today was in the falling snow, the first of the season.
Have no fear…
I can’t help but feel that the big picture behind the OpenAI saga that occurred over the last fourteen days should be the recognition that the greed inherent in capitalism is dangerous and may ultimately lead to our undoing. We should remember that it is such greed that lead to the Great Depression, and even more recently to the 2008 financial crisis, and frankly is behind much of the current trend to move away from democracy in the United States. Our acceptance of the reality that it’s ok for people to profit off the suffering of others lead to big tobacco, the opioid crisis, and the continuing mass murders in the United States. I fear this will all continue so long as we continue to accept that the ends justify the means.
Finished reading: People of the Way by Kurt Struckmeyer 📚
Finished reading: The Franchise: Chicago Cubs by Bruce Miles 📚I enjoyed reading this one about my favorite baseball team.
I can’t be the only person to think that the Humane missed an opportunity when the designed the Ai Pin to be a square rather than something that looks more like the Star Trek communicator badge. Of course, one could stick to an OG flip phone / communicator. I wonder whether people will buy the Ai Pin, it seems too expensive to me.
Thunderstorms with 46 degree temperatures just doesn’t seem right, but yet that is what is going on outside right now.
I keep reading articles that are interpreting the hiring of Gregg Counsell is a sign that the Cubs will be aggressive in the free agent market this year. I believe people might be overlooking something important. Jed Hoyer has stated that he has admired Counsell’s success in Milwaukee given the budget constraints. I believe that Hoyer is convinced that his way of NOT paying a lot of money for free agents is the correct path, and signing Counsell enables him to continue that strategy and be successful. Counsell might have signed with the Cubs thinking he is stepping up to a big market team, but in practice the Cubs have more in common with the Brewers. It is more than likely that the Cubs do not sign the likes of Bellinger and Ohtani and instead stick to their history of signing bottom top to top mid tier players. None of the players the Cubs signed after hiring Joe Maddon were top tier at that time, including Jon Lester. Until proven otherwise, I am not convinced the signing of Counsell is a signal of a change in how Hoyer will make decisions. I still think the Cubs fired the wrong man.
The United States is not about my freedom, it is about our freedom. The consequences of the selfish, individual, and not Christ-like ideology promoted by our religions that are all our identity markers is leading to our destruction.
Thinking back to this glorious morning in Houghton.
I realize that what I wrote below and how I relate what the Chicago Cubs have done (sports) to the state of the world may appear to be overly dramatic. What I think is incredible dangerous is a world in which there are no lines, and that is appearing more and more frequently. Some time soon there will be another mass shooting in the United States, this is guaranteed because there is no line, no limit on the amount of death that a gun advocate has in the U.S. to convince them that there is no good reason to have an AK-47. The very principle of liberty for all in the United States, nor the democratic republic instituted for the sake of that liberty no longer appears to be a line. My question to Republicans is, what is the line that Donald Trump cannot cross to either get re-elected or while in office, that will lead you to no longer support him?
I have read The Athletics’s articles on the firing of David Ross and the hiring of Gregg Counsell that confirmed that the decision went down as expected, and no matter how the Cubs front office wants to sugar coat it, they stabbed Ross in the back. Cub fans who have problems seeing this decision as I do likely are in the camp that the ends justify the means. Ends justifying the means is “the” scourge on our society today in things little like what happened to David Ross and large like the support for and voting for Donald Trump as POTUS. No principles, values, or guard rails (ethics) are considered to be in place that lead one to the conclusion that even though one could do something they won’t do it. When the ends justify the means there is no democracy.
Whenever a general manager/front office of a professional sports team fires a good coach, or in baseball manager, I am suspicious of the true motivations behind the decision. I tend to think such decisions are often deflections of attention away from the front office. Today the Chicago Cubs dismissed David Ross and hired Gregg Counsell and many will note similarities in this decision with how they dismissed Ricky Renteria in 2014 to hire Joe Maddon who unexpectedly become available. I personally do not think the two situations are the same.
Renteria had been on the job for only one year, had not really proven himself as a manager, and did not have any history with the Cubs. Ross is one of the heros of the 2016 world championship team and had taken the Cubs to the playoffs as a manager. Counsell is a good manager and had taken the Brewers to the playoffs five of his six seasons with them, but did not have success in the playoffs. I do not think Counsell is as good a manager today as Joe Maddon was in 2014.
More important, David Ross was not the reason why the Cubs did not make the playoffs this season. The Cubs did not make the playoffs because of a depleted bullpen and in my opinion bad offseason acquisitions that were eventually released during the season, and those decisions were made by the general manager and president of baseball operations.
Ricketts might have bought Hoyer’s argument that jumping on the opportunity to get Counsell is similar to when Epstein jumped on the opportunity to get Maddon, but if Ricketts really wants to address the root cause for why Cubs did not meet expectations this season he ought to be questioning the decisions made by Hoyer and hold him accountable. If the Cubs have decided to completely move on from 2016 that means moving on from Jed Hoyer. In my opinion, the Cubs released the wrong person from their team.
Oh, and by the way, if the Cubs make this move of stabbing one of their own in the back, they darn well better be aggressive at signing free agents during the off season.
I find this to be an interesting debate of whether or not humans have free will. I think argument made against free will might really be making the argument for how we are all connected. The argument against free will appears predicated on the idea that for it to exist decisions must be able to made without any outside influence, and what that really seems to argue against is randomness. Perhaps the important question isn’t whether or not we have free will, but rather, if we don’t have free will, then so what?
“Our growth (transformation) relies in embracing the seemingly conflicting values of liberty and unity, by transformation from an either/or worldview to a both/and worldview. The transformation will not be easy because everything we know and see around us is built on and reinforces either/or. Either/or keeps power in power.” True when I wrote this more than two years ago and true today. We hope for miracles and only get change when we need to transform.
Seven years ago the greatest game ever played was played, on a Wednesday, in Cleveland.