Essays
Independent Food For Thought
Two articles I think are worth reading on this, the 250th birthday of the United States because they describe how far we have come, yet still the same, while fighting against what we tell ourselves is the norm of civilization.
America, 1926: What a Forgotten 100-Year-Old Report Says About Who We Are
Derek Thompson https://www.derekthompson.org/p/america-1926-an-absurdly-deep-dive
“In other ways, the America of 1926 was another world—practically another planet. Roughly half of the U.S. still counted as rural, and tens of millions of Americans had no indoor plumbing or electricity. Thick smoke from oil lamps filled their homes, and they emptied their bladders and bowels in old-fashioned chamber pots. Women had only voted in two presidential elections. Millions of children still worked for pay. Of the nation’s 27 million households, only 11 million had a phonograph, to listen to music, or a car. The first movie with sound would not come out for another year.”
Democracy Is Bullshit
David Pinsof https://www.everythingisbullshit.blog/p/democracy-is-bullshit
“So what is democracy? It is a key that perfectly fits the lock of group mode. It is a system that brandishes a fearsome weapon before our eyes—the coercive power of jails and cops and militaries—and tells us we cannot control it, and cannot defend ourselves from it, unless we band together into huge, lumbering groups. It is a system that pries power away from the hands of individuals and tosses it to mobs, cliques, unions, religions, interest groups, ethnic groups, and grotesque agglomerations of all the above called ‘political parties.’ It is a system defined by the crushing hopelessness of individual toil and the awesome power of collective synchrony.”
People are wonderful. I love individuals. I hate groups of people. I hate a group of people with a ‘common purpose’. ‘Cause pretty soon they have little hats. And armbands. And fight songs. And a list of people they’re going to visit at 3am. -George Carlin
“The purpose of a group is to increase the power, status, and resources of the humans inside it relative to the humans outside it. How do we know this is true? Because over evolutionary time, the groups that reliably fulfilled this purpose became our ancestors.”
“Monarchy is rule by monarchs. Oligarchy is rule by oligarchs. Democracy might seem like it’s rule by the ‘demos’—by the people—but it’s not. Or at least, not by individual people. Democracy is, instead, rule by tribes. Yes, it’s time to switch from ‘groups’ to the more pejorative ’tribes.’ The most cohesive, well-organized, well-funded tribes, bound into supertribes called ‘parties,’ are the ones who rule. It’s a tribeocracy. And given the well-documented ethical and intellectual downsides of tribalism, that is a very bad thing. It’s hard to think of a worse way to run a society than to systematically take power away from wonderful individuals and wise crowds so we can give it to mean, dumb, incoherent, sanctimonious tribes.”
“But there is a worse way to run a society, called autocracy, which leaves us with an important question: Why are democracies nicer places to live than autocracies? The main reason is that democracies are multitribal while autocracies are unitribal.”
A Look To The Future With AI In It
Read a really good essay titled After AI Takes Everything written by a software engineer based in Singapore who goes by Airing. The link I am providing is to a copy of the essay I have in Readwise that includes my highlights. If you work in IT or know someone who does that is worried about what AI is doing to their future I recommend that you read the essay.
A part of the essay I find most relatable is the following:
The threat to the job, the cultivation of the ability, the survival of subjecthood — all of these anxieties collapse, when gathered, into the same thing: we are afraid of losing our sense of value. Afraid that one day we will wake up and find we are no longer useful to this world. Being laid off is just the outer shell of that fear. The core is older: a person’s deepest fear has never been having no job. It is the suspicion that one is no longer worthy.
What will enable one to survive the AI revolution is their own sense of value as a human being. Consequently, I think what employees need to be sensitive to is the degree to which employers actually value them. If an employer treats their employees as a cog or as nothing more than a cost that employer will be eager to replace you no matter what. I would find another job. In fact, this is the primary reason why I decided to retire as what remains left of my life is too precious to be un-valued.
Oh, and by the way, I think this sense of value as a human beings is the core of Pope Leo’s encyclical.
Android 17
Google has released Android 17, and I just initiated the process to download and install it on my Pixel 10. 9to5Google has a video overview of all the changes, which are mostly cosmetic. For the last several years the Android version upgrades have not included significant functionality additions, rather they include UI and general performance improvements. Functional additions to Android come in the Quarterly Point Releases (QPR) and we expect QPR1 to Android 17 in the fall, timed with the release of the Pixel 11.
Also included in the Android 17 download is the June 2026 Pixel Drop that adds features to Pixel phones. Most useful to me is App Bubbles, which provide users the ability to add applications to the floating “bubble” that appears on top of all screens and apps running on the phone. We previously had this ability for text messaging conversations and I think of it as a multitasking feature that enables me to quickly switch to a task that I have pinned to the display.
One use that I have for app bubbles is for quick access to RadarScope while there are storms in my area to quickly see the current weather radar. To “pin” an app to the bubble tap and hold the app’s icon and tap Bubble at the bottom of the context menu. Note that this feature does not appear to work for all apps, particularly ones that have custom context menus. For example, tap and hold the Gmail icon and you do not see a Bubble option instead you see options to compose new email or open an Gmail account.
Wear OS 7 is also coming for the Pixel Watch and as I am less enthused about that release I am not go to force it to be installed on my watch.
Enough
I am of the opinion that one cannot begin to comprehend the risks of artificial intelligence without knowing oneself. We are embedded in a culture of “more” that teaches we should never be satisfied and we never see that “more” for what it is, an idol. The drive for the more, more wealth, more power and with that somehow a better life for oneself is the context in which decisions about artificial intelligence are being made.
More is the zeitgeist of the norm of civilization, so much so that most of us are willing to accept it as desirable and our true calling.
Using Google AI Plus
I replaced the standard, original, Google One subscription with Google AI Plus, which provides more AI features for $4.99 per month. I now have access to the Daily Brief produced by Gemini using Gmail, Calendar, and Text Messaging that I find useful but surprised I am not receiving notifications about them each day, instead I have to go in to the Gemini app to read them, which makes no sense. I found where I control whether I see notifications for Daily Brief and toggled that on/off.
Another problem I have with Gemini on the phone is that it is too verbose. When I ask it for information it produces several paragraphs and seems to insist on reading all of it when I prefer to read what was produced in silence. Perhaps Google could enable user to set a preference such as enabling users to tell Gemini to summarize long responses verbally and provide the remainder on screen to be read.
One more complaint… I like NotebookLM but I wish Google would do one of two things, either enable NotebookLM to access Google Keep or provide users the ability to create and edit notebook sources from a phone. Here is my use case. I religiously track the oil level in our 2013 GMC Terrain in a note in Google Keep. I found it useful to provide that odometer and oil level log to NotebookLM so that I can query it, but to get the log into a notebook I have to send a copy to Google Docs because NotebookLM only knows about Google Docs stored in Drive. Keep does not use Drive for storage, and I suspect Google stores notes in a backend database.
If Google will allow users to create notebooks in NotebookLM and create sources for them on a phone then that notebook could be an alternate to Keep. So far Google has not added any Gemini features to Keep, which is a bit surprising, but in another way suggests that maybe someday NotebookLM could replace Keep. I personally think it would be smart of Keep stayed as it and provided NotebookLM as the “AI equivalent” of Keep.
Ideally, NotebookLM would automatically sync/update Google Drive sources, but right now I have to manually sync to get updates which is fine except that if I simply send a Keep note to a Google Doc it doesn’t overwrite previously shared documents instead it creates another doc with the exact same name and the new “version” of the doc needs to be added as a source. In short, I don’t have an easy way to get updates to my oil log in to NotebookLM.
Idol Of Intelligence
I am fascinated by the number of reactions to Pope Leo’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, in my technology feeds. It’s the first time that I can recall of seeing so many technologists spend any time with what a figure of religion has to say.
I am in the process of reading the encyclical, but I also have been reading many of the reactions and I particularly like this one by Yuval Levin. The following jumps out to me:
The appeal of idols has always been that they offer shortcuts. The God of the Bible demands that you live in a way that forms your mind and heart and soul toward your fullest human potential. This requires hard work but it yields a kind of person both capable and worthy of a flourishing life. The idol offers the material benefits of such a life without that formative work. And if all you care about are the benefits, not the form of your mind, heart, and soul, then the offer is awfully hard to resist.
Technologists tend to chase the shortcuts in life, apparently lacking the wisdom to see that we do so at the risk of not fully forming humanly. Another story from the Bible that comes to mind is the story of the fall in Genesis 3, which I think our ego causes us to conclude the “problem” or the “sin” of Adam and Eve is not obeying God. I think ego draws that conclusion because it controls over whether or not to obey. In other words, our ego is the solution to the problem.
I keep coming back to the following that Eve says in Genesis 3:2-3:
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’ "
The tree in the middle of the garden is the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and I ask myself, why does God say having knowledge of good and evil leads to death? Isn’t this nothing more than knowing right from wrong and isn’t that what every good parent is expected to teach their children?
I dare say how much different the world might be if the teaching of this scripture contemplated more on this paradox and avoided the egotistic shortcut of control and obedience. It is possible that the grand lesson of life is hidden in this seeming paradox of how something so fundamental to our very survival, good versus evil, friend or foe, leads to death. I think the problem it points to is the seeing of the world dualistically, as black and white, that makes it easy for us to see others apart from ourselves. From this we lose our humanity.
The Current Cubs Failure Starts At The Very Top
What Craig Counsell and David Ross have in common is that both are former players and I think that is the context in which one has to conclude that so far Counsell has not been better than the person he replaced. Former player managers appear to be more likely to continue to expect older players who once did very well to find their former selves any day now, when the probability of that happening is not likely.
The problem with the current Cubs is not Counsell just as Ross was not the problem when we was fired. The continued success of the Milwaukee Brewers after Counsell left them for the Cubs is for me strong evidence that it’s a system that leads to success not one person. What is important is the people at the top of a baseball team, the owner and next in command, to make good hires for people to put in place a good system.
The Chicago Cubs will continue fail to meet expectations and long as Jed Hoyer is running the Cubs. Hoyer wrongly over valued Counsell’s contributions at the Brewers and under valued the Brewer organization that clearly is superior to the Cubs. Counsell leaves and his bench coach is promoted to manager and the Brewers keep winning, what does that tell you?
I expect Counsell will be fired because that is the simplest action for Hoyer to take, and Jed isn’t going to fire himself. Rickett’s extended Hoyer last season before the trade deadline even after demonstrating poor decision making by trading the organization’s top prospect for a poor performing rental in Kyle Tucker.
Doing the same thing over and over is insanity. The Hoyer lead organization is convinced low cost, low budget aquisitions will get the Cubs back to the World Series but the current roster is just the latest evidence that will not work. We have the same team now as we had in every year since 2019.
Just Because You Can Doesn't Mean You Should
I’ve written here a few times of my concerns with AI. Eric Markowitz expresses similar concerns.
We began to believe that because a capability exists, it must be deployed. That because a machine can replace a person, the person must go. This is an abdication of our moral duty as humans. It is surrendering our judgment to our instruments and calling it progress.
The reason this moment feels so acute, so existential, is not because AI is uniquely powerful — although it is. It’s because AI has arrived at precisely the moment when we have already hollowed out so much of what makes work meaningful.
We have already financialized everything. We have already reduced human beings to line items and disposed of them like inventory. We have already built an economy that treats people as costs to be minimized rather than as the very source of the value being created.
I also think the idea seeking meaning in their work is fools gold, intended to allow themselves to be used. Finding meaning in work confused vocation with occupation. Some times they do align, but I think only when starting with vocation.
Streaking Baseball Players
The Chicago Cubs have won ten games in a row, which is their second ten game winning streak of this season. Right now it is fun to be a fan of the Chicago Cubs given that their entire lineup is hitting and that puts a lot pressure on opposing pitchers. If the line up keeps this up, the Cubs could be a champion, but that is not likely. The key to winning divisions in baseball is stacking wins to put distance between you and other teams in the division so that you can get a large enough for when the team loses several games in a row you don’t lose your place.
I think it’s hard for me to get really excited about this year’s team because of the pitching staff. Teams that have success in the playoffs have Cy Young caliber pitchers and right now I can’t put any of Cubs starters in that category.
Going in to the season, Cade Horton had that potential, but he is injured and done for the year. Shota Imanga is pitching very well as is Edward Cabrera but the big question about both is whether they can sustain their current performance through the entire season, both have history of injuries.
Pitching wins championships and right now it’s hard to feel confident that the Cubs current pitching is good enough. The Cubs lineup and current pitching may be good enough to win their division, and perhaps even get to the National League championship series, but as teams advance in the playoffs chances of that opposing pitching will neutralize a lineup increases and that is when your pitching matters.
Pitching Is Hurting The Cubs
While acknowledging this as probably too much of a generalization, I think baseball games are won (or lost) by either pitching or hitting. Based on earned run average, I think that when a MLB pitching staff gives up more than four runs it did not do its job. During the Cub’s recent ten game winning streak their pitchers gave up more than four runs only once. Now the Cubs have lost three in a row, and in every one the pitchers gave up more than four runs. Worse, they have given up six or more runs in each game, therefore not giving their hitting much of a chance to win.
The Cubs do currently have a winning 17-12 record due to the fact that of the 24 games played in April, Cub pitchers held opponents to four are fewer runs in 16 games. It appears to be the case that the huge number of their pitchers on IL is catching up to the Cubs.
If the pitching trend continues and given how well the other teams in the NL Central are playing, the Cubs will end up with a losing record for the season and not make the playoffs.