Thoughts
I am reading “How the Ivy League Broke America” by David Brooks, published in The Atlantic (gifted link), and agreeing almost entirely with the points that Brooks is making.
Looking back, I know that my grandmother’s (who raised me) strongest desire for me was a college degree that lead to achieving “the American Dream.” Her desire was influenced by the meritocracy Brooks describes, even if the arc of her life started before the meritocracy view of the world was instituted.
So, I fit in the college educated category, except that my grandmother was not wealthy and my education was paid for mostly by Pell Grants and student loans. The grants sufficiently covered my credits, so I only needed a relatively small amount of loans for things like books.
I feel as though if I were born just ten years later I probably would not have the life I have today, because I probably would not have afforded that college degree or I would have been hugely in debt.
Like most of her generation, my grandmother wanted me to partake in the American Dream and she believed that would only happen if I had a college degree. She wasn’t wrong, but the problem is that if you can boil down the achievement of a better life to one thing it becomes very easy to put a dollar value on that thing and when that happens a barrier is created.
What Brooks describes in this article is a cultural problem that government itself cannot fix. Yet, government made up of people who see the problem can make government an enabler of a fix rather than a barrier. Does eliminating the Department of Education help or hinder? Honestly, I am not entirely sure.
I guess Nixon was right. Is what Trump did on January 6 an official act as POTUS? What is the definition of an official act? Anyone celebrating this decision ought to stop and realize the ruling applies to all presidents regardless of party. It applies equally to Obama and Trump. Still happy?
I wish that my RSS feed reader could filter out items behind a pay wall, or at least flag them in some way. It would also be nice if bloggers either didn’t link to stuff behind pay walls or at least indicate that a subscription is required. I think it is ironic how Dave frequently argues against the burden of pay walls and also frequently shares links to stories that are behind pay walls.
Currently reading: Naming the Powers by Walter Wink 📚
I think this is a good book (series of books actually) for those who desire to follow Jesus to read at this time. The quote below is just one example:
The Weather Underground correctly criticized the U.S. government for its barbaric violence in Vietnam and then mirrored the very barbarism it condemned by adopting violence as its means. Whenever we let the terms of struggle be dictated by the Power that we oppose, we are certain to become as evil. Nothing about this insight is new. It is written for anyone to read in Rev. 17:15-18. There the Beast on whom the Harlot (Roma) sits turns against her and shifts his allegiance to the ten enemy kings. These will hate the harlot and burn her up with fire. The Beast can shift loyalties precisely because he knows that the means employed to overthrow the Harlot will make the kings every bit as much the children of hell as she. (Emphasis added)
I assume that in the above Wink is referring to the Weather Underground as known as The Weathermen. The Weathermen emerged from the campus-based opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War and from the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Wikipedia
What we are seeing played out between Israel and Iran and between Israel and Hammas is retribution. Violence begetting more violence. Empire convinces us this is the norm of civilization and there is no hope for change. Empire is also an idol.
Today I start lap 59 around the sun. Unlike the last two years, there is no snow. Morning sunshine gave way to clouds in the afternoon. My bride and I had a late lunch at Ford Garage.
I agree with everything that Om Malik wrote in this post about how AI IS Changing Writing, in particular the following:
My approach to AI has been to embrace and extend my capabilities. I use quite a few tools with AI inside. Many of them have boosted my productivity. I am on the lookout for more to add to my arsenal, so I can become more effective when it comes to my creative output. I don’t need it to write for me. I need AI to make sure I don’t make spelling mistakes, point out some overused phrases, repetitive usage of phrases, and what my editors used to call “Om” things.
I don’t understand why an individual will want AI to write for them because I own (and want to own) my words because they reflect me. My writing is never about producing content and I don’t make a dime from any of my web sites. I may be biased, but I think what makes it blogging is whether or not one is making money.
Today I am enjoying my first vacation day, or what I like to call retirement practice, of the year. My company provides the Presidents Day holiday on Monday, so thus I have a four day weekend. Now that the Super Bowl is in February, I wonder why the NFL hasn’t decided to make Super Bowl Sunday be the day before Presidents Day every year, enabling many to have a day off on the Monday after the Super Bowl.
If you think you are not religious then you don’t know what is religion. I think Americans are more religious today than ever before, but don’t recognize it because we equate religion with a specific association to specific organizations or specific beliefs in deities.
Religion is much more fundamental to who we are as humans. For example, if you identify yourself with an NFL team, like I say I am a Packers fan, you are religious. The religion, which is that to which you connect or bind yourself (re-ligio) is professional U.S. football. Republicans? Democrat? Conservative? Liberal? Progressive? All religions. Yes, even atheism is a religion. Religion is an aspect of our ego.
The problem in all of this is we have no understanding of our true selves, and the decisions we make are to maintain all these false selves that don’t really add value to who we are and what we truly need. It is the stranglehold of our religions that is driving decisions that we make against our own best interests.
I use Readwise Reader to read articles that I select from my RSS subscriptions, and I think it has information that would like to extract. For example, from which domains do I most frequently read from? This is the type of question that if Readwise provided an API I might dabble with some programming.
With AI, Focus On The People
When I read something about the dangers of AI I can’t help but fear the writers are missing an important point. Saying that AI is bad is like saying the Internet is bad or guns are bad. In truth none of these items are bad. What is bad, and what we need to focus on, is that there are bad people who can and will use these items to amplify what they can do and thus inflict harm on others.
Back before the Internet was known by most of the world those who supported it advocated for all of the good it can do, but we failed to take in to account how it can be used for harm. What is common among AI, the Internet, and guns, particularly automatic guns, is the scale and speed at which harm can be done.
So, my advice is, focus a bit less on the technology and more on the ways in which people want and might use that technology for harm and then craft policies aimed at constraining the the people who may do that harm. It might be making a nuanced argument, but I think it is an important one when encountering those who see themselves as needing to defend/protect the items.
If I were in charge of marketing a foldable phone, I think I would call it a mobile 2-in-1 rather than foldable because that puts emphasis on the functionality. From using the original Surface Duo learned that you have to think of these devices as a small tablet first and a smartphone second.
I could be a target consumer for these devices because I am a heavy tablet user and a lite phone user, and I use both devices every day. The problem is, no foldable is ever going to be as thin as a standard smartphone and feel comfortable in front pants pockets.
Price is a real constraint right now. When the price drops to a comparable to smartphone + tablet then it will be more compelling. So I wonder, how long will it take for a new foldable to cost $800 or less?
Rule one of being a United States citizen, and really a citizen of any country, ought to be, ignore all political advertising. It’s shocking to that this fundamental advice is not taken seriously by enough people. Frankly, I would prefer all political advertising, to which the vast majority of campaign funds is spent, were outlawed so that our tools to evaluate candidates were primarily their record and debates.
The advent of Large Language Models appearing as artificial intelligence makes this advice more important then ever. We will see video clips of people who appear to be saying things they did not say. Money is not a constraint (thanks SCOTUS) and technology is no constraint (thanks capitalism).
The U.S. Constitution puts in place a structure of “checks and balances” between the three branches of government to prevent tyranny, and it is that concept that limits the degree of oversight of SCOTUS by Congress. However, this structure also enables tyranny when the same wealthy parties buy SCOTUS justices and members of Congress.
If members of Congress, no matter party, are unwilling to actually impeach those who support their ideology to maintain freedom for all citizens and not just a select few, you have in place opportunity for corruption and defacto dictatorship.
The founders imagined that the threat of impeachment would be sufficient to keep people in line, but we now know that is not true. Impeachment itself is useless without conviction. If Senators are unwilling to convict a sitting President for inciting an insurrection, then for what will it ever convict a President for?
I think the reason why some are concerned about chatGPT is that they know the tendencies of most towards laziness. For most, if they read something that is not obviously wrong they will accept it as fact. Laziness might not be the right word, I know that I don’t want to live in a world in which I have to question everything. Constant skepticism is not healthy, we need to be able to trust some people. Such skepticism taken to the extreme leads to a person fearful of everything and everyone, and that leads to them to shooting a kid who unexpectedly rings their doorbell.
Straight Jacket Voting
We frequently fall in to the trap of thinking that how things work today is how they have always worked. Take for example voting in the United States. The whole concept of an “independent voter” is driven by the fact that today one can vote for people of different parties rather than all representatives from a single party. For example, you might vote for a Democrat for President and a Republican as your Senator.
What I learned while reading The Age of Acrimony is that in the 19th century there was only straight party ballots. The ballots may have been nothing more than a card of one of two different colors. Voting was not in private, one put their colored ballot in the ballot box while everyone else was watching. Elections could and often did become violent affairs. The invention of the ballot booth, with it’s privacy curtain and the ability vote for people running for different offices rather than a party’s representatives cooled the temperature of politics. It also created the idea of the “independent” voter.
You might have noticed that the temperature of politics has definitely risen to higher temperatures over the years, highlighted by the insurrection on January 6, 2021. My theory is that the idea of voting for one’s party, no matter who is running, has become more in vogue ever since Ronald Reagan, when I think the Republican party learned during Reagan’s second term that what letter was next to the name of the candidate was more important than the actual person. The thinking is that what is most important is the party elected to office and not the person because the party’s ideology is what is most important for leading toward the desired outcome. It doesn’t matter whether the President has dementia if the decisions are really made by his handlers.
I think we will see this played out most vividly during the 2024 election. Neither Biden nor Trump are popular among Democrats or Republicans, but they will vote for either the Democrat or Republican candidate. The question will be how the so-called “independents” will vote, and that becomes more difficult when the campaigns become nothing more than don’t vote for the other crazy old person.
Politics is broken because the system is gamed towards the status quo for the benefit of those people who gain from the status quo. Today this is not only the military industrial complex, but nearly every corporation in the United States. How else can you explain why all the candidate we can seem to elect are always of the same generation? Both parties rig it so that the anointed ones are the only options, hence incumbents never are challenged from within, and the non-incumbent pool of candidates are tightly controlled.
With all the banning of books and now social media, it really feels as though we are living in 1984.
This YouTube video of A History of Rock in Guitar Riffs from 1965 to now is really cool.
I think Dave misunderstands what manton is doing in regards to the character limit. The character limit does not apply to blog posts, the character limit applies to what appears in the micro.blog timeline. As has always been, posts that are longer than X character are linked to the associated blog post that contains all of the content. From my perspective, how micro.blog handles long posts in it’s timeline is the same as how Feedland handles long posts in the feeds list.
Manton could change how the timeline works to expand/collapse long posts like Dave does in the Feedland “news” display, but that is his prerogative as the hosting/platform provider. As a writer, I am willing to work within the constraints that he is providing. I don’t see the constraint as limiting me as a writer in any way because the full content is provided on my blog, which frankly is where I prefer people to actual go and read what I write.
Look In The Mirror, There Is a Gun In Your Hands
If one is a child, a teenager, a college student in the United States, aware of the realities of the society that they currently live in, how can you possibily conclude anything other than the fact that the generations older, now Millenials through Baby Boomers, don’t care about them at all? It’s seems we have all forgotten the desire for providing our children a better life than our own. Better should be safer. Instead we do absolutely nothing.
I am Gen-X, and to my recollection the last time enough people in power were shocked enough by a shooting was in 1993 when the Brady Bill was passed. Looking back from today, it seems that only the attempted murder of an old white man who happens to be President lead to action. Not murders of elementary, high school, and college students.
I see people of my generation ripping on younger generations as “entitled” and “lazy” and don’t seem to really care why. Might it be that in the United States the probability of a kindergartener experiencing an in-school shooting before graduating high school is greater than zero? I don’t know this is a fact, but I know it’s true, but the fact is that truth does not piss off enough people to take action.
Parents and grandparents need to stop convincing themselves their child will never face a shooting. It’s time to stop numbing ourselves hoping that it will never happen. It’s time to face the reality that it will happen, to your child, someone you love, maybe tomorrow.