Browsing social media this morning was emotional due to all the tributes to Dolly Parton. A question often asked is, how is there so much evil in the world? Perhaps the better question is, why is there so much good in the world? Fortunately there are those in the world, like Dolly, who are in communion with the Divine such that light shines enough to provide glimpses of the Kingdom as it ought to be on earth as heaven.

I think the hand wringing over non-mainstream politicians winning Democrat primaries is very telling in how it shows that a large number of people do not know or will not admit there has been a change in U.S. politics.

What most do not want to admit is that Trump and the “Make America Great” political movement correctly identify the sentiments of wanting change. The message is that the “same old, same old” is not working and less and less accepted. Trump successfully convinced a lot of people that he was truly different, and all the “crazy” things he says and does are just clear evidence. The problem for Republicans, however, is that it is becoming clear that in reality Trump and those looking to mimic him are not different.

In my opinion, Abdul E-Sayed is campaigning on the same problems MAGA is a reaction to. For example, why are U.S. tax dollars sent to foreign governments when there are so many U.S. citizens, including veterans, going without? Isn’t that a common sense question?

Further, if the U.S. government is going to collect taxes, shouldn’t those tax dollars be prioritized on U.S. citizens? Why not spend those billions on healthcare for U.S. citizens rather than on endless wars?

Hilary Clinton and Kamala Harris both lost to Trump because they were the “same old, same old.” In a time when many think the Democrat and Republican parties are pretty much the same, those people are looking for clear differences. And if the differences are between “crazy” ideas, which crazy idea is more harmful to the United States, starting a unnecessary war that results in prices going up or stop starting wars and instead spending that money on healthcare for citizens?

My installation of Feedland is one of the services I currently do not have access to due to the Proxmox host failure. Fortunately my installation of River5 is on another host, but this circumstance gives me the opportunity to try out FreshRSS. Learning a new RSS aggregator takes some time, but I am working my way through.

Quick update. We celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary last week, first with one night of camping and then a planned night in Frankenmuth, Michigan. We survived the campout ok, but on our anniversary night I accidentally shaved off a chunk of my right index finger so we spent a few hours at urgent care. Not a big wound but enough to make typing difficult. To top it off, when we got home I found my primary Proxmox server was down due to a worn out SSD.

Winning The Trade Deadline Doesn't Matter

Trades at the Major League Baseball deadline do not make champions, championship teams are built during the off season and through development of young players. Good teams that need one or two players at the deadline and get them can make themselves a great team.

By most measures, the Chicago Cubs became a better team at this year’s deadline by getting the players they needed. The problem is, the Cubs needed too many players at the deadline, and didn’t make their lineup more reliable.

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A Fool With A Tool Is Still A Fool

AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

Nikhil Suresh https://hermit-tech.com/blog/ai-mania-is-eviscerating-global-decisionmaking

“Unfortunately, we live in a dark timeline. All of the AI projects we have observed as a team are failing. Every single one – we have seen 0% success in a year and a half, not only amongst projects we have been asked to participate in22 We have rejected all AI implementation work. It is absolutely a gigantic bubble and we have minimized our exposure to it – every single one of our current contracts would be totally unaffected by OpenAI collapsing, save for perhaps some second-order effects such a recession causing a client to become unable to pay us. And there’s nothing we can do to insulate ourselves from that anyway., but even within projects that we have observed in passing while doing totally unrelated work. Even if you grant that AI tooling accelerates specific workloads, the method and scale of the current investments is senseless. Frequently the failure is not related to AI itself, but rather that companies are terminally bad at running software projects effectively, and as I have remarked previously, AI projects are subject to all the failure modes of normal projects plus you can get everything right and then still fail because of the method’s novelty. Very few companies are so good at shipping software that they can afford the extra risk profile.”

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Only You Can Change You

I am catching up with sharing some quotes from what I read during our recent road trip. Today’s batch presents some ideas that I think are useful for self reflection.

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Roadtripping In A Hyundai Tuscon

We drove from our home in southeast Michigan to Fort Collins, Colorado and rented a 2026 Hyundai Tuscon for the trip. Our 2013 GMC Terrain has too many miles on it for us to want to pile on thousands more in a matter of weeks, and renting enables me to experience some of the latest vehicle technology.

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Looking In The Mirror

The following articles that I have recently read provide some deeper thought about artificial intelligence as it relates to humans. Theologian Ilia Delio says: “AI unsettles us because it is a mirror, and what we see in it is what we have been refusing to see in ourselves.”

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Finally back home to mornings on the patio being sernaded by the cicadas. We saw a lot of the following during our road trip.