I get it, Bill, and we agree on having concerns. Fictions mere.y mirrors the coming obvious: HAL (1968) for sure, Colossus: The Forbin Project a couple years later. There are certainly numerous upsides to AI, but ...

For openers, what happens with the "human surplus"?

Notice the indifference of LFTHNDTHRDS to the ongoing TRUMP EPSTEIN COVERUP.

And, no, the Epstein Coverup has absolutely nothing, zip, zero, nada to do with the Secret Service switching Old Yeller's Secret Service codename from "LARD BUCKET" to the more rapidly transmitted, received, and acted upon "NIPS."

I'm a luddite.
#142 | POSTED BY DBT2

First heard of them at about the right age - college freshman - and time - the Sixties - so that my attitude is receptive.

"The concerns and methods vary, but there is to it all, at bottom, a message that is unmistakably Luddistic: beware the technological juggernaut, reckon the terrible costs, understand the worlds being lost in the world being gained, reflect on the price of the machine and its systems on your life, pay attention to the natural world and its increasing destruction, resist the seductive catastrophe of industrialism."
Kirkpatrick Sale

E Jean Carroll really got to that slimy, money-grubbing pos.

The money hurt, sure, but it must have been the LOSS that hot-burned Old Yeller's butt. Which is odd, when you really think about it, because Trump's been such a yuge lewzer his entire life. He went bankrupt six times destroying businesses he owned, and repeatedly showed he couldn't make money even when running ... no, wait for it ... casinos. That's why he's settled on grifting and stealing- it's easier, harder to trace, and has low overhead.

But the slob lost. To a woman. Because he's a disgusting sexual abuser.

Speaking of which, war schmor, how's Trump's Jeffrey Epstein Coverup holding up?

Moon landing
9-11
COVID
Sarah Palins baby.
#125 | POSTED BY EBERLY

Should be enough hooks for the pilot episode.

"A protest is not a good place to bring a gun."

I don't know your views on the Second Amendment Bill, although I think I may have a pretty good sense of it. In any event, shouldn't we - as automatic members of the unorganized/nonexistent organized militia - be able, by right by Gawd, to bear our arms hither and yon? Not my view, of course, but I'm curious.

Bill, I get the sense we've been living in the future for a few years now.
Not many, but probably more than we initially thought.

"If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do."
JD Vance
9/24

"I love the uneducated."
Donald Trump
Repeatedly

Trump's reaction to discovery mirrors a cucaracha's to light.
Ah, glorious Nature's sweetly serendipitous reveals.

"Afghanistan War: 20 years, 2,000 DEAD. Iraq War: 9 years, 4,600 DEAD. Vietnam War: 19 years and 5 months, 58,220 DEAD. Korean War: 3 years and 1 month, 36,574 DEAD. Venezuela War: 1 day, 0 DEAD. Iran Military Conflict: 4 months, 18 DEAD."

"Christ, that was exhausting!" Old Yeller huffed, melting into his heavily upholstered chair. "How about two or four burgers and a couple of buckets of fries?" he brightened up. "People don't know this, but it's called a bouquet of fries ... but first ... golf!"

Well, that went well.

The routine with respect to Trump's Republican Guard is as follows:

1. Feral masked, poorly trained, badly vetted, roided-up thugs harass and murder people.
2. Aforementioned feral thugs play victim card, lie about what happened, who they murdered, why, etc.
3. Employers of the feral thugs reflexively coverup, lie, close off investigations.
4. Feral masked, poorly trained, badly vetted, raided-up thugs out and about to do more thuggery.

Boy, that didn't take long.
Could have.
But ... Republicans.
Thanks, a##holes.

Vance slithered onto the political dustheap when he proudly announced he lies to get attention.
He and scum like him are playing with other folks' lives.
They are sociopaths who will literally kill for a headline.

The Mencken links to a Robert Kahn 2017 piece in which there's this:

Nor did Henry Louis Mencken say, precisely: "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

What Mencken (1880-1956) did write, in the Sept. 19, 1926 edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune, was: "No one in this world, so far as I know " and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me " has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby."

Hiya, Corky ... Your daughter is in a fascinating field - one about which practitioners I've encountered feel a real passion. She's also covering a lot of territory when you factor in the traffic. People in S FL seem to handle that by zoning out, freaking out, or dropping out. And the heat you mention? This is the northern Caribbean, basically, and the midday blast reminds me of a beachside town in Yucatan ages ago (built up now) coming into summer: painfully bright light from an incandescent sun, deserted beach, no-dogs empty streets, closed shops, nobody in sight. Eventually, a bus came by. Its kinds like that. The weird never seems too far off. Lol.

Well done!

You as well

Gotta try!

#1
University professor for many years, and my experience absolutely mirrors yours.

"We called him Old Yeller. The name had a sort of double meaning. One part meant that his short hair was a dingy yellow, a color that we called "yeller" in those days. The other meant that when he opened his head, the sound he let out came closer to being a yell than a bark."
Fred Gipson, Old Yeller

How's the Epstein Coverup coming along?

Trump lies a lot. About as much, in fact, as he promises.

The 50,000-watt "flamethrower" KOMA (1520 AM) ruled the night in the 1960s along the lonely highways and byways of the nighttime Southwest.

#17
I'm sure they are.

There probably isn't a magical place on this (or any other) continent those sorry excuses for human beings wouldn't eff-up for a buck. Preferably stolen and unreported. That's what Trump, exemptions, legislation, exceptions, executive orders, and the Supreme Court are there for.

The regime is not in the least bit interested in education but, rather, threatened by it.