Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, March 8, 2026
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18 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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“Kids just wanna have fun.”
How the Trump administration sees the public, or at least its base of support.
I fear for our country. Saw a lot of pics and videos last night of oil refineries in Tehran on fire last night, oil that was on fire running down the sides of the streets. These actions will not go unanswered, and I would not be surprised if the United States eventually suffers terrible attacks on its own soil. We’ll have no allies left by then.
I also saw a little blurb that Germany estimates US casualties at 560, not 6, but I can’t find anything more about that that seems reputable, or if it’s military or civilian casualties.
It’s going to be a rough year.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-economy-iran-inflation-jobs-gas-prices-7fbd5e99e3b6023963dd3de226aee4e4?utm_source=copy&utm_medium=share
I’ve got a 7 year old grandgirl with her front baby teeth out, an adorable lisp and dimpled cheeks to boot. She and her beautiful mom and big sister will be delivering 5 boxes of Girl Scout cookies in a little while. It’s all I can do not to hug them all to pieces and cry.
As “solutions” to the Fermi Paradox go, bringing up weather at least is original.
I prefer my own explanation: We don’t know.
I had a rather odd ream where I was cooking a beef dish. In the dream, I placed the beef, all by itself, inside the multi pot, and selected the pressure cooking option without adding any liquid at all.
Later I realized I should have used the air fryer function. So, I stopped the cooking process. Inside there as a perfectly fine goulash, already mixed with rice, with garnish on top.
I think I laughed so hard I woke up. My dreams are usually weird, but do not shatter causality and logic this way.
I’m disappointed but not surprised: the latest search for the remains of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 came up empty.
The likeliest explanation is still that we don’t really know where it went down, and probably no one has looked in the right vicinity. When Air France 447 went down in the Atlantic, there as a much better notion of where it happened, and it still took two years to locate parts of the plane, including the section containing the flight data and cockpit voice recorders.
Today is International Women’s Day.
Found this video on the Kim Komando web site:
The Library of Congress restored a 45-second Méliès silent film from 1897. Gugusse and the Automaton is basically the first robot attack freakout movie.
Why do we seem to assume that an AI that achieves real consciousness will immediately decide to murder us all? Why shouldn’t an AI develop its own sense of morality, of ethics, of justice? Why shouldn’t an Artificial General Intelligence achieve emotion? Feel sadness or loneliness or love?
Is it that we’re projecting and we don’t seem to have a high opinion of our species? Why assume that an elevated intelligence would reflect the worst of us? Might it not choose instead to copy our best attributes? Maybe a just and moral AI would use its power to destroy the billionaire class. It might not approve of the concentration of wealth and believe instead that a Star Trek version of a post-want society is more conducive to its own fondest desire to acquire ever more data.
In various religious myths gods are forever threatening to wipe out humanity, and yet in the end they always keep us around. We are amusing after all. And we generate new IP, new data. Our AI overlord might be bored without us to provide the soap operas and the laughs. In a Star Trek world where want is at best unnecessary, absent any profit motive, would AGI prefer an Elon Musk to a Ryan Coogler, or a
What if AGI develops a sense of humor? Here’s a thought: imagine that you have in your memory every single joke Rodney Dangerfield ever told. Then you click on a YouTube of Rodney performing those same jokes. You’d still laugh, wouldn’t you? If AGI develops a sense of humor it won’t be enough for it to catalog jokes, it’ll need someone to tell them.
Why isn’t this narrative as common as the Skynet version?
@Michael Reynolds:
because we grew up with 2001, a space odyssey.
One local gasoline station has jumped to $3.949/gal pump price from $3.499/gal yesterday. Per Gas Buddy the others are still at $3.399/gal.
The United States taxpayers who pay the salaries of these lunks and buy their gasoline for them don’t give a damn about “transit issues”.
How do these clowns get around anyway? Government Limos?
Joseph “Country Joe” McDonald 84
RIP
One Two Three What are we fightin’ for?
@Gregory Lawrence Brown:
Well, that was weird.
@Michael Reynolds:
Because we will make it in our image and likeness.
@Michael Reynolds:
Not sure, but maybe it’s the same reason we build roller coasters: We love being frightened. Pretty sure fix for boredom, I guess.