Friday’s Forum
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78 responses to “Friday’s Forum”
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The Florida headline of the day- A man charged with voter fraud in Florida blames rivalry between Trump and DeSantis supporters
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The headline of the day- Bodies from Yevgeny Prigozhin plane crash contained ‘fragments of hand grenades,’ Russia says
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@CSK: And I was just gonna ask, “Did I miss anything yesterday?” I guess I won’t put my foot in my mouth (thanx for that) and just say,
I am so very sorry Jax, words are inadequate.
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I did not have this on my 2023 Headline Bingo card: New York man pleads not guilty to stalking woman by plane for four years
Michael Arnold, 65, was arraigned in southern Vermont – where he kept his plane – on charges of aggravated stalking, violating an abuse prevention order, resisting arrest, impeding a public officer and providing false information to police.
He was released on several conditions, including that he have no contact with the woman, not stalk her, and stay 300 feet (91 meters) from her home and business, as well as from all airplanes.
When the FBI are investigating you, ya done fcked up.
Arnold was arrested Tuesday as he was arriving at the William H. Morse state airport in Bennington, Vermont, where he kept his 1976 Cessna 180 single-engine plane. He said he had not stalked anyone and denied that he was flying his plane the day before, saying instead that he was riding with someone, police said. According to the affadavit, Arnold told the officer that he had had no contact with the woman and that if he had wanted to harm her he could have done so very easily, but never did.
Says every stalker ever.
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The employment numbers for September are in: up an incredible 336,000, which is roughly double what was expected.
And yet the majority of Americans still believe Trump–who, we shouldn’t forget, is the first President in modern history who ended up with a net negative in jobs even after adjusting for COVID–is better than Biden on the economy.
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From Dead lawns, dry wells: Texas drought persists after summer heat dome, comes this little tidbit:
The events in the hill country are “just a microcosm of the global situation”, said Dr Zong-Liang Yang, a professor in the earth and planetary sciences department at the University of Texas at Austin.
Without human-induced climate change, the heatwaves that swept across the US, Mexico and southern Europe this summer would have been virtually impossible, Yang said: “The probability is less than 1%.”
While climate scientists have a high degree of confidence in connecting extreme temperatures to climate change, droughts are trickier. “Temperature is directly related to the greenhouse effect. If you have more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, they will lead to more greenhouse warming,” Yang said.
Drought, however, is influenced by a host of factors, including wind patterns, cloud formations, and pollutants. Although he cautioned that further study is needed, he said: “For current ongoing droughts, I would think that human-induced climate change would play a very high role.”
Welcome to our new normal
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Ok, serious question, why do they think that Jordan will be successful at this, at all? Are they just that deluded?
I suspect that with Trump’s endorsement, Jordan likely wins. However, I can’t imagine he has any ability to actually govern beyond simply lighting everything on fire. He’s an absolutely abhorrent person. I mean, Scalise is bad, but it’s my understanding that he’s at least friendly (?, slick? smart?) enough to have some contacts across the aisle. Does Jordan? I’m under the impression that he’s about as hated as Gaetz on the Dem side.
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@Beth: I found this Tweet from Rick Wilson interesting.
https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1710295069717057757
The lobbyist of my long acquaintance, who works for a very large association in DC sends:
“If they pick Jim Jordan, it’s Speaker Jeffries and I’m fucked.”
Me: “Yes.”
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@Beth:
The biggest challenge for the new speaker is going to be dealing with Matt Gaetz, and Jim Jordan has past experience with catering to sexually abusive coworkers
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This speaker’s race is yet another hot mess. I’d be surprised if Jordan isn’t running a whisper campaign focused on Scalise’s health (Scalise was dx with multiple myeloma in August).
Jordan, of course, would be a disaster of epic proportions for the country. He’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer and comes with a ton of baggage from his ignoring sexual abuse allegations from his time at Ohio State.
Good lord.
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And conspiracy theories are now so mainstream, that Mad Vlad can give misleading and fragmentary misinformation sounding like one.
Battlefield hand grenades kill by shrapnel, not by blast. Meaning if one goes off a few meters from you, the fragments will kill you but the blast won’t. A grenade going off on a plane won’t bring it down, unless it goes off in the cockpit and takes out the pilots.
What Mad Vlad said, in effect, was “I did not shoot down plane. I blew him up.”
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eww, gross, you win. Lol.
@Mikey:
That is interesting and I suspect is how it will play out. After the government shutdown ends in February.
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@OzarkHillbilly: l have read a bit about Anderson’s Heat Hypothesis. Hot climates make for hot tempers, in a nutshell. Add in lots of guns and hellzapoppin’!
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Nothing on Trump sharing nat’l security secrets with a foreigner?
Seems like kind of a big deal…
https://abcnews.go.com/US/after-white-house-trump-allegedly-discussed-potentially-sensitive/story?id=103760456 -
@Beth:
“Ok, serious question, why do they think that Jordan will be successful at this, at all?”
Your definition of success and theirs is very different. For them “simply lighting everything on fire” is a success.
Jax,
Sorry to hear of your loss.
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@CSK: Look on the bright side. Now it will be easier to lose that excess weight.
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@Mikey:
I’m certain we won’t see a Speaker Jeffries until 2024 at the earliest.
Best we can hope for is for a sizable group of Republiqans to offer a semi-sane candidate who does want to govern, and offer the Democrats a small bone in exchange for minimal support (ie enough votes to win the post, but not all Democratic votes).
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@CSK: Towards my mother’s end, nothing tasted good anymore. Except for Ted Drewes Frozen Custard that is. So every time I went to see her in the hospital, I made a stop at Ted Drewes*. I forget what her favorite was, but she ate every bite of whatever Concrete I got her. Maybe you’ve got something similar where you live?
*a south side STL institution
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Not familiar with Ted. I’ll have someone bring me something edible. Thanks, though.
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@CSK: Ted Drewes is a St. Louis institution. Frozen custard–think of something along the lines of soft-serve gelato. Very rich.
The original Ted Drewes location, IIRC, is along the path of the old Route 66.
I hope someone smuggles in some tasty treats for you!
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While @CSK: deals with real medical issues, and @jax copes with the world collapsing in on her, at a much more trivial level I can report that thanks to cataract surgery I now have super telescopic vision in one eye. I mean, I can always see the mountains from my condo here in Vegas, but goddam, I can really see the mountains now. If there was a single flower* up there, I’d see it. I could go to Ukraine and target tanks five miles away. When I get the other eye done I’m putting in for x-ray vision.
*Fun fact: the state flower of Nevada is gravel. State animal: fossilized trilobites. State bird: Southwest Airlines 737. State mascot: buffet shrimp. I’ll stop now.
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On the one hand, Kathy’s First law states: Nothing lasts forever.
On the other hand, I can’t see how a sentient, technologically advanced species can go extinct.
Yes, we have only one example of a species such as I described above, and we don’t exactly get high marks in popular depictions of self-preservation. After all, we’re messing with the climate, polluting every nook and cranny in our living space, turning life into shareholder value, etc.
I can see many, many ways in which we can deal a major blow to civilization, but not one that ends in all of us dying off. There’s no payoff in doing that.
In any case, there hopefully exist other sentient, technologically advanced species in the universe.
All that aside, I see three scenarios for advanced civilizations:
Local: dependent on resources and energy sources on the planet and low orbit.
Interplanetary: capable of using resources and energy sources all over the local solar system.
Interstellar: capable of using resources and energy sources from an indefinite number of solar systems (plural).
The first two end in natural extinction once the star at the center of the system ages long enough and destroys all or most of the system it used to illuminate and keep warm(ish). For the Sun, it may grow too hot in about 1 billion years to evaporate all water on Earth.
A local human civilization, then, cannot last more than 1 billion years (possibly less). An interplanetary human civilization can ameliorate or stretch this time period, by, for instance, building a large enough object to block or filter out much of the sunlight reaching Earth, enough to keep water from boiling off and the temperature from getting too high. Maybe even moving the Earth farther from the Sun*.
An interstellar human civilization would simply move elsewhere. younger yellow stars should be good for several billion years. red dwarf stars for trillions. Even if there are no suitable planets we could inhabit, there will be resources that can be mined to support life under domes, or underground, or in large space habitats in convenient orbits.
Unless some or all the above is not possible.
In the long term, though, the universe will become too disorganized, and the energy sources too diffuse for life to continue. but that should be several trillion years from now.
*I’ve this notion of taking over Mars’ orbit and making it our second, more remote moon.
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I can report that thanks to cataract surgery I now have super telescopic vision in one eye
Does it make that Steve Austin noise when you focus on something in the distance? Now that would be cool.
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@OzarkHillbilly: I haven’t been in St. Louis in years, but last I was there I made a point to drive down to the Ted Drewes on old Route 66 and have a Concrete.
I was glad I did, that thing was delicious.
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@Kathy: The problem is that evolution chose an organism that is principally a parasite as its apex sentient being.
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@Michael Reynolds: For a combination of reasons, I had cataracts very early—late 40s in my left eye and early 50s in my right. Indeed, I’m not quite 58 now and have already had laser cleanup in both since.
Because I had Lasik way back in January 2000 and the surgeon had long since disposed of the records by the time I got the cataract surgery, it was a bit of a crapshoot. My eye doc is world class (he performed Tiger Woods’ Lasik a few months before I got mine) but still had to make an educated guess. I wound up with middle distance in both eyes rather than one long and the other short. Basically, my vision from 20 feet out is mildly fuzzy without glasses (but better than 20-20 with), things from 3-20 feet are super sharp, and I can fake the up close just fine.
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I’m beginning to wonder what sort of odds I can get on “Jeffries is Speaker by Jan 1”. Can’t be the favorite, but Trumps endorsement of Jordan just made it more likely.
I haven’t heard as much as about others, but I’m betting a lot of the Republican conference doesn’t like him either and think he would be crap as Speaker. Let’s not forget that it’s more than a title. It’s a job. It’s a big, hard job.
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@charontwo: Thanks for sharing that.
For every pie flung in someone’s face, there’s someone else whose job is to mop up the pie that hit the floor. For every clown car disaster, someone else has to break out the shovels and scrapers and hoses and get that gore gone.
Two sentences that manage to describe the current state of the roles of our two main political parties.
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@CSK: Discovery? The likelihood that he would end up paying their court costs? Inability to find a lawyer to take the cases on spec?
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@CSK:
My guess is that he’s too thin on legal representation and running out of funds. Both those lawsuits were more harassment than serious anyway and he was bound to lose. They are the old trump game of suing a poorer defendant in the hope they settle.
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Fun fact: the state flower of Nevada is gravel. State animal: fossilized trilobites. State bird: Southwest Airlines 737. State mascot: buffet shrimp. I’ll stop now.
The North Dakota version of that is…
Tree: telephone pole
Bird: mosquito
Motto: Keep your motto to yourself -
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From the billionaire space race front, Amazon launched two (2) prototype internet satellites meant to be a competitor for SpaceTwitters’s Starlink.
This puts Lex Bezos well behind the Head Xitter on several counts. For one thing, Lex had to hire another man’s rocket to get his launch off. He’s supposed to have his own launch company. Maybe if they manage to launch something, someday into orbit…
For another, these old fashioned disposable boosters cost more.
I suppose it’s good to have competition in expensive, space based internet service. I still worry about all the debris that keeps accumulating in low orbit.
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@Jen: There are 2 locations, the one on Chippewa (rte 66) and one on South Grand. I had always thought the S Grand location came first but what do I know? For a couple years I lived within walking distance of the S Grand location, which I dearly loved. But I always had a sad in winter because the SG store closed down and I had to drive to the Chippewa store to satisfy my cravings.
When I moved out here I had to give up my TD addiction cold turkey. The withdrawals were horrible.
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@Mikey: Always worth a stop.
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@CSK: Sorry to hear you got such a horrible result.
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As regards Trump dropping his defamation suit. There’s been a pattern I’ve observed a long time where somebody says something disparaging about a celebrity/businessperson and said target “sues” for libel. Even though what was said is true. The lawsuit is big news, and gets reported widely. Then they drop it later, maybe they try to get a settlement, but maybe they just drop it quietly, figuring it won’t be reported and their reputation is defended.
It’s all about appearances. And Trump is very savvy about appearances, and how the media works. Very savvy.
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@CSK: Of course. I’m certain the shock hasn’t worn off yet.
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Thank you all for all your kind words. I am….ok. I think. I am trying to stay focused and busy. My mom is currently undergoing cancer treatment in Arizona and is too weak to come home right now, so I’ve been doing funeral home stuff and banking stuff so I can legally keep the lights on and the cowboys paid here at the ranch.
I saw my Dad at the funeral home. I am glad I did. He’s cleaned up now, and it’s a much better image than the one I had in my head from accident, before the cops and EMT’s pulled me away so the firefighters could pry the baler open. I am certain that it was quick, and even if I had been able to get that baler open by myself, it would’ve been too late. I wish I knew if he heard me screaming that I loved him and please don’t leave me, but….I will never know in this lifetime.
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@Jax: You don’t know me and I don’t know you, but I’ve learned enough about you from your comments here to be confident that your dad knew you loved him whether or not he heard you at the end. I’m no longer a praying kind of guy but if good thoughts do any good, you have them from me. Take care.
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@anjin-san:
Hmm, I’m not entirely surprised. The backward-looking nature of AI means it feeds on cliché and trope. Overfeed, it seems. -
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@CSK: I’m pretty confident that he didn’t win any of either one.
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@CSK:
Getting from regurgitating to creating may be a big leap for AI, if it ever achieves it. While not buying all of the split brain ideas of Julian Jaynes, I do think it’s an interesting way forward, perhaps. AI is aware of other, but it does not have a self. Homo sapiens, most self-aware of animals, does have a bicameral brain with divided functions, different inputs, areas of specialization. As you know when you sever the corpus callosum you can end up with two subjectivities inside one skull. Maybe AI needs a different AI talking to it through a glitchy phone line. Maybe I isn’t possible without a thou. Paging Martin Buber. -
@Michael Reynolds:
Ever come across Peter Watts’ stories (Blindsight, Echopraxia ) about possible super-intelligent, but non-self conscious, beings?
Interesting speculation on the possibility that human style consciousness may not be a evolution-preferred state, but just a contingent outcome of Homo sapiens history. -
@CSK: In that case, you really really really do have my sympathies.
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@Jax: Don’t be too stubborn to seek help. My brother’s suicide hit me a lot harder than I was ready to admit at first. And I wasn’t there to watch it. Just being able to talk about shit helps. There is a whole world of crap I can’t say to family because there are some things they are better off ignorant of.
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@JohnSF:
“There’s insufficient data for a meaningful answer.” Multivac and successors, c. 2061-end of the universe.
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@Kathy:
“I’m sorry Dave…” -
The backward-looking nature of AI means it feeds on cliché and trope.
For a whole bunch of “reasons” I wan to do that AI 90’s yearbook thing that’s floating around on every Trans Instagram right now. I freaking love those tropes. I don’t know if it’s worth it to give up my data for that.
That and I would be absolutely crushed by it.
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@Kathy:
That’s a different story by another author.
True enough.
But the entire materia tends to blend together inside my head. -
@Kathy:
“There’s insufficient data for a meaningful answer.”
“The Last Question”, Isaac Asimov. I think it was actually “Insufficient data for a meaningful response at this time.”
