Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, June 11, 2026
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42 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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BlueSky.
I’m sitting on the upper terrace in my (rented) home in Estoril, gazing out at the ocean. I imagine what those early Portuguese sailors thought as they looked at this same scene, having almost no idea what was out there in the big, scary Atlantic. And how despite not even being capable of measuring longitude, or having a reliable compass, or any way to really keep time, nevertheless put to sea, in ships no longer than a WW2 vintage PT boat crammed with 60 men they had no hope of feeding long-term since they lacked refrigeration or a way to control the onboard rat population.
And how despite the peril, they clenched their determined jaws, and headed off to find gold and en route slaughter vast numbers of coastal and island natives with the back-up plan – should gold be hard to loocate – of some day returning with more men and more ships and enslaving whatever natives they had not slaughtered on the first go-round, and then establish colonies that could perpetuate the enslaving and the raping and the torturing for centuries.
This is why education is a bad thing and ignorance is bliss. First paragraph happy, second paragraph not as much.
@Michael Reynolds:
It’s a nice thought, but early Portugese explorers mostly hugged the coast of Africa. The discoveries of the Azores and Brazil were basically accidents after sailors were blown off course.
They didn’t set out to explore the Atlantic in hope of finding land. Whenever they deliberately struck west, they knew they were going to find something.
/pedant mode off
Good grief, I really hate these people.
Event honoring servicewomen canceled after most branches decline to attend
I’m going to repeat my posting from last night. WaPo reports that Trump’s last “checkup” at Walter Reed involved no fewer than twenty-two specialists. TWENTY-TWO. I get that he’s president and so a higher level of care than the average Joe, but good grief–twenty-two??!! That feels like a lot.
ETA: I continue to get WordPress errors when I post, claiming the site is unavailable, despite the post actually successfully posting. I’m using Firefox.
@drj:
Obviously you haven’t studied Joe Rogan and flat-earth theory.
I know. But I was thinking more of Magellan, or in Portuguese, Fernão de Magalhães, even though his voyage was more Spanish than Portuguese. I was going to get into the Portuguese-Spanish rivalry but the gruesome details (backstabbing, hangings, mutinies) lacked the dreamy tone I was going for.
(Fun fact, my sister’s boyfriend in the Azores was a Magalhães. I don’t know if there was a real familial connection, though he was a bit of a prick, so maybe.)
Portugal, like Belgium and Holland, gets a bit of a pass for its colonizing with Spain getting the lion’s share of opprobrium in the early game, and Britain more in later years – not implying any sympathy for either. It was brutal assholes all the way around.
One of my kids attended Sir Francis Drake HS where an effort was launched to dump SFD despite the fact that he was damn near ‘woke’ compared to the norm for the time.
All for the glory of Christ, of course.
And now we’ve ruined history for all the comment readers.
Is anyone else bothered by the fact that apparently the entire live audience at Knicks games consists of celebrity millionaires and billionaires? Almost all of them white millionaires and billionaires watching a game dominated by black players?
Granted I’m a weirdo in that I don’t get sports, never have, and have never cared what anyone did with a ball. Throw it, kick it, beat it was a stick, I DGAF. And I am just baffled by the hysteria of sports ‘identity politics’. We’re number one? We won? No, Larry David and Taylor Swift and Chalamet and fucking Zaslav, the players with the talent and the good genes won, you just spent enough money to draw focus.
@Michael Reynolds: No, I’m more bothered by the fact that us everyday taxpayers subsidize these billionaire-owned teams by building stadiums and constructing infrastructure for them. My personal policy is to vote against every bond issue on sports.
@Jen: I get the same error. I’m using Edge. No issue with posting though. Did have to delete a duplicate post.
@Jen: @Scott: I happened to me last night via Safari on my phone (we’ll see if it happens when I hit “Post Comment” here in a sec). I have let James know, and he has put in a ticket.
@Steven L. Taylor: And, it did…
@Michael Reynolds:
It stands to reason they’re the only ones who can afford tickets.
Are you not bothered by the fact San Antonio led the entire game, and fraudulently lost it at the last second because unaccountably the game kept on going even when it was clear San Antonio had won?
I didn’t see the game, but I gather that was the gist of it from reading Bluesky comments this morning.
I said Ma’at demands a bad turn after a good one. Yesterday a water pipe in the apartment upstairs broke in the course of some kind of repairs or remodeling, and water came gushing into my bathroom from where the ceiling light fixture used to be.
I got off easy. The upstairs neighbor agreed to pay for the repairs. That’s common in this building. We had to pay for repairs a few years back when an overflowing backed up sink in the kitchen caused water seepage downstairs…
@Kathy:
I’m frustrated that my NFL team is getting dragged into this.
Larry David and Taylor Swift and Chalamet, the definition of front runners. Probably only realized that NY had a BB team last week.
edit: getting the unavailable screen, yet comment posted on chrome
I’m getting the error in Chrome, Win11, too. So long as the comments post, though, it’s all good.
Anyway, about yesterday’s rant on XpaceS and Xtarlink, it’s not that clear whether or not XpaceS demands Xtarlink be offered free.
I did uncover that Adolf is charging airlines less for Xtarlink, which is chasing market share off a cliff to achieve a dominant position. this explains why Xtarlink exploded in airlines in 2025 and 2026, after dragging along since 2022.
It still costs airlines a lot, in the hundreds of millions of $ for large fleets like Air France or United. and that’s just to place the systems on aircraft (and I can see why Ryanair doesn’t want it on that basis alone). There’s talk of “alternative monetization,” such as playing ads. Some airlines offer it completely free, a few require you be enrolled in their loyalty program (all are free to enroll in).
My prediction still stands. this is classic stage 1 of enshitification: offer a good service at a low price. Next comes jacking up prices and degrading the service.
Lex’s BO service, called either Leo or Project Kuiper, is live and running, but with far fewer satellites, meaning coverage ought to be spottier, and perhaps speeds are lower.
I think the AI picture is becoming clearer.
Outside of coding, there’s little impact on LLMs replacing pele at jobs any time soon. They may serve as productivity aids, which might reduce the number of employees required in some industries, but they won’t outright take over jobs. Even in coding, this is what seems to be happening right now.
All this is subject to change. Technology keeps advancing. But for now, this is what seems to be the actual reality.
The notion that ChatGPT will take your job appears to be hype, largely disseminated by the AI companies themselves as a selling point to investors. The latter would love to pump up their share values in other industries by replacing human employees with, they’re told, far cheaper chatbots. This does not seem to be happening.
It appears, too, that data centers in orbit are also being sold as the one thing that will unleash the massive AI revenue once and for all. this gives off Theranos vibes. Sure, you won’t be limited to how many data centers you can clog Earth’s orbit with. and likely, if this happens, will involve large constellations of small satellites, rather than a smaller number of big satellites. Smaller satellites would be easier to cool, too.
This carries problems of its own, not least servicing malfunctioning satellites. But at least small satellites can be written off rather than repaired, right? Which still leaves launch costs to consider. No matter Adolf’s hype on Xtarship, if it ever winds down the blowing up stage of testing and begins actual orbital launches, costs will still be high. I don’t think this is the one thing that will unleash revenue, if any revenue can be unleashed.
One last thing. the dot.com bubble popped largely because many companies’ business plan seemed to be “to be acquired by a larger company for millions“. Many were relatively small startups, and I expect a few were garage companies with three employees, two of whom were the founders. But most of what these web companies offered had real value for many, be it as entertainment, information, connection to others, even early e commerce.
AI may have value for business, but I see limited real value for everyday people. And I’ve been trying to find it.
@Michael Reynolds:
Television coverage of professional sports, especially crowd shots used as filler, is highly orchestrated. Even more so during playoffs when celebrities are likely to show up. On the occasions when I do have an NBA game on during the regular season, I intentionally watch for shots where a chunk of the crowd above the first few rows is visible but not the focus of attention. There are plenty of minority folks there, and the makeup of those people varies from city to city in ways that make sense. More Blacks in NYC; more Hispanics in Phoenix; more Asians in Northern California. Those observations aren’t statistically sound, just my impressions over the years.
Add me to the list with the “site unavailable” error. Firefox on Linux, a combination I haven’t seen mentioned before.
@Kathy: So. I play a computer game called Terra Invicta. It is really big, and really complicated. Someone just published on Reddit a tool to help with one aspect of the game, which is earth politics, showing you possible unifications of different countries.
In the comments, it becomes clear that somebody vibe-coded this tool. This seems appropriate to me. It’s a hobby project meant as a tool for another hobby, which probably wouldn’t exist any other way.
This isn’t a deep project. It’s a project of “take some data” (probably done by hand) and create a visualization of it, with some interactivity. A person *could* do this, but it would take a lot more time, and most of the work would be boring as hell.
My main concern with this is that this is the kind of stuff you start junior programmers off with. Yeah, it’s boring, but they have a lot of things they need to learn about programming environments and work flow and the whole social organization of things – those things are not taught in school, nor should they be.
But if you use AI to do this, how do you grow more programmers?
@Kathy: The problem I see with AI is that a lot of businesses have already invested a ton of money and need to recapture that somehow. If not through shedding human employees, it will have to come from somewhere else.
So, enter the “push AI into everything” stage. This morning, I was horrified to read that Visa is adding AI to its payment network, and will allow chatbots *to purchase on behalf of users.*
I mean, what could possibly go wrong when you empower a chatbot to do your shopping using your credit card? JFC.
On other matters, I officially declare the 2026 FIFA Snoozefest boring.
But not without irony.
The rest of the department again pooled money to buy a big screen TV, and signed up for a streaming service package with all the games. The TV works. the streaming company seems over-saturated, and they can’t get it to stream at all. They went out to buy an aerial. So 20th century…
I also have one of the two best viewing places. I can remain at my desk, so I neither need to stand nor find a chair, and have an unobstructed view. And I couldn’t care less what happens in any game, or whether they manage to stream them.
The gods have a strange sense of humor.
@Jay L. Gischer:
I don’t have the supporting link, but I heard IBM is taking AI out of entry level positions, or no longer replacing entry level positions with AI, because otherwise they will lack people with the experience to handle mid level positions.
@Jen:
You may wind up with 500 thousand shares of Fireflies, Inc. 😀
When I tested Perplexity’s Comet AI agentic web browser, it took me a bit to realize it was a bad idea to let it have the info from Chrome, which included addresses, phone numbers, and credit card numbers. I uninstalled it and set it back up without allowing to import anything from the other browsers.
MS has incorporated Copilot in its browser, but you have to actively use it. Google has Gemini butting into every search, but I don’t think it’s incorporated to Chrome as such.
Trump has nominated Jay Clayton, a US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, for the DNI position. While not as uniquely unqualified as Pulte, I still don’t see what I thought was the REQUIRED national security experience for the job.
@Sleeping Dog: Chalamet grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, as a 4th or 5th generation New Yorker and long-suffering Knicks fan (and sports superfan in general) since childhood. He was a fixture courtside back when they were terrible; skipping glamorous industry events to attend Knicks games instead is part of his lore. He’s generally considered the 2nd most dedicated celebrity Knicks fan after Spike Lee, ahead of Ben Stiller.
Swift on the other hand…gurl what? You’re from Reading, you’re supposed to be suffering with Philly in basketball! Lol
@Kathy:
On Chrome and G-mail you need to opt in for AI to be part of the user experience. But on G-mail, they wrapped a bunch of existing editing features, spell check, auto complete into the AI opt in, so opting out costs you useable features.
Turn the sign. NYT (gift) reports the cease-fire is on again.
ETA: Unavailable message and comment posted. Safari.
@gVOR10:
Trump claims that some “breakthroughs” have been made. The Revolutionary Guard calls bullshit on that claim.
Just today:
Before Trump, Maine lobsters were procured from Japan.
Wind turbines are a national security threat because they could hide an autonomous drone army.
We have a new, but *also unqualified* candidate for DNI
Ag Secretary continuing to lie about the defunding of screwworm monitoring
Same Ag Secretary is proposing “AI on drones” to combat the current spread of said screwworms
…and that is just a quick roundup.
@Jen:
MBA brain. So far as I can tell, the goal of most MBA programs is to convince the students that experience and subject-matter knowledge are irrelevant; you need to know management. The DNI isn’t doing intelligence, are they? They’re managing intelligence. (Law school seems to instill the same belief.)
@Sleeping Dog:
I use Chrome at work and home, and Gmail on the phone and at home. I haven’t noticed any AI intrusion, except in the right-click menu that sends search terms to Google, which means to Gemini.
On the other hand, in gmail I mostly read emails and rarely write anything. Mostly I get newsletters and notifications there.
On other matters, El Taco is now claiming an agreement of some sort, even approved by Iran’s supreme leader Jr. There’s been no word from Iran about it.
@Kathy:
Iran says it’s bullshit.
@Michael Cain: I’m sure that is the “logic” being used, but as far as I am aware, Congress put one restriction on the position of DNI when it was created: the individual who holds the position MUST have “extensive national security experience.”
It’s literally in the law that created the job. I do not understand how, in the massive intelligence apparatus that we have, that Trump cannot seem to find a single person who is ACTUALLY qualified for the job. Meanwhile, that little twerp Mike Johnson is out there whining about the lack of a FISA renewal being dangerous. It’s all so eye-rolling.
Looks like Taco has Taco’ed again.
@CSK:
The thing is, you can say that about everything that comes off his facial anus, and you’d be right only… oh, wait.
They took their time denying it. Now they say no decision has been made.
Should I worry when the Persians get Laconic?
@Michael Reynolds:
Greed drove it all, of course. Check out the story of Anson’s “successful” voyage for a tale of horror on a par with Magellan’s. Only about 10% survived that one too, and the individual tales of the various ships that lost contact are great stories in themselves. Historical documentation much better than what we have for most of the Portuguese ones. The Portuguese held closely to the documents of their voyages, considered them the most closely guarded of state secrets. The habit of keeping them all in one place held long after, and the building they were stored in burned down in the 18th century.
Rats? A problem?? A culinary delicacy worth killing for to men who’ve been eating their belts and shoes.
@Jen:
1) I doubt any of the more competent people in the vast US intelligence establishment kisses the orange ass enough to get the job. They’d insist on informing El Taco on facts, not on what he wishes were so.
2) The problem with catering to idiots, is that one needs to sound idiotic. Johnson makes a good example. FISA is not being renewed now. It can be renewed later if/when sanity returns to the top of the vast US intelligence establishment.
@Jen: Seems the outrage over Pulte was so great Trump withdrew it today. Somebody named Clayton has been chosen now.
Nevertheless, Trump tried to load two 60-80 hour a week jobs on one guy. Perhaps the news here is that Trump is running our of people he feels he can trust, or ones capable of more than grunting and hooting, anyway.
@dazedandconfused: Yes, I noted Clayton’s appointment above. My point was that yes, Pulte’s name was withdrawn because of the outcry of his not being qualified. But Clayton is *also* not qualified. He’s an attorney, with what appears to be ZERO intel experience. When Congress created the DNI position, it *required* the person who holds it to have extensive intelligence experience. This isn’t just about Trump scraping the bottom of the barrel, he is quite literally flouting the law (but what else is new).
Oh, there’s so much wrong with this.
Sanity first. The expected share price for the XspaceS IPO is $135. The investment research group Morningstar has calculated a realistic value of $63 per share.
Now the rest.
Ok, the IPO already has a lot of eager fans, with subscriptions reaching over $250 billions, which is four time the $75 billion Adolf wants to raise. So, no doubt the launch will be successful (so, not a Xtarship launch).
The piece points out
Uh-huh. None of that is liable to make any money, at least not for several yeas, if not several decades.
I won’t rehash the data centers in SPAAAAACE. But consider a base on the Moon. Adolf could build one, no doubt, if his Xtarship works as intended. But who’s going to pay for it? Adolf? Don’t make me laugh. If a lunar base is built within the next 30 years or so, it will be by a government or a group of governments. Next, what’s the anual revenue from the ISS? I hardly think it’s trillions of dollars. that’s about what you can expect from a lunar base, which will serve very well for research of various sorts, but won’t make money. Likewise cities in Mars and all the other stuff.
So, if you want to finance Adolf’s fantasies, go right ahead. If not, well, maybe he can support a second meme stock long term.
@dazedandconfused: I saw a story that RFK Jr. is paying little attention to the bulk of the work of HHS, focusing only on his little obsessions. Little Marco has three or four jobs, which only works if he doesn’t take them seriously and lets the bureaucracy and his various deputies run on autopilot. I doubt Pulte is spending 60 to 80 hours a week on his current job. Just focusing on doing Trump’s dirty work and sucking up. His appointees don’t take their duties any more seriously than Trump himself.
@gVOR10:
For the parts of the administrative state not deconstructed for reasons of ideology—that which tends to include the transfer of power and financial benefits to the administration’s allies.