Saturday Happy Hour

Enjoy

Karoline Leavitt Is Pregnant

And I hope she gets the finest medical care at the level she supports for all women.

Lunch

Shop while you eat! (Ad, I get a commission).

PR For The Rich and Famous

Elon Musk has made plenty of confidently wrong predictions over the years. I will even grant him some credit and say that earlier he probably even believed some of them, though saying  that he believed something isn't much different than saying Trump believed something. They are actually quite similar.

But nothing he said would have mattered all that much if both tech and mainstram journalists didn't treat his utterances as the proclamations of a genius.  And, then, being complicit in the con, remaining unwilling to revisit their own role.

There are a couple of points in time when Elon would have gone bust if not for his hype team in the press and some financial interventions by either deluded or corrupt (both) elected officials.

Elon barely talks about Mars anymore. It was his whole thing!

Defenders of "American" Civilization Have Never Encountered It

I think it is the case that lots of people believe that immigration began in 1990s because the past, for some, is nothing more than fake stories, but I don't know what do about people  who look at Martin and Sinatra and think "Mayflower children." 

I don't know how to deal with people who don't mind being confidently wrong and feel no shame when they are.

Morning

Slacker Saturday

TELL MISTERS TRUMP AND HEGSETH IT WAS A GREAT SUCCESS

Don't put anything to the contrary in the newspaper. 

The US military said in its initial assessment that “multiple” Isis members had been killed in the strikes on extremist “camps”.

However, residents of Jabo professed surprise at the strikes, saying the bombs had landed in empty fields, causing no casualties, and that Jabo had been relatively shielded from violence. The last attack by militants had occurred two years ago, they said. Video footage on Nigerian television showed pieces of burnt metal in what looked like farmland. 

One man told Arise News, a local television station: “Glory be to God, there was no loss of life.”

Friday Afternoon

enjoy

How Much Does A Billion Cost, Michael? 10 Billion?

One day soon we will realize a computer that gets math problems wrong much of the time is not an especially useful computer.

As A.I. Companies Borrow Billions, Debt Investors Grow Wary

...

Investors in the A.I.-fueled stock market have largely shrugged off warnings about a tech bubble, an optimism that has pushed up share prices to repeated new highs this year.

But the debt market is telling a different story, some investors say. New artificial intelligence companies looking to raise funds to supercharge their nascent businesses are being made to pay lofty interest rates on the money they borrow, indicative of investors’ skepticism when new, unproven A.I. businesses take on large debts.

I've heard a few "AI company" pitches recently and they are all like "a chatbot helps you with something" and I am surprised people are lending at any rate for this stuff.

Money Can't Buy You

I know there is a selection issue here - we only hear from the rich guys who never shut the fuck up - but it is still a mystery why all these rich guys can't stop posting. There is nothing wrong with a bit of posting - I do it occasionally myself - but that they are so invested in it, and get so enraged by it that they have to warp society over their twitter beefs, is hard to comprehend.

Go sip wine in Italy. Climb a mountain. Learn violin. Become an arts patron. Whatever.

Simply Having A Wonderful Christmastime

I am glad My President spent yesterday doing what he loves best - posting 200 insane things on his website..

Morning

Boxing Day

Embarrassing

I can't imagine being an actual Trump fan. I don't mean a Trumpism fan.  They are cruel assholes. I get that. There are plenty of cruel people.

I mean a fan of Trump, the man.

Just laugh at these people. It is so absurd. They are so absurd.

Mechnical Turks You Never Thought Of

My long-held belief us that Waymo has been obscuring how much human intervention they use, and this task is funny example of that.

Adkins had witnessed an Achilles’ heel of the Waymo robotaxis that ferry thousands of riders in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities each week. The vehicles can navigate city streets and compete with taxi drivers without anyone behind the wheel — but become stranded if a human doesn’t close the door behind them at the end of a ride.

Because riders and passersby can be unreliable, Waymo pays workers in Los Angeles $20 or more for rescuing a robotaxi by closing a door, summoning help through an app called Honk that is like an Uber for towing companies.

Sure Why Not

I get that there is a certain romantic appeal to manned space exploration, but if there are jobs perfectly suited for the AI robots we are supposedly building, they are whatever the fuck Altman imagines the space jobs are.

OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman says in 10 years’ time college graduates will be working ‘some completely new, exciting, super well-paid’ job in space

Their consistent vision of "the computers should do the fun creative jobs while humans should do dangerous drudgery" is very weird!

Happy Life Day Everybody!

Felicitations of the season

The thing about the Winter Solstice is that if you're in the northern hemisphere, it doesn't much matter what you believe because a solstice just is, no matter how you were raised, and that means that in December the days are short, the nights are long, and the weather is chilly no matter how you were raised. Why wouldn't you want to see pretty lights and spend time with friends, possibly drinking eggnog or mulled wine? It's kind of nice that from a week or so before Thanksgiving until right up to Twelfthnight, you have an excuse to wish people happy holidays and even smile at strangers. (I've always thought the southern hemisphere should make their own holidays to go with their winter solistice, too.) It's fun. It's friendly. And Bill O'Reilly was always a meanie for trying to spoil it. I've always maintained that he, and people like him, were the ones who were making war on Christmas, so f'm. I wish you warmth and light and fellowship.

In case the holidays leave you short of things to read, a few reminders:

When I want the details, The American Prospect is good at clarifying things. If it's important, it will surely be there somewhere.

Or Radley Balko at The Watch, especially on the subject of off-the-leash policing. (Link fixed.)

The folks at Drop Site News have been doing some amazing coverage of big stories, especially that huge one it's so dangerous to talk about.

When I just want the headlines and a basic story without too much deep-diving, I find Common Dreams a comfortable read, reasonably sane, sort of like I used to think The Washington Post was before I realized it wasn't at all like that. (And that was well before Bezos bought it.)

I was watching an old Tom Baker episode of Doctor Who and noticed the planet they landed on was called "Atrios". Fancy that.

Signed,
Not Atrios

Xmas Eve Evening

Wrap those presents

ONE MILLION DOCUMENTS

Sure why not.

Randy Andy

My Dad called him that when I was a kid, though I didn’t have any idea why or what it meant.

Email from ‘A’ at British royal family’s residence asked Ghislaine Maxwell for ‘inappropriate friends’