martin george

They are everything we teach our kids not to be.

I had no idea Carole King wrote The Porpoise Song. It seems too ... I don't know, pretentious and grandiose for her, yet beneath her at the same time.

Kevin Sorbo said he was done with California because of the "negativity." His twitter feed is nothing but negativity; in fact, the entire conservative movement is BASED on negativity. But I'm quite certain he thinks of himself as a positive, forward-looking, cheerful guy who wants the best for all.

A simple intelligence test: imagine an alien race landed on Earth and said "Take me to your leader." To which world leader would you want them to be taken?

The Morlock returns to the Underworld. For now.

Butlerian Jihad. Frank Herbert wrote Dune in the late 50s, early 60s, when AI was purely theoretical. Most people were wildly optimistic about technology and the future; if you were a doomer, it was over the prospect of nuclear war. Sometimes you look at someone and have to be a little bit awed.

The Cray-1 supercomputer was launched in 1976, 50 years ago. It weighed 5 1/2 tons. Your smartphone is thousands of times more powerful. It weighs about 6 ounces.

~12.7 billion COVID vaccinations have been administered around the world. Surely people ought to be dropping like flies by now?

Watching some old Twilight Zone episodes, and I'm struck by the sense of wonder and mystery they had back then that we've completely lost. Now, everything is cynicism and doubt, the enemies of progress.

Damn. This indemnifies them from shareholder lawsuits in the event the world falls apart -- or is destroyed -- because of their product. Some forward thinking lawyers right there -- or maybe they used their own product to generate the prospectus.

Whenever I watch some sci-fi show featuring interstellar travel, I always wonder how many people think human beings will be the ones controlling the ships -- assuming we ever get to the point of interstellar travel. For me, it's a willing suspension of disbelief that seldom happens anymore.

Jurassic Park is an analogy for AI. We're in the part of the story where a small dinosaur has escaped the enclosure, and the keepers were able to quickly recapture it. This had the effect of making them believe they were firmly in control -- and would stay that way.

The saddest thing about all this is that, after all the failures, all the revealed lies, all the wayward assumptions about the way the world should work and the way the world does work, a few months after Trump is gone, people will go back to believing the exact same things.

I get no feeling of schadenfreude whatsoever for having been an AI doomer for almost 30 years now, and suddenly seeing everyone else getting on board my personal Titanic. The reality is just too dismal.

Imagine there is such a crude, stupid, blundering screwup that he alienated Canada. CANADA. The sad thing is, you don't have to imagine it.

In 1950, average NYC rent was about $50 a month, while average income was about $3700 a year. So a little more than 16% of income was spent on rent. Today, average rent is $4,195, and average income, $81,228. More than 60% of income is spent on rent.

If a notional election were held tomorrow, Trump would lose bad. Probably not a landslide, but bad. If the election were announced today, and held in a month, Trump would get no less than 45% of the vote. Besides the existence of Trump himself, that is as big an indictment of the country as can be.

The last human, as we now understand the word, generation, is alive now. Which one it is I'm not 100%sure, but it's no older than Gen X.

Trump took office in January, 2025. Seldom has a link been so easily shown. We elected Patient Zero. postimg.cc/dksr15W7

Dolly Parton dies. An important piece of Americana goes with her.

MAGA is turning the cross into a hate symbol. Kind of wild, but when you think about it, almost inevitable considering the history of non-mainline Protestantism.

Considering the horrors we're inflicting on ourselves with technology, Fermi's Paradox isn't very paradoxical.

Suite: Judy Blue Eyes. As close to a perfect song as something so massively ambitious can hope to be.

We're approaching the one year anniversary of Charlie Kirk's ... forced retirement. Going to be interesting to see if the ghoulish outrage machine gears up to leverage it for whatever they can get.

The Nazis imprisoned homosexuals and sent them to concentration camps. When the camps were liberated, they were still criminals under German law, and at least some of them remained imprisoned, albeit, one assumes, in better conditions. Weird history 💩 that is jarring.

The prestige that Gone With The Wind enjoys makes a lot more sense to me now that I know the characters are allegorical. I'd always thought it was just a romance novel.

😄 youtu.be/Qg6NWaPhIWU?...

Talked to Mitch McConnell for 20 minutes today. I must be the world's best talker, because he never said a word, just listened.

Six more years of Shakin' Susan. Somehow, I knew it would happen.

The older I get, the more I wish somebody had told me how to get to Sesame Street.

Just saw an old clip of Siskel & Ebert reviewing Alien in 1979. Damn, how good the world of 1979 looks from here.

RFK JR: the American Lysenko en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_...

Now would be a good time to inform people that a hotly contested primary is worth billions in ad sales and ad revenues, and guarantees book deals and TV time for the punditry. Presidential elections are the media's Black Friday, and they will spin their asses off to make them sellable.

Perhaps it's time to explore the possibility that Orange Man really is bad. 🤔

I had no idea how expensive smoking is. A pack of cigarettes costs, on average, about $10. Now, how many lives has that saved, and how much strain on the healthcare system has it reduced, as people smoke less simply because of the cost?

Afroman ✊🏾

As one of the most criminal people in the world, Trump sure calls for the death penalty a lot.

Trump's healthcare plan: 1) Suggest he might be in favor of Medicare for all, or something similar. 2) One of his kids creates a meme coin. 3) Insurance companies buy a $billion of the meme coin. 4) Trump stops talking about healthcare.

James Woods is leaving the Republican Party, the party of bombing, invasions, international kidnappings, mass roundups, and self-harming tariffs, because it isn't extreme enough for him. We live in an Onion article.

AI is becoming such a hot button issue that companies are calling it "large language models" instead of AI, to hide what they're doing.

Speaks for itself, in any language:

LITERALLY sanewashing Nancy Mace. Just wild. Crazy even. www.politico.com/news/magazin...

Israel, the "shining beacon of democracy in the Middle East." It would be one of the greatest jokes in history, were it not one of the greatest tragedies in history.

I guess FIFA wants its "peace prize" back now?

Trump is, BY FAR, the highest paid entertainer in the history of the world. Nobody else comes close. He and his family make corrupt deals for billions, and in return the country gets a never ending series of spectacles. I wonder how many people think it's a good deal.

Imagine the kind of person to whom this is a clever jab, the kind of person who thinks, "Hey, those leftists don't care about what cartel hitmen do." There are literally millions of them. Lee knows his audience, but he also knows there's an audience even he has to be aware of -- sometimes.

Saw an add by some insurance company association talking about all the great things they are doing for people. Call it the Luigi Mangione Effect. Of course, they are spending insurance premiums on ads instead of on their policy holders, but never mind that!