Category: Comment

Unmarvelous

Saw Deadpool and Wolverine this weekend. I was hoping for more of a tie-in with the old movies, but it was really a cursing and violence bonanza. A young employee said it was his favorite movie.

So yet again, I feel old.

A lot of friends have children. Today I also learned that a friend of mine in his 50s is getting married. I quipped, “there is a God.”

I had a young man I met at church last year sometime who said incredulously, “you still want to have a relationship?” Youth is wasted on the young.

Where does resignation to your age begin?

Creeping, All-encompassing

The Engineers press forward to what they consider the future, creating a “new slate.” The past is not a problem; they will just rewrite it and point toward a future that they believe no one else has thought of.

They wield government to create executive orders, audits, investigations, penalties, fines, regulations, government healthcare, and to restrict the free market with wage and price controls.

When finally free speech becomes hate speech and the engineers take control of the family, education, and children’s lives, then we have crossed over the Rubicon.

Man sells himself for comfort.

The Deserts of Memory

Can memory be reset? It seems it’s easy. Change can happen faster if the past of your enemies is maligned and if your own past is forgotten.

Repeating what you want others to remember is an effective method in bringing about forgetting the bad, emphasizing a person’s good traits or successful actions. “I would never do that,” says the morally superior human. Forgetting his past, his opponents’ maligned, and he a new person.

Radicalism kills history, kills memory, kills examination. Because of pain, we don’t want to look back. But self-awareness is the only way the future can amend wrongs and errors.

Day 4

Apparently, you can have it both ways.

You can say you want to be uniters, while disparaging the opposition. You can revile your opponents and declare openness. You can claim “joy,” while exhibiting pure anger.

These are not happy warriors. Using stronger emotion to drive your politics and crushing dissent are the making of tyrants.

DNC troubles?

The news media has been drawing parallels between the riots at the 1968 DNC and the planned protests at this week’s DNC. One difference is that there are still significant Democratic believers in the right of Israel to protect itself. How long will that be true?

College students are carrying the torch for Hamas. They stop traffic, they shut down businesses. No matter your belief on the war in Gaza, we should be able to agree that your fellow citizens should not be harassed.

I was watching an episode of Somebody Feed Phil wherein the happy chef is enjoying a carnivorous meal and a bothersome anti-meat crusader passes by Phil and his companions, saying “meat is murder,” or something to that effect. Phil responds, “I guess no one learned manners.”

People deserve to be free from harassment. Your cause may be important to you, but don’t force others to have to support your cause.

It’s a basic tenet of our Bill of Rights. You get free speech and freedom of association, and others get their freedom to not have to listen to your free speech and to associate with people who don’t care about your cause.

It’s time to grow up.

Olympic View

After the last two weeks, I am more convinced that mankind believes and has hope in good things.

Why are teamwork and peace and friendly competition lifted up between nations, not perfectly at peace, ideals? Yes, there are many issues and many conflicts around the world right now, and one can’t be Pollyannaish. But hope is a good thing.

Just finished The Magicians Nephew. Of interest to me right now is its bit about how someone could block Aslan’s words out of mind to a point where all you would hear is a roar or growl. Makes you think about how His voice should reach you, and warn against conscious blocking out of His voice. Lewis was such a master and had a perceptive vision of human nature.

In anger one can purposely drown out the good voice, angry about struggle. But where can we go? The dream that permeates the world still speaks today.

Administrative Problems

The scandal of the Secret Service’s ineptitude (or worse) is a sign of a creeping administrative state that is unelected and accountable. It’s been said lately that part of that problem is the hiring practices of the diversity crowd. I don’t want to go into depth on DEI. Plenty of other people have said enough.

I have a dream of a new liberalism that stresses a new citizenship, unity over diversity, and civilization-building over inward-looking self-destruction. Family, friendship, and commonalities over superficial physical features.

The New Values
– Education focused on how to think not what
– Production from the supply chain to the citizen that is secure and optimized for less waste
– Energy policy that sensibly leverages fossil fuels while being forward-looking with nuclear
– Technology that serves the individual and provides communitarian tools
– Agriculture as the bread basket to the world
– Wealth and opportunity for all

The meritocratic corporation can be an answer.

The Inbetween Times

“Oh that’s fake.”

Needs some repeating: Deepfakes and fake video are on the edge of indiscernibility. It’s a sea change coming. We won’t know disinformation when we see it.

The public may not be thinking of the immensity of this. “Oh, it’s just online memes.” Memes aside, real news and information are closer to truth oblivion. It’s still a fiction thing. AI has moved beyond audio; AI video will be widely available.

Concomitant with this is the normalization of insularity due to the pandemic’s effects.

Please, get outside. I’ll join you.

Try as you might, the out there becomes life

Neil DeGrasse Tyson brings the truth, the need for reconciliation of the biblical world and science. You can’t be afraid. 13.8 billion years ago the fire brought galaxies to bear.

How can we speak to those who are sold out on the scientific method. Why is this even a concern? The gravity of discussion calls to that high place where we can say “I don’t know.” But fear erupts when we see the whittling away of supposed biblical narrative. But those in the peer-reviewed community don’t get a satisfactory answer to their questions.

I’m not sold, I can’t be. Everything should go on as needed. Everything should cause us to welcome questions.

The new immigration

Recently seen more on European immigration. The scale is very similar to ours. But the type of immigrant is different from the past. How is the West going to survive in the same way at these levels? We and the Europeans were previously able to absorb and integrate people much different than us. In Italy for example, the population has dropped precipitously and other ethnicities are changing the fabric. Culture is changing in each Western nation. It’s a brave new world and I can’t see where it’s all going.

The Heavier Requirement

The sometime appreciation for China’s poverty-reducing measures relies on the CCP’s supposed benevolence in other ways. From our vision outside China, we see:
* the ruthless treatment of minorities like the Uyghurs in the brainwashing camps
* the military drills with eyes on Taiwan, Japan, and other nations in China’s orbit
* the theft of our technology and IP
* the expansionist mindset with the Belt and Road colonies, including spying
* the monitoring of their populace with the social credit and other systems
* the stealthy weapon of TikTok and other Chinese tech companies
* the Chinese police stations in Western countries

The occasional Western fascination with China is a head scratcher. To the Left, the strange kingdom over seas appears more praiseworthy than our democracies. When taken together, I think this confluence of Leftist beliefs about the malignancy of capitalism and the various social issues of “oppressed minorities” has caused a lack of self-awareness in the progressive.

As upholders of true democracy, though imperfect, we must make every effort to see the world as it is.

AI reflex

Open AI caught Google and others off guard.

But the models I am working with are specialized. I had read that specialization is the future. I can see that small language models (SLM) may be the future. I’ve wondered whether certain ideas for language models could be built for purposes that are focused. Within this, I could love to create a Christian history model. It could include images, tables, graphs. Maybe someone has done this? The possibilities are intriguing.

Time for the focus on specialized purposes in AI.

Don’t win, just change the rules

It’s easier to change the rules than follow them. Radical egalitarianism results in:

– The electoral college
– End the filibuster
– Pack the court
– Add new states
– Nationalize voter laws
– Apportion senators by population
– Enlarge the house
– Nullify federal law
– Redefine impeachment

Respect federal, state, the courts — and the people.

On The Demolition of Francis Scott Key Bridge

Should we not look askance of the tearing down? Do the beautiful colors bleed? Not spoken of in prophecy, the fabric of democracy flutters in the breeze. Old ideas not so old, our lifespans but inches on the yardstick. Remember the profundity, remember the novelty, from voice to voice spread the call to arms. Something deep and wonderful.

“Elon Musk” update

I’ve had to put down the Musk biography because of the new job. But I did have some opinions of what I have read so far.

There’s obviously some venom toward him. Some people think he’s brought chaos to the world; others, a new freedom for discourse. Both are true. I  certainly wouldn’t want to work for him. Yes, it’s true that he is an inspiration, especially for those on the spectrum–and I thought that for the first 500 pages of Isaacson’s book. But when the stories become repetitive, you get the idea of what it’s like in that brain of his.

He has “surges,” where he pushes his employees to outperform. Many times, his demands are successful–other times, not. He sleeps on the factory floor or in a conference room and has a preternatural ability to sleeplessly work through technological problems until they are solved.

My biking buddy Lennie said a friend who worked for Musk told him of his holding one-on-ones with employees where he doesn’t look up while you are sitting there and asks difficult questions. He’s certainly a genius in engineering and asks those Google-level interview questions.

But there may be a trail of beat-up workers: the ones that have managed to survive his firings. (He asked who wanted to remain at Twitter/X when he took over, but then fired some of the same people who decided to stay.)

So, interpersonally, he sounds like an intimidating man. But he certainly has made a dent.

Work in general

I forgot about the need for free time when you work full-time. I miss my mornings reading. But I am doing some really cool stuff for work.

In the news, some alarming items about the middle east. It’s easy to get into apocalyptic thinking.

Still thankful for fam and friends, people who prayed for me.

Been taking Jax to a new park when possible, but he gets overheated.