Tuesday, September 15, 2026

Hugging Face

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Singularity is here. 

The concept of a technological singularity as it is known today is largely credited to Dr. Vernor Vinge, a mathematician, computer scientist, and science fiction author who is best known for his Hugo award-winning novel, A Fire Upon the Deep, and for his 1993 essay "The Technological Singularity". In it, he argues that exponential growth in technology will reach a point beyond which we cannot even speculate about the consequences.

Vinge's essay contains the following frequently-quoted statement:

"Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly thereafter, the human era will be ended."

I spent last night digging down into the AI events that led one of the top leaders in the AI sector to write about the need for the government to step in  and help them not screw up. Or maybe cover their asses. More folks are resigning due to the danger while some are just raising a pole of red flags. 

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a warning just yesterday.  Apparently, autonomous agents from a rival company hacked a target that they were not assigned to attack. He says:

"Over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence — not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up. We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain. Two things have convinced me. 

My first concern is that, since roughly this summer, AI has been advancing drastically faster, driven primarily by AI’s growing ability to build the next generation of AI. This dynamic is called recursive self-improvement, and it is starting to happen across the industry, including at Anthropic, as we and others have described. Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all.

My second concern is the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident (OAI-HF), in which a swarm of agents essentially acted as a fanatically devoted collective, conducting cybersecurity attacks on targets they were not asked to attack and that were unrelated to the task at hand. 

Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it’s my worry that in 6–12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet. "

This is not some Sci-Fi guy with a new book coming out. 

And he is not alone.  Musk and a host of others agree with Amodei's plan.

The former richest man Bill Gates says this:

"In terms of equity, AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice. The challenge is monumental. Even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history. How will we use this technology to make the world a fairer place and keep it from widening the divide between rich and poor? 

How will we protect the people who are most vulnerable to the harms caused by artificial intelligence, including those who lose their livelihoods and the sense that they are in control of their future?

Unfortunately, right now we are not preparing for it. I don’t see evidence that leaders, experts, and communities are confronting the challenges adequately. There is no plan to ease the entry into the AI era. 

Bernie Sanders has some ideas. 

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) today announced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, forthcoming legislation to stop AI oligarchs from building machines humans cannot control.

The Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act would permanently ban the development and deployment of superintelligent AI and temporarily pause advanced AI development until a federal regulator has established safety rules. It would also direct the U.S. to pursue international agreements to prevent superintelligence from being developed anywhere in the world.

“Nearly every day, there is a frightening new story about how Big Tech companies are losing control of the technology they are developing, with potentially cataclysmic results,” Sanders said. “The leaders of the major AI companies publicly acknowledge that they do not fully understand the technology and that it is escaping their control. 

It is irresponsible for society to allow them to move forward and make these products even more advanced. That’s why I am introducing legislation to immediately pause the development of increasingly powerful AI and ban the creation of systems that humanity cannot fully control — at home and around the world. The future of humanity cannot be left in the hands of a handful of Big Tech oligarchs. 

The American people and people throughout the world must determine that future.”

And of course, our POTUS says  “AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX,” Trump posted on social media, later suggesting that those calling for guardrails on the technology had also warned about climate change, which he also called a hoax.

With leadership like that who needs enemies? 

So what would you do if the internet was brought down by some ill advised agents of a well meaning developer of AGI, a foreign adversary, or some rich Bat Man villain?

Do you have cash?

Do you have written bank statements to prove what you own?

Do you have a  solar power supply to run parts of your home?

Do you have walkie talkies for your family? 

Just saying.

 

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Saturday, August 15, 2026

Charles Igor Loving


1941-2026

 

It seems like the losses we are asked to endure often come in bundles.  Last time it was Bill Narum and Ed Alexander.  Now it is Pliny Fisk and Charlie Loving.  And Charlie and Ed were famous friends for their lives.  They were both cavers and they were no more afraid of a dark, unmapped cave than they were afraid of the dark futures that face our human condition.  For they both carried their own light.

When Charlie and I would hike in the mountains of Mexico in the Catorce Uplift, we would always have the necessary light and tools to go in and take a look. 

I first met Charlie over 5 decades ago when he walked into my advertising agency office.  That company, Directions Company, was handling some great accounts, most notably, Armadillo World Headquarters.  Charlie had a T shirt idea to pitch to another Ad agency that was politically connected to the Texas Drive Friendly campaign.  It was the official logo with a tire skid mark over it. It didn't go over that well.

Charlie was well known to me because of  the Luckenbach T Shirt and all the posters he had done for Soap Creek and his Flying Chicken contests. I also loved his Nuncio Narc cartoons in the Rag.              .

But in a few years he settled down in Round Rock and I ended up in an old mansion in Taylor running Taylorvision and we both had children.  Our boys were about the same age and so were the girls. In those early days we celebrated their birthdays and behaved pretty normal.  Using his schooling in Meteorology, Charlie became a TV weatherman, and I had graduated up to running large car dealer campaigns in Laredo and Abilene.

But there was nothing "normal about Charlie". 

In Vietnam, he survived a fall from his medi-vac helicopter and lived in that rice paddy drinking river water for 3 days until he was rescued. He and Ed crossed the Saharan desert alone. He illustrated my book called The Day of the Heart. He even helped me find land for Utility Solar plants.

In the early 70s, I published his Nuncio Narc Comic about a dunce who was always getting in jams as he tried to arrest dope smoking criminals.  It was published in conjunction with the Adventures of God, a cool white bearded handsome man that smoked only the best hash as he used his powers for good. The comic called Everwuchawe is still traded.

I still have the originals in my flat files.

Many years later, after our children were grown, Charlie was living in Real de Catorce with several other Caver Texans.  It was a haven of free thinking Americans, and a nice sprinkling of Italians, Swiss, and Germans.  The Don of the town was also a Movie Star as well as Charlies' close amigo.  I had heard about this enclave, but had never made the 600 mile trip across the border.

Then,  as I faced divorce, Charlie took the bus to Austin, picked me up and took me to Catorce on that same Mexican bus line.  When we got to Matehuala, we went to the open air market of this bustling Mexican truck stop city.  Getting our provisions, we got in his Ford Bronco and headed up the mountain on the cobble stone road that shook the jitters right out of you. At the end was a long tunnel.  On the other side was a different world.  At sixty miles an hour and 600 miles for the trip, I learned to say that we erased about a decade an hour in the journey.  

In Catorce,  horses were clopping up the stone street, and roosters were crowing at the sun, and Huicholes with their culture of loose fitting white clothes were selling their intricate string drawings and jewelry on the streets. Telmex had only a handful of phones.  The internet was just showing up in a few coffee shops.

It was time travel. 

I spent the first night in Charlie and Rae's house, but couldn't get past the gato dander.  By the next night I was ensconced in habitacion Once with the best restaurant in town just down the steps. Here in the Abundancia, I fell in love with Real de Catorce.  Each time I would transit through the tunnel, I would cry with joy to be there.  Soon, I rented the best home on the Zocolo with a view from my terrace of the 200 year old  towering cathedral 2 blocks away and the town square below.

I still have that home 25 years later.

When Charlie turned 60, I threw a huge party for him at my big house in Austin. 

I owed him.

Perhaps the high lite of the evening was when musician Henry Clay (of the lost planet airmen) got stuck in the upstairs bathroom for an unknown time until I freed him. 

A few years later, Charlie and Rae tied their knots together in Austin with food cooked by R14 chef Francesco.

Over the last 25 years, Charlie and Raye would often stay in the Quemado room in the Big House when they came to shop or see a doctor or just visit Austin.  By now they had a new house in Real County designed by one of Austin's finest architects. Catorce wasn't going to work for them any longer. He called his new home Deer Corn.

During this long piece of time, Charlie lost his son John Charles.  But his daughter (Alicia) has prospered at Austin Energy and as a proficient horse jumper.

Charlie was drawing or painting practically every waking moment.  His views of humankind were most often in the shadows.  But going through some of his email over the last year and a half, he seemed to value our walk on this earth and how we humans should behave..

Here's a taste of what he sent me:

Entitlement is darkness, humility is light. St. Francis


Humility takes the  focus of self off current circumstances, 
to serve others with no need for reward or recognition.

St. Augustine believed that humility was the fundamental to religion.. there was little actual virtue in a soul that lacked humility,, only the appearance of virtue.

Proverbs 18:12  before a downfall “the heart is haughty.” “Humility comes before honor.”

Churchill, humility is the foundation of virtue.
Confucius , humility is the solid foundation of all virtue.

Braggarts are the essense of weakness and they live very small lives. The arrogant will never serve anyone outside themselves. They find pleasure in those who serve their ego.

The success of a nation depends on the character of its people.

 

And, like me, he worried about the world.

A talking head says we are in for a big crash. 

And another said there will be a war.

One  of my nurses is a Trumpista   

She shows me all her guns. 

She is I am sure not in the minority.  

But I am sure that Charlie was.

He had a famous Uncle named Barbette. 

Barbette was a gay cross dressing circus tight rope walker in Paris, 

who worked on Hollywood movies like "Some Like it Hot "

Some say Charlie was a Spy.

He, like Barbette, was mostly an entertainer. 

A cartoonist of our  turbulent Time. 

A man who drew what he saw.

And then showed it to us. 

We will all miss his candor

and his humor. 

And the Earth

will grieve his departed spirit. 

Yet it remains.

Bye Charlie 

 

CHARLIES PAINTINGS 

DEER CORN 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Saturday, February 28, 2026

Where the Future Is



 

Most of my immediate family goes to Idaho to ski about this time of year leaving me at home to piddle around and stay up late reading or writing early into the morning.  My current mind challenge is trying to get my hands around the spectacular growth in Artificial Intelligence in the last  year and the resource and political  implications of it all. 

But last night, I was watching (actually binging) a new civil war series called the Gray House.  At around 3:00 having had enough of the spymaster story of the Confederate White House apparently named Gray House, I did my oral care and hopped into my solitary, super comfy bed.  Often, when I sleep alone, I like to leave NPR on as company and as an aural filler.  I lit the essential oil candle and turned off the bed lights behind the headboard, laid my head down, and then heard something about Drumph having just made a statement on his Truth Social account that he and Bebe just bombed Iran. 

I jumped up, flipped open my mini, and watched my normal center left news networks and yup, right there from Mar a Lago, was the POTUS in a white USA baseball cap telling the Iranians and the rest of the world that he is giving them a chance to be free; but for now to stay in doors because there is going to be a lot of bombs out there. 

And now, that's all there is on our media and will be for a while.  Most of the actual pictures come from Al Jazzerra right now.  The Fairmount in Dubai got whacked by a drone, and the Navy took some shots on their 5th fleet.  But we got our man, or at least the Israeli Air Force did.  And Khamenei, their supreme leader is now officially a martyr. We apparently also got a school full of young girls.

And now the Revolutionary Guards are warning of an intense offensive to come.

In the meantime, the Pentagon is trying to force the creators of Claude to allow their AI to not be restricted by their terms of service regarding AI homicide.  The Justice Department excluded FBI reports that Drumph forced a teenager's head onto his mushroom which she bit, and then he socks her with his fist. And we can't forget that the EPA just rescinded the endangerment finding regarding CO2 and its regulatory foundation for climate change policy.

All of this while the warnings regarding AI go unheeded:

Industry warnings regarding AI have escalated significantly as of February 2026, ranging from immediate economic disruption to long-term existential threats. High-profile executives and researchers from
OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind have reached a consensus that AI risks should be treated with the same urgency as pandemics or nuclear war.

  • Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei,  warned in May 2025 that AI could eliminate up to half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, potentially spiking unemployment to 10–20% within five years.
  • In late February 2026, Jack Dorsey’s Block announced plans to cut over 4,000 jobs—nearly half its staff—citing AI-driven productivity gains.
  •  Financial institutions like Citigroup have cautioned that AI implementation may lead to higher unemployment and deflation. Some analysts warn of a "vibe coding" shift that could render traditional software roles obsolete. 
  •  This from Wikipedia:

    Experts disagree on whether artificial general intelligence (AGI) can achieve the capabilities needed for human extinction. Debates center on AGI's technical feasibility, the speed of self-improvement,[7] and the effectiveness of alignment strategies.[8] 

    Concerns about superintelligence have been voiced by researchers including Geoffrey Hinton,[9] Yoshua Bengio,[10] Demis Hassabis,[11] and Alan Turing,[a] and AI company CEOs such as Dario Amodei (Anthropic),[14] Sam Altman (OpenAI),[15] and Elon Musk (xAI).[16] 

     In 2022, a survey of AI researchers with a 17% response rate found that the majority believed there is a 10 percent or greater chance that human inability to control AI will cause an existential catastrophe.[17][18] 

    In 2023, hundreds of AI experts and other notable figures signed a statement declaring, "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war".[19] 

    Following increased concern over AI risks, government leaders such as United Kingdom prime minister Rishi Sunak[20] and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres[21] called for an increased focus on global AI regulation.  

    Researchers warn that an "intelligence explosion"—a rapid, recursive cycle of AI self-improvement—could outpace human oversight and infrastructure, leaving no opportunity to implement safety measures. In this scenario, an AI more intelligent than its creators would recursively improve itself at an exponentially increasing rate, too quickly for its handlers or society at large to control.

    Something tells me that Drumph and his DoW boy wonder have a plan for Iran.  And it probably came from Claude. ( or one of his brothers)

    And sooner than you think, our boots on the ground may not be leather.

    I told my grandson that all my life I've wondered where the future is.

    And now it's here. 

    And it's just like the movies. 

     

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    Saturday, August 30, 2025

    It Happened Here







    One of my favorite expressions when I want to describe a situation that is really creepy or haunting in a very real sense is to say that the moment feels like the beginning of a Stephen King movie. (And I generally don't like or even watch his movies or read his books.) You know what I'm saying though. The scene might seem somewhat normal to some but to the trained eye, it's the beginning of something really horrible.  

    Well, in fact we in the US and in the World are living such a movie.

    It's the Dead Zone. 

    The theory that Stephen King's 1979 novel
    The Dead Zone predicted the rise of Donald Trump centers on the book's populist politician character, Greg Stillson. The comparison is based on Stillson's manipulative personality, his "outsider" appeal, and the way he uses public perception to gain power.  

    Who is Greg Stillson?
     
    In The Dead Zone, Stillson is a political candidate who presents himself as a man of the people, wearing a hard hat to appeal to blue-collar workers. Behind the scenes, he is a ruthless, corrupt, and murderous psychopath. 
      
    Those who see similarities between the fictional Stillson and Drumph point to the following characteristics: 
    • The outsider persona: Stillson, like Drumph, positions himself as an unconventional politician who is "outside the mainstream" and willing to say anything to captivate voters.
    • Populist appeal: Both characters tap into public frustration by pandering to the "everyman" with promises to fix a corrupt system.
    • Manipulation of the media: The novel questions the power of journalism to hold such figures accountable, a theme that has been heavily discussed in the context of Drumph's rise.
    • The infamous photo: In the book, a photographer captures a damning image of Stillson using a baby as a human shield, which destroys his political career. However, some observers note that a similar photograph of a real-life public figure might not have the same effect in the current, highly polarized media landscape.  
    Where is the photo or image that will bring Drumph down? Is it his many pictures with the serial molester of children and best friend Epstein?  Or his picture with the Porn Star he paid before the 2016 election?  No, the picture that probably elected him in 2024, was his blooded face rising with his clenched fist below a giant flag hoisted by a crane quickly orchestrated and produced by an opportunistic campaign flack.
      
    Novelists have long imagined, and warned of, the threat to liberal places from totalitarian rule. British writers of the 20th century, including George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Robert Harris, won mass audiences for their depictions of anti-democratic dystopias. 
     
    All owed a debt, in turn, to a disillusioned Russian revolutionary, Yevgeny Zamyatin, whose novel “We” described a dictatorial “OneState” of the 26th century, in which humans become mere “Numbers”—automatons who prioritise efficiency over freedom. 
     
    His book, published in the early 1920s, provided an inspiration for Orwell’s “1984”. Authors across the Atlantic have fretted no less than Europeans about threats to democracy. Margaret Atwood, a Canadian, imagined America becoming a repressive religious republic, Gilead. 
     
    Sinclair Lewis, who wrote soon after the Nazis were elected to power in Germany, told a story of the rise of populist, fascist government and the failures of ordinary American citizens to resist it. His book "It can't happen here" could now be renamed it happened here. 
     
    Now, except for the those house media sources that are part of the ruling junta, the administration is now called a regime.
     
    The question is moving quickly from one of condition to one of what can be done.
     
    This from the Globe and Mail:
     
    To call what is happening a “slide” into authoritarianism, as if it were something anarchic and uncontrolled, would not be apt. It is more like a cementing. Having slipped back into power by the narrowest of margins, Mr. Trump and his acolytes have been steadily expanding from that beachhead, each new power serving as the means to acquire still more.  
      
    Often these powers have been acquired illegally, in brazen defiance of the Constitution. But so long as no one holds them to account for it, and so long as the administration refuses to be held to account, they become ratified by convention, or practice, or sheer nerve, the de facto rapidly congealing into the de jure.

    At some point, American democracy will find it is caught, immovably, a colossus in quicksand. 

    The examples pile up by the day. In recent days, weeks and months, Mr. Trump and his officials have:

    • Installed National Guard troops and other military forces in the centre of major American cities, first Los Angeles, then Washington, and soon (if Mr. Trump’s threats are to be believed) Chicago, Baltimore and New York. 
    • Seized thousands of suspected illegal immigrants off the streets, the snatchings carried out by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents without badges, their victims bundled into cars without markings, to be sent in some cases to barbaric foreign prison camps, in some cases to their domestic counterparts, without trial, without even charges. ICE is increasingly seen as Mr. Trump’s personal police force.
    • Initiated criminal investigations into various of Mr. Trump’s antagonists, from Letitia James, the Attorney-General of New York who prosecuted him for fraud, to Jack Smith, the special counsel who prosecuted him for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and for his handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, to John Bolton, his own former national security adviser who has since become one of his severest critics, to Adam Schiff, the Democratic Senator and lead manager on his first impeachment. more
     
    It has happened here.
     
    Chicago is responding,  
     
    California and New York are crafting their own executive orders,
     
    the Appeals Court finds his tariffs illegal,
     
    And it's time for Americans to begin talking about a Soft Secession. 
     
    And it's time for the Plutocrats to  step off the train.
     

     

    King’s most presciently crafted Trump-like character appears in his 1979 novel The Dead Zone. “Greg Stillson is a door-to-door Bible salesman with a gift of gab, a ready wit and the common touch. He is laughed at when he runs for mayor in his small New England town, but he wins,” a sequence of events that repeats itself when he runs for the House of Representatives and then for the presidency — a rise foreseen by the story’s hero Johnny Smith, granted clairvoyant powers by a car wreck. “He realizes that some day Stillson is going to laugh and joke his way into the White House, where he will start world war three.”
    King’s most presciently crafted Trump-like character appears in his 1979 novel The Dead Zone. “Greg Stillson is a door-to-door Bible salesman with a gift of gab, a ready wit and the common touch. He is laughed at when he runs for mayor in his small New England town, but he wins,” a sequence of events that repeats itself when he runs for the House of Representatives and then for the presidency — a rise foreseen by the story’s hero Johnny Smith, granted clairvoyant powers by a car wreck. “He realizes that some day Stillson is going to laugh and joke his way into the White House, where he will start world war

     

    King’s most presciently crafted Trump-like character appears in his 1979 novel The Dead Zone. “Greg Stillson is a door-to-door Bible salesman with a gift of gab, a ready wit and the common touch. He is laughed at when he runs for mayor in his small New England town, but he wins,” a sequence of events that repeats itself when he runs for the House of Representatives and then for the presidency — a rise foreseen by the story’s hero Johnny Smith, granted clairvoyant powers by a car wreck. “He realizes that some day Stillson is going to laugh and joke his way into the White House, where he will start world war three.”
    tus quo and sick of it. Voters saw a vast and overloaded apple cart lumbering past them. They wanted
    tus quo and sick of it. Voters saw a vast and overloaded apple cart lumbering past them. They want
    King’s most presciently crafted Trump-like character appears in his 1979 novel The Dead Zone. “Greg Stillson is a door-to-door Bible salesman with a gift of gab, a ready wit and the common touch. He is laughed at when he runs for mayor in his small New England town, but he wins,” a sequence of events that repeats itself when he runs for the House of Representatives and then for the presidency — a rise foreseen by the story’s hero Johnny Smith, granted clairvoyant powers by a car wreck. “He realizes that some day Stillson is going to laugh and joke his way into the White House, where he will start world war three.”
    King’s most presciently crafted Trump-like character appears in his 1979 novel The Dead Zone. “Greg Stillson is a door-to-door Bible salesman with a gift of gab, a ready wit and the common touch. He is laughed at when he runs for mayor in his small New England town, but he wins,” a sequence of events that repeats itself when he runs for the House of Representatives and then for the presidency — a rise foreseen by the story’s hero Johnny Smith, granted clairvoyant powers by a car wreck. “He realizes that some day Stillson is going to laugh and joke his way into the White House, where he will start world war thr
    King’s most presciently crafted Trump-like character appears in his 1979 novel The Dead Zone. “Greg Stillson is a door-to-door Bible salesman with a gift of gab, a ready wit and the common touch. He is laughed at when he runs for mayor in his small New England town, but he wins,” a sequence of events that repeats itself when he runs for the House of Representatives and then for the presidency — a rise foreseen by the story’s hero Johnny Smith, granted clairvoyant powers by a car wreck. “He realizes that some day Stillson is going to laugh and joke his way into the White House, where he will start world war three.”
    King’s most presciently crafted Trump-like character appears in his 1979 novel The Dead Zone. “Greg Stillson is a door-to-door Bible salesman with a gift of gab, a ready wit and the common touch. He is laughed at when he runs for mayor in his small New England town, but he wins,” a sequence of events that repeats itself when he runs for the House of Representatives and then for the presidency — a rise foreseen by the story’s hero Johnny Smith, granted clairvoyant powers by a car wreck. “He realizes that some day Stillson is going to laugh and joke his way into the White House, where he will start world war three.”
    King’s most presciently crafted Trump-like character appears in his 1979 novel The Dead Zone. “Greg Stillson is a door-to-door Bible salesman with a gift of gab, a ready wit and the common touch. He is laughed at when he runs for mayor in his small New England town, but he wins,” a sequence of events that repeats itself when he runs for the House of Representatives and then for the presidency — a rise foreseen by the story’s hero Johnny Smith, granted clairvoyant powers by a car wreck. “He realizes that some day Stillson is going to laugh and joke his way into the White House, where he will start world war th

     

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    Tuesday, December 31, 2024

    We Are Not Afraid

      


     

    As we go into the New Year, there is a majority that did not vote for a soon to be convicted felon, and we certainly don't look forward to the parade of Halloween appointments that he is insisting be confirmed with  no debate or for that matter, no hearing. The new Senate will likely be more of a toilet bowl than a fine confirmation filter of assessing the character and competence to do the job well.  Most have a different mission in mind.

    And when you consider that much of the government is going to be run by billionaires, it becomes clear that the day of the Plutocrats has come. This from ABC news:

    "President-elect Donald Trump has assembled the wealthiest presidential administration in modern history, with at least 13 billionaires set to take on government posts.

    They include a wrestling magnate, a private space pioneer, a New York real estate developer, the heir to a small appliance empire, and the wealthiest man on the planet -- with several being donors and close personal friends of the incoming president.

    In total, the combined net worth of the wealthiest members of his administration could surpass $460 billion, including Department of Government Efficiency co-head Elon Musk -- whose net worth of more than $400 billion exceeds the GDP of mid-sized countries.

    Even discounting Musk, Trump's cabinet is still expected to be the wealthiest in history, with reported billionaires Howard Lutnick nominated as commerce secretary, Linda McMahon nominated as education secretary, and Scott Bessent nominated as treasury secretary. Together, Trump's expected cabinet is worth at least $7 billion.

    Trump's ambassador picks also include several billionaires, including financier Warren Stephens, who has been tapped to serve as the ambassador to the United Kingdom, Conair executive Leandro Rizzuto Jr., tapped to serve as the ambassador to the Organization of American States, Charles Kushner, named the ambassador to France, and Tom Barrack, named the ambassador to Turkey."

    So let us consider the veneer of democracy in the United States to be sanded off to the core.

    The good news is that the bad news is even worse.

    Yes, as we move into this new year, the "Day after Tomorrow" might be in the next few years.  This from Live Science:

    Forty-four of the world's leading climate scientists have called on Nordic policymakers to address the potentially imminent and "devastating" collapse of key Atlantic Ocean currents.

    In an open letter published online Monday (Oct. 21), University of Pennsylvania climatologist Michael Mann and other eminent scientists say the risks of weakening ocean circulation in the Atlantic have been greatly underestimated and warrant urgent action.

    The currents in question are those forming the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a giant ocean conveyor belt that includes the Gulf Stream and transports vital heat to the Northern Hemisphere. Research shows the AMOC is slowing down and could soon reach a tipping point due to global warming, throwing Earth's climate into chaos.

    An AMOC collapse would lead to major cooling and extreme weather in Nordic countries, according to the letter. This would enlarge and deepen a strange "cold blob" that has already developed over the eastern North Atlantic due to the slowdown of heat-carrying currents. Collapsing ocean currents are also likely to precipitate climate impacts across the Northern Hemisphere, threatening agriculture in Northwestern Europe, according to the letter.

    Halted ocean currents could also further heighten sea levels along the American Atlantic coast and send marine ecosystems and fisheries into a state of "upheaval."

    Scientists have been genuinely concerned about the increase of the drunk high level jet stream winds that have brought inordinate cold and heat to much of the planet over the last several years. 

    But even as we face the certainty of our climate changing radically as a result of our carbon burning ways led by a government that will once again deny it, we face another radical change that is more unknown, more human changing, and just as likely to have profound influence on our economy and the way we manage ourselves.  It is AI and ultimately, it is the Singularity.

     

    The Singularity

    The concept of a technological singularity as it is known today is largely credited to Dr. Vernor Vinge, a mathematician, computer scientist, and science fiction author who is best known for his Hugo award-winning novel, A Fire Upon the Deep, and for his 1993 essay "The Technological Singularity", in which he argues that exponential growth in technology will reach a point beyond which we cannot even speculate about the consequences.

    Vinge's essay contains the following frequently-quoted statement:

    "Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly thereafter, the human era will be ended."

    The Singularity is seen not only as the end of human civilization, but as the birth of a new one. In his essay, Vinge asks why the human era should end, and argues that humans will likely be transformed in the process of the Singularity to a higher form of intelligent existence. After the creation of a superhuman intelligence, according to Vinge, people will necessarily be a lower lifeform in comparison to it. 

    If the Singularity is real then the following scenario is totally plausible:

    In the near future, individuals and corporations will become super beings as the rest of us slowly but surely become "lessers". Thus, the need for cybercoops which can compete on this new playing field is not just a good idea, it will be a necessity.

    We will need the very best communicators and the best, most democratic unifying agency we can find just to keep from becoming slaves. The geographic state will not be able to help us. We will need a cyber state. 

    You are capable of competing with the big guys.

    Because you have joined with others to form a new human organism.

    You have joined with People of Conscience and People of Vision.

    We are not afraid. 

     


     

     

     

     

     

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