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.

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.

 

CHARLIES PAINTINGS 

DEER CORN 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Pliny Fisk III

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pliny Fisk 1944-2026

 

 

I was in the back and away from my phone when it began to ring or whatever it does now.  Rarely do I make an effort to get to it.  If it's important, they'll leave a message,  but this time I ran to answer like a teenager in the sixties.   It was GV.

The moment I heard the emotion in her voice, I knew what words were coming:  

"Pliny passed away last night."

She gave me some details and I asked if he passed peacefully, and she said yes.

Given that I am the Godfather of her son Ariel, I asked if I can drop by in a few hours and bring some food for the family.  Three out of the four  kids were already here with grandkids and all. 

I met Pliny Fisk 50 years ago in the architectural lab at the University of Texas.  We were both building passive solar homes at the time and he was going to use an earth-air exchanger to help cool the house.  I was considering doing the same with my half buried replica of a 19th century Texas ice house.

It was in the crucible of exploration and scientific adventurism that we forged our friendship.  His infectious enthusiasm was his superpower.  There were always new things, new possibilities, new discoveries. Sometimes, perhaps even often, they didn't work or they weren't practical.  The earth/air exchangers turned out to be legionaires disease breeders. 

But he was a fountain of ideas and hope and change.

This from Texas Architect:

Driving down FM 969 in Austin, one would never imagine that just off the road lies one of the world’s most influential and progressive centers for sustainable architecture and planning: the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, known colloquially as Max’s Pot. Founded in 1975, Max’s Pot is run by Pliny Fisk III and his partner, Gail Vittori, along with a rotating cast of overall-clad designers who can be found around the center—some drafting, others welding. 

Fisk, who bears a remarkable resemblance to both Albert Einstein and Anton Newcombe, studied at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s, where he earned master’s degrees in both architecture and landscape architecture. Exposed to Louis Kahn, Ian McHarg, Ross Ashby, and others, Fisk became fascinated with systems thinking and the natural environment as they relate to the built environment, developing a rich architectural philosophy early in his career. 

Originally called the Laboratory for Maximum Potential Building Systems, the CMPBS office was first built for the University of Texas School of Architecture in 1973. Fisk, along with his then-partner, Daria Bolton Fisk, received the university’s approval to establish an architecture laboratory focused on forward-thinking design pedagogy, green building, and hands-on construction. True to the philosophy of green building from the outset, the Fisks rejected UT’s plan to equip the lab with standard electricity, running water, and cooling, choosing instead to figure those systems out themselves.  

Soon after its opening, however, UT began to distance itself from the Lab. Tensions peaked in 1975 when a letter arrived from the United Nations inviting the Fisks and students to present at Habitat ’76 in Vancouver. The letter was addressed to “Max’s Pot, School of Architecture, UT Austin”—by then the accepted nickname for the Lab. The university had a fit over the use of this unauthorized moniker, to which Fisk famously replied, “Don’t worry—it’s just the United Nations, after all.” That same year, the Laboratory for Maximum Potential Building Systems became the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, an independent nonprofit."

I was on the Board of the Center in those early days.  I was the auctioneer at several fund raisers.  Occasionally, Pliny would give me a chance to represent the fledgling center at a Solar Conference.  And in so doing, he brought me into the discussions and consciousness of those worlds.

And it would lead to my speeches and presentations throughout the Americas and in Europe. 

This from wikipedia:

Pliny Fisk III (May 30, 1944 – July 27, 2026) was a co-founder and co-director of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems (CMPBS),^[1] a sustainable design and planning organization established in 1975. Fisk also served as Fellow in Sustainable Urbanism and Fellow in Health Systems Design at Texas A & M University, where he held a joint position as signature faculty in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Planning.^[2] Fisk previously held positions at Ball State University, the University of Texas at Austin, Mississippi State University and the University of Oklahoma. 

But Fisk was no ivory tower academic.  

When the Lo-Vaca Gathering Company shut off the natural gas supply to the small town of Crystal City, Texas, in the fall of 1977, Fisk developed the idea of using Army surplus wood stoves and abundant mesquite for heating. By January 1978, Crystal City residents had installed nearly 1,000 wood stoves. 

In subsequent years, the Center led an effort to manufacture and install inexpensive solar hot water heaters using salvaged materials. The production of the solar collectors also helped bolster the job market of Crystal City.

Somewhere in there, I remember going down to Crystal City to get Pliny out of jail.  He was being held for exciting the natives. 

In 1983, Fisk was sponsored by the Center for Investigation and Documentation of the Atlantic Coast (CIDCA) to set into motion a large scale indigenous housing program for the Miskito Indians of Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast. Fisk's goal in the project was to draw upon the available natural and human resources of the region to address an extreme housing shortage.

In 1991, the Texas Department of Agriculture (and Laredo Junior College) hired Fisk and CMPBS to design and build a demonstration farm (outside the South Texas city of Laredo).

In 2002 Fisk was awarded the U.S. Green Building Council’s first Sacred Tree Award in the public sector category.^[18][19] He was also a recipient of the Passive Solar Pioneer Award (from the American Solar Energy Society)

All of this would have been impossible without GV. (Gail Vittori), his long time partner and co-director of the Center.  For Gail's contributions were and are critical.

But perhaps most importantly they should be recognized as the creators of the Green Building Programs that are in so many communities and cities today. 

For in 1991, Fisk and Vittori developed "A Conceptual and Contextual Framework for the City of Austin" that served as the basis for the formation of the world's first municipal green building program (now operating as Austin Energy Green Building).^[15][16] The cooperative effort earned the United Nations Earth Summit Award for Exemplary Public Environmental Initiative, in 1992 (the only United States organization to receive recognition at the Earth Summit).

At the large late afternoon gathering at the Center on Wednesday,  perhaps 30 people spoke after Gail thanked everyone for coming.  All those there had some connection with Pliny and Gail that was deep and personal.  

For me, I spoke of Pliny's power to inspire us to do the important things and to strive to make things better, And I reminded us all that here in Texas we have about 40 GWs of Wind, almost 40 GWs of Solar, 20 GWs of storage.  That's enough to provide over 50 % of our power on many of our days.

The record will show he made a difference during his walk with us. 

And that he brought us  Serious Commotion. 

That to have known him,

was a Grace. 

 

 

 

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The Metanoia of the POTUS

 

From:THE WHITEHOUSE

For Immediate Release 

A letter from the President 

My Fellow Americans,

As you know,  my niece Mary Trump is a  psychologist, a very good one. And she counsels me on occasion. Most of the time I don't listen to her. Mostly because she says unkind things about her Uncle

She characterizes me as a dangerous and unevolved bully whose behavior is driven by early childhood trauma, a lack of empathy, and decades of enabling by our family. 

Drawing on her clinical background, Mary argues that I am emotionally and cognitively unfit for office. She has raised concerns about my advancing age, self-control, and detachment from reality, which she believes results in erratic behavior and an inability to accept responsibility.

She points to my father, Fred Trump Sr., as someone who psychologically "destroyed" me by demanding a transactional version of loyalty, mocking kindness, and rewarding ruthlessness. She believes this environment prevents me from developing normal emotional regulation.

Mary has extensively discussed my financial history, claiming my wealth originated exclusively from my father rather than my own business acumen. She argues that my approach to power continues to follow a playbook of escalating violence, denying responsibility, and attacking my victims. 

In summation, Her basic theory of the case is that Fred, the patriarch of “my malignantly dysfunctional family,” a crude, cruel, selfish, boastful, money-grubbing liar, raised his second son to become a crude, cruel, selfish, boastful, money-grubbing liar.  

Mary reminded me lately of my  Rosebud moment when I was 7. 

At dinner one night I kept refusing my mother’s and sisters’ pleas to stop tormenting my brother Rob, so my teenage brother Freddy dumped mashed potatoes on my head. Everybody laughed, and they couldn’t stop laughing. 

And they were laughing at Me.” 

From then on, I would never allow himself to feel that feeling again. From then on, I would wield the weapons that were taught to me. At her birthday party at the White House 64 years later,  my sister Maryanne referred to the incident in a toast, and I kept my arms tightly crossed and I scowled at the whole affair. And once again, the rest of the family laughed. 

And I haven't eaten Mashed Potatoes in 73 years.

So as I turned 80 a few weeks ago, I looked over the south lawn of the White House and realized that my niece is right.  And I realized that I will be remembered as the worst President in the History of our 250 year experiment if I continue the ways of my father.

I am not right about everything... I am wrong about almost everything. 

Mary says that I have experienced a Metanoia which she says refers to the journey of changing one's worldview, altering deeply ingrained habits, or healing from trauma to achieve a fundamentally new perspective on oneself and the world.

First thing I will do is FIRE Steven Miller. And then RFK Jr. is next.

I will rejoin the World Health Organization. 

We will once again work with the nations of the world in our fight against Climate Change. 

I will give up on my Save America voter suppression bill.

I will place all of my assets in a blind trust like all other former Presidents with assets. 

And I will require Congress to stop trading stock based on insider information.

If given the opportunity, I will balance the Supreme Court.

I will stop the AI insanity and allow state,  national, and global regulation.

I will support Bernie Sanders' Bills supporting public ownership of AI.

And I will tear down our Walls and work for Global Peace.

To survive, We must believe that our Earth is First.

For that is where we all must live. 

Thank you for your attention to this matter. 

Janelle:  "Honey..."

"Huh?"

"You are singing in that spiritual voice that comes to you in your dreams every now and then."

"What were you dreaming?"

"Of Metanoia."

"Of What?"

"You know that thing that happens that makes you suddenly see differently."

"Honey you were dreaming."

"Yes, I guess I was. "

 

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On the Ropes

 

Amongst all the events over the last weeks,  the American Pope gets my nod for making it clear that A I is a huge challenge for his flock and most of the rest of us.  As you may remember, the previous Pope made a strong statement about Climate Change.  And now Pope Leo has issued his encyclible on Artificial General intelligence.

This from the Vatican:

"Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.”

The opening words of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, summarize its underlying reasons and purpose.

 Pope Leo XIV has taken up the legacy of his predecessor, writing a social encyclical which addresses one of the principal challenges of the contemporary age: artificial intelligence.

Divided into five chapters, Magnifica humanitas has an underlying premise: technology is not “a force antagonistic to humanity” (4), nor is it “inherently evil” (9). However, “technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it.

Therefore, Pope Leo XIV appeals for people to build “for the common good” and to “remain human,” following a courageous mentality of shared responsibility and communion, so that the world “will come to recognize the human heart as the place where God desires to dwell”

In the meantime, The Times reports:

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the chatbot Claude, confidentially filed on Monday for an initial public offering, joining what could be a once-in-a-generation, moneymaking moment on Wall Street.

With its I.P.O. filing, Anthropic is expected to be among three high-profile companies preparing to go public this year, along with the rocket company SpaceX and OpenAI, which started the A.I. boom in 2022 with its ChatGPT chatbot.

Their I.P.O.s, which would be among the biggest ever, could create a tsunami of investment and employee wealth, and mint the world’s first trillionaire in Elon Musk, who owns about 50 percent of SpaceX. 

The public offerings could also flood the nonprofit world with new money, since Anthropic and OpenAI have both pledged a large part of their shares to charity. 

SpaceX’s I.P.O. is expected this month, and OpenAI has been preparing to file in the coming weeks.

And then the other night, the biggest explosion I've seen maybe since Mount Helena, blew parts of Cape Canaveral to Kingdom Come in a so called anomaly.  (Not an unscheduled rapid disassembly)

Blue Origin experienced a fiery setback Thursday when its New Glenn rocket exploded on the launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Fla. 

“I have very little doubt that Blue Origin will get to the bottom of this,” said Stan Shull, the founder of Seattle-based space technology consulting firm Alliance Velocity. “They seem very vision and goal driven, and I don’t expect this to change that, but it’s a setback, and it’s a significant one. 

“It’s going to change the timeline of their hopes and dreams.” 

Blue Origin’s rocket exploded during what’s known as a static fire test, a typical test run before launch to ensure the rocket’s systems are working as expected. Shull described it as filling the rocket with propellant, then briefly firing up the engines. 

On Thursday, “right around the time of ignition, the whole thing just blew up in a very spectacular way,” Shull said. “I don’t recall ever seeing one like this before.”

And the damage to the surrounding area is extensive as Blue Origin is warning residents and visitors that debris from the recent rocket explosion could begin washing ashore along Brevard County beaches in the coming days and weeks, prompting safety concerns for beachgoers and environmental advocates. 

So science and rockets and computers are certainly in the news.

But what's not in the news, according to Google AI, is the damage inflicted by Iranian forces on our bases. It is substantially higher than reported:

Yes, damage to U.S. bases in the Middle East is significantly higher than initially acknowledged by the U.S. government. Investigations and analyses—including an extensive review of satellite imagery by the Washington Post and reporting by the BBC—reveal a much broader scope of destruction. 

Asset Destruction: At least 228 structures and pieces of major equipment have been damaged or destroyed across 15 U.S. military sites in the Middle East. [1, 2]

Critical Systems Hit: The strikes heavily impacted key military assets, including destroying multiple Patriot and THAAD missile defense systems, satellite communication sites, and an E-3 Sentry command and control aircraft. [1, 2]

Soft Targets: Iranian strikes also successfully targeted "soft targets," including hangars, fuel depots, and living quarters (such as barracks and gyms), specifically to inflict mass casualties. [1, 2]

Strategic Relocation: Due to the severity of the threat, U.S. commanders relocated the vast majority of personnel away from exposed bases to avoid mass casualties, leaving many of these sites lightly staffed. 

And so today, Drumph crashes his own cease-fire agreement like the cheap real estate character he is. He, along with his cracker barrel team he assigned to do the negotiating, are treating a 5,000 year old culture like a newbee on the trading block.  And oil futures go back up,  stocks go up or down, while inventories continue their slide.

And Xi looks real good.

And we look worse and worse.

And Pax Americana is on the Ropes.

 

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The Liberal's Conundrum

 

 

 We just came back from Mexico.  This time and for the first time in decades, we went to Merida.  At one time, Merida was one of the richest towns of the world.  It's unique landscape made for creation of many great Haciendas that provided the raw materials for rope for the rigging of the sailing ships of the European fleets of the time.

In 1542 Francisco de Montejo gave the name Mérida to the captured Mayan city T’ho (Tihoo). An early base for Spanish efforts to conquer the Maya, it subsequently became an administrative and commercial center for the Yucatán region. In the 19th century, its economy was based on the processing and export of locally grown henequen, a fibrous plant from which twine and rope are produced. By the early 20th century Mérida became one of Mexico’s most important commercial cities.

The city is a base for trips to several Mayan sites, including Chichén Itzá, Kabah, Mayapán, and Uxmal. Many colonial-era buildings, including the Casa de Montejo (1549) and the cathedral (begun in 1561), are also tourist attractions, as are the city’s ornate henequen-era mansions.

Except for going to one of the many water holes (cenotes) that formed after the meteor strike, we didn't go anywhere.  Instead we stayed at a henequin era Hacienda about 25 miles away.  Having been restored over the last several years  to a state of grandeur by a friend of a friend, we were guests.

Our room was a gigantic reproduction of the glory days of Merida.  The walls were thick and well painted. The ceiling was 20 feet high.  (their strategy for dealing with the afternoon heat). The grounds were lush and well manicured. Hacienda Petac has been around for about 400 years.

With the great food and the remarkable Mayan service, We disconnected pretty good. 

And it gave us time to reflect on the situation we find ourselves in.

This from Democracy Journal: 

"In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford observed a close connection between the holding of extremely conservative, system-justifying values and authoritarian tendencies. They took a multi-methods approach, conducting structured interviews and administering questionnaires and projective tests to countless samples of American adults. Among other things, they observed that people who endorsed statements like “America may not be perfect, but the American Way has brought us about as close as human beings can get to a perfect society” were also more likely to express prejudice, anti-Semitism, and anti-democratic sentiments.

Ever since the Democratic Party first took a strong leadership role on the issue of civil rights for African Americans in the 1960s, authoritarian tendencies have consistently predicted support for Republican presidential candidates. 

Whatever the proximal psychological causes, we are bearing witness—all over the world—to the rebirth of extreme right-wing movements that thrive under conditions of anxiety. These movements promise a return to “traditional” (often religious) values, a curtailing of reproductive and other rights of women (as well as sexual minorities), and a revival of nationalistic (often ethnic) pride and the “restoration” of national boundaries, along with a dismantling of the “administrative” welfare state and the imposition of illiberal reforms and vindictive immigration policies. 

It is worth recalling that Adorno and his colleagues identified nine characteristics of the authoritarian syndrome : 

(1) aggression against those who deviate from “the norm,”  

(2) submission to idealized moral authorities,  

(3) uncritical acceptance of conventional values,  

(4) mental rigidity and a proclivity to engage in stereotypical thinking, 

(5) a preoccupation with toughness and power, 

(6) exaggerated sexual concerns,  

(7) a reluctance to engage in introspection,  

(8) a tendency to project undesirable traits onto others, and  

(9) destructiveness and cynicism about human nature. 

These characteristics provide an uncanny description of Drumph. 

It  is as if he has been doing authoritarianism by the book. 

And that is my point.

We are not dealing with a Man.

We are dealing with something far more sinister.

So forget Drumph and his acolytes.

And remember Robert Frost’s admonition that “A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.” Even though this is not a quarrel. It is a struggle.

And some would argue that Liberals would be better off “owning” the struggle in this historical moment. That rather than playing out our own internal contradictions, we should try to become as fully aware of them as possible.  

But I suggest we take their stage masks off, turn on the house lights, and see clearly their elaborate but thread-bare costumes. We look behind this curtain of lies.

Those who make up the current regime are a cast of thousands in the presentation of a civil drama that intends to distract and even mesmerize those who would watch it as anything other than a sick play which moves from one scene to the next so that your energy is spent hating the characters instead of removing the producers and their hired directors and light men. 

For there is wealth behind every line as the audience follows the plot and the characters perform.

The recent return to space by the voyagers on Artemus can remind us that we all live on our Earthship.

For our Conundrum is our Salvation.

And the Obstacle is the Path. 

 

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From a Firehose

 

 

If you feel like you've been drinking from a firehose, join the club.  

Just this month alone, the US is now bragging about bombing a 5000 year old civilization back to the stone age, and in so doing has caused the almost closure of the Strait of Hormuz, rocking energy prices and fertilizer shipments to the West.  Eight million or so have demonstrated in the NO Kings protest against the most corrupt, vile, undemocratic administration in the 250 year history of our Republic. It just goes on and on.

But last night, we  saw the AI Doc.

This from Wikipedia:

"The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist is a 2026 American documentary film directed by Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell. It is produced by the Academy Award–winning teams behind Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniel Kwan and Jonathan Wang) and Navalny (Shane Boris and Diane Becker)."

So this is no fly by night outfit. And despite the firehose of gluttony and ignorance we see in our daily political existence, this movie might very be the scariest movie you'll see this year.  (or any year)

This from KQED, 

"Roher gathers the interviewees into three broad groups: the terrifyingly pessimistic ones, the naively optimistic ones and the CEOs who are casually working on something that may or may not spark humanity’s demise. (Well, three out of five of them, anyway: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei all appear. Mark Zuckerberg declined to participate and Elon Musk apparently backed out at the last minute.)

The worst AI predictions are presented first. Eliezer Yudkowsky, co-founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, calmly talks of the “abrupt extermination” of humanity. Author and historian Yuval Noah Harari calls AI “a deadly threat.”

Center for Humane Technology President Tristan Harris — one of the most measured commentators in the movie — also shares some truly sobering views, the worst of which is that he knows active AI researchers who “don’t expect their children to make it to high school.” It doesn’t help matters that machine learning researcher Shane Legg follows this with the assertion, “The really powerful systems are coming and they’re coming soon. (clip)

In his conversations with Roher, Sam Altman talks a good game about the safety protocols that OpenAI has in place. Given his company’s highly controversial new contract with the Department of Defense, his words will either ring hollow or serve as comfort, depending on your viewpoint. For his part in The AI Doc, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei simply says, “Am I confident that everything’s going to work out? No, I’m not.” Hassabis is even more vague: “If something is possible to do, humanity is going to do it,” he says.

The feeling I left The AI Doc with is that the future of AI is overwhelmingly — and unfortunately — out of the hands of everyday people. "

That's just not just scary,  that's undemocratic.   

After the movie, we went down to our favorite italian restaurant and bar on the corner.  There we ordered our usual meal of Kale Salad and Meatballs on Polenta.  We were still  working on digesting the movie when the food arrived.   Next to us at the corner of the bar were two 40ish males  One of them was in High Tech and the other was in Property Management.  The conversation went on long enough for me get a couple of doubles in.  But they were moved by the movie.  My partner was moved.  And my hair went from being on fire to whatever the plasma version of that is. 

I told my story about how I have spent most of my adult years (after my Armadillo daze) working in Renewables trying to deal with the existential challenge that humanity faces with Climate Change.  How I built the first commercial wind farm in Texas, how I served as Chairman of the Electric Utility to adopt renewable energy goals that far exceeded the tepid goals of most organizations, how I lobbied the PUC for an energy only payment protocol ultimately creating an economic environment such that rosy red Texas has more Wind, more Solar, and more Storage than any other state.  And even with the R's trying to stop the train, the tracks are laid.

I didn't mention that I had been blogging about it for 22 years now. 

But I did tell them that I no longer think that Climate Change is  the primary existential challenge of humankind.  Oh it is, but it's like a meteor that  is way out in deep space but clearly heading our way.  The AI meteor is in our solar system.  And there are billions and billions of dollars and other currencies being spent right now as the race for  artificial general intelligence (AGI) dominance goes into overdrive.

According to  Google AI, 

As of early 2026, true AGI does not exist. Current research focuses on improving large language models (LLMs) to handle more generalized reasoning, though they still fail at complex, novel tasks that humans easily solve. It also says,  Development of AGI brings significant risks, including ethical issues regarding AI safety, job displacement, and alignment with human values.

Global investment in artificial intelligence is currently witnessing an unprecedented surge, with projections indicating that it will reach roughly

$1.5 trillion in 2025 and exceed $2 trillion in 2026. This massive influx of capital is driven by a global race to build AI infrastructure, specifically data centers and hardware, with total annual investment expected to grow by over 40% annually.

 

Global military expenditures reached a record high of approximately $2.7 trillion in 2024.

At 40% annual growth, AI investments will eclipse our war investments by next year.

We cannot drink from the Firehose.

We must point our efforts elsewhere. 

My brother Frank would say: 

You can't worry about your Dandriff,

When you are dying of Cancer.

Something else got him. 

 

 

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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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