Your voice will soon become the primary way to interact with all machines.

Nope. Well, it’ll only happen if we have fully sentient machines and then they’ll probably kill us all.

Except for perhaps for cars’ entertainment/phone systems, voice will never be the primary interaction method for any machine that we use.

Just not gonna happen.

Do the Democrats really believe all the foofaraw about Russian hackers having nearly unlimited power to influence US elections? Is this really going to be the accepted narrative going forward, that it had nothing to do with choosing a terrible candidate and it was just Russian hackers (and evil Nazi misogynist BernieBros) who caused the loss of the most-winnable election in history?

Damn.

In a way I am glad to be living through this moment. I’ve read a lot about historical episodes of collective enforced amnesia and contra-reality narrative formation, and a lot of sociology about group dynamics in times of extreme stress, and a whole lot more about the construction of shared realities, but it’s pretty interesting to get to live through such a major episode of it with so many available research resources. I can learn about huge cognitive flaws in real time with little effort.

If the Russians had as much power as people like Drum believe, and if some pilfered emails no one but a very small percentage of the really small elite/intellectual set even knew about really mattered that much, then it’d be an unprecedented level of engagement and knowledge by the electorate who seemed mainly to be voting on economic issues.

I figure this will last a few years — just like with the “Iraq had WMDs garbage” — and then reality will re-assert itself as it inevitably does.

Still, interesting and instructive to watch. I’m learning tons.

Amazing that people unqualifiedly believe the CIA about the nature and extent of Russian hacking when it also provided the “intelligence” that justified the Iraq war.

Have none of you an ounce of critical thinking skills? Do you really think the CIA has no agenda of its own, no political objective it’s advancing toward?

Grow up, folks. Oh wait, these are Dems we’re talking about here. They can’t. Instead, they caper about in playground games while the other side rolls out the tactical nukes. I forgot.

This article is moronic throughout.

I call this framing “The Naturalistic Fallacy – Economics Edition.*”

How this works is that the particular sort of “free” trade that we practice is presented as a fait accompli of existence, as a natural force like the weak nuclear force or like gravity. It’s just what happens, like rock falling off a cliff rather than a series of mutable choices.

Under the rubric of this fallacy, vast job losses, vast inequality (which the article only glancingly deals with, and dismisses ameliorating as charity and as a bad thing) and other deleterious effects are just the Way Things Are^TM.

Funny that Roberts uses the examples of doctors and nurses, which are strongly protected from competition by various laws and licensing procedures that make it nearly impossible for foreign doctors to cause the same sort of competition that American factory workers for example experience.

We’ve been hearing lately that globalization is some kind of scam to enrich corporations and international banks.

It is not only that, but now it is mainly that nowadays. Again, that is a choice. It did not have to be that way. NAFTA for instance was never a free trade agreement (and neither would have been the TPP) — it was always about structuring society in such ways that privileged already-wealthy corporations and plutocrats in a (successful) attempt to make them ever wealthier.

Again for the dense: a choice.

Free trade agreements as structured are mostly about expropriating wealth from the productive classes (hint: not the rich) and using intra-country competition combined with free-flowing capital to precipitate various crises that allow this wealth to be semi-legally stolen from the coffers of government and the public at large.

I will omit the exact mechanism of how and why this works here (there are many books about it), but rather I will observe that this extractive model is now the main focus of currently-extant capitalism and it harms most people around the world, either directly or through huge externalities (pollution, global climate change).

*Yes, I know I am misusing Thomas More’s concept of this. I’ve read Utopia.

Theoretical physicists lampoon and sometimes exploit untrained amateurs (who are, I must admit, delusional most of the time) but then come up with something as ludicrous as string theory and devote decades to it.

Who are the fantasists and naifs supposed to be again?

I hadn’t listened to Red Dirt Girl by Emmylous Harris in many years, but lately I’ve been listening to it a lot. Reminds me of people I knew growing up who are dead now. And I’m not very old.

Only a Southerner could write a song like that. Perfect.

It’s very odd — uncanny, even — to watch the Left talk about “traitors” and “patriotism” and such in reference to the alleged Russian hacking in an effort to influence the US elections.

Have I awoken in Crazyland? What is happening here, exactly?

In all my life, I don’t ever recall the Left honoring or caring about patriotism or treason either way. It’s not their typical language or usually even in their sphere of concern. I sometimes have to check to see if I haven’t accidentally strayed onto some loony right-wing sites by accident.

Though I do believe Russian and Russian-affiliated state actors did attempt to influence the election, I strongly doubt it had any determining effect, and if so it was only because Hillary Clinton was such a bad and incredibly weak candidate anyway.

Mostly it seems to me the Dems and the wider Left just cannot and will not take any responsibility at all for the huge cock-up and tragedy they’ve inflicted on our nation and the world. They enabled and supported Clinton — and denigrated anyone who offered a better alternative — so they are just as responsible for Trump as the average Trump voter.

For all that, I blame false prophet sycophants like Kendzior, Krugman and Marcotte (and the entire DNC) who gave us forward path that pointed only backwards, and precluded thus a better future.

That they need a scapegoat like the damn Russian government just makes me even angrier.

This is fun. What really makes it is that she’s casually wearing a light saber.

Even more effectively than the original score, this shows the classical influences of Williams (Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky etc.) when played in this more stripped-down fashion.

It’s just math, but I didn’t really think about it until it started happening to me.

These days, when I get a raise at work as a percentage of my income — damn, that makes a lot more difference than it used to.

(humblebrag incoming, I guess) Not too long ago at work, I got a raise that alone as an absolute amount was approximately more than I made in two entire years of work in the Army (even inflation-adjusted).

I don’t know if others in my position think about it, but I do. It’s not quite guilt because I am not sure I have even the capability of that feeling, but when I walk into a fast food place or somewhere like that I strongly realize that my raises alone these days are often more than the folks working the counters pull down in an entire year.

And that’s not a good feeling. It’s not about “deserving” or not. Not like I am turning down those raises, or that the eschewal of them would even help. It’s just fundamentally wrong, and if it’s wrong at my relatively-modest level then it’s even more wrong for those who are vastly more wealthy than I am.

Beyond a certain point, money just builds itself higher without you doing anything. Stock accounts make more in dividends than the average daily wage. The pyramid of loot grows ever taller from which you can gaze disdainfully down at those around you. All without any interaction at all.

This system is unsustainable. I say that even though I benefit from it, and even though if it were to cease I’d probably lose more than I’d gain.

There’s no way some people’s raises should be more than some others working full-time make in a year, just as there is no way a CEO should bring in hundreds of times what the average worker does. On that base a true civil and civilized society cannot be built nor sustained.

Dreamed last night that I died and I become discorporated. To verify that I was truly dead, I poked my own corpse’s eye hard enough to damage it where the pupil looked more like a Pac-Man.

Messing around with your own dead body even in a dream is quite an odd experience, let me tell you. I don’t know how I died, but I didn’t look particularly damaged.

She’s great and she sounds like Loretta Lynn:

Compare:

Song was banned from the radio for years. In some ways, country was more progressive than rock especially when it was done by women….

I thought I’d recounted this tale somewhere on this blog before, but I could not find it. Ah well — I’ve had dozens of blogs over the years.

So here goes.

Long time ago, I was dating a girl who was very ditzy. I know, saying that makes me an automatic misogynist. But hear me out: she was not unintelligent. In fact, she was very bright. But if you called central casting and asked for the “cute, ditzy blonde type” this is person who would’ve shown up, frantically pushing on the pull door to get into the office. She was not playing a version of this to appease men, nor was she incapable of rational, logical thought. What she was, though, was crazy fun to be around and an amazing singer, too. And oh yeah, as I’ve mentioned, a complete and adorable clown show when it came to many things that I just didn’t care about involving social interaction and understanding irrelevant facts of the world, all the while having this wild sort of confidence and self-assurance that somehow made it all work.

One night we were hanging out, listening to music, playing board games and such like that. We were getting a bit peckish so I suggested that we order a pizza. She’d been pretty sheltered by her parents and had never done this before, so just to do something she’d not done, she wanted to place the order. I told her to go right ahead.

All was going perfectly well till the end of the call. I could not hear the other side of the conversation though these things are of course like a script; I knew what the pizza place on the other end of the line was asking.

As it wrapped up and the pizza place employee inquired of her, “What’s your number?” she at first looked around eyes wide, searching for any possible reply and finding nothing. I already knew something great was about to happen. I could just tell.

Finding even after a few more beats of time no possible answer to this question and so replying as truthfully as she knew how, she burst out with this into the phone: “I’m a TEN!”

Oh. My. Holl hell. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so long and hard at anything another person has said in my life. I couldn’t stay upright. I fell on the floor out of breath and gasping. I did not get up for a while.

For as long as we were together after that, we’d both just at times opportune and in- issue forth a confident proclamation of “I’m a TEN!” and laugh like maniacs.

There’s no doubt that Donald Trump is lying bout many things. It’s just his modus operandi.

But the press has no credibility with me because though they are mostly calling out Trump’s lies, they did nothing at all to call out other lies over the years like the laughable Laffer Curve, or the neolib idea that “free*” trade would be a boon for the nation, or the many corporate lies they peddle daily, and so many other similar neolib fabrications.

Yes, I know the press is and cannot be expert economists (of course, most economists aren’t expert economists) but calling out Trump’s lies is too little far too late.

The only reason of course the press has any interest in calling out Trumpian trumperies, tall tales and tergiversations is that Trump threatens them rather than enriches them (and their bosses).

Being a member of the national press now is an elite job, and Trump offends the elites in the press and also threatens their livelihoods. That’s the only reason you are hearing a word about it.

*By free, of course meaning trade that enriched a small subset of the population while diminishing the fortunes of nearly everyone else.

A friend of mine talked about building something like this about 20 years ago now.

Amazon Go is a new kind of store with no checkout required. We created the world’s most advanced shopping technology so you never have to wait in line. With our Just Walk Out Shopping experience, simply use the Amazon Go app to enter the store, take the products you want, and go! No lines, no checkout. (No, seriously.)

That was when we were young and brash and attempting to come up with business ideas (none of which ever came to fruition mainly because I am too lazy to work hard enough to start a business). Our idea was similar to this, except it’d use RFID and since at the time RFID was not cheap compared to today, we thought of giving a 5% discount if you brought your RFID tags back next time.

What’s funny about it is that at the time, the few people we talked about it with thought it was a moronic idea that would never, ever happen and was laughably ludicrous.

Yet here we are.

Economists often claim that sociology and psychology are not “real” sciences — not like economics. Economics of course has more mathematical models and “empirical” results. Never mind that these results and models don’t correspond with anything in the actual world or how people really behave, but the math works out!

I’d say that 40-50% of psychology is probably wrong, maybe 20-30% of sociology, but probably 80% of economics is delusional or ideologically-driven (so if it is correct, it’s just accidentally so).

It is improving, though. Slowly. Maybe in a few hundred years economics can achieve the relatively-high standards of sociology.