No matter how it uses its power, Google might be the single most powerful corporate entity ever to exist.

In principle (and perhaps already has in practice) it could determine the fate of elections, of wars, of what we do or more likely do not do to combat climate change.

There is no part of the world unaffected, and a minor algorithm tweak affects billions of people — their opinions, their ideas, their very thoughts.

Used to be, power was in controlling bodies, determining who went where and did what. These days, it’s controlling the minds of who controls those bodies, including their own.

Google has a complete de facto lock on the information access of billions, and fighting for net neutrality will do absolutely nothing to help with this.

It’s weird how the justification for so much pointless math in school really always boils down to, “You’ll need it when you take another math class!”

My partner today said as we were discussing a similar topic, “I used to like physics before I took physics classes.” Her objection to all her math and physics courses was that they had absolutely no connection to the real world, and she never once learned at all how some disconnected equation had anything to do with anything. Luckily, she has some talent at math and actually has a minor in it, but she still despised just about all of her math instruction.

A survey of math is all that 95% of students need — knowing what tool to reach for is far more important than knowing how to use every single tool on the shelf, which is our frankly idiotic approach now.

Every student should be taught the basics. That is, math right up to algebra. Even algebra is useless for the vast, vast majority, so stopping there is the logical place.

Then, a few semesters of “Math Survey” and that’s it.

What a waste of time teaching so much math.

I don’t think anything in the tech world has ever made me angrier than what Firefox is doing to itself, and how useless it’ll be after it does it.

Literally no useful extensions will be left and the browser will be worthless and no better than IE at that point. There has rarely been such an epic incident of foot-shooting in the tech world.

Such a goddamn shame.

If you were thinking of buying an SS — which I heartily recommend if you can swing it — do buy a new one.

Not really worth it to buy a used one. Not if you can bargain at all.

I paid not that much more than that, and got the full manufacturer warranty and two free oil changes and services, too (for a car like the SS is a $200-$250 value or so).

Even the olders SSes are pretty dear.

I expect it’ll actually rise in value (as the GTO did) after people realize what they missed.

I also figured out why a few people have asked me at gas stations and such, “Is that a BMW?”

SS:

BMW M5:

I like how BMWs look just fine, but won’t pay the extra 50% for the nameplate, so that works for me!

Today, Charles Darwin would be hounded out of science and academia as he was a slow worker and didn’t use any math in his work.

In fact, many of the world’s greatest scientists of past era would receive the same treatment.

If anyone thinks that is a good thing, then you and I have some huge fundamental disagreements.

The best proof that AI is possible is that it’s already built.

Look in the mirror.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

What a strange world we live in where we have Juggalos set to do battle with Nazis with Donald Trump as President while a hurricane destroys Texas.

If you’d written this in a novel twenty years ago, it’d’ve been dismissed as utterly implausible trash.

But now we live in an utterly implausible trash reality.

Ah, wish we still inhabited such a footloose and fancy free era where we cared about the Juggalo opinions on magnets vs. whether Nazis kill them in street fighting.

Why I do not support Kamala Harris:

its chelsea @SenKamalaHarris never supported me she stands for the fascist police state you love so much ‍♀️ you are the same https://t.co/TGg99IN8Cr

— Chelsea E. Manning (@xychelsea) August 24, 2017

She’s a torture-supporting neoliberal.

Simple as that.

However, I do support Tulsi Gabbard and Tammy Duckworth.

Almost everything everyone does on Twitter these days would be much better-suited to a blog.

It’d be easier to read, easier to link, and much easier to aggregate.

The future seems to be using stupider and worse technology so you can get idiotic, low-value things done more quickly.

Great.

Co-worker riding in my car after I did a quick u-turn and sprinted away like a demon with a tailwind of hellfire.: “This…this doesn’t drive like a family sedan.”

He didn’t have any idea what the car was. Such a fun car to drive!

Macron spends $30,000 on makeup as policies stall.

But he was the great neoliberal hero. WHAT HAPPEN???

Macron’s presidency looks about like Clinton’s would have had she won.

Better than Trump? Yes. Just like a brushfire is better than dumpster fire.

Good? Helping much?

Nope.

Well, this is telling:

Just found this in the Village Voice, April 27, 1967. If you read it, click and read the whole thing. pic.twitter.com/H5FjY6WT85

— Erin Blakemore (@heroinebook) August 23, 2017

Hey. Hey ya’ll. Remember when I said several times on this and other websites that many people who supported Sanders in the primaries would vote for Trump if Sanders wasn’t in the general?

And you remember how I was excoriated, and told this would be 1 in 10,000 rare (actual quote from another website I commented on), and that it’d basically never happen?

Well.

1 In 10 Sanders Primary Voters Ended Up Supporting Trump, Survey Finds.

I’m not good at politics. But I do know something about how humans behave and tend to think.

Most predictable thing ever really.

Something I’ve realized only recently how surface level most people’s gloss of events and motivations for those events are.

I knew people were ignorant. What I didn’t realize is just how willfully ignorant they are. It’s not that they don’t know. It’s that they don’t even want to know.

At another site, I posted a comment about how Google’s HTTPS push had nothing to do with the best interests of the consumer and everything to do with Google’s desire to shape and to control the market — including in advertising.

At that site, you’d think I’d suggested that it was ok to decapitate kittens with lawn mowers. Not only was I some sort of deranged conspiracy theorist, of course the HTTPS push/putsch was all being done because fluffy, cuddly little Google cares about you and just wants to make you safer.

It’s not just that specific issue that concerns me — though that one is pretty blatant — but the general phenomenon. Not only are most “intelligent” people content to understand nearly nothing except received wisdom, they are also happy to lampoon anyone who wishes to comprehend anything below that perfunctory surface-level gloss.

I’ve realized it for a long time, but smart people as societally-defined usually aren’t all that smart.

Some of them — many of them, perhaps most of them — are in fact mulishly moronic, and not only don’t mind, they revel in it.

This is something I haven’t fully consolidated in my own mind, but this is sort of antipodal to conspiracy theorists — it’s the obstinate denial of the complexity of the world or that there is anything operating under the surface at all.

I haven’t made sense of it yet. But unlike those people, at least I realize there is something to make sense of.