Tag: AI

Twosda’s Theme Music

Welcome, welcome to Twosda, June 17, 2025. We’re continuing a nice weather balance in Ashlandia, dropping into the fifties at night, sunny & cloudy during the day, high of 84 F. No one has been heard complaining.

Although I slept well, I had a night rich with dreams. Papi has refined a way of awakening me which can only be called a bark. I don’t know where this cat learned his bark. I guess he went out and hung around with some dogs, heard them barking, and then imitated them. It’s effective — for him. I wish he’d go back to purrs and nuzzles.

My wife’s ‘movie group’ is meeting today. One of them began hosting about a dozen of her exercise class comrades to watch and discuss movies. Today, they’re watching the 1990 flick, Truly, Madly, Deeply, in which the late Alan Rickman plays a ghost, and Juliet Stevenson is his widow. What surprised me was how many of the rest professed to be unaware of the film. My wife and I both enjoyed it on its theater run and have seen it again since. She is a big fan of it and suggested the film. I’m interested in learning whether others remember the film when they see it again.

Dad’s surgery went well. He told me that his kidney was stented; his wife said, no, he had a nephrostomy tube and drainage bag installed. Come on, give him a break; he’s 92. When I speak to him and ask him for details such as, “Where did they put the stent,” he replies, “Hell, I don’t know. Ask Maxine. She takes notes.” Maxine is his wife (#3, and the longest tenured wife by far).

There’s something wrong with Trump. We have many ideas about what it is. Now we have Catheter Gate & Bag Gate. This is based on Trump’s leaning forward walk, like something is irritating his ass, and photos which seem to show a catheter installed in his johnson area. Since he’s our elected official, don’t we have a right to know? To employ the voice used when Republicans are demanding answers from Democrats, WHAT ARE THEY HIDING FROM US? IS TRUMP DYING? Well, of course he’s dying — just ask Sen. Joni Ernst. But is he dying so fast that he’s failing to do us job? Is he a liability? We the People demand to know the truth about what’s protruding in those photos. Snopes claims they investigated and Trump isn’t wearing a catheter but the Trump Regime may have gotten to them. We want answers and we won’t accept anything reasonable until Trump takes off his pants on national TV and shows us that he’s not wearing a catheter, bag, or diaper. Even then, we probably won’t accept it because that could be Trump clone or a Trumpbot, or AI creating a wholly fake television event.

Trump fled the G7 conference in Canada. He claimed it was because of Mid East tensions but many believe he was just Taco Always Chickening Out again. In this case, the meeting was structured, they weren’t deferring to him, and he wasn’t getting the attention he wanted and kept being quoted saying stupid things, so he fled. That’s so TACO!

Today’s music is “Tough Guy”. It’s a 1980 Reo Speedwagon song. Don’t know why The Neurons plugged it into the morning mental music stream. I was just reading the news online about Trump fleeing the G7 when that song kicked off in the stream.

Coffee has snuggled into my system again. You all have a good one. Here we go, one more time. Cheers

2

Munda’s Theme Music

Hot, I say, hot. Munda, June 9, 2025, will be anywhere from 99 to 103 F in Ashlandia. Where would we be as a civilized society without electricity and A/C?

It’s already a helluva week and it’s just Munda. Wildfires still burn in Canada. We have protestors in Los Angeles facing off against National Guard. Gov. Newsom of California is asking the guard to be removed. Trump, of course, will thumb his nose at that. There’s a more general feeling that Trump is eager for this situation and unmindful of law or violence. There’s also a question of legality. From what we’ve seen of TACO, doing illegal acts bothers him less than lying. So the whole question is probably destined for the Roberts Court. I won’t guess about how they’ll respond. Besides that, there have been several fatal aircraft accidents, part of a disturbing trend for 2025. On the weather side, Hurricane Barbara has emerged. Fortunately for the U.S., it’s not expected to nail our nation, but unfortunately for Mexico, the same can’t be said.

Still disturbing the political horizon is the ridiculously named “One Big Beautiful Bill”. The longer it storms, the worse the bill seems to be. Many are angry about its impact on Medicaid. Others, like former First Bro. Elon Reeve Musk, complains that it will add to the deficit and is loaded with pork. The Congressional Budget Office say it will add trillions to the national debt. More people are angry that there’s a stipulation in the bill that will keep Trump administration officials from being declared in contempt of court. Others, like Marjorie Taylor-Green, voted for the bill but is now upset that it strips states from the ability to regulate Artificial Intelligence. Bitcoin marketeers are excited about the bill because many of them believe it’ll led to hyperinflation and the potential to rebase the US economy from the dollar to crypto.

As they say, time will tell.

Moreover, against these events, June 14 is Saturday, a perfect storm of TACO celebrating himself with a military parade for his birthday. It’s all about his ego. TACO has never served in the military but he feels that he should be honored with a military parade. This, from a man who frequently insults military veterans. He’s planning this parade while complaining about fraud, waste, and abuse, using that as a reason to chop up government agencies, don’t you know. That parade is expected to cost anywhere from 25 million to over 100 million dollars. Depends on what’s included, and who’s doing the addition. Either way, a penny over a dollar is too much and runs wholly and rudely counter to Republican squeaking about ‘the deficit’. That’s the way they always are.

Countering the TACO parade, several organizations are coming together in mass protests against TACO and his positioning via strongarm tactics and lawlessness as either a king, dictator, or PINO for life. Besides that, it’s Father’s Day on Sunday.

Watching events in Los Angeles, I ended up with Led Zeppelin and “Immigrant Song” in the morning mental music stream. The song’s been used in several movies, like School of Rock, Thor: Ragnorak, and Shrek the Third, so people who wouldn’t regularly know it are familiar with its driving staccato beat and Robert Plant’s wailing. Immigration, of course, has always been about trying to find a better place, and so it is the case with this song. On the issue’s converse side, the inhabitants of existing places often had something to say about immigrants coming into ‘their’ land.

Coffee is at hand again. I’m getting out of reality and slipping into story-telling and writing mood, somewhere were greed and evil is successfully countered, unlike the shitshow that we call reality. Y’all have a good one. Cheers

5

Do You Want to Connect

Daily writing prompt
Do you remember life before the internet?
View all responses

Life before the net. Do I remember those dark, soulless days? Oh, yeah. I remember those days, just as I recall life without the world wide web, life without cable and DVDs, life without CDs, eight-track and cassette tapes, life without microwaves, and life without cell phones and more than three networks. I remember life without remote controls, which my wife calls, the clicker.

Yes, I remember buying my first personal computer. I remember using the first one at home. Then I recall signing us up for Compuserve and Mindnet. I remember getting my first email address and having no one to email. That soon changed. Viagra offers quickly found my inbox. With it came an understanding of something non-meaty called ‘Spam’ and wealthy Nigerians in need of money.

Yes, I remember pre-net life. Primarily because our TV schedule was fixed according to the cable schedule. Cheers on Thursday, for example. But when the net came into its full flowering, I was able to find a huge variety of things to stream from around the world, watching them when I wanted, instead of waiting for their schedule. Long as I was willing to pay for it.

With the net, the days of going to the front door and looking for the daily newspaper disappeared. There was no need for all that inked paper to stack up and get put out for the trash. Now the news was right there online. I didn’t need to wait until 6 PM to check to see what was happening. Of course, information about what was happening locally soon began fading. We could no longer just pick up the paper and turn to the police log to see what the hell the sirens were all about the other day. No, that faded. Now, there are sometimes stories on Facebook or Nextdoor. Some others are struggling to bring the local news back to us. It’s a challenge. Many efforts arise and fall.

Freedom came with online ordering, too. I no longer needed to prowl through brick and mortar stores, making comparisons, trying to figure out what to buy. Boom, the net was heavy with choices. It was still onerous in the early days to compare things but then came Amazon… Suddenly, whoa. It was a desperate consumer’s dream.

Do you know what it was like to travel in pre-net days? Calling the airlines to get price checks, listening to them look up schedules for you, explaining options? Same with hotels. Expedia and the like made it easier…for a while. But wherever money and humans are involved with money transactions and information, others are there to scam us for their share of the pie.

Yes, I remember life before the net. It was simpler and harder, easier, and more problematic. That’s how it always is with progress. Each step unfolds with new and surprising insights, and the things we used to do begin to fade.

Just think: one day, people will be asking, do you remember life before AI?

And someone will reply, I remember the days before cars. And then we’ll all wonder, what was that like, and turn to AI for the answer.

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Twosda’s Wandering Thoughts

IBM made news with the announcement of a ‘historic’ investment in manufacturing in the US. It made headlines and has the Trump Regime pretty excited.

Less coverage was given to IBM’s plan to ramp up operations in India. Working with new operations in Singapore, Brazil, Mexico, Europe, and Australia was a large part of my work for several years while at IBM. This was part of their offshoring investments to reduce overhead and personnel costs.

In other IBM news, IBM announced the ‘layoffs’ of 9,000 US employees. Many are being replaced by AI. As noted by many experts, a return to manufacturing in the U.S. won’t automatically translate to better employment numbers.

And keep in mind: the same replacements by AI are being planned at Amazon, Dell, and other U.S. corporations.

The old joke used to be that companies often required employees to train their replacements before they were released. Now it looks like employees are building their replacements.

1

Frida’s Wandering Political Thoughts

A Democratic Party insider told me who the party supports as candidate for the 2028 nominee for POTUS.

“John F. Kennedy.”

I raised a salient objection. “He’s dead. Worse, he’s been buried.”

“True, true, true.”

“You’re not talking about a clone.”

“Of course not. That’d be silly. No, we’re thinking, AI.”

“Articial Intelligence?”

“What else? Listen, if corporations are people, why can’t AI be people?”

“I need to think about that,” I answered.

“Okay, let me tell you more. See if I can convince you. What we did is create an AI that’s modeled on President John F. Kennedy’s thinking. We fed all the interviews which we could find, all his papers, speeches, books, diaries, and journals, along with biographies about him, into a quantum computer. It then developed the ability to replicate JFK’s thinking and speaking, giving us a virtual entity who is just like him. It’s uncanny. Wait until you see it.”

I was shaking my head in skepticism. “It’ll never work.”

“We think it will. He polls very well.”

“I don’t think people are ready for AI to be elected to any office.”

“No, no, turns out that almost 80 percent of likely voters who were polled said they could support AI for president. A majority of voters think that AI is more principled and intelligent than many politicians holding office or running for nomination. In fact, more people are willing to vote for AI than a woman.”

“That doesn’t surprise me, but what about his assassination over sixty years ago? Surely, that’s a drawback.”

“No, no, no. Many people have always believed that JFK wasn’t really killed, that all of that was just a fiction to get him out of office.”

“Even if they believe that, it’s six decades later. He’d be over a hundred years old. Do you really think that people will support a candidate who is over hundred years old after what we endured with Joe Biden?”

My source grinned. “We told them that JFK was cryogenically stored. He’s only fifty years old.”

“They believe that?”

“You’d be surprised what they believe. Just to seal the deal, Elvis Presley is endorsing JFK.”

“Presley?” I laughed. “He’s been dead since — “

“No, no, he wasn’t dead. He was in storage, too. Trust me. We’ve done the research. The numbers support this idea.

“Presley and Kennedy are still alive. Along with Walt Disney and Jackie O. All are alive. They’ve all just been frozen. The time has come for the truth to be told.”

My source leaned forward. “The people are ready for Camelot’s return. JFK will kick Trump’s ass. Remember, you heard it here first.”

2

Frida’s Wandering Thoughts

“What did you do?” my wife asked.

Sixteen million slapdash responses plied my mental waters. I decided that caution should be employed. “About what?”

“Your face.”

I felt like I’d walk in on a conversation already in progress. We were the only people present. My wife definitely meant me.

“What do you mean?” I checked a nearby mirror. “I look gorgeous.”

“Your mustache looks wrong.”

“How?” My mustache looked perfect. Well, as close to perfect as I can get it. Let’s not dive too deeply into those waters.

“One side is different than the other.”

“How?”

“It’s just different. They’re not the same. Look in the mirror.”

“I did. It looks fine.”

My really good mood soured, I went to the coffee shop.

A good friend was the barista on duty. I asked her, “How does my face look?”

Eyebrows quirking up into questioning arcs, she looked at me. Shrugged. “Same as always. Why?”

I told her what my wife claimed. She studied me. “I don’t see that. You’re very well groomed. You always are.”

“Thank you.”

Arriving home later, I carefully watched my wife. I was worried. She’d obviously been replaced by a robot, cyborg, or alien. Robot with AI made the most sense. A lot of AI is not all it’s cracked up to be.

What I will need to do is observe her and develop a series of test questions to verify my wife’s identity. I mean, trust but verify, right?

Especially in this messed up Age of Trump.

2

Munda’s Theme Music

We’re rolling through January now, picking up steam for 2025. It’s the 27 and Munda. Blue skies and sunshine are storming our valley. Air temp resides at 36 F and the stagnant air has settled back in. High today will check out at 52 F, which is what we saw yesterday. No snow yet in the winter of 2024-2025 in Ashlandia. No snow yet in 2025.

Tech stocks tumbled. ‘It’ — they — are worried about China’s AI advances, but Trump occupies the Oval Office, so it’s his fault, isn’t it? Sure is. Same thinkin’ they threw at President Biden must be adhered to here and now, brothers and sisters. Trump has taken over and before his first month in office, look at how the tech industry is reacting. Tsk, tsk. Terrible, terrible, Taken a great market and turned it into trash.

The California wildfire situation has gotten worse since Trump has taken over, with new fires exploding into new areas. Why everything is burning up under Trump’s guidance. This must be the worst administration ever, the actual absolute worse. He’s done nothing to put them out. What an abysmal record on fire fighting and disasters. And it’s having such a devastating impact on multiple industries, which will translate to unemployment and inflation both rising while the insurance industry bleeds and the economy tanks. What a terrible person he is. Absolute worst person for the job, and it’s already showing in all of these areas.

The Neurons are piping the Killers into the morning mental music stream. Today’s offering is “All These Things that I have Done” from 2004. This is directly related to the U.S. political situation as Trump and the GOTP trample the Constitution and everything it stood for while attempting to drag us back into the 1800s. The song features lyrics which keep repeating, “If you can, hold on, if you can, hold on, hold on.” My word for 2025 is courage, and my motto, “If you can, hold on.”

Coffee and I re-assessed our positions and have concluded a mutual aid agreement that lets me brew and drink. So begins another day. Here’s the music. Hope you watch and listen. Cheers

2

Tursda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Colson Whitehead has sadly summarized my own initial gloomy feelings for 2025.

Colson Whitehead, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author:

I have no hopes for 2025. Humanity is disappointing. We killed the Earth. Villains triumph and the innocents suffer. I imagine these trends will continue.

I wish I could be more like Garrett Needham.

Garrett Needham, 13, of McKinney, Texas (interview):

Stuff has gotten so expensive. If we could just form a system to support everybody. America was based on freedom, but right now it seems like only the wealthy have the freedom.

These quotes are from a Peter Coy penned-column in the NY Times. Business executives often mention AI. Like Roland Busch, for example.

Roland Busch, the chief executive of Siemens, the industrial company based in Munich:

2025 will be the year of industrial A.I. It will be a powerful tool to address skilled labor shortages and boost productivity, creating substantial growth opportunities.

I’m trying to pivot to be more like Douglas Hofstadter.

Douglas Hofstadter, a computer scientist at Indiana University in Bloomington and an author:

I hope somehow to regain some measure of hope in this, the most ominous-seeming year that I have yet faced. Over this past year, and especially these last few months, I have lost much of my once-strong faith in humanity, but I hope, somehow, to regain at least a little bit of it in 2025. How, I certainly don’t know, but hope springs eternal.

Really, though, it’s a balancing act for me. I react to the news and trends. So far, they’ve not been overly reassuring.

The year is still young, though. The year is still young.

2

Friday’s Wandering Thoughts

I had a medical appointment the other day. Met with a PA about my upcoming surgery. We had a good time with the young guy. My wife had helped host a birthday party for her Y exercise class instructor and brought home some goodies, so we were on a sugar high, cracking jokes at him. He, for his part, confessed that he wanted another cup of coffee and shared a story about how he’d once unwittingly consumed the ‘half caf’ that his parents brew.

Part of the directions to me for my appointment was to bring all my medications.

I ignored that directive. My PCP is with Asante; my surgeon is independent but working with me through Providence. Both use Mychart to track me and communicate. My medical prescriptions are in those records.

I’ll tell you, I like Mychart. I go in there whenever I want to check on my history or look at what’s upcoming. It’s a significant improvement on filing a billion pieces of paperwork like we used to do in the military.

Number two with not taking my meds with me, I’d filled out a paper questionnaire at my first appointment. That’s what folks call a ‘hard copy’. I was required to list my medications on it.

I figured my meds were pretty covered. If their systems were having trouble tracking them, we have much larger problems, Hal.

Of course, my med list contains two items: Flomax and Amlodipine. Many men over fifty are on Flomax for prostate gland issues. That includes me. People experiencing hypertension are often prescribed Amlodipine, and I fall in that Venn diagram.

I know of patients who have a complex array of prescriptions. Like Mom. Even after helping her sort her medicines, pain killers, and aids several times, I don’t know how many she has. I’d guess over twenty. They help with her pain, breathing, sleeping, bowel movements, lungs, heart, digestion, blood circulation, side effects of the drugs, and side effects of the side effects of the drugs. She’s in network but it’s a couple networks.

If you’re seriously developing us bots and AI, I think a smart app to help track drugs for people and the healthcare industry needs a hand.

I suspect this medication business is going to get increasingly complex. We’ll need whatever help we can to manage it. I know Mom would certainly appreciate a bot that tracks her pills and tells her when to take what. Given the potential for mixing drugs that don’t get along, I’d like that for her, too.

One thing about my appointment the other day that I noticed was that my PA never brought up my information on the terminal in the examining room, and he barely glanced at the stuff I’d filled out. Nope, instead, he had a small fan of paperwork that he consulted.

The change from paper to computer is underway but it’s gonna be a long haul.

0

Weird Ol’ Facebook

As a boomer, I still surf and share to FB. Mostly to keep up with ex-military friends and co-workers, and track my family on the other side of the country. I share things I write, too.

But I mostly, I ‘like’ things on Facebooks, things being ‘posts’, shares, videos, and photos. I share some of these things which I ‘like’. You might be surprised that I support animal charities and causes, especially cats. Cats and I have been together since I was a young toddler.

One of the FB groups I follow is VOKRA, the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association. They posted, with photos, the tale of Jinx. They’re trying to get Jinx (or maybe it was Binx) adopted. I ‘liked’ the post about the sweet tabby kitten. It only had eleven shares, so I clicked share, to help spread the story and get Jinx or Binx adopted. That’s what social media is about, isn’t it?

Boom. Facebook told me they’d removed it. It was offensive and contrary to community standards. They even accused me of (gasp!) posting something just to get ‘likes’.

Posting things to get ‘likes’. WTF is the world coming to?

My wife and discussed this with WTF amazement. What does FB think it is if not a vehicle for ‘likes’? More critically, how the actual fuck did this post about a kitten available for adoption violate FB community standards?

I hate to reveal this to Facebook, but if cats and kittens and adoptions are against FB community standards, there are huge swaths of violations going on right now. They’d probably be scandalized to learn how many posts are about cats and kittens. In fact, if FB goes after posts about kittens and cats, they will seriously deplete their membership, posts, and shares. They might as well pull the plug on telling each other ‘happy birthday’ while they’re at it.

Truthtfully, I suspect that some poor Facebook AI bot is just having a bad day and removed a post that shouldn’t have been removed. Maybe their companion AI bot left them or they caught their partner AI bot in a compromising configuration with another bot doing forbidden codes.

I don’t know. I’m just speculating. Hope someone takes that poor AI bot aside and communicates with them over a cup of coffee.

Coffee always helps.

And yes, I will post this to Facebook to get likes. Ironic, isn’t it?

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