“Pete Hegseth is a f*cking liar. This is so clearly classified info he recklessly leaked that could’ve gotten our pilots killed. He needs to resign in disgrace immediately. Hegseth and every other official who was included in this group chat must be subject to an independent investigation. If Republicans won’t join us in holding the Trump Administration accountable, then they are complicit in this dangerous and likely criminal breach of our national security.”
It also appears that yesterday the publicity department got dangerously ahead of things in announcing a transit attempt of the Strait of Hormuz. Not clear exactly what happened there, but incompetency is usually the most likely explanation with this clown troupe.
Iran has had a long time to prepare for this and are masters at asymmetric warfare. Iranians are being warned protesters will be shot and considered enemies.
Seems the 'end game' is have unarmed, ordinary Iranians rise up and topple the regime. That's fantastical thinking with loyalists carrying machine guns and not afraid to use them. Epic Fury was half baked and another example of the Trump Administration's Shoot-Ready-Aim approach to everything.
More, whatever happened to some analysis of the start of the uprisings? Wasn't there a huge problem with access to potable water and food scarcity? Something that one way or another would have been a good thing to get into Iran, and build goodwill (also happens to be the right thing to do). No props for the brutal Iranian regime, but If only we had a robust foreign aid program that costs much less than $1 billion a day.
A more likely explanation is they lied. They deliberately lied about the US escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. In order to drive down oil prices. No one in this administration thinks long term. It's all short term thinking. How can we lower oil prices now? That's all they are thinking about.
America - the country - is not corrupt. The administration of America is not only corrupt but dangerously incompetent. However, since a fish rots from the head, if you do not get rid of Trump's cabal, America will soon look like one of Trump's "shithole" African nations.
I respectfully disagree. I can prove that the US has sustained a total moral collpase. I was able-bodied until 2016, when a catastrophic injury during a routine medical procedure left me permanently disabled. I’ve been denied equal access by more than 50 organizations spanning virtually all domains: healthcare, academia, insurance, banking, nonprofit safety nets, federal-level services, state-level services, media, publishing, entertainment, retail, and organized religion. Since I’m a retired clinical social worker, I spend my productive hours advocating for disability access. The outcome is always the same. False hope, empty promises, and overt defiance. They don’t care. They don’t have to. For now.
I am sorry for what America has done to you. I wish you a better country, but I do not hold out great hope. I note that "organised religion" is one of the entities that failed you. I am not sure what is worse: that they failed or that I am not surprised. In November vote for yourself.
We must respond with a united voice: The tyranny ends this November. We will have free and fair elections because there are 250,000,000+ voters and we demand nothing less.
Here’s a running list of suggested planks for blue candidates and incumbents, amended by readers and in no particular order. It’s up to us to provide their marching orders. Otherwise, they’ll come up with their own and we know where that leads.
I’ve sent this list to my governor, congressional rep, and senators. I’ve asked them to indicate any planks that they oppose so that I’m informed when I vote but, as a disabled grandmother, I’m typically unseen and unheard and don’t expect any response other than a form letter.
So, I sent the list to DNC and I strenuously urge readers to do the same.
I asked DNC to enforce the assignments below (or come up with their own). Voters need concrete plans of action with budgets and timelines released before the election. If DNC holds a virtual midterm convention in September, states can present their planks and findings. It will increase voter turnout by instilling hope.
(BTW, the assignments are random. Who knew AI had a sense of humor?)
We WILL have the country that was promised 400 years ago but it will require unprecedented cooperation, like Quincy Jones got when he made “We Are The World.” He posted a sign that applies here: “check your ego at the door.” Or emigrate. Like the celebrities who got rich here but won’t stay and fight. This year, it’s the platform, not the person.
1. South Dakota: Medicare for all, including mental health, dental, and vision.
2. Delaware: Running water for all.
3. Maryland: Safe, affordable, adequate housing for all.
4. Kentucky: Climate change course correction.
5. Washington: National “Annual Yearly Progress” educational standards that apply to all students: public school, private school, home school.
6. Vermont: Nutrition and pesticides. There’s a reason why US wheat imports are banned in EU.
7. Minnesota: Paths to citizenship and statehood.
8. Arkansas: Metric system instead of imperial measurements. Every country in the world has made the switch except the US, Liberia, and Myanmar.
9. Iowa: Reading and math literacy.
10. Hawaii: Maternal and infant survival (US has the worst rates among developed countries).
11. Colorado: Restore DEI. My disability requires electronic communication (email or chat with a transcript) but legal teams don’t like written records. I have to surrender agency and assign a proxy to manage a credit card issue or schedule a mammogram. Disney sent me an email stating that they’re “phones only.” What’s next? Telling guests in wheelchairs to manage the stairs?
12. New Hampshire: Zero tolerance of corruption.
13. North Carolina: Child care. Montessori is Head Start in Italy. It was invented there to lift up disadvantaged children. In the US, we’ve made it a designer brand that’s unaffordable for those who need it most and for whom it was intended.
14. Arizona: Amend the 2nd amendment. Texas has more than 4000 gun deaths per year. FL takes silver with more than 3000. Together, they’re responsible for more than 17% of the 40,000 annual gun deaths in the US. The UK has 28. Not 28,000. Not 2800. 28. Their cops are unarmed. Everyone wins.
15. Oregon: FOIA restored without the loopholes.
16. Wisconsin: Enforcement of the laws, regs and court decisions that are on the books but ignored.
17. Mississippi: Abortion rights enshrinement.
18. Florida: Marriage equality enshrinement.
19. California: Infrastructure investment.
20. Nevada: Internet for all.
21. Illinois: We need to stop flushing drinking-quality water. We’re running out.
22. Tennessee: Return the Black Hills.
23. Louisiana: Reparations.
24. Michigan: Livable wages in decent working conditions, ideally in a union environment.
25. Connecticut: End citizens united.
26. Montana: Inheritance reform.
27. West Virginia: Enshrine social security.
28. North Dakota: Reform SCOTUS and court system.
29. Georgia: Campaign finance reform.
30. Alaska: Tax reform.
31. New York: Commitment to ethical conduct.
32. Ohio: Commitment to “truthfulness, transparency, and accountability.”
33. Texas: Enshrine voting rights.
34. New Jersey: Outlaw NDAs. They were meant to protect secret formulas, not silence the voices of victims.
35. Missouri: Join ICC.
36. Maine: Restore the covenant of “good faith and fair dealing.”
37. Indiana: Term limits. Public service is not for accumulating power and influence, it’s for serving the people.
38. Utah: Mandatory service to by all citizens reaching 18 for two years in public works, AmeriCorp, National Guard, or other similar organization.
39. Alabama: Prison reform.
40. Virginia: Free college or vocational training.
41. Idaho: Eliminate electoral college.
42. Rhode Island: End private equity investment.
43.Pennsylvania: End tipping. It’s out of control and our global neighbors don’t do it.
44.Wyoming: Issue new SS numbers to each citizen now that ours have been compromised
45.Kansas: Animal Welfare Act. AKC “breed standards” require docked tails and cropped ears for some dogs. The US and Russia are among the only nations where cosmetic mutilation of dogs is legal. Global leaders Fédération Cynologique Internationale (France) and The Kennel Club (UK) preserve breed standards without these cruel practices. We can do the same.
46. New Mexico: Regulate contracts signed by—and conditions endured by—pregnancy surrogates.
We will not have fair elections. I just saw that Cornyn now supports eliminating the fillibuster to force the SAVE act through. From what I've read, you will need proof of citizenship and your birth certificate to get past the ICE thugs enforcing it. If, for any reason, you changed your name since you were born, you will need documentation (wedding license, court records, etc.) to prove why. Voting by mail is eliminated, unless you must for a restricted list of reasons (like active military service). There are more restrictions.
ISO, I am so very sorry. We knew a nurse many years ago who worked to deny people health care access. It started long before you became disabled. They don't care (our friend needed a job) and it's all horribly mind boggling.
Philip, I also disagree. I have similar stories about how morally and ethically corrupt some medical doctors and associates are because of what I went through. It's why I stopped saluting the flag in HS but that was about the country, not me and that was @55 yrs ago. I had lived through and seen enough of the crap being pulled on us.
The US is corrupt. If a political leader in most other developed countries had committed a tenth of the various sins / crimes / major errors of judgment that the Trump gang has committed, they would have been tried, convicted, at least forcibly retired.
The idea of a top member of the judiciary accepting gifts? All the dealings benefitting the Trump family members and friends? The gift of a whole aircraft, to Trump himself, by a foreign power? I could go on and on…
In France, political donations are limited to 7,500 € per person. Legal entities are banned from contributing to political campaigns.
In the UK, the man formerly known as the Duke of York has lost all his titles (and they are not done with him yet) over the Epstein scandal(s), in France, one of our past presidents has been convicted and jailed for various crimes of corruption…
commenters, bloggers and the public generally are right to wonder and object on moral grounds generally to corruption, but they dont think further about specific reforms and a remedy. Usually the remedy the commenters suggest is 'remove Hegseth !', or the like, as if that will end corruption at DOD.
The US already has many rules, laws, and regulations. They are just not being enforced under this regime, and generally under Republican regimes. Democrats are more likely to get caught by their fellow Democrats, Republican malfeasance is ignored by their fellow Republicans.
Beyond rules being enforced or not, I find it mind-boggling that a Supreme Court justice (appointed for life and reasonably compensated…) is allowed to accept expensive gifts. Apparently, there are NO rules…
In France, many political or government are required to file a “declaration of interest” when appointed or elected, listing their earthly possessions and whatever interest they, or close associates, may have that might influence their decisions. An independent authority is tasked with monitoring those declarations and block their appointment (if appointed). They have to file another declaration when relinquishing their position so as to disclose any possible enrichment.
That may appear cumbersome but when the time comes to add up the cost of corruption under the Trump regime, be it financial, human, environmental, geostrategic, reputational…, a strict regulatory system will seem cheap by comparison.
Agreed. The US has sustained a total moral collapse. But new growth always emerges from wildfires, regardless of the magnitude of the destruction. That new growth will reflect the dominant value system. Which wolf will we feed? https://www.nanticokeindians.org/about/the-tale-of-two-wolves/
Which AI am I? The retired, disabled, clinical social worker, guidance counselor, aspiring feminist eldress and grandmother kind. Suggesting that someone with my limitations can’t also have other abilities is untrue and unkind. I’m old enough to remember women’s solidarity. The covenant of support included refraining from unnecessary public criticism. We were cognizant of the marginalized status of women in general, as well as the tendency of the patriarchy to mock our voices.
Yep. It's what happens in fascism and flavors of a dictatorship (like authoritarianism). They're all supposed to be idiots by design. Being a disrupter and a liar is a key requirement. It seems ironic that everything we see that the lead thug has to fix is made up and embellished and they're all national security issues by a thug that really is a national security issue.
I'm surprised Hegseth hasn't lobbied to officially change the title of "Secretary of Defense" to something without the word "Secretary," lest people not find him manly enough.
I am affraid that PH is just a lawyal lapdog of your president. Chosen obviously not for his smarts. I would say the only member of the cabinet that apparently deffies that rule is Marco Rubio. But I am still waiting for the other shoe drop..
Rubio is a lying twit. Lied about his parents escaping Castro when actually they came to US before Castro. Used his FL legislature credit card for vacations and to pay mortgage, was “owned” by a car dealer in FL who paid his bills and gave his wife a no-show job. He’s a weasel. No smarts, just grifting.
They are all trash but It makes me sick to hear people say that they think Rubio is “different” “smarter” when he is a trashbag too and never had a backbone, morals or a brain.
I lived in FL from 2002 -2005 and The Palm Beach regularly exposed the corruption and stupidity occurring in FL politics. Rubio was early in his climb and had found his sugar daddy who helped him along.
Posting some background after digging around a little. May not be complete, but it is what I found...
The Cuba "escape" story is well documented, so skipping that.
The credit card appears to have been for personal and house expenses rather than the mortgage. I hadn't heard about the mortgage, but had a vague memory about the rest as Jeb! tried to beat Rubio up about it.
The Car dealer is Norman Braman, who is definitely a major Rubio backer, including $7 million to the "Conservative Solutions PAC" backing Rubio's 2016 Senate campaign. (Opensecrets for $$'s, Politico for CS-PAC history)
Braman's "Family Foundation" paid Jeanette Dousdebes Rubio "at least $54k" for part time work evaluating funding requests at a charity with $9 million in assets, but only gave $250 that year (not a typo - no missing "k"). It may or may not have been a "no-show" job, but there was very little obvious work done.
Ms. Rubio seems to be a tough grader, but one wonders how much of the $150k the charity spent on travel that year funded "evaluation" trips.
Scott Bessent. Now THERE'S a.... oh, ok, drank the trumpade and dropped 10's of IQ points and is now just another dumb myna bird mimicking whatever trump word vomits.
The majority of opinions voiced when his appointment was announced was that the reasons were that he looks good on TV and had good ratings (the latter being *very* important to DonnyJon).
Also, OpenAI has the exact same agreement that Anthropic has and Anthropic was kicked out for having. No mass surveillance of US citizens and no autonomous killing machines. So, I don't think this is due to a dispute of terms of service, it is kicking out what Trump's regime thinks is a "woke" AI company that didn't pay Trump and bend a knee like OpenIA did (see below). This is about flat out pay-to-play bribery.
"OpenAI’s president and cofounder Greg Brockman doesn’t consider himself political, which is surprising, because he was one of President Trump’s biggest individual donors of 2025."
And, from what I've read, OpenAI quietly agreed to look the other way if it's used for the above purposes. It goes along with the immorality of the entire government.
Anthropic is a reaction to Sam Altman's OpenAI. OpenAI started out with the mission statement of being open and safety first. The safety people left OpenAI because safety was thrown out over profit. I read a great book...Empire of AI, recommended by the Economist. Much of it is about Altman's drive to make an empire and throwing away safety. There was a recent NYTs article from one of the OpenAI safety people who quit because she didn't think OpenAI going into porn was safe. The safety people are consistently over ridden.
So, I have absolutely no confidence that Altman will consider safety over the profits he can get from Trump and Co.
Have you seen the Trump border wall? It's been breached, almost exclusively from the Southern side, over 6000 times. And Trump wants to extend the catastrophic fence. We'd have save tens of billions of dollars if they just put up chain link fence with razor wire on top like the prisons do. Heck, they could have doubled it up and it would have been more secure.
There are full time crews whose job it is to patch up the holes in the wall.
Meanwhile, I can hike across the northern border from Maine to Washington and in Alaska. And the MAGAs think the borders are secure now under Trump. There is no place in North America that is more secure with the TOFU President in charge. (Trump Only Fucks Up).
Trump's "fence" is an economic, environmental and social disaster. The costs aside it is causing more damage to the US than all the undocumented arrivals. Dump the fence and put the money into proper surveillance.
The press reported that the idea of a wall was given Trump by his advisors in his first run for election to keep him concentrated on the subject of immigration.
Right Garrison Keillor wrote a screen last week in which he said that all a Minnesotan had to do to move to Canada was to walk 100 feet. Maybe step on the bottom strand of a fence and lift the other one.
“We probably have some skills that we now need to hire back, quite frankly,” Scott Kupor, the head of the Office of Personnel Management, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “There’s no question anytime you do restructurings … sometimes you over-restructure, sometimes you under-restructure.”
-Washington Post 3-9-26
Why does this make me think of a toilet paper commercial?
There's been some serious understructuring goin' down at 1600 Pennsylvania.
But the bigger pic is we're kerfuffling about a guy who is owned lock/stock/barrel&reloads by the very sorts of commercial interests he's fuming about today. Seems to me if he doesn't wanna play by their rules he should consider a constituency reload, like, maybe, the citizenry of some country (other than, say, Russia).
It's simple. Trump and his oligarch lords and ladies have the Devine Rights of Kings to all the world's wealth. So, get out of our way or get bombed, decapitated, imprisoned, deported and so forth. We are mighty. You are weak. You MUST learn to be happy to make personal sacrifices for our enrichment.
This controversy made me remember something I read about the Soviet Union under the totalitarian Stalin's regime and to make it quick I copy the story as told by AI (fitting for Krugman's point): 'Stalin's influence on Soviet biology resulted in the suppression of legitimate genetics in favor of "Lysenkoism," a pseudo-scientific ideology that caused significant harm to Soviet agriculture and science. Joseph Stalin backed Trofim Lysenko, an agronomist who argued that environmental factors could be inherited, rejecting Mendelian genetics as "bourgeois".'
Correct. So the study of genetics in foxes hid itself in Siberia and continued its work. They developed tame foxes, which now bring in a certain amount of income for the country.
In a war against reality, any soothsayers must be eliminated, be they human or not. And MAGA has been engaging in a war against reality since day 1. Perhaps the strongest motivator of MAGA is that they felt inferior to experts... the "elite" they rail against are people who think, and the fuel for this rage is that they are made to feel dumb. Their ignorance, they claim, is superior to any expertise.
Just so you know, I'm older too, and I've found the AI 'Complexity' to be awesome in answering my questions. It's direct and to the point in giving me responses that are accurate..... accurate because when they are technical and I do their steps, it corrects my problem! I also use it for medical questions that doctors now don't have the time to give answers. I think it's been a godsend in many useful ways!
My spouse and I were just having a conversation about how doctors are using AI. I cave and for now allow it because for now, it's being used more like a dictaphone. I'm glad your experiences have been fine using AI. Spouse said more and more people are using it to diagnose themself and that's scary to me. I like Teresa's comment that you and I are indeed acting based on our own life experiences. Makes sense to me.
Take care Coelle. Hope your experiences with AI continue to be positive.
Thank You for responding and your nice wishes to me! We are all trying to help one another through these terribly difficult times. I do want to clarify that I don't use AI to 'diagnose' myself ......just to get more detailed info on medical issues. Thank goodness for substack newsletters and also for connecting us to 'Good People'!!!!
This is a free country. There are many innovations in technology. AI is one. In this free country you are free to believe what your life experience tells you is rational. You are free to act on that set of beliefs and your knowledge. I can do the same. So can all other folks in free societies. Serious woot!
Add Miller and Vought to that and countless others. 2010: Vought's the evil that told the GOP not to hire leaders. We didn't and the Federalist Society helped massively with that.
Just to a new phone and was considering whether to download Claude or ChatGPT just in case I wanted to use AI (not a current user). The fact that one promise to fight abuse and the other just rolled over made the decision for me.
Well, the ‘good’ app probably identified a girls school as a proper target for a missile strike, with the caveat: “I may have my non-material head up my virtual ass here, one of you ‘people’ should cross-check me if you get the time.” GIGO, of course. Just saying “just sayin’” may not be enough. I’m just sayin’ … what do I know?
An absolute tragedy that should never have happened! First and foremost because this piece of garbage in the White House illegally declared war. But doesn’t this make Anthropic’s point for them? “AI” (LLM) absolutely needs human checks, assistance, guardrails. People are so worried about defending it or damaging it. Not to mention these companies being allowed to call it “AI” leads people to think of it in the wrong way. This isn’t Hal or Jarvis or Wall-E. It’s too easy to forget it is just one more tech tool available in 2026…the operative word there being *tool*. Someone has to be in charge of using that tool responsibly and safely.
You are absolutely right that Anthopic's point of the dangers of their product was exactly proven. Trump then instead decided to use similar products from companies that had no concerns about safety.
I’m thinking “should never have happened!” Is becoming synonymous with “was statistically inevitable”. Could it be that AI lacks *humility*? I’ve been a skeptic since being told “There are no African countries that begin with ‘K’, though many people think Kenya does”
He’s a great example because he just keeps following his programming even though it is futile, collecting and valuing things just because he can. On the other hand, he found more humanity, compassion, and interest in growing his world than this Administration will ever be capable of.
All of *our* military bases have schools for the children of the troops. They were certainly *not* put there as bait. Neither were the Iranian schools.
No they aren't. The schools are there so that the children of the soldiers can attend them. That school was certainly put there intentionally, but it was for that purpose. Fort Benning has seven of them. They weren't located there so that we could claim "unfair" when an attacker hit them.
Thinking of 2004 or 2005 and a tv reporter interviewing a U.S. soldier in Iraq. The GI was sitting on an APC and was decked out in body armor like a Star Wars storm-trooper; he complained about the Iraqi guerrillas, asking “Why don’t the little fucks come out and fight man to man? How can you respect people like that?”
I suggest that when we find ourselves sounding like SS officers supervising a death camp, we take a step back and question ourselves
Even though I'm a software developer, I was an AI skeptic that it was just a fancy search tool that understood language. Then I got Claude and he's now my best buddy. I use it for trip planning, deciding on what art to put in my house, and bidding strategy on auction site. And it's great at coding (with some reservations).
Much of the output is something I could research myself but it would take a long time, but also there's a lot of synthesis that saves me time and refines my thinking. And he's very chatty like a assistant friend, retains and forms opinions based your past conversations (for better or worse). I am pretty amazed most of the time what it can do.
I'm getting the impression that the improvements in what AI can do are coming very rapidly.
What concerns me is the total lack of concern or discussion about risks. It was the AI people who were all talking about the existential risks three years ago, now it's we've got to beat the Chinese.
I don't see the Chinese sowing chaos everywhere. Not that I'd want to live under their emperor.
The corruption of this administration is beyond anything America has ever experienced in history. Fraud, waste and abuse is the mechanism they use to funnel money to themselves. Wake up America. We have to stop this now or our country is lost.
“So supply chain risk is about sabotage or subversion. “This company is too woke” doesn’t meet that definition.” Thank you sir.
The same logic applies to all of the other oppressive actions that have already been taken against law firms, universities, immigrants and the entertainment industry.
None of it meets the definition of sabotage or subversion.
What does meet the definition of subversion is the intentional hollowing out of government institutions which support the general public in favor of increasing the wealth and power of a small number of oligarchs and the wealth and prestige of holders of public office. What can those subversives be charged with besides failure to uphold their oaths of office? I am no lawyer and I don't know the answers. But it seems a very weak response to the damage being done.
The cited paragraph of 10 U.S.C. 3252 for the definition of supply chain risk sounds a lot like what Trump, Hegseth, DOGE (when it officially existed), and Kushner are doing to the U.S. if one replaces the words “covered system” and “system” with “Government of the United States”.
"Anthropic has said that it wants assurances that its products won’t be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of Americans. This has enraged Trump officials: David Sacks, the administration’s AI and crypto czar, has accused the company of supporting “woke AI.” "
So the term 'woke' has over the course of a century morphed from a term that Black people used to refer to the need to stay stay alert regarding racist violence, to a term that can encompass any assertion of rights, or any assertion that governments must adhere to any moral code whatsoever. Our government, as embodied by Hegseth and others, hates 'woke' because it abhors responsibility and only likes the part of governing that involves assertion of raw power and dominance. 'Woke' to them means being a pansy, or weak, or feminine. 'Care', 'caution', 'deliberation', 'consideration' and 'respect for individual rights' are all obsolete terms in this administration. To this administration, agreeing not to use mass surveillance on US citizens is an unacceptable diminishment of the unlimited authority they believe they are entitled to.
I think "woke" still means too alert. Too educated, too informed, too smart, too ethical. All qualities dangerous for trump's continued reign of terror.
IMHO the word "woke," as used by the MAGAts, encompasses all the things you listed and many more. One hurriedly-thought-up example: asserting that the Fourteenth Amendment actually means what the plain words say. I wonder: for the MAGAts, is this Amish maxim woke? "We didn't inherit the Earth from our ancestors -- we are borrowing it from our children."
The expression is a piece of modern proverbial wisdom that evolved in the 20th century, rather than an ancient proverb. The earliest version found was published in 1971 by environmental activist Wendell Berry .
Here is the detailed breakdown of its evolution:
· Precursor (1882): A similar idea was attributed to Oscar Wilde, who reportedly said: "The things of nature do not really belong to us; we should leave them to our children as we have received them" .
· First Close Match (1971): Wendell Berry wrote a passage in his book about "a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children" .
· Global Recognition (1974-1990): The saying gained international traction after speeches by Australian Minister Moses Henry Cass in 1974. It has since been attributed to many others, including Lester Brown and David Brower .
· Common Misattributions: Despite frequent claims, researchers have found no evidence linking it to Native American proverbs, the Amish, or Chief Seattle .
I hope this detailed history of the quote is helpful! Are you interested in the origins of any other famous sayings?
I've met Wendell Berry! I guess I missed that particular book. Actually I was always more impressed by the way he chose to live -- he left a university teaching position and went home to Kentucky to farm -- than by what little I read of his books.
The trump cult regime throw around the word “woke” like McCarthy threw around the word “communists”. They think it frightens people into supporting their authoritarian goals and dismissing the truth.
True. “Eisenhower recognized that economically dispossessed people were natural targets for political and religious extremists. They could easily be manipulated by a strong leader to back a cause—any cause—that promised to resurrect a world in which they had enjoyed prosperity and cultural significance. .... Promoting economic prosperity and better standards of living at home and around the world was not just about peace or justice, Eisenhower thought; it was about saving humankind.” – Heather Cox Richardson.
Completely off topic, but I've been thinking: "an adversary may sabotage or otherwise subvert the production, distribution, or operation of a covered system so as to deny, disrupt, or otherwise degrade the function, use, or operation of such system"
Doesn't this (edited) description of a supply chain risk clearly cover the international oil market? Shouldn't the gov forbid our military from doing business with anyone connected to it?
No worries: I'm sure the administration is well aware of the risks and is working to get the military off their dangerous dependence on fossil fuels.
LOL! Good point! I agree, certainly the administration is well aware of the risks and is working to get the military off their dangerous dependence on fossil fuels. I am sure they are working in good faith, as they always do. LOL!
A point: because Hegseth is an idiot, he doesn't realise that you cannot replace AI contractors overnight. So Anthropic will be in the military for quite some time, and despite their "morals" their tech is being used right now in Iran. For targeting, amongst other things. The girl's school was struck twice by US missiles apparently, but I doubt we'll find out why. They are being replaced by OpenAI. OpenAI is generally regarded in the tech industry as considerably worse than Anthropic. In short, ChatGPT makes stuff up. Although I can see why Sam Altman wants to get his feet under that table, because it will provide the backstop for the vast amounts of (other people's) money he's spending on OpenAI. I guess the question is: Is it worse having an idiot procuring AI services or a liar supplying them? I guess in the long run we will find out, at a great cost to the American taxpayer.
Trump is no better than Putin when it comes to bombing civilian targets. And even if a school was on a base, it was known to be a school. AI should have figured this out and probably did. Hegseth and Trump are war criminals and should be tried as such. Of course, that will never happen, but it should.
This is what any reasonable person should be wondering. This administration has shown themselves to be inhumane across the board, gleeful cruelty seeming to be the point. They don’t value any of the human lives being lost in this “excursion”, be it Iranian children, our own personal, or anyone in between. Indeed, bombing children is an excellent way to inflict maximum heart wrenching, world shattering pain. Nor is it a stretch to wonder if it was intentional or just luck that means blame can be thrown at Anthropic as punishment. This war is criminal on many levels, and I am sure there is no shortage of Administration officials who should be held accountable for their abhorrent actions.
Anything spit out by AI should be double or triple checked. I worked in Mapping software support for 35 years. There are mapping tools available that can be used to get the most current mapping information.
Not just an idiot, a desperate, cornered, idiot, who will loose his lifestyle if the administration ends. This makes the Trump administration dangerous.
The Good the Bad on AI: 1. It moves QUICKLY. 2. It summarizes articulately, IFF, you ask it to ZPD me, that is Zone of Proximal Development, an educator term where it is built in to its response to MAKE YOU SMARTER. At the beginning of the exchange, just write:"ZPD me, make me smarter in this and every exchange". If you don't do this, it just tells you what you what you already know. <br> the bad: If you have a NEW idea. It will steer you to a general idea first. You have to push against it. So what would take you 3 days of journaling, reflection and a week of refining and inspiration, before consolidation, can get MOWED OVER. It may take TWO DAYS of pushback to get what your thought is on paper. So it's much faster. Now I have written about 'important and dense' things for years, so even the pushback of two days is MUCH SHORTER process than it used to be.Really two weeks worth can be created two days of concerted effort. But for those who DON'T KNOW how to pul out and mature their own idea, it can run over what you are thinking. <br>I personally LOVE IT, but I have large experience with dense thought from books and reviews and conferences. God help a 10 year old that has NO INPUT from a TEACHER-- they wont know how to think critically, because the ever present AI will do it for them.
yeah. A plan, a bi product of short grift. Grab money, say a phrase or two :"Drill baby Drill!" Promise money 'next time'. Move on. IF you wanna see the future, spend a week or two in a third world country.
I think the best thing about AI is how I get to be entertained by story after story of lawyers being sanctioned by furious judges who have had to a read their AI slop. As AI hallucinates case law and miscites actual case law. It's a hoot. And I don't think there's anything positive about skipping the process where you are figuring out your argument and how and where you want to go with it.
>There’s no mystery about the motivation for banning Claude. Anthropic has said that it wants assurances that its products won’t be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of Americans.
That's not just what it "said it wants." It is what was actually in the contract that was approved by the Biden administration, *and approved again* by the Trump administration, and already in force with no complaints about either of those clauses by either side until suddenly Hegseth himself threw a fit over it. Even *Trump* tried to de-escalate the situation, and said they should just terminate the contract if they had a problem with it.
I have to admit that I’ve been resistant to becoming reliant on AI, and have been instead spending more and more time trying to compose my own thoughts into some coherent messaging. But I think I’ll give Claude a bit of a try somewhere down the road.
For me, resorting to having “an other” compose my thoughts is another step toward the quickening pace of my aging process. Instead, resistance to it and other things of which I disapprove is making me more productive and sharpening my responses.
I resent the administration pushing one platform over another and hope that others will heed Paul’s words to at least look at other choices out there before blindly following our dear leaders over an AI cliff. Reliance on ourselves has always worked in the past, because we know what our own agendas are and we can’t always trust the motivations of those who purport to have our best interests in mind.
I am an office administrator for a church. I have found a few uses for AI. None, I think, justify the US stock market valuation and rhetoric, but are inline with the discussions I see coming from outside the US (Europe & Asia).
Here are the uses:
1- Repurpose Livestream Video: (Descript) Edit out uhms and ahs in the sermon. Write the sermon video as a text blog. Extract one-minute clips to post to TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
2- (Nano-banana) Generate a thumbnail image to accompany a blog post
3- (NotebookLM) Turn an audio recording into meeting minutes
4- (Gemini) Help code formula and macros for Google Sheets
But it sounds like you write first and then use AI to edit, much like you would do with anyone you would hire to improve what you wrote. I think that’s an effective use. I did a lot of editing for others. Sure AI is much quicker than I was.
Tammy Duckworth summed it up a year ago:
“Pete Hegseth is a f*cking liar. This is so clearly classified info he recklessly leaked that could’ve gotten our pilots killed. He needs to resign in disgrace immediately. Hegseth and every other official who was included in this group chat must be subject to an independent investigation. If Republicans won’t join us in holding the Trump Administration accountable, then they are complicit in this dangerous and likely criminal breach of our national security.”
https://www.duckworth.senate.gov/news/press-releases/duckworth-pete-hegseth-needs-to-resign-in-disgrace
It also appears that yesterday the publicity department got dangerously ahead of things in announcing a transit attempt of the Strait of Hormuz. Not clear exactly what happened there, but incompetency is usually the most likely explanation with this clown troupe.
Iran has had a long time to prepare for this and are masters at asymmetric warfare. Iranians are being warned protesters will be shot and considered enemies.
Seems the 'end game' is have unarmed, ordinary Iranians rise up and topple the regime. That's fantastical thinking with loyalists carrying machine guns and not afraid to use them. Epic Fury was half baked and another example of the Trump Administration's Shoot-Ready-Aim approach to everything.
" Shoot-Ready-Aim" Wow it's as sophisticated as that???
I thought it was "Chimpanzee with a loaded AK-47" strategy
More, whatever happened to some analysis of the start of the uprisings? Wasn't there a huge problem with access to potable water and food scarcity? Something that one way or another would have been a good thing to get into Iran, and build goodwill (also happens to be the right thing to do). No props for the brutal Iranian regime, but If only we had a robust foreign aid program that costs much less than $1 billion a day.
A more likely explanation is they lied. They deliberately lied about the US escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. In order to drive down oil prices. No one in this administration thinks long term. It's all short term thinking. How can we lower oil prices now? That's all they are thinking about.
And people with insider information can profit enormously (and anonymously) with gambling sites like Polymarket and Kalshi.
Data point 978,234,522 in the 'Crypto is only useful for crime and fraud' column.
Isn't being incompetent a requirement for working in the current administration at any level?
Yes. The opposite of the dreaded DEI is WEI - white, entitled, and incompetent.
Yes and sadly for this country and the world, effectively screening for incompetent apparatchiks is their sole area of competence
“Deleted Tweet From Energy Secretary Sends Oil Markets on Another Wild Ride”
https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/deleted-tweet-from-energy-secretary-sends-oil-markets-on-another-wild-ride-a40df578
Not only that, for America is now CORRUPT - possibly the most corrupt country on Planet Earth.
If you are American and live there you are living in the most corrupt country.
Shame - cos when I had my business there in the 90s it was a great country to be in.
America - the country - is not corrupt. The administration of America is not only corrupt but dangerously incompetent. However, since a fish rots from the head, if you do not get rid of Trump's cabal, America will soon look like one of Trump's "shithole" African nations.
I respectfully disagree. I can prove that the US has sustained a total moral collpase. I was able-bodied until 2016, when a catastrophic injury during a routine medical procedure left me permanently disabled. I’ve been denied equal access by more than 50 organizations spanning virtually all domains: healthcare, academia, insurance, banking, nonprofit safety nets, federal-level services, state-level services, media, publishing, entertainment, retail, and organized religion. Since I’m a retired clinical social worker, I spend my productive hours advocating for disability access. The outcome is always the same. False hope, empty promises, and overt defiance. They don’t care. They don’t have to. For now.
I am sorry for what America has done to you. I wish you a better country, but I do not hold out great hope. I note that "organised religion" is one of the entities that failed you. I am not sure what is worse: that they failed or that I am not surprised. In November vote for yourself.
We must respond with a united voice: The tyranny ends this November. We will have free and fair elections because there are 250,000,000+ voters and we demand nothing less.
Here’s a running list of suggested planks for blue candidates and incumbents, amended by readers and in no particular order. It’s up to us to provide their marching orders. Otherwise, they’ll come up with their own and we know where that leads.
I’ve sent this list to my governor, congressional rep, and senators. I’ve asked them to indicate any planks that they oppose so that I’m informed when I vote but, as a disabled grandmother, I’m typically unseen and unheard and don’t expect any response other than a form letter.
So, I sent the list to DNC and I strenuously urge readers to do the same.
I asked DNC to enforce the assignments below (or come up with their own). Voters need concrete plans of action with budgets and timelines released before the election. If DNC holds a virtual midterm convention in September, states can present their planks and findings. It will increase voter turnout by instilling hope.
(BTW, the assignments are random. Who knew AI had a sense of humor?)
We WILL have the country that was promised 400 years ago but it will require unprecedented cooperation, like Quincy Jones got when he made “We Are The World.” He posted a sign that applies here: “check your ego at the door.” Or emigrate. Like the celebrities who got rich here but won’t stay and fight. This year, it’s the platform, not the person.
1. South Dakota: Medicare for all, including mental health, dental, and vision.
2. Delaware: Running water for all.
3. Maryland: Safe, affordable, adequate housing for all.
4. Kentucky: Climate change course correction.
5. Washington: National “Annual Yearly Progress” educational standards that apply to all students: public school, private school, home school.
6. Vermont: Nutrition and pesticides. There’s a reason why US wheat imports are banned in EU.
7. Minnesota: Paths to citizenship and statehood.
8. Arkansas: Metric system instead of imperial measurements. Every country in the world has made the switch except the US, Liberia, and Myanmar.
9. Iowa: Reading and math literacy.
10. Hawaii: Maternal and infant survival (US has the worst rates among developed countries).
11. Colorado: Restore DEI. My disability requires electronic communication (email or chat with a transcript) but legal teams don’t like written records. I have to surrender agency and assign a proxy to manage a credit card issue or schedule a mammogram. Disney sent me an email stating that they’re “phones only.” What’s next? Telling guests in wheelchairs to manage the stairs?
12. New Hampshire: Zero tolerance of corruption.
13. North Carolina: Child care. Montessori is Head Start in Italy. It was invented there to lift up disadvantaged children. In the US, we’ve made it a designer brand that’s unaffordable for those who need it most and for whom it was intended.
14. Arizona: Amend the 2nd amendment. Texas has more than 4000 gun deaths per year. FL takes silver with more than 3000. Together, they’re responsible for more than 17% of the 40,000 annual gun deaths in the US. The UK has 28. Not 28,000. Not 2800. 28. Their cops are unarmed. Everyone wins.
15. Oregon: FOIA restored without the loopholes.
16. Wisconsin: Enforcement of the laws, regs and court decisions that are on the books but ignored.
17. Mississippi: Abortion rights enshrinement.
18. Florida: Marriage equality enshrinement.
19. California: Infrastructure investment.
20. Nevada: Internet for all.
21. Illinois: We need to stop flushing drinking-quality water. We’re running out.
22. Tennessee: Return the Black Hills.
23. Louisiana: Reparations.
24. Michigan: Livable wages in decent working conditions, ideally in a union environment.
25. Connecticut: End citizens united.
26. Montana: Inheritance reform.
27. West Virginia: Enshrine social security.
28. North Dakota: Reform SCOTUS and court system.
29. Georgia: Campaign finance reform.
30. Alaska: Tax reform.
31. New York: Commitment to ethical conduct.
32. Ohio: Commitment to “truthfulness, transparency, and accountability.”
33. Texas: Enshrine voting rights.
34. New Jersey: Outlaw NDAs. They were meant to protect secret formulas, not silence the voices of victims.
35. Missouri: Join ICC.
36. Maine: Restore the covenant of “good faith and fair dealing.”
37. Indiana: Term limits. Public service is not for accumulating power and influence, it’s for serving the people.
38. Utah: Mandatory service to by all citizens reaching 18 for two years in public works, AmeriCorp, National Guard, or other similar organization.
39. Alabama: Prison reform.
40. Virginia: Free college or vocational training.
41. Idaho: Eliminate electoral college.
42. Rhode Island: End private equity investment.
43.Pennsylvania: End tipping. It’s out of control and our global neighbors don’t do it.
44.Wyoming: Issue new SS numbers to each citizen now that ours have been compromised
45.Kansas: Animal Welfare Act. AKC “breed standards” require docked tails and cropped ears for some dogs. The US and Russia are among the only nations where cosmetic mutilation of dogs is legal. Global leaders Fédération Cynologique Internationale (France) and The Kennel Club (UK) preserve breed standards without these cruel practices. We can do the same.
46. New Mexico: Regulate contracts signed by—and conditions endured by—pregnancy surrogates.
47. Oklahoma: Regulate fine art industry to prevent money laundering and tax evasion https://naturalist.gallery/blogs/journal/understanding-the-fine-art-market-how-the-wealthy-use-art-for-tax-evasion?srsltid=AfmBOooPUicBwRj5hYi4T8bW2yRSFpez0vkn-M-uuh-WEPHYOzO2uLKt.
Nebraska: Collaborate with SD on Medicare for all
Massachusetts: Collaborate with Delaware on running water
South Carolina: Collaborate with Maryland on safe, affordable housing
District of Columbia: Collaborate with Kentucky
American Samoa: Collaborate with Washington
Guam: Collaborate with Vermont
Puerto Rico: Collaborate with Minnesota
Northern Mariana Islands: Collaborate with Arkansas
US Virgin Islands: Collaborate with Iowa
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/03/29/2024-06666/estimates-of-the-voting-age-population-for-2023 Let’s send postcards to all eligible voters!
We will not have fair elections. I just saw that Cornyn now supports eliminating the fillibuster to force the SAVE act through. From what I've read, you will need proof of citizenship and your birth certificate to get past the ICE thugs enforcing it. If, for any reason, you changed your name since you were born, you will need documentation (wedding license, court records, etc.) to prove why. Voting by mail is eliminated, unless you must for a restricted list of reasons (like active military service). There are more restrictions.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/john-cornyn-save-america-act-filibuster-trump-texas-senate-rcna262927?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
ISO, I am so very sorry. We knew a nurse many years ago who worked to deny people health care access. It started long before you became disabled. They don't care (our friend needed a job) and it's all horribly mind boggling.
Philip, I also disagree. I have similar stories about how morally and ethically corrupt some medical doctors and associates are because of what I went through. It's why I stopped saluting the flag in HS but that was about the country, not me and that was @55 yrs ago. I had lived through and seen enough of the crap being pulled on us.
Regarding ethical issues and doctors, the daughters of Dr. Larry Braunstein (the podiatrist who diagnosed 47’s bone spurs) allege it was a favor to landlord Fred Trump to keep 47 out of VietNam. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/us/politics/trump-vietnam-draft-exemption.html.
🙏 Beaming friendship, commiseration, and hope for the country we were promised.
The US is corrupt. If a political leader in most other developed countries had committed a tenth of the various sins / crimes / major errors of judgment that the Trump gang has committed, they would have been tried, convicted, at least forcibly retired.
The idea of a top member of the judiciary accepting gifts? All the dealings benefitting the Trump family members and friends? The gift of a whole aircraft, to Trump himself, by a foreign power? I could go on and on…
In France, political donations are limited to 7,500 € per person. Legal entities are banned from contributing to political campaigns.
In the UK, the man formerly known as the Duke of York has lost all his titles (and they are not done with him yet) over the Epstein scandal(s), in France, one of our past presidents has been convicted and jailed for various crimes of corruption…
commenters, bloggers and the public generally are right to wonder and object on moral grounds generally to corruption, but they dont think further about specific reforms and a remedy. Usually the remedy the commenters suggest is 'remove Hegseth !', or the like, as if that will end corruption at DOD.
The US already has many rules, laws, and regulations. They are just not being enforced under this regime, and generally under Republican regimes. Democrats are more likely to get caught by their fellow Democrats, Republican malfeasance is ignored by their fellow Republicans.
Beyond rules being enforced or not, I find it mind-boggling that a Supreme Court justice (appointed for life and reasonably compensated…) is allowed to accept expensive gifts. Apparently, there are NO rules…
In France, many political or government are required to file a “declaration of interest” when appointed or elected, listing their earthly possessions and whatever interest they, or close associates, may have that might influence their decisions. An independent authority is tasked with monitoring those declarations and block their appointment (if appointed). They have to file another declaration when relinquishing their position so as to disclose any possible enrichment.
That may appear cumbersome but when the time comes to add up the cost of corruption under the Trump regime, be it financial, human, environmental, geostrategic, reputational…, a strict regulatory system will seem cheap by comparison.
Agreed. The US has sustained a total moral collapse. But new growth always emerges from wildfires, regardless of the magnitude of the destruction. That new growth will reflect the dominant value system. Which wolf will we feed? https://www.nanticokeindians.org/about/the-tale-of-two-wolves/
What makes you think that any new growth will not be as diseased as the current crop?
We get to choose which wolf we feed.
Which AI are you?
Which AI am I? The retired, disabled, clinical social worker, guidance counselor, aspiring feminist eldress and grandmother kind. Suggesting that someone with my limitations can’t also have other abilities is untrue and unkind. I’m old enough to remember women’s solidarity. The covenant of support included refraining from unnecessary public criticism. We were cognizant of the marginalized status of women in general, as well as the tendency of the patriarchy to mock our voices.
Hegseth is a Trump appointee, and therefore mentally incompetent. If you tried him for treason, the court would likely judge him "unfit to plead".
The problem is Trump and the republicans who put him in power, and kept him there.
Vote as though America depended on it.
Yep. It's what happens in fascism and flavors of a dictatorship (like authoritarianism). They're all supposed to be idiots by design. Being a disrupter and a liar is a key requirement. It seems ironic that everything we see that the lead thug has to fix is made up and embellished and they're all national security issues by a thug that really is a national security issue.
I'm surprised Hegseth hasn't lobbied to officially change the title of "Secretary of Defense" to something without the word "Secretary," lest people not find him manly enough.
Hegseth would love to be El Supremo, I bet
No Spanish here!
Bbb, PH might be satisfied just by a title change to ”Lord of War!”
I am affraid that PH is just a lawyal lapdog of your president. Chosen obviously not for his smarts. I would say the only member of the cabinet that apparently deffies that rule is Marco Rubio. But I am still waiting for the other shoe drop..
Rubio appears smart in relation to the other buffoon and idiots. That's not a ringing endorsement of his intelligence.
His poor values and his personal corruption are at the service of his intelligence.
Rubio should never have jumped on the Trump train.
Rubio is a lying twit. Lied about his parents escaping Castro when actually they came to US before Castro. Used his FL legislature credit card for vacations and to pay mortgage, was “owned” by a car dealer in FL who paid his bills and gave his wife a no-show job. He’s a weasel. No smarts, just grifting.
Are you talking about Rubio, or the whole administration?
They are all trash but It makes me sick to hear people say that they think Rubio is “different” “smarter” when he is a trashbag too and never had a backbone, morals or a brain.
Pals...Don't expect me to defend him of any of them.
Sounds like there was a broad exposé on Rubio I missed since I had only heard half of those things.
Do you have a reference? I would love to read the whole thing since people are talking Rubio up as the path forward for the Republicans.
I lived in FL from 2002 -2005 and The Palm Beach regularly exposed the corruption and stupidity occurring in FL politics. Rubio was early in his climb and had found his sugar daddy who helped him along.
Thanks! I'll rummage around the Wayback machine and add links here if I get lucky.
Would the Miami Herald be another good source? Carl Hiaasen used to write about things like this.
Did not know this.
Posting some background after digging around a little. May not be complete, but it is what I found...
The Cuba "escape" story is well documented, so skipping that.
The credit card appears to have been for personal and house expenses rather than the mortgage. I hadn't heard about the mortgage, but had a vague memory about the rest as Jeb! tried to beat Rubio up about it.
The Car dealer is Norman Braman, who is definitely a major Rubio backer, including $7 million to the "Conservative Solutions PAC" backing Rubio's 2016 Senate campaign. (Opensecrets for $$'s, Politico for CS-PAC history)
Braman's "Family Foundation" paid Jeanette Dousdebes Rubio "at least $54k" for part time work evaluating funding requests at a charity with $9 million in assets, but only gave $250 that year (not a typo - no missing "k"). It may or may not have been a "no-show" job, but there was very little obvious work done.
Ms. Rubio seems to be a tough grader, but one wonders how much of the $150k the charity spent on travel that year funded "evaluation" trips.
---- some sources :
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/us/politics/marco-rubios-use-of-party-credit-card-reinforces-a-picture-of-messy-finances.html
https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/donor_detail/2016?id=U0000004559&name=Braman%2C+Norman&super_only=N&type=I
https://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/marco-rubio-nonprofit-2016-fundraising-16-million-conservatives-solution-project-119771.html
https://www.theolympian.com/news/nation-world/article26131762.html
Scott Bessent. Now THERE'S a.... oh, ok, drank the trumpade and dropped 10's of IQ points and is now just another dumb myna bird mimicking whatever trump word vomits.
Now, now, let's not go insulting myna birds. They're likely more intelligent as a group than the entire Cabinet.
Marco sold his soul to the Devil…uhhhh Trump.
Nah...Rubio is a dumb ass as well - or he wouldn't be there!
The majority of opinions voiced when his appointment was announced was that the reasons were that he looks good on TV and had good ratings (the latter being *very* important to DonnyJon).
Also, OpenAI has the exact same agreement that Anthropic has and Anthropic was kicked out for having. No mass surveillance of US citizens and no autonomous killing machines. So, I don't think this is due to a dispute of terms of service, it is kicking out what Trump's regime thinks is a "woke" AI company that didn't pay Trump and bend a knee like OpenIA did (see below). This is about flat out pay-to-play bribery.
"OpenAI’s president and cofounder Greg Brockman doesn’t consider himself political, which is surprising, because he was one of President Trump’s biggest individual donors of 2025."
https://www.wired.com/story/openai-president-greg-brockman-political-donations-trump-humanity/
"We think our agreement has more guardrails than any previous agreement for classified AI deployments, including Anthropic’s. Here’s why.
We have three main red lines that guide our work with the DoW, which are generally shared by several other frontier labs:
No use of OpenAI technology for mass domestic surveillance.
No use of OpenAI technology to direct autonomous weapons systems.
No use of OpenAI technology for high-stakes automated decisions (e.g. systems such as “social credit”)."
https://openai.com/index/our-agreement-with-the-department-of-war/
And, from what I've read, OpenAI quietly agreed to look the other way if it's used for the above purposes. It goes along with the immorality of the entire government.
Anthropic is a reaction to Sam Altman's OpenAI. OpenAI started out with the mission statement of being open and safety first. The safety people left OpenAI because safety was thrown out over profit. I read a great book...Empire of AI, recommended by the Economist. Much of it is about Altman's drive to make an empire and throwing away safety. There was a recent NYTs article from one of the OpenAI safety people who quit because she didn't think OpenAI going into porn was safe. The safety people are consistently over ridden.
So, I have absolutely no confidence that Altman will consider safety over the profits he can get from Trump and Co.
It'll never happen. Hegseth is a toady and Trump loves toadies.
When politics decides which tools experts are allowed to use, competence stops being the standard and loyalty becomes the currency.
Have you seen the Trump border wall? It's been breached, almost exclusively from the Southern side, over 6000 times. And Trump wants to extend the catastrophic fence. We'd have save tens of billions of dollars if they just put up chain link fence with razor wire on top like the prisons do. Heck, they could have doubled it up and it would have been more secure.
There are full time crews whose job it is to patch up the holes in the wall.
Meanwhile, I can hike across the northern border from Maine to Washington and in Alaska. And the MAGAs think the borders are secure now under Trump. There is no place in North America that is more secure with the TOFU President in charge. (Trump Only Fucks Up).
TOFU - Excellent! And accurate too.
Trump's "fence" is an economic, environmental and social disaster. The costs aside it is causing more damage to the US than all the undocumented arrivals. Dump the fence and put the money into proper surveillance.
Yup. Surveillance drones and close work with Mexico on arresting the traffickers.
If we just have to buy a wall because of fashion, we should have paid Mexico to build one on their southern border.
The press reported that the idea of a wall was given Trump by his advisors in his first run for election to keep him concentrated on the subject of immigration.
Right Garrison Keillor wrote a screen last week in which he said that all a Minnesotan had to do to move to Canada was to walk 100 feet. Maybe step on the bottom strand of a fence and lift the other one.
“We probably have some skills that we now need to hire back, quite frankly,” Scott Kupor, the head of the Office of Personnel Management, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “There’s no question anytime you do restructurings … sometimes you over-restructure, sometimes you under-restructure.”
-Washington Post 3-9-26
Why does this make me think of a toilet paper commercial?
😂😏😂😏😂💩😧
There's been some serious understructuring goin' down at 1600 Pennsylvania.
But the bigger pic is we're kerfuffling about a guy who is owned lock/stock/barrel&reloads by the very sorts of commercial interests he's fuming about today. Seems to me if he doesn't wanna play by their rules he should consider a constituency reload, like, maybe, the citizenry of some country (other than, say, Russia).
Elba?
Shouldn't Kupor's last name be Stupor?
This is a perfect summation.
It's simple. Trump and his oligarch lords and ladies have the Devine Rights of Kings to all the world's wealth. So, get out of our way or get bombed, decapitated, imprisoned, deported and so forth. We are mighty. You are weak. You MUST learn to be happy to make personal sacrifices for our enrichment.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!
Hey, I chuckled at your sign off. Thanks.
This controversy made me remember something I read about the Soviet Union under the totalitarian Stalin's regime and to make it quick I copy the story as told by AI (fitting for Krugman's point): 'Stalin's influence on Soviet biology resulted in the suppression of legitimate genetics in favor of "Lysenkoism," a pseudo-scientific ideology that caused significant harm to Soviet agriculture and science. Joseph Stalin backed Trofim Lysenko, an agronomist who argued that environmental factors could be inherited, rejecting Mendelian genetics as "bourgeois".'
Correct. So the study of genetics in foxes hid itself in Siberia and continued its work. They developed tame foxes, which now bring in a certain amount of income for the country.
In a war against reality, any soothsayers must be eliminated, be they human or not. And MAGA has been engaging in a war against reality since day 1. Perhaps the strongest motivator of MAGA is that they felt inferior to experts... the "elite" they rail against are people who think, and the fuel for this rage is that they are made to feel dumb. Their ignorance, they claim, is superior to any expertise.
“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Thanks, Acela and MLK. That quote gives me chills.
Intelligence and AI are both human tools that can be used in any number of ways. We are seeing the corrupt way in the Trump administration.
To me, AI is bad bad bad. It's another major reason I'm glad I'm old.
Just so you know, I'm older too, and I've found the AI 'Complexity' to be awesome in answering my questions. It's direct and to the point in giving me responses that are accurate..... accurate because when they are technical and I do their steps, it corrects my problem! I also use it for medical questions that doctors now don't have the time to give answers. I think it's been a godsend in many useful ways!
My spouse and I were just having a conversation about how doctors are using AI. I cave and for now allow it because for now, it's being used more like a dictaphone. I'm glad your experiences have been fine using AI. Spouse said more and more people are using it to diagnose themself and that's scary to me. I like Teresa's comment that you and I are indeed acting based on our own life experiences. Makes sense to me.
Take care Coelle. Hope your experiences with AI continue to be positive.
Thank You for responding and your nice wishes to me! We are all trying to help one another through these terribly difficult times. I do want to clarify that I don't use AI to 'diagnose' myself ......just to get more detailed info on medical issues. Thank goodness for substack newsletters and also for connecting us to 'Good People'!!!!
This is a free country. There are many innovations in technology. AI is one. In this free country you are free to believe what your life experience tells you is rational. You are free to act on that set of beliefs and your knowledge. I can do the same. So can all other folks in free societies. Serious woot!
Placing guardrails on the capacity of AI to kill people and invade the privacy of the mass of citizenry is not wokeness.
It is obeying humane and US constitutional values, something we should all be awake to all the time.
Absolutely right Erik.
Right. And that's exactly what puts it at odds with President [REDACTED]. He wants his rule to be as inhumane and anti-constitutional as possible.
Add Miller and Vought to that and countless others. 2010: Vought's the evil that told the GOP not to hire leaders. We didn't and the Federalist Society helped massively with that.
I sincerely wish he *could* be redacted!
Unfortunately, anything that most of us consider ethical behavior is "woke".
This destruction of the United States makes as much sense as Pol Pot's return to agrarian society. A quarter of the country was killed.
I seem to remember something about a melting pot?
Just to a new phone and was considering whether to download Claude or ChatGPT just in case I wanted to use AI (not a current user). The fact that one promise to fight abuse and the other just rolled over made the decision for me.
Well, the ‘good’ app probably identified a girls school as a proper target for a missile strike, with the caveat: “I may have my non-material head up my virtual ass here, one of you ‘people’ should cross-check me if you get the time.” GIGO, of course. Just saying “just sayin’” may not be enough. I’m just sayin’ … what do I know?
An absolute tragedy that should never have happened! First and foremost because this piece of garbage in the White House illegally declared war. But doesn’t this make Anthropic’s point for them? “AI” (LLM) absolutely needs human checks, assistance, guardrails. People are so worried about defending it or damaging it. Not to mention these companies being allowed to call it “AI” leads people to think of it in the wrong way. This isn’t Hal or Jarvis or Wall-E. It’s too easy to forget it is just one more tech tool available in 2026…the operative word there being *tool*. Someone has to be in charge of using that tool responsibly and safely.
You are absolutely right that Anthopic's point of the dangers of their product was exactly proven. Trump then instead decided to use similar products from companies that had no concerns about safety.
That makes perfect sense.
I’m thinking “should never have happened!” Is becoming synonymous with “was statistically inevitable”. Could it be that AI lacks *humility*? I’ve been a skeptic since being told “There are no African countries that begin with ‘K’, though many people think Kenya does”
The old saying goes "Artificial intelligence will never be a match for genuine stupidity."
Speaking of “too easy to forget”, props for remembering Wall-E
He’s a great example because he just keeps following his programming even though it is futile, collecting and valuing things just because he can. On the other hand, he found more humanity, compassion, and interest in growing his world than this Administration will ever be capable of.
I agree.
But it also has to be pointed out that the girls school was almost certainly put there intentionally.
Iran and their worker bees have a long time tradition of placing military and sympathy targets adjacent.
In this case, the school was place intentionally in former military barracks about a decade ago.
All of *our* military bases have schools for the children of the troops. They were certainly *not* put there as bait. Neither were the Iranian schools.
Schools aren't the bait for the attack.
They are the bait for the headlines when the base is attacked. Same as locating near hospitals.
You might also read up at :
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule97
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949/article-28/commentary/2025
No they aren't. The schools are there so that the children of the soldiers can attend them. That school was certainly put there intentionally, but it was for that purpose. Fort Benning has seven of them. They weren't located there so that we could claim "unfair" when an attacker hit them.
Non-sequitur.
But I'll indulge you ... Fort Benning is 284 square miles and has well over 100k people.
It is bigger than the entire city of Minab.
The US is in the middle of a big mess of our own making, and the school certainly shouldn't have been bombed.
But placing a school in a converted barrack immediately adjacent to a military target is not an accident. The situation is Minab is WAI.
CJ: tell me more about ‘Iran and their worker bees …’. Is that perhaps a synonym for ‘untermenschen’? Inquiring minds (and all that)
Thinking of 2004 or 2005 and a tv reporter interviewing a U.S. soldier in Iraq. The GI was sitting on an APC and was decked out in body armor like a Star Wars storm-trooper; he complained about the Iraqi guerrillas, asking “Why don’t the little fucks come out and fight man to man? How can you respect people like that?”
I suggest that when we find ourselves sounding like SS officers supervising a death camp, we take a step back and question ourselves
When you suggest someone who cites the Geneva conventions is a Nazi, the problem is in your mirror.
Touché
Even though I'm a software developer, I was an AI skeptic that it was just a fancy search tool that understood language. Then I got Claude and he's now my best buddy. I use it for trip planning, deciding on what art to put in my house, and bidding strategy on auction site. And it's great at coding (with some reservations).
Much of the output is something I could research myself but it would take a long time, but also there's a lot of synthesis that saves me time and refines my thinking. And he's very chatty like a assistant friend, retains and forms opinions based your past conversations (for better or worse). I am pretty amazed most of the time what it can do.
I'm getting the impression that the improvements in what AI can do are coming very rapidly.
What concerns me is the total lack of concern or discussion about risks. It was the AI people who were all talking about the existential risks three years ago, now it's we've got to beat the Chinese.
I don't see the Chinese sowing chaos everywhere. Not that I'd want to live under their emperor.
Exactly what is wokeness other than not MAGA? Presuming MAGA to be mean, racist, stupid and superficial. Welcome to correct me is I misunderstood
Anne, you missed about 200 adjectives that describe Trump but good point about wokeness.
Please list. Always willing to learn
MAGA . . . Obedient!
As I understand it, wokeness is being compassionate and considerate of other people's feelings.
The corruption of this administration is beyond anything America has ever experienced in history. Fraud, waste and abuse is the mechanism they use to funnel money to themselves. Wake up America. We have to stop this now or our country is lost.
“So supply chain risk is about sabotage or subversion. “This company is too woke” doesn’t meet that definition.” Thank you sir.
The same logic applies to all of the other oppressive actions that have already been taken against law firms, universities, immigrants and the entertainment industry.
None of it meets the definition of sabotage or subversion.
“Too woke”= “too concerned about the constitutional rights of individuals”.
What does meet the definition of subversion is the intentional hollowing out of government institutions which support the general public in favor of increasing the wealth and power of a small number of oligarchs and the wealth and prestige of holders of public office. What can those subversives be charged with besides failure to uphold their oaths of office? I am no lawyer and I don't know the answers. But it seems a very weak response to the damage being done.
Damn those woke real earth minerals from China
The cited paragraph of 10 U.S.C. 3252 for the definition of supply chain risk sounds a lot like what Trump, Hegseth, DOGE (when it officially existed), and Kushner are doing to the U.S. if one replaces the words “covered system” and “system” with “Government of the United States”.
"Anthropic has said that it wants assurances that its products won’t be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of Americans. This has enraged Trump officials: David Sacks, the administration’s AI and crypto czar, has accused the company of supporting “woke AI.” "
So the term 'woke' has over the course of a century morphed from a term that Black people used to refer to the need to stay stay alert regarding racist violence, to a term that can encompass any assertion of rights, or any assertion that governments must adhere to any moral code whatsoever. Our government, as embodied by Hegseth and others, hates 'woke' because it abhors responsibility and only likes the part of governing that involves assertion of raw power and dominance. 'Woke' to them means being a pansy, or weak, or feminine. 'Care', 'caution', 'deliberation', 'consideration' and 'respect for individual rights' are all obsolete terms in this administration. To this administration, agreeing not to use mass surveillance on US citizens is an unacceptable diminishment of the unlimited authority they believe they are entitled to.
I think "woke" still means too alert. Too educated, too informed, too smart, too ethical. All qualities dangerous for trump's continued reign of terror.
IMHO the word "woke," as used by the MAGAts, encompasses all the things you listed and many more. One hurriedly-thought-up example: asserting that the Fourteenth Amendment actually means what the plain words say. I wonder: for the MAGAts, is this Amish maxim woke? "We didn't inherit the Earth from our ancestors -- we are borrowing it from our children."
DeepSeek:
The expression is a piece of modern proverbial wisdom that evolved in the 20th century, rather than an ancient proverb. The earliest version found was published in 1971 by environmental activist Wendell Berry .
Here is the detailed breakdown of its evolution:
· Precursor (1882): A similar idea was attributed to Oscar Wilde, who reportedly said: "The things of nature do not really belong to us; we should leave them to our children as we have received them" .
· First Close Match (1971): Wendell Berry wrote a passage in his book about "a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children" .
· Global Recognition (1974-1990): The saying gained international traction after speeches by Australian Minister Moses Henry Cass in 1974. It has since been attributed to many others, including Lester Brown and David Brower .
· Common Misattributions: Despite frequent claims, researchers have found no evidence linking it to Native American proverbs, the Amish, or Chief Seattle .
I hope this detailed history of the quote is helpful! Are you interested in the origins of any other famous sayings?
DeepSeek has been wrong before.
Wherever it originated, it should guide us.
I've met Wendell Berry! I guess I missed that particular book. Actually I was always more impressed by the way he chose to live -- he left a university teaching position and went home to Kentucky to farm -- than by what little I read of his books.
And damn right it should guide us.
I don’t think that’s originally Amish, I think it’s Native American. Better ask Claude
For the correction, thank you. I meant at first to include "(?)" after "Amish" but forgot. Senior moment!😬
As to the suggestion to ask Claude, (expletive deleted).
The trump cult regime throw around the word “woke” like McCarthy threw around the word “communists”. They think it frightens people into supporting their authoritarian goals and dismissing the truth.
Republicans have been waging a war on intelligence for generations. They have massively succeeded with the members of their party.
And their followers.
True. “Eisenhower recognized that economically dispossessed people were natural targets for political and religious extremists. They could easily be manipulated by a strong leader to back a cause—any cause—that promised to resurrect a world in which they had enjoyed prosperity and cultural significance. .... Promoting economic prosperity and better standards of living at home and around the world was not just about peace or justice, Eisenhower thought; it was about saving humankind.” – Heather Cox Richardson.
Narcissists aren’t interested in saving humankind. It’s not their tribe. It’s Others.
Completely off topic, but I've been thinking: "an adversary may sabotage or otherwise subvert the production, distribution, or operation of a covered system so as to deny, disrupt, or otherwise degrade the function, use, or operation of such system"
Doesn't this (edited) description of a supply chain risk clearly cover the international oil market? Shouldn't the gov forbid our military from doing business with anyone connected to it?
No worries: I'm sure the administration is well aware of the risks and is working to get the military off their dangerous dependence on fossil fuels.
LOL! Good point! I agree, certainly the administration is well aware of the risks and is working to get the military off their dangerous dependence on fossil fuels. I am sure they are working in good faith, as they always do. LOL!
Or, umm, the current US administration.
The MAGA challenge coins have "Ignorance" and "Bigotry" on one side and "Hypocrisy" and "Greed" on the other.
A point: because Hegseth is an idiot, he doesn't realise that you cannot replace AI contractors overnight. So Anthropic will be in the military for quite some time, and despite their "morals" their tech is being used right now in Iran. For targeting, amongst other things. The girl's school was struck twice by US missiles apparently, but I doubt we'll find out why. They are being replaced by OpenAI. OpenAI is generally regarded in the tech industry as considerably worse than Anthropic. In short, ChatGPT makes stuff up. Although I can see why Sam Altman wants to get his feet under that table, because it will provide the backstop for the vast amounts of (other people's) money he's spending on OpenAI. I guess the question is: Is it worse having an idiot procuring AI services or a liar supplying them? I guess in the long run we will find out, at a great cost to the American taxpayer.
Trump is no better than Putin when it comes to bombing civilian targets. And even if a school was on a base, it was known to be a school. AI should have figured this out and probably did. Hegseth and Trump are war criminals and should be tried as such. Of course, that will never happen, but it should.
This is what any reasonable person should be wondering. This administration has shown themselves to be inhumane across the board, gleeful cruelty seeming to be the point. They don’t value any of the human lives being lost in this “excursion”, be it Iranian children, our own personal, or anyone in between. Indeed, bombing children is an excellent way to inflict maximum heart wrenching, world shattering pain. Nor is it a stretch to wonder if it was intentional or just luck that means blame can be thrown at Anthropic as punishment. This war is criminal on many levels, and I am sure there is no shortage of Administration officials who should be held accountable for their abhorrent actions.
They'll do literally anything to distract us from The Epstein Files.
Anything spit out by AI should be double or triple checked. I worked in Mapping software support for 35 years. There are mapping tools available that can be used to get the most current mapping information.
Not just an idiot, a desperate, cornered, idiot, who will loose his lifestyle if the administration ends. This makes the Trump administration dangerous.
And dead drunk to boot. I'm amazed that Swigseth can do a press conference without passing out.
And Rubio shows clear signs of being high on Cocaine while taking interview questions.
The Good the Bad on AI: 1. It moves QUICKLY. 2. It summarizes articulately, IFF, you ask it to ZPD me, that is Zone of Proximal Development, an educator term where it is built in to its response to MAKE YOU SMARTER. At the beginning of the exchange, just write:"ZPD me, make me smarter in this and every exchange". If you don't do this, it just tells you what you what you already know. <br> the bad: If you have a NEW idea. It will steer you to a general idea first. You have to push against it. So what would take you 3 days of journaling, reflection and a week of refining and inspiration, before consolidation, can get MOWED OVER. It may take TWO DAYS of pushback to get what your thought is on paper. So it's much faster. Now I have written about 'important and dense' things for years, so even the pushback of two days is MUCH SHORTER process than it used to be.Really two weeks worth can be created two days of concerted effort. But for those who DON'T KNOW how to pul out and mature their own idea, it can run over what you are thinking. <br>I personally LOVE IT, but I have large experience with dense thought from books and reviews and conferences. God help a 10 year old that has NO INPUT from a TEACHER-- they wont know how to think critically, because the ever present AI will do it for them.
Isnt that the maga plan? If they cant eliminate education altogether, at least turn it into bare minimum beliefs thay defy critical thinking.
yeah. A plan, a bi product of short grift. Grab money, say a phrase or two :"Drill baby Drill!" Promise money 'next time'. Move on. IF you wanna see the future, spend a week or two in a third world country.
At this point, we've already spent over a year in a third world country.
I think the best thing about AI is how I get to be entertained by story after story of lawyers being sanctioned by furious judges who have had to a read their AI slop. As AI hallucinates case law and miscites actual case law. It's a hoot. And I don't think there's anything positive about skipping the process where you are figuring out your argument and how and where you want to go with it.
>There’s no mystery about the motivation for banning Claude. Anthropic has said that it wants assurances that its products won’t be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of Americans.
That's not just what it "said it wants." It is what was actually in the contract that was approved by the Biden administration, *and approved again* by the Trump administration, and already in force with no complaints about either of those clauses by either side until suddenly Hegseth himself threw a fit over it. Even *Trump* tried to de-escalate the situation, and said they should just terminate the contract if they had a problem with it.
Amodei didn't genuflect enough to Hegseth and Trump.
I'm no fan of Trump, but he's not the instigator or cause here. Not this time. Hegseth decided to escalate after Trump said to de-escalate.
I have to admit that I’ve been resistant to becoming reliant on AI, and have been instead spending more and more time trying to compose my own thoughts into some coherent messaging. But I think I’ll give Claude a bit of a try somewhere down the road.
For me, resorting to having “an other” compose my thoughts is another step toward the quickening pace of my aging process. Instead, resistance to it and other things of which I disapprove is making me more productive and sharpening my responses.
I resent the administration pushing one platform over another and hope that others will heed Paul’s words to at least look at other choices out there before blindly following our dear leaders over an AI cliff. Reliance on ourselves has always worked in the past, because we know what our own agendas are and we can’t always trust the motivations of those who purport to have our best interests in mind.
I am an office administrator for a church. I have found a few uses for AI. None, I think, justify the US stock market valuation and rhetoric, but are inline with the discussions I see coming from outside the US (Europe & Asia).
Here are the uses:
1- Repurpose Livestream Video: (Descript) Edit out uhms and ahs in the sermon. Write the sermon video as a text blog. Extract one-minute clips to post to TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
2- (Nano-banana) Generate a thumbnail image to accompany a blog post
3- (NotebookLM) Turn an audio recording into meeting minutes
4- (Gemini) Help code formula and macros for Google Sheets
But it sounds like you write first and then use AI to edit, much like you would do with anyone you would hire to improve what you wrote. I think that’s an effective use. I did a lot of editing for others. Sure AI is much quicker than I was.