Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

When robots  take all of the jobs, one result will be that some services previously only available at a high price will become much more affordable.  So, instead of taking jobs, they will be improving our lifestyle.

They’ll probably take a few jobs, too, a major technological change to society like that is bound to be a bit wrenching.  Of course, robocars are going to eliminate a lot of jobs for truck drivers and cab drivers.  On the other hand, that means that shipping costs will be lowered which is bound to be good for the economy, and cab drivers will no  longer be able to defraud people.

They might still be able to converse, though, which will be interesting.  You won’t have to tip your robot bartenders and waitresses.  But, there’s a couple of other jobs I’m thinking of.  Robot massage parlors will  boom.  No, I’m not  talking about sex dolls.  Seriously.  A robot masseur doesn’t need to make a living wage, and they can work long  hours and apply just the right pressure and it will  be cheap enough everybody  can  go  get  one  at the end of a hard day’s work because, hey, why not, we’ve earned it.

Another one, which depends on a certain amount of near sentience, being able to respond to questions and statements with understanding, is psychology.  Who goes to  psychologists today?  Not many.  It’s expensive, and a lot of people don’t want to pour out their troubles to a stranger, no matter how committed they are to doctor-patient privilege.  A robot with a nice soothing voice and a literally encyclopedic knowledge of human emotions and  ailments and a completely non-judgemental attitude, on account of not actually being human, might just smooth right  over that problem.

Those are a couple of jobs  where I  think they will have a positive impact, and expand the  field rather than  take  jobs.  I’m sure there will be others.

I didn’t watch the Emmy’s and probably wouldn’t have even if they were broadcast here, but firsthand knowledge is seldom an  impediment to me stating my opinion, which is what I’m about to do.
I wouldn’t have watched them because I haven’t seen most of the shows which were nominated for awards, don’t have  any programs I was really rooting for, and would probably be disappointed in the winners as I think most major network TV programming is godawful crap, it’s just cop show after  cop show in  a non-stop orgy of violence.  Talk about terrorism.  The TV industry has got people thinking that murder is a common occurrence and you can’t trust anybody.
Nonetheless, I strongly object to Sean Spicer being invited to speak there.  I don’t care if it was a joke segment, I don’t care if he was introduced by Stephen Colbert – Colbert can have him as a guest on his own damned show if he wants.  This was supposed to be a celebratory, even a festive occasion, and they invite someone who is known for trying to shut down access to information, to silence the press, to damage democracy.
Sure, he was never actually convicted of a crime.  I’m pretty sure that lying is not a crime, or else half of American (and not just American, other countries have this problem, too) would be in jail.  But that’s no reason to treat him as if he was a normal, harmless, jovial old guy who took some hits in the political arena and now  we can laugh about it.
That makes it seem like it was all O.K.  That makes it seem like Trump is O.K.   Oh, sure, he’s a bad president, but we can laugh about it, can’t we?

No, we can’t.   And we shouldn’t.  This shit isn’t funny.

We all have our own ideas about  what happened, and,  therefore, about What Happened.  My Facebook feed is about evenly  split between people who are mocking the book furiously, and those  saying we should ignore it.

I don’t have a lot  of  Hillary  supporters among my Facebook friends.  Anyway, I  believe I blogged on that topic a few nights ago, with the idea that  the Internet is vast and can host one more than one  conversation at one time, the marketplace of ideas is  inevitably going to have more than one stall.
But tonight I’m just going to make a prediction.  One more week, tops.   After a week, nobody will be posting about Hillary’s book and we  can go back to more immediate topics.  This is based on a couple of  things.

The juiciest  bits have already been mined.  I don’t  know that for  sure, and  a few more will  trickle out, maybe, but you kind of can’t top  the pony page, or the 4 minute abs bit, or her failure to understand the point of Orwell’s 1984.
Like any book, some people  will buy it, some will refuse to buy it, and the vast majority of the American public, who’ve never set foot in a Barnes and Noble in their life, will  carry on obliviously and not even be  aware there was a book.

Her supporters have  probably already bought it, or will soon.  Nobody else is  going to buy it at all.  So, sales drop, news drops, sales drop.  That’s the way  it goes.

Once the book does fade from the news cycle, Hillary won’t have much else  she can due to stay in the public eye.
So, my  friends, patience.  It won’t be long  now.

OMG, it’s after 1 a.m. and I’ve pretty much  wasted  the day, got high, spent a lot  of  time on facebook, worked a little bit on  a poem I’m writing which came to me kind of all at once but, between general concept and actual words on paper there is a gulf, and no bridge across  it except  the  one you  build yourself.
The idea is to use a sort of  a double dactyl rhyme scheme (without all the other double  dactyl rules, which are damned near impossible to adhere to) to write  about the grandfather paradox of time travel, and  the multi-verse theory which would smooth out that paradox, and  how if there are multiple alternate universes, (which probably means an infinity of alternate universes), and we just haven’t discovered them yet, then civilizations who  are more advanced than us by millions or even billions of years (because yes, the universe (this universe) is that old) will have discovered it by now and perfected  the means of traveling from one to the other, just like in Sliders, which was a really  brilliant concept for a sci-fi series but suffered from bad writing and bad  acting.  Perhaps it’s just me, but there’s something I  don’t like about Jerry McConnell, and I  don’t know  what it is.  The rest of the  cast  were pretty lame, too.
So, somewhere in this specific galaxy, the one we are actually, currently in, there are  species who are hopping in and out of these other realities with greater ease than we have even getting beyond our own atmosphere, and someday we’re going to run across them, and there are alternate realities where we already have.

(trigger warning: tonight’s blog contains offensive language. In fact, that’s what it’s about)

I was watching a panel discussion about Hillary’s new book, mostly pretty favorable to Hillary, and one of the women started talking about the misogyny of the Sanders’ campaign, the way they will  do, and she said something along the lines of “I can show you some examples, believe me” and I’m pretty  sure I know what she meant.  (I guess this is called ‘mansplaining’ but, hey, it’s my  blog.)

Somebody called her a stupid cunt  on Twitter, and she’s pissed off.  Pissed off enough that she’s decided that all Bernie supporters are like that, that it was a co-ordinated effort, and probably Bernie himself was behind it, because he’s a man, and he was trying to steal the nomination away from Hillary.
I don’t doubt that it happened, I mean, that she got called bad names.  Being a person who appears on TV, she probably has had hundreds of people call  her a stupid cunt, or a silly  old twat, or a fucking cow, or a nasty old bat, or a witch.  Some of them might have even been women.
I’ve certainly called Donald Trump a racist prick from time to time.  And I have a friend who likes English football a lot and he often refers to under performing players as useless cunts, even though they’re all men so it’s kind of silly.  It’s a word that gets tossed about lightly.  I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but it happens.  It wasn’t what the Sanders campaign was all about, and the women who are bitching about it (whoops, there’s another one) know it.
I’ll bet you (and this goes for all the blonde bobble head news ladies) that I’ve been called a misogynist more times than you’ve been called a cunt.  So, let’s call it a day and talk about the issues.