Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Electric cars, solar panels, a car in space, and now…well, hard to say what it is, exactly, but Elon Musk is doing some very interesting experiments with pigs.
For now, he’s put a chip in a pig’s brain, and it can monitor its brain waves, which centers light up to which stimuli, etc… but it’s not really about the pigs. If they survive the experiment (as appears to be the case) then it’s a success.
The goal is to develop a neural human-machine interface. From the BBC article:

Mr Musk argues such chips could eventually be used to help cure conditions such as dementia, Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord injuries.

But the long-term ambition is to usher in an age of what Mr Musk calls “superhuman cognition”, in part to combat artificial intelligence so powerful he says it could destroy the human race.
Of course, it could also be a form of AI, a human machine hybrid, and maybe that could also end the human race.
But, I’m kind of optimistic. The ultimate application of this is immortality. When our bodies get old and worn out, we can just transfer all of our mental patterns into a computer, which can be installed in an android. It won’t be the same as flesh and blood, but considering the alternative…
So, good possibilities, bad possibilities, like any technology. This is something to keep an eye on.

Well, I think my views are reasonable and moderate, but most people think I’m an unhinged leftist. So, it was with kind of mixed feelings that I got kicked off a page I belong to for being too right wing. Well, suspended anyway, but I probably won’t go back.
On the one hand, it lets me know there are people more radical than me, which is reassuring in a sense. I may not be exactly mainstream, but there is some space between me and being out of the stream altogether. On the other, I’m a bit miffed, because the offense, in my view, was not an offense at all.
It is a page called ‘So You Decided to Fuck Around’ which was formerly called ‘Fuck Around and Find Out,’ a phrase commonly abbreviated FAFO and used as a somewhat more belligerent version of Bernie or Bust. Our views are not, in the main, in opposition.
It was the comment thread after a meme which had a stick figure and the face of Elon Must at the top of it, and it ended with ‘Don’t be like Elon’ and on the side it listed all of the horrible things about Elon Musk, like how he was born in South Africa (profitter from apartheid!) and ‘Being really stupid. He had to hire scientists to run his space program for him.’
Which I thought was silly and responded with ‘Who’s he supposed to get to run his space program, taxi drivers?’ Well, a shit storm ensued, in which I was informed of all sorts of evil shit that he’d done, which I guess involved calling somebody a pedophile and a lot of his projects not working as well as hoped. And, while I was impressed with him putting a car into space, very few of the other people on the thread were.
Anyway, I was banned for being a ‘bootlicker’ and ‘pandering to corporate interests.’
But, it was kind of nice, after arguing all day with right wingers and gun aficionados about whether it was O.K. to murder people during a political demonstration, to get some flak from the left for a change. I can’t say it was support, but it did provide balance.

The world, and especially the U.S., has taken a hard turn to the right in recent years, there’s no denying. The Overton Window, which Bernie had moved significantly to the left, has suddenly slammed shut and no light is getting in. It’s a tragic reality, but one there is no point in denying.
Things have moved so far to the right that even the arguments the left makes are entangled in the right wing frame.
When people, good, kind-hearted, left wingers say “Kyle Rittenhouse was breaking the law because 17 year olds are not allowed to own ‘long guns’ (which is, in this instance, a euphemism for an AR-15) in Wisconsin, it leads to all sorts of discussions about the differences in gun laws between Wisconsin and Illinois, because Rittenhouse is from Illinois, where 21 is the minimum age, and the crime was committed in Wisconsin, and so on.
It is a good point to make because it adds to the legal argument against the young murderer Kyle Rittenhouse, but it implies that it would have been O.K. if he’d used a pistol instead, and that maybe it would have been cool if he had waited for his 18th birthday before embarking on a shooting rampage. Or maybe if he’d been a Wisconsin native and not crossed any state lines, then it could be forgiven.
Which is all bullshit. He murdered two people and he did so with the willing assistance of his mother and the encouragement of the Kenosha, Wisconsin, Police department. Everybody involved needs to be tried.

Not only has the murderous, racist cop who shot Jacob Blake in the back, point blank, seven times, not been arrested, the press is barely talking about him at all. I have heard the name Luke Courtier, and Officer Courtier has left horrible comments on Facebook in the past, like “it was a good shot” after a police murder in 2014 (Yes, this shit’s been going on that long), but other sources say he was just one of the other officers on the scene, and mainstream media is not a lot of help.
Now, we already have a new villain in Kenosha. His name is Kyle Rittenhouse, he’s 17 years old, loves guns a lot, black people not so much. He was there as part of some Blue Lives Matter militia, and he murdered at least two people with what I shall just describe as a big, scary, military level weapon, and let the gun nuts argue about what it was. It’s pretty clearly visible in some shots.
The thing is, toward the end of the video I saw, he’s walking toward the police, sirens are blaring, ambulances, police cars, and armored troop transports are moving into the area, a man behind him is shouting “Hey, hey, he just shot all those people back there.” You can hear somebody from one of the police cars saying ‘Get out of the road!’ Not, ‘Get down on your knees,’ or even ‘Sir, would you please put the weapon down.’ He just kept walking and all the vehicles were passing him by.
I guess he was arrested later.
A courtesy the police should have extended to Jacob Blake. Then we wouldn’t be having this whole situation.

For a couple of days I’ve been hearing from Facebook friends about how much they hate the new layout of Facebook and I was a bit mystified because I didn’t see any changes.
Then, about two hours ago, it changed. It’s different enough that you notice it right away, although I haven’t noticed too many serious changes. Chat is still there, birthday notifications are still there, my groups are still there.
It does seem to be missing the ‘activity log’ feature, but I only use that to see if people are replying to my comments and, if they are, I will see it under notifications.

I don’t really understand the business logic of it, though. If the system works, why tamper with it? Does Mark Zuckerberg have nothing better to do? Does he think this will bring him a lot of new business? (I kind of suspect that everybody who wants to join Facebook has already joined) Does he think it will attract a younger, hipper crowd? I doubt it.

It’s a minor irritation (as much as I haven’t found anything seriously wrong with it, I haven’t seen anything advantageous about it, either) which I will get used to and in a couple of days it will seem like it was always that way.