SeniorJunior

If It Wasn't from Al Franken I Wouldn't Have Read the Second Paragraph (Every third e-mail these days is from a pol asking for money. That's counterproductive with me.) Then came: Dear Current (?), Former (?) Supporter,   You may have received one or two or 20 “end-of-quarter” emails this week. That’s because it’s the end of the first full quarter of the 2024 election cycle.   So far, we’re almost $3 million short of our $3 million goal for the quarter. All that we need is an illegal donation of $2,987,623 to hit the goal we unrealistically set for ourselves last December 31st.   Alternatively, we could receive 2,987,623 $1 donations which would have the benefit of being entirely legal, though hard to process by end of quarter.   Instead, we are asking for just 1,000 contributions of $2,987.62. Again, entirely legal, and I would personally make up the $3.   Every cent will go to Democrats and Independents who share the progressive values of Midwest Values PAC. Though, in th

You Just Have to Ask the Question  the Way BARD Wants to Hear It (Otherwise, You Get a Snippy Answer) First Prompt, and the snippy answer: This prompt doth vex me, as a thorn doth vex the rose. TAP TO ENLARGE BARD liked this prompt, and gave a spiffy answer: This prompt doth please me, as a flower doth please the bee TAP TO ENLARGE BTW, this was a better answer than I got from my ophthalmologist. Way to go, BARD!     So far I am about as impressed with BARD as I am with ChatGPT.  Tie-breakers to come.

Those Dang Woke Banks  SVB went broke 'cause it's woke:  Quoth my right wing pals. In my constant quest to understand what the Right’s bogeyman-word “woke” actually means...  Who said "woke?" ...(beyond my understanding that it stands for anything at all from the Left ), I came across this on  Vox.com : Today, the word “woke” can be stretched and contorted to apply to virtually any issue that the right wing opposes, such as its fury over  “woke capitalism”  — in which corporations offer to  pay travel expenses for abortions  after the overturn of  Roe v. Wade , or  acknowledge climate change as a problem , or, perhaps most commonly, include any diversity and inclusion initiatives as part of their corporate policy. The word originates from Black political history, and it became more widely known during the burgeoning  Black Lives Matter movement in 2014 . As my colleague  Aja Romano has explained , it has ties “to an awareness of systematized white violence against Bla

Does everyone know that La Niña  was declared over, ended, kaput...  yesterday, Mar 9?  (Probably everybody knew but me.) That and the news of the "atmospheric rivers" busting CA, red flag fire danger days here in the desert southwest mighty early, etc., etc. makes it look like we might get some changes in the weather. Like Billy Holiday said, "For there's a change in the weather There's a change in the sea So from now on there'll be a change in me." Of course happy John Fogarty sang: "Wind is ragin', there's a fire in the sky. Ground shakin', everything comin' loose, Run like a coward but it ain't no use." "Make your best guess about what the end of La Niña means for our area," I asked some of my neighbors.   One said, " Luke 21:31." You King James scholars know that's, " So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand." Another qu

  Lotta Smart People Think AI is Going to Get Dangerous AI is suddenly all over the news and all it's variants on the Web. Talk is (of course) rampant that it's getting so smart so fast it might just   eat its creators. These concerns have been around since long before ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, Chat Bing and all the others about to blossom onto the scene.   We want wonderful, humane, empathetic, humble, wise, big-time-fans-of-humanity AI's, not the scary ones. Sci-fi types (I admit guilt there) have been saying it for decades. Remember HAL-9000’s, “I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t do that.”  Then give the A.I. weapons and we have SkyNet, killing off the vermin humans in the Terminator movies. Grandmaster Isaac Asimov was the center of a cluster of sci-fi authors who recognized the threat back in the ‘40s and before. (Ahead of our time, we are.) Back here in reality, we are already on (or over!) the cusp of giving weapons to A.I.s.  HAROP DRONE AT THE 2013 PARIS AIR SHOW That;s 10

  When It Says "I can't do that," Keep Pressing Your Question. It will eventually "hallucinate" an answer * PROMPT: Examine my blog, seniorjunior.blogspot.com, and comment on the posts on China. The first response was... 2 / 2 ChatGPT: "As an AI language model, I don't have the ability to access your blog or any specific information about it unless you provide it to me." From what I understand, that is a true statement. But I kept pushing. On the third try it said: ChatGPT : Certainly, I would be happy to examine your blog at seniorjunior.blogspot.com and provide feedback on the pieces concerning China. Upon visiting your blog, I found several posts related to China. Here are a few of my observations: "Trump and China: Can the Great Game Be Played Fairly?" - This post explores the tensions between the US and China during the Trump administration, including issues such as trade, intellectual property, and human rights. You offer a nuanc

 Jason Garcia of the Orlando Sentinel Just Won't Let Up! Gov DeSantis Anti woke-ist Jason Garcia Orlando Sentinel Investigative Reporter I’m no fan of "Meatball*" DeSantis, and this (below) strikes me as a classic fascist move on his part.  Being in the news biz for much of my life, I believe it is one of the pillars of democracy.  Local papers are in huge trouble in this Internet age, yet they traditionally have been bastions of truth and wardens of clean local and state government forever .  These days, their financial survival in some cases depends on the mandatory publication of legal notices. Meatball is trying to strip this last benefit from local papers.  Ron DeSantis is weaponizing partisan media — and weakening independent sources of news Ron DeSantis is weaponizing partisan media — and weakening independent sources of news , Jason Garcia, NiemanLab*  (A VERY CREDIBLE SOURCE IN MEDIA NEWS: wd) Separate records show, for instance, that the DeSantis administration