Greenland Deal: Thoughts

1. I don't understand foreign policy.

2. Seems like a very good outcome.

3. Well done Trump team.

4. I simply cannot believe that Trump's lunatic threats to invade helped this along.

5. But see (1).

6. Thank you Denmark; you were the bigger man, and you've helped NATO and the West bigly.

7. I do wish we owned Greenland.

8. There's often method to Trump's madness...but you gotta wade through a lotta madness...

9. But see (1).

Ryan McBeth on Trump's Greenland Deal

Seems plausible to me:

Pretty typical Trump: there's method in his madness...but, boy, you gotta wade through a lotta madness to find it...

ACTBlue Apparently Opened the Door Wide to Foreign Donors

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Appearances are not always deceiving.

I think the Democrats are exactly what they seem to be.

And that includes: an absolute shit-tone of fraud. They pump out ever-increasing amounts of tax money to their network of sleazy, radical NGOs, and straight to their voters and donors via all sorts of "welfare" programs. Some of that (enormous amount of money) then comes back to them as donations. It's a massive grift/graft operation. They also directly fund all sorts of what are essentially leftist indoctrination efforts, including through K-12 and universities. I think they see everything as a "whole-of-society"...or "whole-of-the-universe" matter--everything they do is a part of their overall effort to achieve what they now deceptively call "(social) justice"...

   And I'm not going to be a bit surprised if it turns out that the same moral sensibility infects their attitude toward votes and voting.

   So, though we've never found the kinds of Big Fraud that indicates that they are actually stealing national-level elections...I'm not convinced it's not there. Though I'm also not convinced that it is. I just don't think we can rule it out, knowing what we know about the Dems.

   I'm not saying that the Republicans are better--though I doubt their approach is the same. Maybe it's more about big influence-peddling (see e.g. the allegations about Trump jr.'s wedding being paid for by a Russian oligarch). I just don't know. Currently, I doubt they're as bad--but currently I'm firmly in my Republicans-suck-less phase...so...

   Look: the Democratic party has been taken over by the radical left rather as the Republicans have been taken over by Trump. The radical left sets the tone and agenda for the Dems rather like Trump sets them for the Pubs. And the radical left does not really "believe in" nations and citizenship. They think the distinctions are arbitrary and should go away. That's what got us to the basically wide-open borders of the Biden administration. If you think the Dems wouldn't take foreign money if they could get away with it, I'd want to know what your reasons for believing that were.

   There is simply no doubt that there are many upstanding, patriotic Americans on the blue team. But the party seems to me to have become a substantially criminal enterprise. 

   None of this is to say that I in any way approve of Trump's apparently indiscriminate violation of the emoluments clause--though, as I've said, I do understand it. He knows--we know, too--that he and his family and associates will be ceaselessly attacked by the left once he's out of office. I'm not sure any amount of money can protect them--see the "E." Jean Carroll case... Anyway: I'm just not talking about Trump right now.

   Blah blah blah. As usual this could all be wrong.

Spanberger is Terrible, Episode MCXVIII: Overrides Youngkin's Order Keeping Crazy/Pervy Males out of Girls' Sports, Locker Rooms, Restrooms

She did it unannounced, too.

Unless she crazy--or a cultist--she knows it's wrong.

Transgender "theory" is a pseudoscientific, cultish ideology. Many such issues are complicated. Many are close calls. Many are things about which sane, intelligent people can disagree. I think politics is filled with such issues--I think there are say more of them than is commonly thought...

...but transgenderism is not one of them.

Trump sticks his oar in, as per usual

OTOH:

Here's a guy who actually seems to know what he's talking about--Jacob Coxon.

   Blue-teamers, already having taken up an anti-data-center position, may have just decided to go with that--they seem to be the AI doomer party.

   Red-teamers, of course, must take up the opposite position and scoff at them. And now that Trump's scoffing, I reckon their position is pretty much set in stone.

   To make matters worse, the blue team has taken up a long line of sciencey-sounding doomer positions over the last 50 years, telling us we were all going to die from: overpopulation, acid rain, hole in the ozone layer, global cooling, global warming, COVID doomerism...you know the story.

   The blue team does love to go all doomer about issues such that doomerism supports some other thing they want to do--e.g. destroy capitalism, cut out fossil fuels...stop the data centers...

   The red team then tends to just take up the opposite of whatever position the blues have taken up...which sometimes leads them in the right direction (e.g. skepticism about climate apocalypticism, rejection of COVID hysteria)...but sometimes just the opposite (e.g.: the blues love Ukraine...so we love Russia now!!!)

   Anyway. Aside from this kind of induction over blue-team episodes of hysteria (and their general irrationality over the last decade), the reds don't have a lot to go on here...

   My position is currently:  I'm listening to the computer geeks. Obvs even they don't know exactly what's going on...and many of them have ulterior motives...but everybody else is just blowing smoke.

   Trump too, as should go without saying.

   I wonder what good could come from an analogy with AI chess? How long did it take to become unbeatable by even the best the meatsacks can throw at it? Can Magnus Carlson ever beat it anymore? I don't know... And what if the competition weren't a mere game...?

   Anyway.

   I think it's stupid for the average person to pooh-pooh AI doomerism.

   One of these days, the doomers are probably going to be right.

   And needless to say: AI could very well be the Great Filter...

   Finally: I have no idea what I'm talking about.

AI Companies Sound the Alarm

No particular link to this one...everybody's discussing it all over.

Many on the right (Trump, Robbie Suave) are pooh-poohing concerns. A common line is: the companies are just doing it as part of a rent-seeking op...

   Now, I decided long ago that I wasn't going to rush jump on the AI bandwagon like so many in philosophy. So I write on the basis of little knowledge beyond reading interweb-level stuff on this...

...But I just want to say:

Sometimes people say things because they believe they are true, and not as part of some sneaky move to get something for themselves.

I trust the AI engineers and eggheads on this a lot more than I trust Generic Internet Yakker #304.

That's all I got.

NR: Trump's Reckless $5k "Dividend"

Jesus Christ.

He's gone completely off the rails.

The Lysenkoization of *Nature*

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