Hold on there, buckeroo

The more data, the better.

The success of A.I. depends on data. That’s because A.I. models become more accurate and more humanlike with more data.

Sorry, NYTimes. "More accurate and more humanlike" can't be. Can. Not. Be. Humans are not accurate. And if they were, why would we need A.I. anyway because we already have more humans than we know what to do with. We could just depend on H.I.

Well, you may say, machines work for free and humans have to be paid. Think again, buckeroo. A.I. is already a massive consumer of electrical power, and growing more ravenous every day. Somebody has to pay. Or, more likely, everybody does.

A.I. is not about creating intelligence, it's about controlling it. What you can control you can sell.

It's an old story that an infinite number of monkeys pounding on an infinite number of typewriters (remember them?) for an infinite time will eventually produce not only every work of literature ever created in the past, but also every one possible in the future.

Computers are dumber than the monkeys. But they're a whole lot faster. 

The I. is A.

Frightening front page news

Starbucks gets go-ahead from Greenfield Planning Board

“I think this is a lunatic idea,” resident Steven Finer said at the March meeting. “All this is based upon issues about the quality of life of the people who live here. And I’m, I think extremely concerned about what it will be when people who are already disgruntled are trying to navigate going on the road to travel west will have to deal with other travelers who are in a hurry to get somewhere. It just feels to me like the congestion is going to be frightening.”

There was, you will note, a restaurant on that site, and there's a McDonald's that uses the same access road (and also sells coffee), and all this is at an interstate highway exit. So, pretty much like every exit everywhere. 

And we have three Dunkins.

My guess would be…

Americans think a president’s power should be checked, AP-NORC poll finds — unless their side wins

The AP-NORC poll found that voters’ views of which institutions have too much power were colored by their own partisanship. Only 16% of Democrats, whose party currently controls the White House, say the presidency has too much power while nearly half of Republicans believe it does. In contrast, about 6 in 10 Democrats say the U.S. Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, has too much power.

With Congress evenly divided between the two parties — the GOP has a narrow House majority, Democrats a narrow Senate one — Americans have similar views on its power regardless of party. About 4 in 10 from both major parties say it has too much power.

…my guess would be people feel the same way about polls. 

Just your periodic reminder that…

cuts off power to hundreds of thousands

…is the phrase common to virtually every occurance of nature — blizzards, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes. Not to mention backhoes and other earthmoving equipment. So really, how smart is it to hook up all our cars to this grid too?

What I don't get

Well, a lot of things, now that I mention it. But this, in particular:

C.I.A. Director Is Heading to Cease-Fire Talks as Pressure Grows on Israel

I thought this was the kind of thing the State Department did. How did the spooks get involved? (And yes, Israeli spies too, and "officials" from Egypt and Qatar.)

"Negotiations have been slow in part because it can take two days or more to relay proposals from negotiating sessions to Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza and the presumed mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Mr. Sinwar has been approving all Hamas counterproposals on hostage negotiations. He is believed to be hiding in the tunnels under Gaza, protected from Israeli raids by a group of hostages he is using as human shields"…

…the Times says.

So there's that. 

Well now that secret's out

A stealth attack came close to compromising the world’s computers

The software at the heart of the internet is maintained not by giant corporations or sprawling bureaucracies but by a handful of earnest volunteers toiling in obscurity.

“The bottom line is that we have untold trillions of dollars riding on top of code developed by hobbyists,” notes Michal Zalewski, an expert.

OK, it was never a secret. It's just that…who knew? 

The "breaking news" label…

…has come to be annoyingly overused in recent years, but here's one for you:

Kansas City Chiefs May Move to Kansas

 Yep, it's true, says the Kansas City Star.

Kansas City happily straddles the border between Kansas and Missouri, although half of it used to be in Nebraska. (I am not making this up.)

The Chiefs' stadium is currently on the Missouri side of town. But maybe not for long. 

No word from Nebraska yet.

You go, Nebraska

Donald Trump's Election Proposal Resoundingly Rejected by Republicans

The Republican-controlled state legislature rejected the procedural motion by 36 votes to eight, blocking what one GOP state senator described as "the last chance to pass winner-take-all this session.

 All the states should be like Nebraska (and Maine — Maine does it too) instead of the other way around: Nebraska (and Maine) casts all but two of its Electoral College votes by district, and not by state (the prevailing "winner take all" approach).

Since congressional districts are determined by population, following Nebraska's (and Maine's) example would make it near inevitable that the electoral and popular vote results would match every time.

"Hardly surprising," they say

Biden and Trump win Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Wisconsin primaries

No kidding.

This horserace coverage of November's Presidential election has worn thin already. It wouldn't be exactly accurate to say nobody cares. But it sure is close.

And no rescue seems in the offing.

(Offing?)

And what's a paltry million or few?

Those Billion-Dollar Lottery ‘Jackpots’ Aren’t Even Half That Big

“Lotteries are run by state agencies, and they’re exempt from truth in advertising laws,” he said.

It's alarming now?

Earth’s Rotation Is Alarmingly Slowing Down

Since 1972, scientists have added 27 leap seconds to the clock—sometimes with disastrous results. Website crashes, tech service blackouts, airline reservation system snafus, and financial market wonkiness are only some of the worries, and companies like Google and Meta have even invented a method called a “leap smear” that essentially spreads the added second across the day. What could happen when scientists subtract a leap second remains to be seen.

It sounds sort of like Daylight Saving Time but without the daylight. Or the saving. (We'd be losing a second, wouldn't we?)

At any rate, sorry, it's pretty far down on my personal alarming list. 

Of course I'm not a scientist. (Now that would be alarming,)

It's April 2, so this can't possibly be a joke. Can it?

Durham Bulls begin 2024 season with new food, players and field at the DBAP

Tuesday night marks the Durham Bulls’ 2024 home opener against the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp.

Go Shrimp! 

[WRAL, Durham, NC.]

When tomorrow is today

 In January of 1838, Abraham Lincoln —he was 29 at the time — made a speech entitled "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions" to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois.

Here's and excerpt from that speech:

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Empires die from the inside out.

"All The News You're Fit to See"

 It's not quite the NYTimes' "All The News That's Fit to Print" but it works for NBC.

That buzzing sound

Wait, does America suddenly have a record number of bees?

We’ve added almost a million bee colonies in the past five years. We now have 3.8 million, the census shows. Since 2007, the first census after alarming bee die-offs began in 2006, the honeybee has been the fastest-growing livestock segment in the country! And that doesn’t count feral honeybees, which may outnumber their captive cousins several times over.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports, the bison population has declined by three percent.

And don't even ask about llamas.

Deja vu all over again

In a 1959 book entitled The House of Intellect, Jacques Barzun opined the U.S. government was more stable than the governments of many other other nations because Americans just didn't pay much attention to politics. It was in the countries that intellectualized politics — like France — he said, that people were always rushing to the barricades.

1959 was, you will surely recall, very near the end of Dwight Eisenhower's second term. The very next year Jack Kennedy debated Richard Nixon on TV — the first debate of that kind ever — and we were off to the races. 

Political assassinations (Jack, Bobby, and Martin); Lyndon's Vietnam; the civil rights movement; Iran I, Iran II*, and Afghanistan; The Donald; January 6 — and a bunch of stuff I've probably left out.

Now comes an academic paper called “Political Self-Confidence and Affective Polarization” — ouch — which, as described in The Washington Post…

shows that Americans with the highest levels of self-described political knowledge and capabilities are also the most polarized and intolerant of the opposing party. “We propose that people’s feelings of self-assurance within politics can have a darker side,” write Carey E. Stapleton of the University of Massachusetts and Jennifer Wolak of Michigan State University.

 In other words, it's too much thinking that's got us into the mess we're in.

As the forementioned paper concludes, “'those who doubt their ability to really effect change in politics ... show less psychological commitment to inter-party battles.' That can be a good thing."

*I, like W, got my i's wrong here. It was Iraq.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote…

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, 

And bathed every veyne in swich licóur 

Of which vertú engendred is the flour…

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.

When April showers

Bring May flowers,

Folks start thinking about

Getting out.

Hiking to Canterbury, for example, and trading stories along the way.