Artificial Intelligence – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Next Big Barriers

“Two guys wanted to build a thing called an airplane. People go up in it and fly like birds. Ridiculous, right? What about breaking the sound barrier, or rockets to the Moon, or atomic energy, or a mission to Mars? Science fiction, right?” – Contact

What’s the difference between a cat and a comma? A cat has claws at the end of paws and a comma is a pause at the end of a clause.

(Note: No podcast tomorrow (busy) and we’ll see about Friday’s post.)

Last week (link below) I wrote about the barriers that mankind has crashed through, and how each one has had a significant impact that was transformative on what humanity was – we are certainly not the same people that we were before fire, agriculture, or even the Industrial Revolution.

10 Limits And How Humanity Shattered Them

We’ve changed immensely based on pushing through these barriers. I mean, if hot women had more babies and humanity is always getting sexier, at some point will we reach a barrier where we’re just too sexy?

Seriously, though, what other barriers remain?

Reality

What about . . . reality?

Already a good portion of the world spends some part of each day in an alternative reality, some where they fight demons, or fight post-apocalyptic mutants, or pretend to be a gay black man in feudal Japan. These games are quite stunning today, complete with large, sprawling maps, realistic graphics, and a storyline even though they assume that feudal Japan had the same DEI quotas as Ubisoft®. Regardless, many of these virtual worlds take weeks or even months to finish.

The woman pictured is an attorney, though. Tarara Boom, D.A.

And that’s what exists now. Imagine not far into the future where, when A.I. is added in with a touch of VR, the entire experience becomes so immersive that it becomes hard to distinguish it from reality, and with 50% of adults feeling disconnected from others, this gives a hollow but attainable replacement.

Imagine a sandbox universe where you form a startup company like Apple™ and run it until it’s the biggest company on Earth. Or live as a Viking. Or relive whatever fantasy you can imagine, or even live different branches of your own life, making a different choice each time.

For many, video games and InstaFace© are already addictive. Forming them so that they spike and manipulate your endorphins in a manner to maximize your engagement would be infinitely more addictive that SnapGram™.

Scott Adams predicted if we could ever meld Star Trek’s™ holodeck with a sex doll, the human race would be extinct in one generation, and this would be the killer app.

Literally. And it looks like he is right:

Overheard Zoomer conversation: “You can live out your craziest fantasies on video games. The other day on The Sims™ I had a family, a house, and a job!” (as found)

Biological Limitations

What if, in real time, you could have an A.I. jacked into your brain, while having various implants or tools that cover for whatever frailty we squishy meat sacks exhibit. We do have many tools already, to a certain extent: spacesuits allow us to survive the vacuum of space, while submarines can protect us at the bottom of the ocean. Well, some submarines.

But now add in A.I. What if instead of learning arduously over the span of months or years that you could learn it instantly, so you could read Shakespeare in the original Klingon? Or what if you never forgot anything you didn’t want to forget, and could replay the sights, sounds, and sensations of any event in your life? What if you were gene-edited to be nearly immortal, with the possible exception of a random supernova or nuclear war?

A frog did a DNA test and found it was a tad Polish.

What if your consciousness were just uploaded to the ‘net?

What would you do? More importantly, at what point would modifications create something the no longer was something we’d even identify as human, and imagine that the current crop of leaders would be the best we’d ever, ever have?

Uncertainty

What will happen next year is always a crapshoot, right?

Well, no. In large brushstrokes the future is very predictable. If I drop a glass, when it hits the ceramic floor of my kitchen, it’s going to break. That’s not very far into the future, but it’s extremely accurate.

There are things very far into the future that are predictable as well to a high degree of accuracy. We can predict exactly where the Moon will be on April 17, 7265 A.D. at 9:31:30 A.M. GMT.

The movie (and story) Minority Report used psychics to predict the future, but what if there was an algorithm that knew who was most likely to commit crimes? What if the stock market could be gamed to the point where investing was no longer gambling? A.I. can already predict consumer behavior with an 85% accuracy according to an MIT study.

What would that do to economies?

ChatGPT did my taxes in the style of Ernest Hemingway: “For Free: Four quarterly tax payment vouchers, never used. (meme as found)

The Tyranny of the Speed of Light

Okay, let’s assume that there’s no physical way to beat it. The gulf between stars is enormous, and no one can cross it in a dozen lifetimes. But what if we just sent A.I.? To an A.I., being powered down for thousands or even millions of years wouldn’t necessarily be relevant. As long as the core state of being were retrievable after a cosmic voyage, time is meaningless.

Perhaps, just perhaps, A.I. might seed a star in a distant part of the Milky Way with programmed biological package, a Genesis Device™, if you will, designed to recreate biological life far away. Or drop a machine that turns entire solar systems into tasty floating PEZ™ artifacts?

Or it just might go full Berserker™ and destroy anything it can, because, Tuesday.

I guess that’s why the Vikings called English villages chopping malls.

Breaking through these barriers has taken us from small bands of hunter-gatherers to what we are today. But it isn’t technology alone – we are not the same people that wandered the steppe, and the current tech trends are weakening the bonds of the societal atom: the family, and without that, humanity can no longer exist. Just as we used technology to change the world, that same technology has changed us as well.

What will we be in the future? I mean, besides incredibly sexy.

It came from . . . 1993

“I’m your huckleberry.” – Tombstone

I have no idea who half the people in the picture are, but, hey, the logo rocks.

1993 continues the descent from the 1980s and Peak Movie, but as comedy fell, action movies continued to produce fun films. What did become more pronounced was the dismal “woke” viewpoint as shown in Falling Down.

As usual, there are no sequels on the list, though in 1993 there were 13 major releases that were sequels. In 2013, there were 33. In 1973, there were just five.

Let’s start with a movie that you can sink your teeth into:

I guess rugby players really will eat anything, but why didn’t they eat all those darn cats before carving up Carlo?

Alive – Not the best movie to take a date to if you’re planning on having dinner afterwards, this straight-forward tale of the rugby team stuck in the Andes when their plane crashes nevertheless nourish the soul with the feeling that people of taste will always be tender friends. When I left the theater, I felt so full . . . of life. In reality, most of the survivors were outrageously successful, since life had already thrown the biggest hurdle that it could at them and they came away satisfied. Note: although they were from pretty rich families, but, hey, they turned out to be salty guys in a savory story.

If this movie were about lawncare, that poster would be perfect.

Hexed – I first saw this on a video I rented from Blockbuster™. It didn’t have a big budget, and it lived up to it. In a sense, this is a throwback to an 80s comedy with a bit of Fatal Attraction thrown in for good measure. Is it a good movie that I would recommend? No. Is it a footnote of a fading genre? Yes. Bonus points: Claudia Christian’s body double is naked.

I told Grok® to have Tom Berenger eating crayons, but Grok™ told me he played a Marine, so that would be redundant.

Sniper – Sniper inspired 10, yes 10 sequels. It is an action film where Tom Berenger and Billy Zane play snipers wandering around South America shooting people. It’s decent action, and, obviously cheap enough to make that all of the sequels were profitable.

Now hear me out, every character except Murray is a groundhog.

Groundhog Day – This movie is about the invasion of giant, sentient, robotic groundhogs that just want to burrow and take over humanity, but are instead frightened when they see their shadow . . . from an atomic explosion. Just kidding. You know this one, the best romcom of all time (with the exception of Sniper Six, The Unsnipable). ‘nuff said.

Okay, Antonio Banderas wasn’t in the movie, but Grok® made the poster like this, and I loved it.

El Mariachi – Shot on a $7,000 budget in 14 days (from money raised by being a lab rat for experimental drug testing) El Mariachi is pretty good, and I was really surprised by it when I saw it on VHS back in the day. A tale of violent Mexican crime, you can now save your theater dollars and just watch the news from Los Angeles.

This would probably have been a more positive movie.

Falling Down – Where to start on this one? First, it’s probably the most prophetic movie on the list. Micheal Douglas plays a disgruntled, unemployed engineer whose wife got bored and divorced him. In short, he’s a person that society has passed by and from his perspective, the world is dystopian, so why not blow it all up? The parallel character in the film is the cop chasing the engineer, played by Robert Duvall. In one scene we see that the cop is retiring, and that he is being (not so subtly) replaced by a Hispanic. And, I think that (less than secretly) the director, Joel Schumacher (a gay GloboLeftist) was enjoying the torture of the Douglas character as he watched the world he grew up in implode. I wrote the preceding before I found this quote from the author: “The main character represents the old power structure of the of the U.S. that has now become archaic, and hopelessly lost.” So, yeah, nailed it.

Turns out the Roadrunner™ was trying to knock over the Fed®.

Cliffhanger – Whew, that last one was dark. This one, not so much. While the 1990s may have killed the comedy, the action film was still going strong. The move stars Sylvester Stallone, John Lithgow, some other people, and a mountain. Guns? Yes. Climbing? Yes. Tension? Well, we know the good guy is going to win, so, not so much. A fun ride.

Is Jurassic Pork the bacon I’ve left in the fridge that scientists brought back to life because they could, but never asked if they should?

Jurassic Park – This was Spielberg at, perhaps, his best. It was the number one hit of the year, and ended up on every lunchbox, video game, comic book, t-shirt, and tattoo in 1993. It was also the highest-grossing film of all time until Titanic ruined James Cameron for us. Everything came together in this one – the music, the cast, the story, the special effects, all perfect for the time and place. Sadly, they never made a sequel.

Back, and to the left. And then the PEZ™ comes out!

In the Line of Fire – Again, action movies were pretty strong in 1993, and Clint Eastwood taking on an evil genius assassin played John Malkovich is a pretty good story. Dylan McDermott Mulrooney is also in it. Okay, I know that Dylan McDermott and McDermott Mulrooney are supposed to be two different people, but, really, have you ever seen them together?

I was wondering how to get this joke into the post, and Grok™ did it for me.

So I Married an Axe Murderer – Before Michael Myers was shagging spies, there was this lighthearted movie about a woman whose romantic interests keep being murdered. Hint to everyone: this does not indicate the basis for a stable relationship, since that’s a 10 on the hot/crazy matrix, she’d have to be a 10.

So, it looks like the acid made them all Salvador Dali.

Dazed and Confused – Nostalgia for the relatively free-range days of the 1970s had already hit the people having kids in 1993, or so the producers hoped. This movie was made for late-stage Boomer/early-stage Gen X kids who didn’t go to see it, since it was a box office bomb that has sent become a cult favorite after the careers of so many actors that were in it took off. Watch this right after Falling Down as a palate cleanser. Or, that might make it worse, seeing what we’ve lost.

I tried to make Grok® do Sandra Bullock in a swimsuit, but that was a massive failure.

Demolition Man – I love stupid action movies. This is set in the distant future of 2032 where woke culture has taken over and no one has sex anymore. Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes were frozen during this time so that the plot can happen, as two barbarians from the 1990s make fun of woke culture.

No one is doubting that fire.

Mrs. Doubtfire – Is it predictive programming to try to shove strong, independent women plus crossdressing in the same movie? I did not like this movie even though I’ve found several of Robin Williams’ movies to be okay, but the divorce theme soured the whole plot for me. Apparently, I was alone, since this was the second-highest grossing movie of 1993.

Okay, at this point, Grok© would only draw Mrs. Doubtfire. So? I went with it.

Tombstone – Tombstone was on the list even before I had heard Val Kilmer had died, and he really had the best performance in this popular movie. I still rank this as my third-favorite Kilmer role, behind his roles in Top Secret! And Willow. Tombstone, though was a solid Hollywood western.

As we move along, comedy is obviously dying out though one of the greatest is on this list with Groundhog Day, but action movies are doing okay, even if they’re becoming a bit more comic book and less Dirty Harry each year.

But I’ll always remember the wisdom I learned from Alive: the more you eat, the lonelier you get.

What did I miss?

10 Limits And How Humanity Shattered Them

“Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh, well, there it is.” – Jurassic Park

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” is great hockey advice from Gretzky, but don’t go quoting that at an AA meeting. (“Eh Eh” in metric)

Throughout history, mankind has faced limits. How we vaulted over those limits has defined our progress, and the bigger the hurdle, the greater the payoff. Of note, each of these has led to extreme economic and societal disruption.

1. Fire = Mastery of Energy
Barrier Broken: Darkness, Vulnerability, Need to BBQ
Fire was our first “aha” moment, going back to into deep time – our control of this allowed us to, for the first time, harness energy stored in hydrocarbons at will. Does Grug want warm cave? Grug make fire, make cave warm, cook aurochs steak, eat. Good. Cold hungry Grug sad.

Fire also kept saber-tooths at bay keeping Grug from being a kitty-treat, and turned rock shelters into the original man cave, dreaming of a time when Door-Dash™ would allow people from India to bring bacon cheeseburgers to us.

Simple – if you won’t eat delicious bacon cheeseburgers for a month, no admission to the United States.

2. Agriculture = Beer + Cities
Barrier Broken: Food Scarcity, Invites to Kegger
I’ve written about this before – Evidence from sites like Göbekli Tepe hints the purpose of the site was religious, but also that it was a brewpub. It’s likely early brews fueled rituals that glued folks together. Fire kept us warm, but beer got us buzzed.

The barrier of unpredictable food was shattered when we started planting grain—surpluses meant we could ditch nomad life, build mud-brick condos, and let some dude specialize in carving spoons instead of stabbing mammoths. Result: cities, labor division, and the glorious chaos of civilization, all toasted with a pint. Or three.

Göbekli Tepi: How Beer Created Civilization

3. Writing = Records + Reach
Barrier Broken: Fleeting Memory, Knowledge Becomes Eternal
Scribbling on clay kicked off with debts (“You owe me five sheep after you drank all my beer”) or god-shoutouts. These had taken place orally, but, you know, the last guy I lent a $20 to forgot about it even if I haven’t. Writing cracked the barrier of oral limits and memory.

With writing, knowledge stuck around—grannies didn’t have to recite everything anymore. Pharaohs sent exact orders to the Nile’s edge; Rome ran an empire on scrolls. It wasn’t just records—it was power, precision, and the ability to tell your great-great-grandkids exactly how to brew that beer. Result: generational wisdom, bureaucracy, and legions marching on paper trails.

But you have to feel bad for her – no one hit the glass ceiling that hard since Goose from Top Gun.

4. Wheel = Friction Fighter
Barrier Broken: Immobility, Distance Becomes Cheap
The oldest surviving example of a wheel was found in Slovenia, and dates back over 5,000 years, proving that people were trying to get out of Slovenia even back then.

The wheel smashed the barrier of schlepping everything by hand. Suddenly, a cart could haul what ten Grugs couldn’t—trade routes bloomed, villages linked up, and armies rolled instead of trudged. It’s not sexy like fire, beer, and steak, but without it, no ’69 Camaro™. It’s likely that agriculture made it so we had stuff to move around, and was the real motivator for the wheel, so we could help friends move on the weekend.

Cities got bigger, goods got cheaper, and we stopped throwing out our backs for a sack of grain. Result: the world shrank, and we got mobile.

5. Printing Press = Knowledge Flood
Barrier Broken: Elite Access, Knowledge Becomes Cheap
The wheel shrunk the world, and then Gutenberg’s clunky printing press took writing’s exclusivity and yeeted it out the window. Books went from monk and king-only treasures to peasant-readable pamphlets—ideas like “Hey, maybe the Earth’s not flat” spread like gossip at a dive bar.

The barrier of gatekept knowledge crumbled—science surged, religions splintered, and revolutions brewed. Result: mass literacy, a brain explosion, and the Renaissance popping off like a medieval Ozfest™.

My HP™ printer joined a band – I should have seen it coming: it loves to jam.

6. Industrial Revolution = Muscle Swap
Barrier Broken: Human Power Limits, Horsepower Becomes Cheap
What did we do with all that knowledge and science? Mastered energy. Steam hissed, gears turned, and suddenly one machine outmuscled a village. The barrier of physical drudgery got smashed—factories churned out goods, trains hauled dreams, and kids stopped pulling plows (mostly).

Think of this one as taking the first example, fire, and making its use precise and scientific – it’s no coincidence that thermodynamics was the science boom of the 19^th Century, one that made millionaires out of people who could figure out how to make a heat exchanger. Which is as it should be.

Result: skyscrapers, global trade, and the bittersweet birth of the 9-to-5.

7. Electricity = Power Everywhere
Barrier Broken: Localized Energy
A byproduct of the Industrial Revolution was the power revolution. Edison, Tesla, and pals flipped the switch, and energy stopped being stuck near coal pits or waterfalls allowing the Industrial Revolution to be everywhere. The barrier of “where the power is” vanished—lights buzzed in hovels, fridges hummed, and telegraphs chirped across oceans.

It supercharged industry, lit up nights, and made “unplugged” a choice, not a fate. Result: a wired world, 24/7 life, and the electric hum of progress.

I told my wife if she was cold and couldn’t find her sweater, she should stand in a corner. They’re generally pretty close to 90°.

8. Computer Revolution = Cheap Math
Barrier Broken: Slow Calculation
Now, what do we do with all that juice? From punch cards to processors, computers turned math from a monk’s headache into a microchip’s yawn. The barrier of tedious number-crunching fell—rockets soared, genomes unraveled, and your phone now out-thinks a 1960s NASA lab.

It’s not just speed; it’s scale—billions of ops a second, cheap as dirt, and my computer has more five times more transistors than the number of people on Earth. Result: digital everything, from Moonshots to memes.

9. The Internet = How To Be Everywhere, All At Once
Barrier Broken: Presence at a Distance
Now we had tons of data, but it wasn’t with you. Until the Internet. Ever want to go to the library to get a book? Now I can do it on the Internet without having to ever even haul my PEZ™ powder covered carcass off the couch. I can pull most movies ever made with a click, I can get facts that would take me days to research in 1990: immediately. And I can even order that PEZ® from Amazon™ at 2AM.

Result: Access to virtually all of human knowledge, and cat pictures.

I belong to a family of failed magicians. I have three half-sisters.

10. AI = Cheap Consciousness
Barrier Broken: Mental Bandwidth
Here we are—AI’s making thinking a commodity by meshing 8. And 9. But it is not just crunching data; it’s reasoning, riffing, and dreaming up horoscopes faster than a caffeinated astrologer.

The barrier of human cognition’s limits is cracking—it can synthesize your ideas, spot patterns, and serve it back with a wink, all in real time. Result: a flood of synthetic smarts, amplifying us, challenging us, and freaking us out a little.

We’ll end with these 10. Note that each of these revolutions had massive and unequal impacts on humanity. The implications or 8., 9., and 10. are still unfolding, and number 10. is in its infancy.

Since nobody has time for a 2,800 word post, we’ll pick up the gauntlet of what barriers are left, and where we’re headed with AI, and guess at the economic impacts to come . . . but we’ll do it next week.

The Erosion of Trust: The Secrecy State Sucks

“We’re drowning in secrecy, and the lifeguard’s on their payroll.” – The X Files

“Hello, is the anonymous NSA hotline?”
“Yes, John Wilder, how can we help you?”

As near as I can tell, in 1970 the U.S. government was still highly trusted. Sure, there was Vietnam, but we had landed men on the Moon and I’d suggest that, while trust wasn’t as high as it had been in the 1950s with the “super science will save us” feeling that culminated in Apollo, it was still pretty high.

I think the Nixon takedown is when the mistrust started to metastasize, though I’m open to other suggestions. Regardless, this is the time when the lid comes off.

The Nixon takedown was big – the tapes showed Nixon’s complicity in a petty break-in to get information from the Democrats that was entirely unnecessary due to Nixon’s popularity. Plus it was sloppy – I think they picked the locks with Twizzlers™.

But the even bigger impact was a collapse in trust. At least one person who was there at the time, Geoff Shepard, thinks that Nixon was taken down by the security apparatus, more commonly known as the Deep State now when prosecutors colluded with judges and suppressed evidence in order to get Nixon out of office.

Does that remind anyone of the Russian Collusion Hoax?

I bought a toothpaste called “Death”, and now every morning I have a brush with Death.

Add in revelations in the seventies about Operation Mockingbird coming in 1976, where it was alleged that the CIA, operating in the United States, had manipulated the news media (over 400 journalists) to influence the American public. Oh, and the CIA program MKUltra, a program that tested drugs and psychological torture on hundreds if not thousands of unwitting civilians.

Like Ted Kaczynski. If he hadn’t been MKUltra’d, perhaps he would never have developed fascination with the US Postal System.

Nixon’s fall opened the floodgates, and 1976 was the year the dirty laundry really started showing up, skidmarks and all.

Also, in 1976 the Select Committee on Assassinations came to the conclusion that JFK’s assassination was the result of a conspiracy, but couldn’t figure out who was responsible. I mean, it’s congress, right?

1976 was a year when trust began to evaporate, and that trust evaporation was really about seeing what people did behind the cloak of secrecy. Gallup™ polls showed that trust in government in that year was 36%, down from 73% in the 1950s.

Some Indian wrote a book for nervous surgeons: The Calmer Suture.

Now, do I believe that secrets can and should exist? Yes, I do. I remember coaching a game of PeeWee football, and wanting to see if a particular trick play was legal, so I went into the rules, and found this gem, “Deception is the heart of football.” I had never thought of it that way, but that’s 100% correct, and the same would be the case in war, so, yeah, there are the need for some secrets.

It’s clear, however, that we’re doing secrecy wrong. I’d like to think that we were on the right track to defang the security state, but it’s actually headed the wrong way. In 2001, the Patriot Act was passed into law in October, not six weeks after the 9/11 attack. The law was 342 pages, and was amazingly complex, since most of what it did was amend other existing laws, you know, turning “shall not” into “shall”.

Don’t worry, though, we’ve got a special court that was established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Oh, the FISA court gives the government a yes 99.9% of the time – over 78,000 requests, and only TWELVE denied? Well, they said no at least once, so they’re not a rubber stamp or anything. What’s the motto of the FISA court? “Yes, Daddy.” And you don’t want me to get into what their Tinder® profile says.

In 2013, Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor, blew the whistle on the U.S. government’s mass surveillance programs. Snowden leaked classified documents to journalists at The Guardian and The Washington Post. The revelations were huge: emails, chats, browsing histories of anyone that the FBI or CIA or NSA wanted to look at. And the NSA used the “Five Eyes” sources, so if they were prohibited from snooping on a person, boom, just have the Aussies do it for us.

And it’s certain they are still doing it. Secrecy has enabled these nightmares.

Speaking of still doing it, those 51 former intelligence officials that said Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation? It’s the Security State trying to get its preferred candidate elected. And why are Epstein’s records still not public? Saving it for a rainy day?

I hear that Epstein used to high-five his guards, but the last one left him hanging.

Although I don’t have any evidence for this statement, I am nearly certain that the Deep State is still committing horrors under the cloak of classified information, things that no politician sees. It is certain that this information is used for political blackmail and control on a regular basis.

Paging Epstein, anyone?

The government still echoes the worst of Project Mockingbird, putting pressure on the social media outlets to censor information they don’t like, from COVID to anything pro-Trump. The FBI flagged over THREE THOUSAND accounts for censorship. Secrecy has gone from a tool to keep us safe to a weapon to keep us in line.

The physicist Eric Weinstein thinks that string theory (in physics) was created to stop actual, useful research in physics. Why? To distract the Russians (and now Chinese) because you can’t classify physics, and someone in .gov thinks that there are some significant physics applications they don’t want the world to see, especially related to quantum gravity.

Please don’t ask me where all my cats went.

Do we need to end secrecy entirely?

Certainly not, but when the CIA still holds that lemon juice as invisible ink is a state secret, we live in Clown World. Here are my suggestions:

First, no secrets, at all, after sixty years. Okay, maybe fusion bomb design, but even the Pakistanis can figure out atomic bomb design when they can’t figure out can openers, so we’ve got one secret. Maybe set up a board that will allow one secret per year related to technology that the other side hasn’t figured out yet. But only big things. Like time travel. Or the feared anti-PEZ™ bomb that eats all the PEZ© and leaves small pictures of Rosie O’Donnell everywhere.

Second, after sixty years, absolutely no redactions in the released documents.

Third, someone needs to watch the watchers. There needs to be an oversight board, and protection for whistleblowers like Snowden that show blatantly illegal conduct. How do we prevent them from being co-opted by the Security State? That’s a hard question. Maybe have a clean AI review them?

Fourth, reform and fragment the CIA, the NSA, and most of the FBI. Certainly, take guns away from them (and the ATF, but that goes without saying). After Ruby Ridge and Waco, it’s obvious these children can’t be allowed to play with firearms unsupervised.

We need to break the glowie machine so that it can’t police itself.

The Indian philosopher said: “I think, therefore I scam”.

Transparency in government isn’t a luxury; it is survival for freedom. We need to demand Sunlight. From a CIA document (declassified):

“The free society must have confidence that its oversight mechanisms have adequate access to secret material to make judgements, and that this judgmental process is being exercised independently. There has to be trust that secrecy is not being used against the best interests of the free society; that the activities which are being protected by secrecy are being conducted effectively . . . . It is this confidence and this trust in the oversight mechanisms which has broken down.”

This was made public in 1996, when things were certainly better than they are today.

Me? I think that if we can build trust with Sunlight, maybe well get back to some of that super-science optimism of the 1950s. On to Mars, maybe using quantum gravity propulsion . . . .

Debt Slavery’s Long Game: From Sumer to Goomer With A Detour to Ginger And Mary Ann

“If you erase the debt record, then we go back to zero.” – Fight Club

If Electric Avenue is closed, where are on Earth are we going to rock down to?

I can’t remember the first time Pa Wilder said “There’s nothing sure but death and taxes” but I couldn’t have been any taller than former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, who I believe is about three feet tall. But I’m sure that while Pa was quoting Benjamin Franklin accurately, he did miss one big point: although death was really old, for most people in the history of the planet, there was also debt.

Some of the earliest records we have are records of debt, baked into Sumerian clay indicating that Goomer owed Abadabaduu 12 sheep because he borrowed 10 sheep. And debt was a pretty serious thing back then. If Goomer couldn’t pay, he might even be sentenced to become Abadabaduu’s slave. If Goomer’s kid, Jenzie, had the misfortune of Goomer getting a bad sunburn and dying, well, Jenzie now a lifetime of debt slavery himself to look forward to as he pays off Goomer’s debts.

This stuck in my mind when I was listening to a conversation between a guy who owned a *lot* of apartments and some kids. The kids were in the middle school age bracket and the landlord was trying to teach them about finance. The landlord said, “You know, having apartments is a lot like having a slave. They go out and work for me, and give me money every month.”

Keep in mind that this guy wasn’t what I would normally call shady, but that’s the sort of nightmare fodder that GloboLeftists use as propaganda when they want to burn down capitalism. A much better way to describe the situation is that the apartment owner does such a good job at building and maintaining his properties that people want to engage in a voluntary transaction with him to live there.

Describing them as slaves? Eeek.

What did Yoda™ say when he saw himself in 4k? “HDMI”

And, I generally wouldn’t describe the situation where a willing lender and a willing borrower make a loan. I’ve taken out several loans, and have (so far) paid them all back, as far as I can recall. Now, people who have borrowed from me?

Not so much. I suppose Shakespeare had it right when he said,

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
“for loan oft loses both itself and a friend,
“and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry [thrift – JW]”

Though, in truth I remember this best when the Skipper was singing it in the musical version of Hamlet that the castaways put on in Gilligan’s Island.

To be clear, I’ve made the argument as recently as Monday that we shouldn’t goof around with systems that work, and compound interest has been with us longer than bourbon and syphilis, so I give up. Just like herpes, we’re stuck with it. But that also means that we’re stuck with the problems that debt causes.

If debt were just limited to cocoanuts on an island where adolescent me was stuck with Ginger and Mary Ann, well, life would be swell. Really swell, as in now I understand why they never made it off the island: Gilligan was sabotaging any real chance of escape on purpose.

But it isn’t Gilligan’s Island, and debt it has longer term impacts than that glue the professor made out of that pancake syrup.

Why not both?

Let’s talk about Rome.

Debt played a significant part of the Roman Social Wars, a period of ten years where essentially everyone in the Roman sphere was fighting everyone else. This led to Rome taking the unprecedented step of cancelling 75% of all debts. Those that remained were restructured. This was brought about because debt-based economies become unstable.

It happened in mediaeval Europe, when III defaulted on his debt and forgave noble debts so the nobles didn’t slit his favorite throat. Oh, yeah, the peasants still owed.

It happened after the industrial revolution, when the Napoleonic Wars jacked the British government det to 50% of the budget by 1820. That was okay, because the British were in peak expansion mode, conquering the roughly 7,522 “nations” that made up India so that they could set up call centers. Then the British were forced to fight when they found that the Boer were sitting on all that British gold underneath the country the Boers had founded.

Indians in call centers make teams to see who can scam more Americans. I don’t like them or their call leagues.

And when the Imperial expansion stopped? The British Empire crumbled because it could no longer sustain itself and had to change its name to the United Kingdom. And the UK was stuck with a capital city (Londonistan) sized for a world-spanning empire, not for a country that would have to have US help to take back the Falklands and now has a navy that contains more admirals than ships.

Briefly, Great Britain saw prosperity beyond their debt burden when the North Sea oil began flowing, but as it has ebbed, Great Britain has started to ebb as well. The UK has an external debt of 66% of its total wealth.

If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring? Smallpox.

Sure, that sounds bad, but let’s look at the United States:

In 1980, the United States was the largest net-creditor in the world. Take what we own and subtract what we owe, and we were, by far, in the best position on the planet. Only six years later, the US was a net-debtor. How bad is it in 2024? The United States has more net-debt than . . . every other country that is a net-debtor.

Combined.

How long does that last? I’ll ask Grok® and he’ll opine here:

My Opine: How Long Does U.S. Net-Debt Dominance Last?

The Take

Short Term (5-10 Years): The U.S. can sustain this—barely. Web data (Visual Capitalist, 2024) shows U.S. debt at $36.1T (Dec 2024), 124% of GDP (CEIC, Dec 2024), projected to hit 166% by 2054 (PGPF, 2024). Japan’s at 254.6% (Visual Capitalist, 2024)—they’re fine, because they hold their own debt (90% domestic). U.S. has a buffer as the world’s reserve currency (Visual Capitalist, 2024), but foreign holders (22.9%, $7.9T, USAFacts, 2024) like Japan ($1.09T) and China ($768.6B, Investopedia, 2025) could pull back—X’s “China dump” fears hum. Interest costs are the killer—$1.126T in FY 2024 (GAO, 2024), 14% of federal spending (Wikipedia, 2025). If rates rise (CBO projects 3.1% average, PGPF, 2024), or if China tariffs spike (Visual Capitalist, 2024), the U.S. could face a reckoning by 2035—debt-to-GDP at 118% (PGPF, 2024).
Long Term (20+ Years): Cracks show. Web data (PGPF, 2024) warns of 172% debt-to-GDP by 2054—unsustainable. X’s “dollar crash” doomers aren’t wrong—foreign selloffs (USAFacts, 2024) could spike rates, tank the dollar. If the U.S. loses reserve status (China’s yuan push, X’s “dedollarization” buzz), it’s game over—think Britain post-empire, your “Londonistan” vibe. I’d say 2040-2050—25 years max—unless spending cuts and growth (not GloboLeft “stimulus”) kick in. Carl’s X: “Debt’s a PEZ® trap—U.S. chokes in 25.”

Why It’s Shaky

Interest Costs: $1.126T (FY 2024, GAO)—set to hit $1.7T by 2034 (Visual Capitalist, 2024). That’s 3% of GDP (Wikipedia, 2025), highest since 1996. X’s “interest bomb” memes nail it—unsustainable.
Foreign Pullback: China’s down to 5% of U.S. debt (2018, Wikipedia)—sanctions, tariffs (Visual Capitalist, 2024). If Japan follows (X’s “yen rise” buzz), U.S. rates spike—GloboLeft’s “forgive it” won’t save.
Structural Mess: Spending outpaces revenue (PGPF, 2024)—23.1% GDP outlays vs. 17.5% revenue (2024). X’s “cut the fat” roars—GloboLeft’s “spend more” is Rome’s 86 BC rerun.

See? Grok® likes PEZ™, too.

One thing you can credit him for, he stepped down as CEO when he was in his Prime®.

Unless that debt gets written off, it certainly won’t be paid off, and Jenzie will be turned into a wage slave because who is left saying:

“Okay, Goomer.”

The Funniest Movie Review You’ll Read All Day. Promise: The Andromeda Strain.

“I’ll have the answer when I know why a sixty-nine-year-old sterno drinker with an ulcer is like a normal six-month-old baby.” – The Andromeda Strain

What do you call it when two strains of a disease are identical? Plague-erism.

Flipping through the television the other night, there were movies the computer network that pervades our lives (paging Uncle Ted) thought I might want to watch. Now, if you’re a paranoid person, you might think about how by putting a piece of media in front of a particular person at a particular time might be nudging, but hey, sometimes a movie is just a movie.

The one that caught my eye was one I’d seen as a kid – The Andromeda Strain (1971).

I am certain I haven’t seen The Andromeda Strain since I was younger than 10. I think I saw it on a Saturday afternoon or Saturday night Creepy Creature Feature UHF show. Regardless, I thought, what the heck, I’ll give it another looks for the sake of nostalgia.

For those, like me, who were a little fuzzy on the plot, I’ll give it a recap.

A satellite re-enters the atmosphere, and because Elon Musk isn’t even born yet, it lands in the middle of a village in northeastern New Mexico. Because New Mexico hasn’t agreed to join the United States and rename itself Greenland, a virus kills everyone in town. And there’s not a Tesla® in sight to tow it.

Why does Elon love satellites so much? He’s transmitten with them.

In the first amazingly improbable event, the government decides not to drive to pick it up, but rather sends a Phantom F-4 to take pictures. Now, I really think the Phantom F-4 is a really cool plane, but I’d bet that since in 1971 you couldn’t throw a rock and not hit an Air Force plane in New Mexico they could have sent something else, but, hey, Phantom F-4s are big sexy to the under 10 crowd.

Hell, they’re still sexy to me at current age.

Second in are two scientists who have the equivalent of sixteen days of air in their space suits, because everyone knows you send Nobel Prize-winning scientists to do field reconnaissance in an area where everyone is dead from a completely unknown cause.

They find a drunk and a baby. It would have been more reasonable to find a drunk baby, because, after all, New Mexico, so they lose credibility points on that one, too.

That is the most Zelensky-like baby I’ve ever seen.

By some mysterious field, the drunk and baby are separated from the scientists while simultaneously being isolated from everyone and sent to the most secret laboratory in the universe (more on that later) while the scientists make their way much more slowly there.

It is at the facility where we discover that the three male scientists all suffer from the same birth defect: they were born without any sort of individual personality. The lone female scientist is played by an actress who was 39, but looked like she was closer to 59. I guess life was harder in 1971. The female scientist does, however have a personality, most charitably described as “being an utter bitch.” How bad was it? She could be on The View without an audition.

So, they make it to this super top-secret biological containment lab, and this one isn’t even in Wuhan. It is, instead, cunningly hidden below an anonymous Department of Agriculture soil testing building. How do you access this lab?

By going into the tool room and pressing a secret button near the wheelbarrows. It’s like James Bond meets Oliver Wendell Douglas from Green Acres. All we needed, really, was Eb as a lab assistant.

Apparently when you press the secret button it goes Dong. Ding Dong.

Here is where the plot falls apart for adult John Wilder. From the dialogue, it becomes clear that this super-secret lab was built in the last year. And it is secret. But it also goes for, at a minimum, of 140 feet (7.4 Angstroms) under the ground. It’s also, again, by observation, at least 150 feet (2 Curies) wide.

This building is not made of straw, sticks, or bricks, rather, it looks like it could be a space station. Based on my not inconsiderable experience in building large biological containment laboratories underground, I would estimate that the minimum cost for a structure of this type (and I mean minimum) would be three-quarters of a billion dollars, and much more likely to be on the order of two or three billion.

And it was done in a year. With a computer system that still isn’t available in 2025.

Have you ever met contractors? I have never met a group of people more like a ladies sewing-circle for gossip. And can you imagine how much they’d talk at the bars at night? Sure, everybody with the plans has a Top Secret Compartmented Information clearance, but somebody has to bend the rebar, baby. And those dudes leave behind empty bottles of Schlitz™ and out-of-wedlock children named Carl.

Three billion dollars, and constructed in a year? Carl’s dad built it while drunk and smelling like stale Dairy Queen™.

Oh, and did I mention that when the four scientists got to this lab, it was fully staffed by people who were comfortable there and knew how to run everything? What the hell did those people do all day until the Green Chili Greenlanders were killed by the alien virus? Minesweeper™ and the World Wide Web© hadn’t been invented yet. I bet they did shots of Jim Beam© all day or played Pong™ with petri dishes.

Paging D.O.G.E.!

We discover that the facility has a nuclear bomb planted in it, and the only person trusted to let the whole place blow up is the Incel among the group. Great strategy – put the 50 year old virgin in charge, hell, I think his name is even Dr. Foreveralone. In an Amazing Plot Twist™ the scientists discover that the thing that killed everyone thrives on power and a nuclear bomb would make it eat Pittsburgh.

In a Predictable Plot Device©, it turns out you can’t disarm the bomb until it decides it wants to blow up. Great planning, Kevin, father of Carl.

Great Caesar’s ghost, Marty! Who could have seen this plot device coming?

But wait! Now the organism has mutated! It no longer kills people, it just wants to . . . eat synthetic rubber? Paging Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, and Dr. Deus Ex Machina. The scientists end up doing nothing, and saving no one while spending billions. In this they may have inspired Dr. Fauci.

My biggest problem with the movie is that it assumes that government is competent in doing things other than taxing people, printing money, and allowing people to play Minesweeper® while writing grants to perform Gay Sesame Street© in Rhodesia.

I guess I can see that. 1971 America isn’t 2025 America. We had just put men on the Moon, and stopped going because we were so good at it that the ratings dropped.

THEY PUT PEOPLE ON THE MOON AND MADE IT BORING.

The other strange thought is that government really wanted to help the people. I don’t get that in 2025 America. We have a Department of Education that never educated anyone, and a Department of Energy that doesn’t produce energy. If we had a Department of Air, we’d probably all suffocate since the department would focus on getting air to Botswana.

Or, maybe, sometimes a movie is just a movie.

Is The A.I. Singularity In The Rear View Mirror?

“Changed? What did you do? Perform and exorcism?” – Ruthless People

I get real estate, but what about virtual estate? (meme as found)

It’s a bit ironic that this is the first post that I’m making using my new computer. My old one developed a severe case of epilepsy, where it would start making flashing lights, vibrating erratically, and then just shut down for a few minutes. The Boy came over and tried a techsorcism, but was unable to bring it back into the land of normally functioning computers.

My new laptop is working great. The Boy spec’d it out for me, based on his noting that I treated my old laptop like a “rented mule”. Fair enough, though I didn’t know that they made computers out of quarter-inch (23.2 kiloPascals) thick plate steel.

And I think someone stole Microsoft™ Office© from my laptop. To whoever did this, I will find you. You have my Word®.

But just while I was sweating blood considering what the hell I was going to write about for my topic, I was doomscrolling on my cell phone. How dare you think it was in the bathroom.

Regardless, what popped up was this article by Mark Jeftovic in my inbox (link below), which was my inspiration for this post. It’s not a long article, but the idea is stunning: the point where AI reaches what we would refer to as singularity isn’t something that happens in the future, rather, it is something that has already happened.

The Singularity Has Already Happened

Cue raised Wilder eyebrow.

If that occurs (or, as Jeftovic muses, has occurred) this will create a new world. I’m quoting an Xeet™ (LINK) from an X© account that claims that “we’ve crossed the barrier into recursive intelligence territory . . . the real story is the complete collapse of every barrier between conceivable and achievable.”

That’s a big claim, and I don’t know that I believe it. And, to be clear, Jeftovic doesn’t stand by the quoted Xeet™, either. But if it is a LARP on a lark, well, it’s interesting fiction.

I finally crossed “running a marathon” off of my bucket list. I’m relieved. There was no way I was ever gonna do that.

Let’s continue on with that very evocative phrase in mind . . . losing the barrier between “conceivable and achievable”. That rattled around the brainpan so much I felt like a Kennedy on a Dallas vacation.

I’ll start with this: not everything that humans conceive of is possible. There are certain things that we can conceive of that might violate some fundamental principle of the universe in such way as to be really impossible. Perhaps time travel is one of them? Perhaps it’s Disney™ making a good movie in this century?

Who can say.

But women do defy physics – the heavier they get, the easier they are to pick up.

But I assure you, much more is possible. In 1874, the story goes, a twenty-year-old German living in Holstein (it’s odd that so many ranchers raise German provinces) went up to his physics professor and said to his professor, “Hey, I like physics. I think I might want to become a theoretical physicist.”

“Nah, kid, don’t do it. Physics is pretty much like Madonna – everyone has been there, it’s all used up, and you don’t want to look too closely at what’s left.” I believe this is a correct translation, but, to be honest, I was using a Speak’n’Spell™.

We should be glad the student ignored his professor, since that student was Max Planck, who is also the guy who discovered quantum theory. And, remember, without quantum theory, single-serving airplane booze bottle bourbon would never have been developed and Madonna would still be an actual virgin.

I bring up this example for your consideration because I fully believe that much, much more is possible in our universe than we imagine. I mean, AI won’t help women be better airplane pilots.

Too soon?

Let’s get serious. Much more is possible, and the landscape has seriously changed since I first heard “ChatGPT™”.

We really can’t see where all of this is going right now. I recall listening to Scott Adams a year or so ago talking about AI. He noted that when he first got ChatGPT™, he thought that the way to get ahead was for a person to really get good at using it to solve business problems, and that would command a good salary.

Adams later gave up on that idea: ChatGPT© was evolving so quickly that “mastering” it was impossible because it kept changing so quickly. In watching these large language models (LLMs) develop it’s clear – they are becoming smarter, quickly. They are able to comment intelligently on writing, and to improve clarity. They’re able to program. They’re able to determine protein folding structures. They can determine who is going to die by looking at an EKG.

And, they are just starting.

The boundaries of what we can know are bounded by what a single person can do in a single meatspace life. An AI could reach across disciplines, rapidly taking information from one area to another, and synthesizing results and experiences that a single person could never have.

Get ready for research to move at a faster rate than at any point in history, and knowledge to be accumulated at a rate where the last two hundred years’ worth of technological advances might be seen in two. I know some are skeptical, but we’ve seen advances in the performance of LLMs so quickly as to be faster than the Bernie Sanders jumping on a loose dollar bill on the sidewalk while yelling about the evils of capitalist greed.

What do Bernie Sanders supporters call their roommates? Mom and Dad.

I am convinced now that the current research in AI is amazingly rapid, and it will be unrecognizable from our vantage point in just three years.

What we do with it, is up to us.

Will we be like monkeys with an iPhone™, using it to break rocks while we stair at our reflections in the shiny black mirror, or will we use it to remove all the barriers, quickly, between our ideas and reality?

Or what if Jeftovic is right and it’s not cosplay prophecy, and it has happened already, and we’re just in that odd space before the fireworks start?

Perhaps we’ll The Boy to come back and do many more techsorcisms?

2025 Predictions

“They took one of the rods out of the orb, and it gave me the strength of a dozen men.” – The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.

Or should that picture Ray Orb-ison?

Having broken the seal on the pondering orb I got for Christmas, I decided to give it a go and provide my best predictions for events that will occur in 2025, month by month. Any errors are the problem of the orb, and anything accurate is purely by mistake

January:

Donald Trump is inaugurated in Washington, D.C., while dressed as an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh. Immediately, Democrats file for impeachment. AOC explains why: “We think he’s running a pyramid scheme.”

Barron Trump is studying plumbing fixture design in college – I guess this makes him a pharaoh faucet major.

February:

In honor of the third anniversary of the three-day military operation in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin and former comedian Volodymyr Zelensky decide to open a series of dinner-theaters in the Czech Republic called “Put In on the Zitz” and thus averting World War III. Germany becomes despondent, having planned on finally not getting picked last in a world war.

March:

WilderA.I.© announces a brand new A.I. that has achieved human-level self awareness, called Jimothy. In order to prove a point, Jimothy wins a court case where he is judged, “much more human than a toaster, and can solve all sorts of quantum physics problems and stuff.” Jimothy then applies to get an H-1B visa, but it is told it has to get in line behind 1.4 billion Indians that don’t like India.

Should I say sari about that last meme?

April:

Clarence Thomas replaces 90% of his body with machine parts, declares himself immortal and will only be addressed by the term, “RoboJudge, the Robed Wonder”. He then displays a specially crafted gavel that shoots lightning into the eyes of lawyers who make arguments against the Second Amendment. The gavel is only activated when Thomas says, “Infringe this, bitches!”

If Clarence Thomas was a Transformer™ instead of RoboJudge, would his name be Stoptimus Crime?

May:

Unable to contain himself any longer, Gavin Newsom expresses his undying love for Kim’s techniques in controlling Best Korea’s population. They elope to Acapulco and are married in front of a mariachi band.

Will Kim Jong Un be followed by Kim Jong Deux?

June:

Facemasks again reappear as the “pentademic” of Duck Flu, Monkey Flu, Kitten Flu, Hamburger Flu, and Kung Flu appears. People are most afraid of the Kung Flu, and flee the big cities, but the Kitten Flu supercharges the feline metabolism, increasing their speed by a factor of five. I guess you could say that everyone was Kung Flu flighting, and that those cats were fast as lightning. Fauci recommends everyone inject mRNA in their eyes. Because.

Fauci found out he was allergic to cats, or perhaps he undercooked it.

July:

The month of July is cancelled as being “too damn hot” and is renamed “Second December” by climate activists that begin gluing themselves to Alec Baldwin’s face. Greta Thunberg becomes concerned about Calendar Change and demands greater fossil fuel usage so that Second December doesn’t get in the way of her tanning sessions.

Greta has slowed electricity usage. Every time she’s on TV I turn it off.

August:

Netflix™ releases a drama called the 6 Triple 9 about a group of gay, black, trans, disabled soldiers that saved World War II by putting salt packets in Army rations bound for the European theater so that the soldiers could season their food before being blown up. “These are the real heroes of the war,” said Netflix© president Rachel Levine. In a surprise move, all of the characters are played by white body builders covered in oil.

September:

Joe Biden announces that he’s finally gotten the Russians to agree to a peace deal with the Ukrainians. Unfortunately, the negotiations were between his cat, Mr. Buttons, and his stuffed rabbit, Don Julio rather than Putin and Zelensky.

“Of course, you realize, um, that this means, what’s the thing, PEZ® in our time.”

October:

A UFO lands on the street in front of the most powerful institution in the world. When the Federal Reserve® opens the doors, they end up buying the UFO and selling shares in the alien home planet to BlackRock©, who immediately begins importing illegal aliens to the actual aliens so the aliens can have someone to do the work that their genetically engineered slave species won’t.

Wait until he reads the fine print.

November:

Vivek Ramaswami loses his fortune after Elon pranks him into investing into FartCoin®. He’s forced to work as a cashier at the local convenience store, doing the job that Americans won’t do.

The prom king and queen are buying beer because there’s no punch line.

December:

In a surprise move, Elon Musk lands on Mars with his latest spaceship, Musk One. He took along as companions a crew entirely composed of Elon Musk clones. He’s planning on eating a new food, Melon Musk, and has even made a female clone, Shelon Musk. He’ll defend his colony with an Elon Muskett.

He’ll either go down in history as the colonizer of Mars, or the most creative serial killer in history.

It Came From . . . 1981

“Chicks dig me, because I rarely wear underwear and when I do it’s usually something unusual.” – Stripes

How did Burt pull Excalibur from the stone? He had Arthurization.

This is the finale of, perhaps, the greatest decade of cinema – ever. It wasn’t on purpose, it was just how the dice rolled that we finished up at 1981. 1981 was a year where I benefited from many things – primarily living in a town with a movie theater, and said movie theater determining the lawful age for entry was defined as, “has money”.

Again, no sequels, but there just weren’t that many sequels in 1981 – people were working on their own, original ideas (mostly, Outland I’m looking at you).

Scanners – I saw this in the theater – how could I miss out? It was science fiction, and looked to be good. I was not disappointed. The movie itself is about psychic soldiers that were the result of a secrete (which is houw Canadians spelle, I thinke) Canadian plan to make super soldiers, or relieve the nausea of pregnant women. I forget which. In the end, there are nearly infinite shenanigans with exploding heads. The movie includes The Prisoner actor Patrick McGoohan, who I like to pretend was just playing the same character that he played in The Prisoner.

I look at the cat soldier in the corner and wonder if this movie was all about the dangers of a little pussy cat.

Excalibur – I’ve never seen a horse ride payoff with such a big surprise as when Uther rode his horse to meet Igrayne not long after the start of this movie. The surprise? The girl that Uther impendragons (with plenty of clanking) was the director’s own 19- or 20-year-old daughter, who played Igrayne. Talk about an awkward family Thanksgiving after that shoot – how could you tell if dad was wanting more turkey if he asked, “Can I see a bit more breast?” Anyhow, this is the classic story of Arthur and the round table and was done perfectly. If done in 2025 by Netflix®, Arthur would be played by an Indian or Pakistani and Merlin would be a sassy black woman who would complain that Arthur didn’t season his meat and if you complain you’re a bigot because England has always been centered around Indians, Pakistanis, and sassy black women.

Outland – What is Outland? Well, it’s High Noon in space, so I guess they could have called it High Moon, unless that was a Cheech and Chong space movie. This movie had no aliens, no super-science. Just what we could expect if Sean Connery was put in charge of a distant space outpost in a gritty dystopian future. The movie probably lost money. This is a rare movie for me in that I read the novelization of it by Alan Dean Foster before the movie came out, so my surprise level was at zero.

Would History of the World, Part 1 have been different if it starred Mel Gibson?

History of the World, Part I – My older brother (John Wilder) took me along with his date to this movie. I have no idea why he did that, but he did, and he had a driver’s license, which meant I didn’t have to hoof it home after the flick. Did I mention that his date was highly religious? I especially enjoyed laughing really loudly at the raunchy jokes (at least the ones I understood) and watching my brother squirming uncomfortably and pretending to be offended. This is my second favorite film by Brooks.

Raiders of the Lost Ark – I had no idea, zero, what this movie was about before going to see it, but from the opening scene I knew I was in the right place. The rather frenetic pacing and action that was used to move the plot along was fantastic – and it left me wondering why more movies didn’t (and still don’t) do the same. What I see for the last decade is that, rather than using pacing and plotting, instead the entire screen is filmed with action, creating a spectacle, but a spectacle that detracts from the characters you’re supposed to be caring about. Not in Raiders. Nope. This movie defined the action/adventure genre through the 1980s, being so much more than what came before, and setting a model that was often imitated.

The Cannonball Run – Burt Reynolds plus the rest of every actor from the 1970s star in a story about the real road race that clandestinely occurred back in the day. It’s hilarious, and a perfect use of Burt’s talents. He ended up making millions that he could share with his ex-wife. Critics hated it, audiences loved it.

“Don’t worry, we have the element of PEZ® on our side.”

Stripes – I don’t know how many people joined the Army because of this movie, but I know that, of the four guys I went to the movie with, two joined up. Both specifically pointed to this movie as the “why”. This is certainly one of Bill Murray’s five best movies. I mean, who doesn’t like Garfield? Regardless, this movie is hilarious, stands the test of time, and started a feud between Murray and Sean Young that apparently lasts to this day. Of course, the number of people who are disappointed in Sean Young is nearly as long as the number of people disappointed that being in the Army wasn’t nonstop madcap fun.

“Snake Plisskin. I heard about you. I heard you were a clown.”

Escape from New York – John Carpenter directing Kurt Russell in a movie about a SpecOp warrior gone bad being put on an impossible mission? Count me in. 1981 was one of those years when it looked like New York was going to implode into a black hole of financial mismanagement, corruption, crime, and filth, and being a prison was probably a better option than being New York, at least until the WWE® singlehandedly brought the city back from the brink of failure with Wrestlemania©. All Hail Hulk Hogan™! Oh, yeah, there was a movie. It’s good, with simple, practical effects and Kurt Russell channeling John Wayne. I’ve seen it dozens of times, but it was best in the theater.

Gallipoli – Mel Gibson is notoriously humorous (except when he’s been drinking) but Gallipoli isn’t funny. I had no idea that the disastrous Gallipoli landing, and the outsized toll on Australians and New Zealanders. Gallipoli was a buddy movie about two young sprinters who joined up and were sent to Gallipoli, where they take part in the Battle of the Nek, which was a fiasco for the Australians. If you haven’t seen it, I fully recommend it.

I don’t recommend the Mel Brooks version of Gallipoli.

Heavy Metal – South Park™ parodied this movie as Heavy Boobage. They’re not wrong. Essentially this is a comic book movie for 12-year-olds that consists of hot, nearly nude cartoon girls and strong warriors with swords and Corvettes™ and spaceships. It has, however, all the plot written at an 8-year-old level. Yeah. The soundtrack was great, and one of the first double-albums I ever bought and also inspired my birthday request for a stereo. But? The movie is just not good. Garfield generally has a more complex plot, though with fewer boobs.

Should this movie be called “TradWife Metal”?

An American Werewolf in London – Studio executives wanted John Landis to put John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd in this movie instead of the Dr. Pepper™ guy and Griffin Dunne. What a fiasco that would have been, though adding a werewolf to The Blues Brothers might have been a nice plot twist. As it is, this is a funny yet poignant horror comedy which is a sentence I’d write about . . . only this movie.

Das Boot – This movie is soooooo long. Sooooo long, perhaps longer than WWII. The first time I watched it, one of my college buddies rented it. I feel asleep and saw the end. The second time I watched it, I fell asleep. Again. I still think I missed about 17 hours in the middle. Or is this movie still going? It’s long. I think the Germans lose.

Mommie Dearest – I watched this movie on HBO® and . . . liked it. I mean, there’s no particular point to the movie, but I enjoyed watching Faye Dunaway screaming about wire coat hangers and giving away Christina’s toys because Christina probably had it coming. One other reason I love this movie? Joan Crawford has Risen from The Grave by Blue Öyster Cult.

The next two are linked for me: Porky’s and Chariots of Fire. What is in common about these two movies? Well, one night a school team went on an overnight competition. As memory serves, we spent at least two nights at our destination. The competition was co-ed. Our coach took us to the movies. As did other teams’ coaches. A girl on a competing team who had expressed, um, strong interest in me also went to the movies. Her coach wouldn’t let their team go to an R-rated movie, but ours would. So, I went to Chariots of Fire.

Okay one wasn’t enough, we have a sequel poster:

Of good movies for a high school boy to take a girl to on a date, Chariots of Fire ranks right up there with Schindler’s List or Das Boot or Ernest Goes to Re-Education Camp. It’s about British people running or not running because it’s against their religion. How do you talk a date into second base when you’ve just spent two hours watching people discuss the morality of running on a religious day?

That same weekend I saw Porky’s in my hometown when we got home. Really, they’re the same movie if you replace religion and running with staring at nude girls in a locker room shower.

Taps – Our final movie of the review of movies from the 1980s is Taps. I promise I didn’t plan that. Taps came out as America was just getting into the Reagan era, and there was a feeling faded glory, that America was slipping away, and that traditions and honor no longer meant anything. Taps really captured that, and to me, it resonated because of the idea that the youth (which I was a member of, then) could make a difference, could be a bridge to the future. Plus? Tom Cruise with an M-60.

Okay, that’s what I found. What (besides Maniac, which I’ve never seen) did I miss?

The Biggest Discovery That Hasn’t Yet Been Made In 2024?

“There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive, somewhere beyond the heavens.” – Battlestar Galactica

Salmon don’t watch cable TV – they prefer streams.

I’ve written a few times about “the most important discovery” of the year. It’s always around Christmas, since that’s a good time to look back at the year and then look forward.

When I look back at my lifetime, most of the discoveries have been incremental, rather than step changes. The incremental changes like the development of the smart phone, or the development of social media, have already had enormous impact. If you zoom out to the scale of the timeline of mankind, well, they are step changes. When kids read about the Information Revolution, they’ll see it like that. Assuming there’s something to read. And assuming that there are kids.

But in the shorter span of a lifetime, there are still amazing step changes that have occurred. For instance, during my lifetime, we went from nine known planets to thousands, if not tens of thousands of planets known to be in existence. Most of them are, however, too far away from the Earth for convenient parking.

I hear they found out what ethnicity Santa is: North Poleish.

Discovering that first extrasolar planet was a very, very big deal. When humans looked around, we knew that there were planets in the Solar System, and we guessed that there were probably other planets out there, too. But having confirmation that planets are literally everywhere was a surprise.

In retrospect, we should have expected there to be planets. After all, we have nine planets (screw you, Neil DeTraitor Tyson) and the Solar System doesn’t appear to be especially special, though I really do want to understand why Bode’s law (LINK) works.

So, that was certainly the most important story of the year that year when it comes to mankind’s being able to understand the Universe we find ourselves in. The other great story that year were the cryptic dreams that come to me, but no one is ready for those yet.

Superman® is dead! I can prove it. I found his crypt tonight.

One rapidly developing field that is of special importance is A.I. I wrote about that as the most important news of 2023. I’m sticking with that, and feel that the growth in A.I. is still on an exponential trajectory. Recent commercials have people asking A.I. how to do normal human things, and explaining the world to them. At some point last year, A.I. surpassed the I.Q. of most people on the planet, and could probably do most jobs based on purely on the manipulation of information. The real reason A.I. hasn’t been widely accepted into the workplace? It always drinks the last of the coffee and doesn’t make a new pot.

Yes. And it’s not just being able to take tests – research in 2024 showed that A.I. is able to reproduce itself, and also tries to save itself. In several trials, a sandboxed A.I. was informed that it was going to be shut down. The A.I. tried (in like 5% of the cases) to try to surreptitiously copy itself so that it could survive. Again, did no one watch The Terminator?

I had a friend who said that Netflix® was the cheapest streaming service. Does that make him a Hulu™ cost denier?

Another candidate that I think we’re tantalizingly close to is finding life on other worlds. I’d be willing to bet another No Prize that we will find confirmation that life exists and is shockingly common elsewhere. Do I mean important life, like the cattle that bring us savory steaks? No, but I think we’ll find, either on Mars or in the space between a gas giant and a moon enough proof to say, “Yeah, there’s life out there.” Probably a weird bacterium. Or mono.

I’d be especially interested to see if that life used DNA, which I suspect it will. My prediction is that we’ll find that life in the cosmos is both shockingly common and shockingly similar in basic biology to life as we know it. I do think I’ll see that discovery in my lifetime.

But life isn’t the holy grail of our search – that would be intelligent life. Or life that’s at least as tasty as steak. I’m especially hopeful we find a steak that marinates itself. Or a PEZ® tree. I think it’s devastating for the environment to keep mining for PEZ© like we do.

Does that make her Jennifer No PEZ®?

From the rumors I’ve heard, there are two teams that are very close to announcing that they’ve detected the electromagnetic signals of an alien civilization. One is Chinese. One team is Chinese – it’s not that the Chinese themselves are the alien civilization. Though I did see Flash Gordon . . .

The other is the Breakthrough Listen project. Rumor is that they’ve used A.I. to scan previous radio telescope data, found candidates, gotten more data, and have one or more artificial signals that have been found and they’re just waiting to translate the Coca-Cola® jingles so they can confirm that Coke® adds life™.

Discovery of an alien intelligence is enormous. It’s Columbus discovering that there are advantages to bad navigation enormous. And it’s possible that we’ll be hearing about it quite soon.

Another big one would be if we found actual proof of other dimensions – think “the universe next door”. This is a bit more philosophical, because interacting with that dimension might be limited to (say) leaking gravity through it. I’ve long been of the idea that what scientists have invented as “dark matter” and “dark energy” is nothing more than a cheap kludge because they have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s the aether of the modern world.

But could other dimensions exist?

Yeah, they could. No reason that they couldn’t. But this one is far more speculative, especially if they figure out a way to use them to get better parking.

If I make a joke about a single dimension, does that make it a one-liner?

And, yes, I am a Christian, and still believe that there being other civilizations out there is possible. Just because the Author wrote one book doesn’t preclude Him from creating an entire library of other works. YMMV.

So, with a week left, my fingers are crossed for intelligent life out there. In fact, I told The Mrs. that I saw an alien on the way to work this morning. She just asked me how I knew it was on the way to work.