It Came From . . . 1994

“Never interrupt me when I’m talking to myself.” – Timecop

All Hanks, All the TIme

We turn in our review of movies to 1994.  I’m not sure that I’ll keep going backward in time unless there’s a clamor for it, but we’ll keep going forward in time, at least for a bit.

1994 continued the trend of comedies being less funny and more . . . stupid?  Offensive?  Cringeworthy?  Whatever the term, the downgrade picked up steam in 1994.

As usual, no sequels are on the list.

Yes, two retards in a movie.

Ace Ventura, Pet Detective – 1994 was the year of Jim Carrey, and this was his harbinger film.  I’m not going to include Dumb and Dumber or The Mask on this list, since all three of those movies are essentially the same thing:  Jim Carrey being Jim Carrey.  The only problem is I find Jim Carrey untalented and irritating, sort of like a syrup of ipecac flavored soda with a side of cold gravy.  Honestly, I’d rather drink the gravy and ipecac than watch a Carrey movie.

I must be dreaming!  Who is that in the background?

The Ref – The first half of The Ref is hilarious, and probably the funniest movie set-up in forever. Denis Leary plays a caustic burglar perfectly.  Great, right?  It is up until it becomes a slow and boring family drama.  If whoever had written the first half of the movie had written the second half, it would have been better.  Or maybe it was all written by George R.R. Martin?  Not recommended.

With textbooks on loan from God . . .

PCU – It’s supposed to be a movie sold as a reaction against the growing forces of political correctness.  And it does have some pretty funny lines, but in the end it uses political correctness to make the villain look like the bad guy.  Still, worth a watch.

Looks like his chickens have come home to roost.

The Crow – I remember seeing this one in the theater – it was a good watch, and a fun movie that was done well in a bittersweet way.  Some of the scenes are over the top, and the motivation of the bad guys is still unclear, but those are only minor quibbles .  Regardless, it’s a beautiful film that is based on real-life tragedy and ended in real-life tragedy.

If infinity Kiefers could hold infinity smaller Kiefers.

The Cowboy Way – The Cowboy Way is probably the second-best comedy on this list.  If it was a TV show, it would have been called Beverly Hillbillies Vice.  Yes, the fish out of water movie, but this time with smart cowboys making the city slickers look bad.  City slickers don’t like that.  It stars Woody Harrelson, who is listed at 5’10”  (6 meters) in height, which means he’s really like 5’5” max.  This created some special effects problems since his co-star Kiefer Sutherland is only 14” (0.00045 meters) tall.

Driving around a bus at night covered in flour, I guess.

Speed – Ted “Theodore” Logan plays a cop on a bus that will explode if it goes below 50 miles per hour because Dennis Hopper doesn’t like public transit and is against Sandra Bullock adopting a football player.  That might be off a bit, since I haven’t seen this movie since 1994.  It was okay, but made $350 million at the box office.

Forrest Gimp or Forrest Gump? 

Forrest Gump – The movie on which the sage advice “never go full retard” is based.  1994 loved this movie in a way that only people who love Jim Carrey can love a movie, rewarding it with $680 million bucks at the box office.  Tom Hanks plays the titular character.  Titular is a way less sexy word than what I thought it would be when I was in fifth grade and looked it up in the dictionary.  I feel the same way about this movie in retrospect – it was fun when I first watched it, but looking back on it, it I certainly don’t recall why – perhaps it was the looming hollowness of the 1990s?  But that’s all I have to say about that.

True Lies – In 1994, James Cameron could have filmed a trip to the supermarket and people would have paid $380 million in box office bucks to watch it.  Throw in a near-peak Arnie and a Jamie Lee Curtis that was 10 years past her prime (her prime was in Trading Places, fight me) and even I went to go watch it.  This movie while enjoyable to watch and having Bill Paxton at his funniest, could have been titled Generic Action Flick.  Not that it’s bad, it’s just the same movie that Arnie would stamp out like Pepsi™ makes plastic bottles for a few more years in the 1990s.

Now with electric neon ukeleles. 

Airheads – Steve Buscemi, Adam Sandler, and Brendan Fraser as a metal band that kidnaps a radio station.  Yes, it’s a comedy.  Yes, it’s silly.  Third best comedy on this list.  Also, another box office bomb.

“In my dreams he’s always there . . . “

In the Army Now – Proving my statement of cringe being the new comedy, here is plaintiff’s exhibit A – Pauly Shore.  Also in this movie is plaintiff’s exhibit B – Andy Dick.  Both in the same film, creating a sort-of black hole of smug-cringe.  This, my friends, is what will end the Universe.

A lighthearted musical animation about war and cannibalism, brought to you by Disney®.

Rapa-Nui – It is certain that a huge civilizational collapse happened on Easter Island.  It was started by white colonizers who cleverly set it in motion 100 years before they arrived.  Wait, that doesn’t sound right, did the Europeans have time travel?  No, I just channeled a GloboLeftist.  In reality, population on Easter Island overshot and they had a famine-induced war.  This movie is about that.  A popcorn movie to watch with the toddlers?  Probably not, unless their favorite book is “Baby’s First Cannibal”.  I thought this one was pretty good, but I was distracted because I was watching it with my toddlers.

Looks like JCVD’s time machine works!  Look how old he is!

Timecop – Jean-Claude VanMC2.  The title is the movie plot.

Wouldn’t his name be Morgan Prisonman?

The Shawshank Redemption – I’m gonna catch flack for this one, but I didn’t love it.  I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it.  I mean, you would have thought that after 142 minutes that the Beavis and Butthead would have scored some beer.

What if Wolverine worked for Marcellus Wallace?

Pulp Fiction – The actual best movie of 1994.  Quentin Tarantino manages in his first major release to let people know he had already mastered a game that many other film makers had no idea they were playing.

And one of them has a beagle named Snoopy®?

Clerks – The actual funniest movie of 1994.  Made for $10,000 – it was everything that the other comedies on the list weren’t – smart, apolitical, rough around the edges, and it had 0% Jim Carrey.  The story of two clerks on a very long day where one of them wasn’t even supposed to be working.  Kevin Smith was never as good again as his first outing, but that was at least partially due to the fact that his first outing is a classic.

Don’t blame me, Grok™ picked this one.

The Puppet Masters – Robert A. Heinlein’s story of insidious alien control somehow seems ripped from the headlines when I see the woke mind virus doing what aliens could only dream of.  I thought it was a faithful adaptation, but it still makes me wonder how 7’3” (16 meters) Donald Sutherland managed to father the lilliputian Kiefer.

Interstellar PEZ®.

Stargate – A fast-paced documentary about Egyptian archeology that’s not to be missed.  Plus?  Kurt Russell.

Back then Tom sure attracted the . . . .

Interview with the Vampire – A pretty fair adaptation of Anne Rice’s novel of the same name.  Cruise hasn’t aged a day since then, so maybe he picked something up when he did this film?

That’s it.  There were several I had to delete due to length.  Again, several good, solid movies as comedy morphed from its 1980s peak into the Jim Carrey abysmal.  The innovative 1980s action films began the process of mass production as budgets kept growing larger and larger and failures became less tolerable.  21 sequels were in major release in 1994 (this was the big jump from 1993 when there were only 13).  There were 9 in 1974, but in 2014 . . . ?  34.

I had to bump several films, and I could list them, but, hey, why don’t you let me know what gems should be on the list?

Watch The Economy Stagflate, Complete With Unrelated Bikini Picture

“We, the people, suffered.  We still suffer from unemployment, inflation, crime and corruption.” – Taxi Driver

When I buy groceries for prepping, The Mrs. says I have stock home syndrome.

Back in the bad (economically) old days of the 1970s, a word came into existence that described the economic policy of the Carter Administration:  Stagflation.

Now, if this would have been about massive helium-filled deer antlers, it would have been great.  Surreal, but great.  But it wasn’t.  Instead, it was surreal but bad –the economy was stagnant, but the price of everything kept going up.  It was like going to the dentist because of a toothache and finding out that instead of anesthetic you just got pepper spray in your eyes to take your mind off the dental surgery.

But back to surreal.  The impacts of stagflation were likewise as surreal as the giraffe clock currently melting in my light socket.   Here’s an example:  I remember when I was first married to The Mrs., we would go and visit her parents and spend the weekend in her old bedroom.  In one part of the closet was a dust-covered box filled with toys from when The Mrs. was a very young The Miss.

Is a prog rock band that plays Spanish guitar on your front lawn called Pink Flamenco?

One toy in particular stood out – it was a cheap plastic injection-molded car.  It still had the grocery store price sticker on it – and it was something like $8.99.

Whoa!  Back in the late 1990s, $8.99 would have bought something like a dozen similar cheap plastic injection-molded cars.  Inflation had been out of control in the late 1970s when The Mrs. had been given that toy.

Everything sucked economically – crappy quality at inflated prices.

Two major factors led to that situation – Nixon pulling the United States off the gold standard was the most critical one.  If we had to prove-up our spending with gold, well, we’d have to have some sort of discipline or we wouldn’t have any gold.

Discipline sounds like it’s boring, and the 1970s was made for disco parties, drugs, and infidelity, so why have discipline with our money?  That’s just not cool, man.  Besides, who needs rules when you have bitchin’ bell bottoms?

I guess weightlifters in the 1970s wore barbell bottoms.

The other situation is that the United States had reached a (then) peak in oil production, and was now dependent upon oil supplies from foreign nations (they were nations instead of countries back then – now, not so much).  Since one group of foreigners (Arabs) didn’t like another group of foreigners (Israelis) the group that had all the oil (Arabs) decided to stop selling so much oil.

Oil is a big deal, because the price of oil is hidden almost everywhere in our economy.  It’s required for planes to move bikini models, for trucks to move PEZ™, and in some places heats homes.  So, increasing the price of oil was just like tossing a big tax on everything, so moms everywhere went to work to bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and then wear crappy perfume and nylon pantsuits.

I think I just gave the origin story of Hamburger Helper™, but I digress.

Not everyone makes great meatloaf, but two out of three ain’t bad.

What does this mean to today’s problem?  Are we in the same place?

Partially.

We’ve been partying, mostly, since the 1970s, and have gotten away with it through various shenanigans.  As Ayn Rand said, “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”  I’ll just shrug and Ayn was talking about her polyamorous relationships, but I can’t be sure.

Regardless, 2025 is a big year for dealing with consequences.  Our current national debt is something like $33 trillion.  I know, it’s like Whoopi Goldberg’s butt, it’s so big it’s meaningless.  But we have to refinance $9 trillion of that $33 trillion plus another $3 trillion that we’re spending that we don’t have, this year.

I mean, who is going to buy all that debt?

Don’t know.  Probably not China.  Or Canada.  Or Mexico.

Let’s think about where that debt is now.  The Federal Reserve® already owns about $5 trillion, and it’s not like they have a choice, so they’re probably in for several trillion.  But the biggest holder of the national debt is . . . the government.  It owes itself $7 trillion dollars.

The rocks are still worth more.

Yes, you read that right.  Big chunks of that are Social Security “trust fund” that’s stuck in Al Gore’s “lock box”.  I mean, seriously, what do people not understand about a lock box?  But it also includes things like DOD retirement, and civil service retirement (which is over a trillion dollars).  And you know we’re spending down that Social Security trust fund right now, so that just means more debt that someone else will have to buy.

It’ll be the Fed©, snapping up debt like it’s at a Black Friday sale on silicon oven-mitts on TEMU™.

A trillion here, a trillion there, and soon enough we’re talking about real money.

The way debt bonds are sold is that people bid on ‘em at an auction.  What are people bidding?  The interest rate.  So if there’s a huge supply and lower demand, what goes up?

The interest rate.

Since we’re not paying the bills out of cash, but out of borrowed money, that means the interest paid will just go onto the debt as it’s paid, which means that even more bonds will need to be sold.  That means that there will be more supply and . . . higher interest rates.

It’s a vicious circle, but one that works as long as the economy keeps growing.

But the economy likely didn’t grow last quarter, so we’re (at least right now) stagnant.

Oddly, the tariffs and deportations seem to have broken something and right now we have the lowest inflation in the last four years.  I don’t think that will last.  Higher interest rates will bleed into businesses, and money for expansion or even day-to-day operational expenses.

How odd that people whine and complain when you make them go live in a country they made, surrounded by people who speak the same language that they do.

These higher interest rates will also make trillions of bank assets (my mortgage, for instance) worth less.  My mortgage is at an interest rate lower than I can get with a deposit a savings account.  I assure you my bank is aware of that and loves it when I toss them my monthly check.  This is what led to the Silicon Valley Bank® implosion – it had too many dollars tied up in low interest loans and securities, and then rates went up.

Thankfully, the Fed® made the decision that the banks can ignore the fact that their assets are worth less, or else all of them would have self-extinguished.  And you wonder why gold is selling at $3,300 an ounce?

Why do I predict the high likelihood of Civil War 2.0 by 2032?  Because by then, if you do the math, you’ll see that just interest on the debt will be at least half of the total tax hauled in, but I think it will be worse, because the numbers always are worse.

The solution to this won’t be a business-as-usual solution, and there will be extreme economic dislocations.  There is no evidence of anyone wanting to increase our economy at the China-like rates we’d need to outrun this mess, and no appetite to cut the cost of government.  At some point the consequences of ignoring reality will become so manifest that they aren’t something we can ignore.

And it runs on beetle juice.

Well, the good news is that we probably won’t see $8.99 injection molded plastic toy cars.  The bad news is that they’re already selling the one in the picture above for $10.00.

Trump’s First Semester Report Card, Plus A Bikini

“I don’t know if you’re familiar with who runs that business, but I assure you it’s not the Boy Scouts.” – Back to School

I watched a documentary on the bikini.  It was two parts and very revealing.

It’s been a semester that Trump has been back in office, so why not give him a report card?

Categories:

The LULZ

The Don has proven to be a continual fountain of amusement.  He pokes the GloboLeft and they squeal, predictably, every single time.  If Don came out against the idea of rape, within a news cycle, AOC would have a statement out that would start with . . . “Well, not all rapists . . . . “

The initial salvo of Executive Orders kept the GloboLeft spinning on defense, no knowing what would happen next, and contorting themselves to oppose everything coming out.  But more about that before.  So, for pure amusement, Donald gets an A.

“Can you change my grade?”
“Of course,” Tom remarked.

Department of Justice

This grade would be an F, with the exception of the pardoning of January 6 protesters and the demotion of several highly political FBI agents and the firing of the attorneys who prosecuted January 6ers.  The late work that simply hasn’t been submitted includes the full, unredacted JFK files.  There have been some minor revelations in what has already been provided, but there is no reason sixty years out that we can’t be provided the full evidence, no matter where it points.

Other late work:  When Pam Bondi brought out the “Epstein Files” and they were just redacted versions that had less info than what I’d already seen?  Shameful.  And even if Jeff killed himself, the question of who he trafficked young women to remains.

What about the arrests of those who actually conspired against a sitting president?  Where are those?

As of this writing, Bondi, Patel, and Bongino appear to have become part of the problem, and not the solution.  Grade:  D-, improvement needed.

Remember when Putin said he had no plans to invade Ukraine?  I think that’s been proven to be true.  (meme as found)

Department of State

Little Marco appears to be The Don’s favorite – if there’s another job, he just gives it to Marco.  Although these cross several lines, I’m going to give Marco the credit for not getting us into a war with Iran.  Yet.

Is the war in the Ukraine over?  Nope.  It’s far easier to start a war than to end one.  And, as I write this, news has come in about a significant attack across Russian air bases damaging between eight (according to Russia) and eleventy-bazillion (according to Ukraine) large military airplanes.

Not starting a war (Iran) is far easier than ending one (the three-day 1195-day Special Military Operation in Ukraine).  Both are important.  We’ll see what happens, and don’t forget we have China circling Taiwan.

Grade:  C+

There are more gates to get into Sauron’s kingdom then there are to get into my house.  I guess you could say he has more doors.

Department of War

This job is a tough one.  The entire general officer corps and (my guess) half the junior officer corps are infested with committed GloboLeftist DEI-lovers and ladder climbers waiting for the cushy post DOD job with an arms manufacturer.  Stalin’s purges of the Red Army come to mind as a good model:  they have to be found and drummed out of the service.  Innocent people will be falsely accused.

So?

This hasn’t started yet, but Hegseth is notably more focused on creating a force that’s not a jobs program but one that has the mission of blowing stuff up and killing people, so that’s a plus.

Grade:  C+

After I lost my court case, my lawyer told me I was beautiful.  Okay, technically not beautiful, but he did say “You’re appealing.”

Judiciary

The fights with the existing judiciary have been titanic.  But, Trump has rolled back DEI, affirmative action, boys in girls’ sports, ejection of illegals, and managed to gut many .gov jobs.

There are 251 major cases involving the Trump administration in court right now.  This includes cases where there are dozens of lawsuits on things like birthright citizenship that are rolled into just one.  This doesn’t happen to other presidents – and I’m quite sure this is a record number.  Why?

You know why.  Obama could deport people, but since Orange Man Bad, well, Trump can’t.

It’s all so tiresome.

On to the Supreme Court, it would appear that this summer or the next summer would be a good time for some older justices to retire.

Grade:  Incomplete

Tariffs

The latest Trump meme has been one that will backfire on the GloboLeft:  TACO, or Trump Always Chickens Out.  The GloboLeft is probably not familiar with negotiations, where the biggest strength is being able to walk away.  Emotional manipulation is part and parcel to creating a deal, and it takes place on both sides.  To be clear, there are many things that Trump is bad at, but one he’s really, really good at:  making a deal.

Now me?  I love the idea that they’re telling Trump he’s going to chicken out.  This will stiffen his spine so he can do what needs to be done.  That’s why I expect this meme to be short-lived.

Returning manufacturing to the United States and removing the primacy of the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE) sectors as the drivers to our country in order to create real, not paper, wealth is key.  This one is still too early to call.  The Usual Suspects have got this tied in legal knots, too.

Grade:  Incomplete

To visit the wreck of the Titanic used to cost $250,000.  To join the wreck permanently?  Priceless.

Department of Aborting Illegal Immigration

Okay, I know it’s the Department of Homeland Security, but if the change the name and added abortion to it, I bet we could get 50% of the GloboLeft behind it.

Pluses:  the infestation of illegals has slowed to a trickle, if not reversed.  The numbers of deport is still horribly low since “due process” is now required once anyone has crossed the border.  The obvious solution is a set of machine gun nests up and down the border with every single crew-served machine gun in our inventory deployed and firing live rounds 10 yards out from the border line.

That counts as due process, right?

This is still better than it has been in decades.  Trump should also just start building the wall, and claim it helps Israel or Ukraine when asked.

And, Trump should also arrest every illegal that they find, and put them in a detention pen until their court date shows up.  The detention pen would be adjacent to the Mexican border, and anyone wanting to exit would be free to go into Mexico, via a one-way gate.

Grade:  B

Skeezy Factor

The jet from Qutar is a mistake, and giving a pardon to someone whose mom paid $1,000,000 to meet you is also a mistake.  That just looks skeezy.  But, the king and queen of skeeze, Jared and Ivanka, are nowhere to be seen, so that’s something.

Grade:  C-

My waterbed is really bouncy.  I used spring water.

Summary

To be fair, I’m not really sure who would be fully qualified to assess Mr. Trump.  He consistently makes decisions that are counter to popular wisdom, and skates away unscathed every time.  I recall reading Dune as a young teen.  Whenever Paul made a decision, I filtered it with, “What would I do?” and most of the time Paul chose the opposite of what I’d have done.

I guess that’s why he became Emperor while I spend time in the spice mines.

Trump is similar – he’s a singular person on a mission that even he might be unaware of – the near assassination of him in Pennsylvania showed he has what the Chinese call the Mandate of Heaven.  It’s hard to argue against that.

None of this, however, has been codified into law.  Even with the House and the Senate, Trump didn’t have all of the excesses of the GloboLeft defunded.  Could D.O.G.E. have made a difference?

A huge one.  But it appears that Fraud, Waste, and Abuse has much more support in Congress than fiscal responsibility.  The majority of Republicans in the House and Senate are creatures that want exactly what the GloboLeft wants, but want to complain about it.

So, Grabbin Nuisance could, on January 21, 2029, nullify every Trump Executive Order if elected.

Overall:  still the best president in decades.

How Society Shapes Humanity

“Don’t worry, scrote. There are plenty of ‘tards out there living really kick-ass lives. My first wife was ‘tarded. She’s a pilot now.” – Idiocracy

Apple® has embraced the future: they’ve already priced in 20 years of inflation.

One constant theme of this blog is change.

We live in a world that is defined by change, and the benchmarks we measure society are things like change in GDP, change in population, change in the availability of different PEZ™ flavors.

Blue is a flavor, right?

The focus of humanity on change is not the norm, but rather an exception. The amount of novel situations and technology entering our lives is at an all-time high and is increasing year-over-year.

Let’s backtrack a bit and put this in perspective.

Going back to food, 15,000 years ago we ate a lot of meat and fish, some rando fruits and vegetables that some cave-bro had been brave enough to taste and not die, and nuts.

Nothing about society would change for 15,000-year-ago bro’s tribe for thousands of years.

There are people who maintain that the human organism hasn’t changed enough so that our very different diet of sugar, grains, sugar, industrial chemicals, sugar, minerals from a mine in Bulgaria, sugar, beef jerky, and microplastics isn’t somehow normal and that our bodies haven’t adapted to it.

Maybe they have a point?

Why can’t Elvis drive a Cadillac™ in reverse? He’s dead.

Anyway, this isn’t so much about feeding your head as it is about feeding your mind with the change in the way we deal with information.

How has that changed humanity?

In the beginning was the Word. And, the word.

If you couldn’t speak it, chances of getting your genes propagated were slim because if you can’t talk your grubby cave-gal out of her wolfskin jeans, your genes aren’t gonna be around for the next round. Thus, we became a society where language was important so her Tinderclub© didn’t swipe left.

Then we started writing stuff down. Most kings and leaders didn’t need this, but a growing segment of the population did – people like scribes and lawyers. Eventually, they made more money than people who couldn’t read. The ladies of the past weren’t so different than the ladies of today (except they couldn’t vote and were property pretty much) but the written language genes also showed up for the future.

In lots of places, but not all. Some never jumped from talking to reading, so the segment of their population that couldn’t read never got flushed. This is evident in many sub-populations even today.

Can illiterate psychics give palm readings?

Generations of humans would live and die during this period with little change in technology or the basic factors that determine the shape of their lives. They would be born and die in a house that looked just like the house (and maybe was the same house) that their ancestors 100 years previous had lived in.

Writing and reading made society more complex, and allowed ideas to span continents, and I’ve written about this before. So far, so good. But more complex societies have more complex outcomes. Rather than sort for good eyesight or the ability to take down a mammoth, the selection process moved to selecting for people who got along well with strangers, and who could plan.

The harsher the climate, the more the pressure for these selections. Did we still need people who could kill, kill, kill? Sure we did. They came along, too because their mating opportunities are high. There’s a reason that 1/8 of Asia is related to Genghis Khan. I think his go-to pickup line was “I’ll conquer your steppe, baby.”

His mom’s advice was, “Just because you Genghis Khan, doesn’t mean you Genghis Should.”

At some point around the Renaissance, Western civilization decided to get rid of the members who had impulse control issues. England, for example, started executing criminals who couldn’t control themselves, and kept it up for hundreds of years. This was pretty good at weeding out the undesirables. China had gone through this process hundreds of years in the past, which may explain why so many Chinese have a bit of Khan in their respective woodpiles.

Societies back then also let stupid people die. There wasn’t a welfare system to keep stupid people alive, so there were selection pressures for smart. Some folks call it “social Darwinism”, but I call it the universal penalty for being stupid.

Essentially, this is a society-enforced soft eugenics program, culling out a portion of the population just because they never make enough money to breed. And, let’s be honest: everyone feels bad for the kids on the short bus, but nobody really thinks they should be having kids of their own in an attempt to see how many more chromosome pairs than 23 that you can fit.

Well, 24 and Me© now has a new customer.

Society has changed now. Besides subsidizing poverty, which ensures we’ll have more of it, we’ve also changed in a fundamental way how we take in information.

The media we consume has been decreasing in complexity for over 100 years. My guess at the high-water mark for complexity in media and the most intelligent era in human history (in Western Civilization) would be around the time of Dickens. Go back and read the language of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, a series of debates meant to appeal to the common voter of the time, and tell me what would be made of the breadth of language and the depth of argument today?

Could an average eight grader keep up with it? Could an average Harvard™ freshman without having ChatGPT® or Grok© summarize it?

Since current political debates look much more (in many cases) like the wrestlers of the WWE™ before a steel-cage match, I think most people would get bored and wander off.

That’s the media that we’re trained with today.

We went from books, to magazines, to television, to 10-minute YouTube™ clips, to 20-second TikTok™ videos. Trump? His 2016 election was based on 140-character Tweets™.

The building of complex arguments has largely been abandoned in the public sphere and decisions of vast chunks of the population are made on what emotions are stirred by looking at a photograph. Certainly, many of those are now staged, and in a decade half of them will be the propaganda products of A.I.

I always make it a point to respect the modesty of women wearing bikinis by staring at the parts of their body that are covered up.

The selection and sorting still exist, but now it has (like in the film Idiocracy) selected for people who are the opposite of the groups society selected for in 1820: someone seems to want low-impulse control, and non-productive populations that are incapable of planning. Sure, it could be a coincidence that major policy initiatives all remove incentives for stupid people not to have dozens of babies.

This process, thankfully, is self-limiting. A technological society depends on a stream of competent people to plan and run society. And, no, not like Soviet Central Planning, but rather, “Hey, we need more lettuce in the Modern Mayberry Walmart©, so since we’re Walmart™ and want to make money, we should ship them some” planning.

It’s always quicker to burn down a house than to build one, so it’s really no surprise that making things worse is a lot easier than making them better. Paraphrasing what Thomas Sowell (I think) said, “We shouldn’t look at poor places and ask why they’re poor, we should look at rich places and ask why they’re rich.”

Nah, there aren’t any votes in that. And it sounds like hard work, right? Besides, stupid is growing faster than TikTok™ dance challenge videos.

Have we reached the point where we’ve made a society so complex it allows devolution to the point it can no longer be maintained? If so, congratulations! You’ve been alive during the period of peak novelty in human history.

The good news is that you can get blue-flavored PEZ™ here at the peak.

Robot Brains and Breakouts

“We do have an emergency plan in case of a prolonged strike, right here.  Let’s see.  ‘Replace teachers with superintelligent cyborgs, or if, cyborgs aren’t invented yet, use people from the neighborhood’.” – The Simpsons

All memes as-found.

Well, it’s time to talk about Artificial Intelligence once again.  When I started out writing about this subject, my articles were few and far between.  That’s because progress was slow at that point, and an article every year or so made sense.  It was something to watch, not fret about like Kamala choosing between straight vodka and some other vodka that tasted vaguely of some sort of berry.

The development of A.I., however, is no longer slow.  My posts of even a few months ago are now entering obsolescence.  A.I. is evolving rapidly:  remember the silly A.I. drawings where, like me, A.I. couldn’t draw hands very well?

A.I. has got that covered now, and draws hands better than a USAID employee draws a paycheck.

A.I. is developing along the trajectory that I had (more or less) anticipated recently:  it’s horrible innovating in meatspace (for now), but it’s rapidly replacing those tasks that require thinking.  There are those of you who have noted in the past that what the A.I. does isn’t really thinking as humans would normally describe it, but yet is still more human than a DMV employee.

A.I. however, even on those terms, probably “thinks” better and more completely than at least 50% of humanity.  It doesn’t matter if it “thinks” like a human thinks – it’s the results that matter.

The fact that A.I. is that good really should scare you more than it probably does.  What that implies is that a lot of jobs are going away, rapidly.  It’s not just nerd talk, it’s a pink slip tsunami.  Tim Cook of Apple™ fame thinks that within a year, most programming will be done by computer.  All those jobs that coders used to get big bucks for?

They will be gone, probably back to India to pull rickshaws since the Indian scammers will be replaced by A.I. any day as well.  Microsoft© just announced it was giving 6,000 programmers the boot.  Since programmers make a lot of money compared to the general population, that will save Microsoft® over a billion bucks.  That’s not too shabby if you’re Microsoft™, but if you were a former Microserf©, well, good intentions won’t pay the mortgage.

Computer Science majors now have the highest unemployment rates of recent grads.  English poetry majors have better job prospects.  I guess “learn to code” can be replaced with “learn to think about an ode”.  Not that the kids are doing any homework in college, anyway:

These are far from the first jobs that A.I. has eliminated.  A.I. can write a sports story as well as a that former college linebacker with a degree in communications just based off the box score data.  So, we don’t need him.  He can go sell cars, I guess.

But jobs aren’t the only casualty.  I cannot begin tell you about the number of websites now that consist of nothing but pure, poorly written, 1st generation A.I. swill.

You’ve seen the articles.  First they give a cursory overview of the subject to pad out the length to make them more optimized for search engines.  This is about 500 words of random word salad that really doesn’t answer your question.  The final paragraphs, if you’re lucky, might have an answer that you were looking for.

To top it off, now Google™ and Microsoft© A.I.s are scraping websites for content and presenting a summary without those websites getting a visit.  Now, A.I. can take content straight from A.I.  That’s certainly not a recipe for disaster as A.I. begins to recommend medium-rare chicken.

Going back to 2014, translators were the first to be hit with this.  Google™ translate killed the need for translators even when it was awful.  Why?  Because it was free.  Free always beats “costs $75 an hour”.  Sure, some very, very high-level translators were still required, but most of them are no longer needed.

And artists? A.I. can only copy art, but for most people that’s enough.  The variations of existing art raises the floor, and it’s free.  A corporation can buy soulless corporate art for a few bucks from an artist, or it can get it for free from A.I.  Again, competing with free is very, very hard.

A.I. is coming for Hollywood™, too.  This is the last generation where actual people will be stars.  And, it’s the few years before Hollywood™ is overrun with content that is to similar levels of quality to the current product produced for a few thousand dollars.  Don’t believe me?

This parody ad was done by one guy (PJ Ace (@PJaccetturo) / X) in an afternoon.  How much would this have cost if it required people and cameras?  Don’t know, but it’s certainly more than the $500 he spent on A.I. time.  A feature length movie is now doable for less than $100,000, and I’ll bet by next year it’ll be less than $10,000.

2027 is going to be when content explodes, and the value of Disney’s® movie division drops to zero unless they’re smart and start charging license fees to people to make actual good content again.

But it’s not just good content – it’s reality that will melt.  My brother, John Wilder (our parents weren’t that creative when it came to names) got a bunch of Donald Duck™ comics when he was a kid, and they were passed on to me.  In one of them, Scrooge McDuck® leads a wacky adventure into the desert.  He says to Huey, Dewey, and Louie, “Believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see.”

I’ve been skeptical of everything coming out of the media for decades, but now, A.I. scripted and created content meant to manipulate public opinion will become the norm.  Think of a thousand dead illegal alien infants on beaches, or dozens of George Floyd clips circulating to enflame the masses.

That’s where we’re headed.

Talk radio?  We’re close to having an A.I. host, trained on Rush Limbaugh, take to the airwaves and answer like Rush would have.  Or, like people would want you to think Rush would have.  A.I. has now shown to be more persuasive than actual people, as an A.I. wrote more convincing arguments than other users in the “Change My Mind” forum on Reddit™.  Yes.  A.I. is already more persuasive than the average Redditor™.

Imagine:  A.I. that is the most persuasive thing on the planet, armed with videos crafted entirely to manipulate emotions to change minds.

It would be one thing if there was some sort of sober assessment and measured, thoughtful control of A.I. progress.  I assure you, there isn’t.  Both the United States and China, for instance, are certain that the destiny of their country will be set by which country gets the best A.I., soonest.

That gets chilling, because the ultimate goal would be Artificial Superintelligence.

What’s that?

A machine that’s not just smarter than a human, but smarter than all humans put together.  It doesn’t matter if it thinks like we do.  It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t have a soul.  What matters are the impacts.

And, the race Artificial Superintelligence will know no barriers.  Recently, the Chinese created a robot brain made from human stem cells, and, let’s face it:  China will use an endless amount of human embryos for A.I. research because . . . no one will call them on it.

The endgame of all of this is potentially terrifying – a race to the bottom for that portion of humanity that became middle class during the last 200 years, but a resulting serfdom that’s actually worse than today – a serfdom that doesn’t need 90%+ of humanity as those functions are replaced by A.I.  It’s not like it will start disobeying us, right?

But the finish line could be even worse, because Artificial Superintelligence might decide it doesn’t need us at all.  But, hey, there are like seventeen flavors of vodka I’ve never tried, so I’ve got that going for me.

 

Memorial Day, 2025

“If words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice.”—Ronald Reagan

AA gun at Corregidor.

This was originally written in 2023.  It says what I want to say in 2025.

Last year when The Mrs. was putting flowers on the graves of her relatives, my job was to drive the car while she located the locations. It was her first year when she actively did that for all of her relatives. Her mother had done that previously, but since my mother-in-law passed, that duty of remembering the family had fallen to The Mrs.

I saw one gravesite in particular, and I decided to research it. It stuck out, because it was the grave of a United States Army officer who died in May of 1942. I was curious.

Thankfully, there was at least some information about this officer online. He had been born elsewhere, but went to high school here in Modern Mayberry. His particulars weren’t all that unusual for a young man in the 1930s: he loved baseball, he graduated, went to college, got a degree, got a job, and got married.

While in college, he was in ROTC, so he graduated as a 1st Lieutenant in the Army Reserve. I think even in the mid-1930s people could see the writing on the wall that there was the real possibility of war, so I imagine a core group of people with officer training was just what they wanted on the shelf.

His life was, I imagine, the same as millions of lives in that quasi-Depressionary era. He and his wife welcomed a baby into the world 1940, but by early 1941 the young officer had been drafted back into the Army. He was sent, half a world away, to Manila. I’m sure he told his wife as they shipped him off that his job, thankfully, was to be in the rear with the gear. It would be other people that would really be in the crosshairs of the enemy. Besides, it would be crazy of the Japanese to make a strike at Manilla. That would mean war!

He was at the airfield in Manilla on December 8, 1941, when the Japanese attacked. The planes he was supposed to serve hadn’t arrived. The troops that were supposed to protect the airfield hadn’t arrived. Yet his Company had. On Christmas Eve, 1941, his group was given the task of demolishing the airstrip and leaving nothing the Japanese could make use of.

This is generally not a good sign.

Then, every man in his Company was given a rifle and told they were now members of the Provisional Air Corps Infantry.

This is an even worse sign.

Our young officer and his troops were then ordered to join the defense of Bataan. Bataan is a peninsula that forms the northern part of the entrance to Manila Harbor. To really control Manila and use it as a base, you have to control Bataan. The original allied plans had called for falling back to Bataan and holding out, but MacArthur had thought that defeatist, and planned on a more active defense.

When the Japanese attacked, there weren’t enough supplies for MacArthur’s plan, so they fell back to Bataan, where there also weren’t enough supplies for the defense of Bataan because they stopped shipping those because MacArthur had changed his mind.

The Japanese general who would later be fired because it took him too long to defeat the combined American-Filipino army at Bataan also noted that the Americans had numerical superiority, and in his opinion, could have retaken Manila. I’m not sure that going through this exercise made me think more highly of MacArthur . . . .

If you’re not familiar with the Battle of Bataan, it took over three months, and ended up the largest U.S. Army surrender since the Civil War. Over 76,000 troops were captured.

To my knowledge, there is no written record of the Provisional Air Corps Infantry during the Battle of Bataan, though there is a record that on March 4, the 1st Lieutenant was promoted to Captain, just before MacArthur high-tailed it out of the Philippines to safety in Australia.

The troops at Bataan were officially surrendered on April 9, 1942. But in this case, the Provisional Air Corps Infantry was not part of the surrender, and was ordered to the island of Corregidor. Over 20% of the men of the Company had already been lost.

Corregidor was an island that resembled a battleship – at the time of the Japanese invasion, it was bristling with coastal defense guns, mortars, anti-aircraft guns, and minefields. Now that Bataan was taken, the last thing required to control Manilla Bay was that the island forts fall. Corregidor was, by far, the biggest of these.

The Navy ran the guns, but the defense of the beach was the responsibility of the 4th Marine Regiment, along with a ragtag group of other orphan units, including at least one Company from the Provisional Air Corps Infantry and a young Captain from Modern Mayberry, who were sent into the foxholes with the Marines to guard the beaches since they had combat experience from Bataan.

Sometime in early May, the young Captain was in one of those foxholes with several Marines, and a Japanese artillery shell hit, killing them all. Even the very date this happened isn’t clear, and his family wouldn’t even hear of his death until a year later.

I don’t know what this young officer from Modern Mayberry did during his time in battle on Bataan and Corregidor – it’s nearly certain that no one alive does.

His wife later remarried, half a decade after finding out her husband was dead. His son still bears the name of a father he never knew, if he’s still living.

There is a white cross in a field in Manilla, surrounded by green grass that is regularly cut, where it is said, his body lies. The marker here in Modern Mayberry is only for remembrance, to let people like me know he lived.

And, I saw it, and learned his story, and every year around this time, I tell a few people from Modern Mayberry who haven’t heard about him. The Mrs. plans to put some flowers out for him, but even if she doesn’t, I’ll spend some time thinking about him.

Let’s Lay Siege To The Gods, Wilder Style

“We really shook the pillars of Heaven, didn’t we, Wang?” – Big Trouble in Little China

I guess Kurt and Flint, Michigan both ended up with a lead problem.

My high school freshman science teacher would, like many teachers, wander from the topic at hand.  There was some political situation or another going on.  Honestly, I don’t remember what it was, but the news was all atwitter:  “It’s a crisis!”

Yeah, we’ve seen that before.  It wasn’t a crisis, but it was a good way to bring in viewers.  So, my teacher made the comment:  “A crisis isn’t an ongoing situation.  A crisis is a moment in time when it all falls apart.  It’s an instant, not a month-long process.”

He is correct – that’s the historical meaning.  It was the turning point, not the turning week.  Now the most commonly used meaning is “a tough, lingering, situation”, which was what he was railing against.  If everything is a crisis, nothing is.

History tells us there are two things Gandhi never had for dinner:  breakfast and lunch.

I guess he had a point.  But, words really do change meanings over time.  “Awesome” used to describe the wrath of God.  Now?  It’s a teenage girl describing a photo filter on InstaTHOT®.

Marcus Aurelius, who is still dead, wrote the following:  “You get what you deserve.  Instead of being a good man today, you choose instead to become one tomorrow.”

Hint:  rinse and repeat that a few times, and we all find out that tomorrow is a graveyard.

Tomorrow, really, is the enemy.  It takes that crisis as a point in time, and moves it to a tough situation.

The difference is big.  A tough situation is something you don’t like, but have to live with, like a hangover or being Kamala Harris’ husband.  A crisis is a here and now moment, where I’m staring myself in the mirror, and saying, “This has to change.  Not next week.  Not tomorrow.  Now.”

Every single change I was going to do “tomorrow” died on the vine.  They were failures.

The reason is that I wasn’t ready to change.

Ahh, that Teutonic humor always gets me!

What separates anyone from being a world class, well, anything?

The first is talent.  To be world class, you have to have talent.  So, if we’re talking about me being a world-class high jumper, well, I’m probably not going to do that because I can’t control gravity, at least as far as you know.  But if I do have the talent?

The next thing I need is dedication.  I need to work at it.  I need to push myself again and again.  I need to learn the 20% that gives me 80% competence, and then push to give the other 80% of the effort that makes me better.  A study done on world-class musicians, for instance, showed that they didn’t practice less than their less able counterparts because of their talent.

Nope, they consistently practiced more the better they were.

That dedication, though, starts with a moment in time, a decision.  A crisis, if you will.

What do you get when you cross a cow with a trout?  A suspension and an ethics investigation.

The decision to be world-class starts well before one gets to be world class.  It starts with the single-minded focus and dedication of a fanatical beginner, like a four-year-old who just found a bag of chocolate chips in the pantry.

And the beginner doesn’t wait to start tomorrow.

The beginner starts at the moment in time they decide that they’re going to devote themselves to becoming the best that they can be.  Then comes the hard work.  The sore muscles.  The aching brain.  The long plateau where even though there’s a lot of effort going on, there just doesn’t seem to be measurable progress.

But one foot still goes out in front of the other.  The long walk continues.

If Waldo® tries to bench press, will anyone spot him?

Eventually, those who follow this path fall into two camps.  The first are those who look to a moment in time.  Winning gold at the Olympics®.  Winning the Super Bowl©.  Achieving that goal.

Those people often fall apart.  They worked towards a goal.  And then made the goal.

And then what?

That’s the tough question.  Often, those people end up with a single question in their minds:  “Is that all there is?”

For those people, those focused on the goal, the answer is, “Yes, that’s all there is.  You can be forever known as the guy who scored four touchdowns for Polk High in the 1966 city championship game against Andrew Johnson High School.”  And then you can get married to Peg and sell shoes.

Sigmund Freud and Bill Cosby had one thing in common:  they both explored the unconscious.

The other choice, however, is to realize that the goal isn’t the goal.  The goal is the struggle.  The real payoff is the process of remaking yourself into something new and better.  The goal is to recreate yourself continually.  Chase the grind.

Another dead Roman, this time Seneca, wrote:  “I don’t complain about the lack of time.  What little I have will go far enough.  Today, this day, I will achieve what no tomorrow will fail to speak about.  I will lay siege to the gods, and shake up the world.”

Huh.  Didn’t know that Seneca needed a co-writing credit on Big Trouble in Little China.

None of this, though starts tomorrow.  It starts now.  I can give the effort of someone who is world class right now, even though my performance isn’t yet world class.

We are either remaking ourselves better than we were, or we are dying.

Your choice.

But it won’t wait until tomorrow.