I think we’ll be coming to terms with more than that. Modi’s mostly word-salad address to the AI summit in Paris today hit a very sensitive point for policymakers, what to do with all the humans made redundant by AI? India, the world’s most populous nation, already has a struggling rural population with children expecting to enter the paid working life in services or manufacturing. What happens when 3/4 of the global population becomes economically irrelevant? This is not unreasonable to ask. Right now, my wife is twinned with an AI in her work. So far she is necessary, because when the AI screws up, it really screws up and human intervention is needed. But most of the time it dutifully learns what it supposed to and copies her actions. Of course, it’s no biggy when the AI is replacing a job in a call center or a law office, but what about computational chemistry or hybrid warfare?
Trump, of course, would just move “excess” people someplace else, but the total mobility between countries (despite all the fears of migrants) is small, only about 250 million in a global population of 8.3 billion. So what’s left, die or starve on the spot? India is the canary in the coal mine here. It should be the fastest growing large economy due to its younger demographics relative to China, but something is happening.
David Lurie, on Aaron Rupar’s Substack, Public Notice, on the aftermath of Trump & Co. potentially deciding to ignore all the judicial rulings – upshot: for legitimacy, DJT’s rule has nowhere to go but into Putin territory, i.e., point of a gun. (or an 11th floor window) He seems to think that we’ll pretty quickly find out whether law enforcement and the military will stick with the Constitution or with Old Beautiful Aryan Blue Eyes and His Weird Wig…
An excerpt: "Despite the extraordinary benefits that Trumpers have derived from the pliant and partisan Court that Mitch McConnell packed for them, they’ve never hidden their dissatisfaction, particularly at the fact the federal courts did not validate Trump’s efforts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election. Now, in the face of the injunctions that have placed modest limitations on their crime spree, Trumpers have declared that they are prepared to challenge the principle of judicial review and attempt to transform the presidency into an actual dictatorship, with no enforceable limitations on its exercise of power.
"The dark irony of this brazen power grab is that it is hugely self-destructive to Trump and Trumpism. Given the brazenness of his actions, Trump more than ever needs his Supreme Court majority to come through for him and lend a veneer of legitimacy to his actions, even if doing so comes at the cost of clipping his wings along the edges.
"If Trump proceeds in open defiance of the courts he will risk turning the huge asset of a politicized rightwing Supreme Court into a liability. More importantly, Trump may call into immediate question the legitimacy of his own authority — legitimacy the Supreme Court has lent to him through key rulings it bent over backwards to issue in his favor.
“A Trump without that veneer of legitimacy offered by the judiciary will end up, like his idol Vladimir Putin, as a “strongman” who can remain in office solely and entirely based on the threat of force. The question, then, could become whether military and law enforcement authorities will be “loyal” to a leader who has shed even the pretense of constitutional legitimacy.”
I would suggest a not so steep price tag actually. Or reframing that, something that should be standard, and sounds really-really-really reasonable.
Simply put, no more breaking the law and honest guardrails in place to prevent Musk from wilding in our government computer systems. No more breaking our laws. Keep the messaging simple.
Just say, Republicans own all branches of government and can pass any law they want. So just demand they go back to the usual verifiable processes they used in the past, which is to pass laws for such nit-wit things. If they pass a law for this, fine, but put it on the table, discuss it, and own it.
Of course, Republicans will have a tough time with that. But it is incredibly straightforward.
It’s true, sentient life doesn’t necessarily kill off stupider lifeforms. Take the Humpback Whale, for example. Been around for many millions of years. On the other hand, if the AI sees itself as competing with less-intelligent humans for resources, and data centers are already approaching the same level of energy needs as the commercial air transport industry, keeping humans will be like keeping pets. I’m not saying we’ll get flushed down the toilet unceremoniously like a dead goldfish, but probably with little dignity. Vance’s thing is that he wants no-hold-barred AI development with no guarantees of safety and no regulation. One can imagine financial crises driven by AI, artificial scarcity events, or even warfare operations conducted without human oversight. What could possibly go wrong?
We gotta see what the Wall St. says. Miraculously, the market has been somewhat stable. Yes, some swings here and there, but overall, it’s surprisingly calm.
Oh dear, another day another constitutional crisis.
That’s a long-winded way of saying the fat fuck and his criminal gang are ignoring the law and there’s not one motherfucking thing anyone can do to stop him.
We need to wake the fuck up already. The civil war started on January 20. There is nothing and no one to stop the fat asshole but us. The congress or the Senate won’t stop him. The courts are fucking hilarious thinking that a lawless scumbag is going to give a fuck about yet another court order they’ll just ignore. So I have to ask? Where’s the line? Is it investigations of “enemies”? Is it kangaroo trials? Bullshit convictions? Imprisonment? State executions? Where’s the fucking line? Because once this fat fuck crosses enough lines to wake up enough people, it’ll already be too late.
And don’t huff and dismiss that warning. The fat piece of shit is blowing past every warning sign, crossing every line and no one is even willing to say the obvious. The civil war already started, but we’re too afraid to fight back.
Many media outlets are reporting that USAID funded and armed the military coup in Bangladesh that overthrew the democratically elected government. This is being widely reported but has not been covered in the lamestream media here at home. I now wonder whether the charity, philanthropy and development activities of the USAID were a front for other activities around the world. If so, it has tarnished US image across the world. Were we, the bleeding heart liberals bamboozled?
He does think we are as uninformed as he is
TSF has never in his life been away from money and status. He’s never lacked anything. Others carry his golf clubs. Other folk end up paying his bills. He’s never gone hungry. So he hss zero clue what life is like for the majority of Americans.
On Monday’s CNN NewsNight, GOP strategist Scott Jennings and former New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu argued that rulings by federal district court rulings need not be heeded by the president when he disagrees with them. Elie Honig, CNN’s senior legal analyst, and a former federal prosecutor, wanted to make sure he heard his fellow panelists correctly.
Chris Sununu shines in his level of incomprehension and stupidity as well. Neither one is familiar with the Impoundment Control Act. Abbie Phillips practically beats them over the head with the law, finally playing a clip of Russell Vought actually explaining it
But Honig brings it home with one of those twists we like - “What if Obama had done this.”
HONIG: Right. The Impoundment Control Act says, essentially, that the president cannot block money allocated by Congress. To the power of district court judges – and I understand your point, Scott, I understand the frustration people have when a district court judge blocks a broad mandate from the chief executive, the elected chief executive, ultimately, the big issues go up to the Supreme Court. But I guess I would ask both of you, what if a district court judge had blocked Barack Obama’s DACA plan? The Dreamers plan, right? And he said, heck with you. I’m doing it anyway. Would you be ok with that? Or would you have a problem with that?
