Items: Car talk, RFK bathes in sewage, and new nuttery from Trump
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I’ve been staying in Silicon Valley for a bit and the perspective is certainly different from that in my bohemian quarter of New York.
As you undoubtedly know, there’s a gold rush over AI, especially around here. A lot of young people, and even some older people, whom I run into want a piece of this — and everyone is worried about where it is all going.
A lot of people seem to think that jobs are not even going to be a thing anymore, which means they’re more interested in launching AI startups or working for/getting stock in them than having what were not long ago “prestige” jobs at places like Google and Uber.
It certainly appears that more and more things in our lives will become beyond our control.
Much of it is already visible. In San Francisco, robot taxis drive people around. Some people have had crashes and near-misses, but overall it doesn’t seem much worse than relying on human judgment.
As I passed street repair and construction sites I thought about how robots are already beginning to take over some of these heavy, labor-intensive jobs, like bricklaying, drilling, heat-welding, and with greater speed and stamina than humans. Some do dangerous work, like the remote-controlled demolition robots.
I wonder whether we should give robots the right to vote.
To be fair, they would presumably do a much better job analyzing our choices — and I really doubt that any ethically programmed (see Isaac Asimov’s famous Three Laws of Robotics) AI-driven robot could possibly end up wearing a MAGA hat.
Speaking of which, one thing about our transformation into a society driven by technology is what we’re losing. I certainly meet plenty of pleasant, well-meaning people here. But, especially in Silicon Valley, I see what happens to people who lack exposure to a classical liberal arts education.
They simply don’t see the world in the same way. And they don’t express themselves very well. Too many people are awkward, lacking in emotional intelligence, or appear almost unaware of the greater crises facing humanity.
It’s a kind of strange, insular landscape. Folks feel they are missing a piece of their core. Loneliness and alienation are apparent.
And I can’t help feeling that a lot of toilers in tech are laboring in a sort of high-end sharecropping. There’s an absence of the joy and wonder that one finds out in the parts of the world where every fifth car isn’t made by Elon Musk. Though as it says on bumper stickers made by a WhoWhatWhy reader living in the area who has a vintage Tesla from way back when, Musk was not the world’s second worst person.
“I Wouldn’t buy a new Tesla cause I’m not a Nazi”
Let me know if you want one. We’ll send them to anyone who donates $50 (or more!!!).
OK So This Is Weird
I was doing some work in a cafe at the Stanford Research Park when suddenly someone I barely know invited me to an exclusive, private “gentlemen’s club” for the weekend. Well, I mean, I don’t usually get invited to that iconic place.
Anyway, I had to move quickly to get ready on such short notice. So I packed up and headed to my rental car, a silver Mitsubishi mini-SUV. I used my fob to open the door, put my computer bag in the back seat, and noticed that the armrest was up. I hadn’t done that.
I shrugged and put it down. Then I got into the front. I started the car, then noticed a tissue packet on the passenger seat. That wasn’t mine. I thought, “Am I dreaming?” and then I noticed that the car seemed less clean than I remembered it. Then I looked at the console, and noticed another fob in there.
It finally hit me that someone had parked next to me in an identical car, not locked it, and left the fob in. I was about to drive off with someone else’s car.
Before I could be arrested for car theft, I got out of that car, got into my own car, and drove off.
About a block away, I wondered whether, being a human and not a robot, I had remembered to retrieve my computer bag.
Nope.
I drove back and, sheepishly (being a human and not a robot), snuck into the other car and took my bag and drove off, replaying in my mind what had happened:.
Another human had pulled into my slot the minute I was away. And that car also looked a lot like mine.
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Since the media is all excited about a new book on Joe Biden’s decline, I’d just like to point out that we were one of the relatively few and relatively early voices of concern about how the reality of Biden’s condition was being ignored by both the Democratic establishment and by the media.
That, in part, is how the country got into its current disaster. One of the co-authors of the book, CNN anchor Jake Tapper, is being trashed in some quarters for profiting from telling this story when he himself was one of those who failed to sound the alarm regarding Biden’s condition at the time when it could have made a difference.
The media does a pretty fair job reporting on real-time events, but its record on anticipating where things are going and being fearlessly blunt about reality is fairly dismal.
Telling the truth, getting it right, and not waiting for the approval of elites in journalism or elsewhere is why I founded WhoWhatWhy. We’re proud of what we do and appreciate your support for it.
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Before you read this next bit, you better put on your boots to keep from skidding in the oil Trump exuded all over the floor where Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed bin Salman [MBS] sat during the president’s recent visit. Here’s a mopped-up version:
We have great partners in the world… but we have none stronger, and nobody like the gentleman that’s right before me…. And if I didn’t like him, I’d get out of here so fast. You know that, don’t you [looking directly at MBS]. He knows me well. I do, I like him a lot, I like him too much, that’s why we give so much, you know? Too much, I like you too much.
This prince he likes so much is the same one who allegedly had Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident Saudi columnist for The Washington Post, tortured, strangled, dismembered, and disappeared.
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Trump said that, on Monday, May 19, he and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin plan to speak on the phone about ending the war in Ukraine. And the two may also get together in person. On Friday, he told Fox News, “We have to get together, and I think we’ll probably schedule it [a meeting], because I’m tired of having other people go and meet and everything else.”
And he said he thinks “Putin is tired of this whole thing.”
Which is so unfair how Ukraine started it!
***
The head of our Health and Human Services Department, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., went swimming with his grandchildren in Washington DC’s Rock Creek which — even before Kennedy entered it — was already full of raw sewage, bacteria, and who knows what else.
For 50 years, swimming, and even wading in that water, has been banned, and warnings are posted in several places. Not even pets are allowed in it.
If he is willing to endanger his flesh and blood thusly, imagine what he is doing to the rest of us!
Kennedy got into a sniping session with a leading House Democrat over massive ($33 billion) cuts to health care services that would result in “needless and preventable deaths.” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), a cancer survivor, also told him that by “promoting quackery” he is “endangering the health of the American people, with pseudo-science, fear-mongering, and misinformation.”
After the hearing, DeLauro said, “I’m here because of the grace of God and biomedical research.”
While DeLauro and other Democrats were concerned about losing lives, a Republican congressman from Tennessee who represents candy manufacturers expressed concern about losing money — the effect of Kennedy’s plan to rid the food supply of petroleum-based dyes.
On the other hand, a West Virginia Republican — concerned about an actual problem, black lung disease in coal miners — expressed relief that Kennedy had reversed the firings of over 100 employees of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
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Pretty much every department continues to exhibit chaos and dysfunction.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard says she doesn’t want the president’s daily briefing on national security compiled at the CIA anymore. She wants it prepared by CIA personnel — but in her office.
Why? Seems to be no good reason, and the people who prepare the briefing are said to be switching jobs to avoid being in her office. Can you blame them?
Gabbard also ordered the National Intelligence Council to move to her office.
***
Over at the Justice Department, which prosecutes financial wrongdoing, such as insider trading, records show that Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 and $5 million of stock in Trump Media on April 2 — the very same day that, after the market closed, Trump announced sweeping tariffs, which caused plunging markets.
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Meanwhile Trump’s tax plan includes — are you ready? — MAGA accounts for babies, the “MAGA Accounts Contribution Pilot Program.” The government would give each qualified child a one-time payment of $1,000, to be placed in accounts set up by the US Treasury.
By the time these infants can vote, appreciatively, Trump will be in his sixth term.
