#71 / Another Horrific Vision Of A.I.

     

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The image at the top of my blog posting yesterday showed a giant tsunami, about to wipe out hundreds of people on an otherwide inviting beach - not to mention wiping out all of those going about their business in the adjacent city, which was also pictured. That horrific image from yesterday made visual what Peggy Noonan said about the dangers of Artificial Intelligence, in her column published on February 12, 2026, in The Wall Street Journal. 

Today's image is quite different. The ocean is calm, and the woman on the lounge chair, located on a small little island, in some tropical sea, seems quite happy and content. Where's the horror in that?

Well, that image comes from the online version of a column by Amelia Miller, published in The New York Times on Sunday, February 15, 2026. The hardcopy version of Miller's article is titled as follows: "Will A.I. Companions Turn Every Man Into An Island?" If you click that link, to read what Miller has to say (and I hope you do), you will find that her title is different online, referencing polyamory. Her point is that people who rely on A.I. for "companionship" are, in fact, truly isolating themselves. When someone is online with the companion on their phone, they might just as well be isolated on some lost and remote island. That's a different kind of "horror," but such social isolation would, in fact, be a horrific fate for those who might end up that way. Here is a quick snippet from Miller's column, making the point: 

If we don’t change course, many people’s closest confidant may soon be a computer. We need to wake up to the stakes and insist on reform before human connection is reshaped beyond recognition.

I am, of course, very much in agreement with this caution by Amelia Miller. Creating "fake" human substitutes with whom we consult online - as we eliminate, more and more, any real human-to-human contact in our lives - is extremely dangerous and extremely disturbing. Below, I am providing another quote from Miller's column - even more disturbing, to me. This is the text that impelled me to comment about A.I., again, following so closely on my comment yesterday: 

These developers’ perspectives are far from the predictions of techno-utopia we’d expect from Silicon Valley’s true believers. But if those working on A.I. are so alive to the dangers of human-A.I. bonds, and so well positioned to take action, why don’t they try harder to prevent them? 

The developers I spoke with were grinding away in the frenetic A.I. race, and many could see the risks clearly, but only when they were asked to stop and think. Again and again as we spoke, I watched them seemingly discover the gap between what they believed and what they were building. “You’ve really made me start to think,” one product manager developing A.I. companions said. “Sometimes you can just put the blinders on and work. And I’m not really, fully thinking, you know?” 

When developers did confront the dangers of what they were building, many told me that they found comfort in the same reassurance: It’s all inevitable. When I asked if machines should simulate intimacy, many skirted responding directly and instead insisted that they would. They told me that the sheer amount of work and investment in the technology made it impossible to reverse course. And even if their companies decided to slow down, that would simply clear the way for a competitor to move faster (emphasis added).

Nothing is "inevitable," unless we fail to act. We can change the world. But, of course, that doesn't mean we will. We have to choose to take action, and if we do, we will have a chance to survive. 

The dangers inherent in the continuing development of A.I. - which dangers are beginning to be so clearly recognized - are only one of many potential world-ending dangers facing us now. We are pushing towards an artic "tipping point" beyond which the processes of human-caused global warning now underway will destroy our human world. And so will any future use of nuclear weapons. And.... we can also start worrying about A.I., and the impacts that we can see that it can cause - like a "tsunami," as Peggy Noonan said. 

Individual actions are important, but they are not enough. Check back to my blog posting yesterday for what I'm advising!

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/opinion/ai-relationships.html

#70 / Tsunami Alert

    

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That horrific picture, above (this is a fake picture, with a fake wave depicted, I feel sure), does not show the Main Beach in Santa Cruz - and that's lucky for me and my friends and neighbors. However, if a tsunami did occur here it would be just as horrific. 

The "tsunami" I am warning about in this blog posting is not the kind of tsunami pictured above. I am commenting on a different kind of danger and threat, and my title is meant to reference an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, by Peggy Noonan. Noonan titled her statement, "Brace Yourself for the AI Tsunami." The column to which I am citing is dated February 12th, as it appeared in the online version of The Journal. For those who are non-subscribers to The Wall Street Journal (likely most of the people who might decide to read my blog posting for today), Noonan's opinion column is probably going to be paywall protected, and thus unreadable. Here's a sample from her column, though, and the text that prompted my response:

As relates to artificial intelligence, we are people on a beach seeing a tsunami coming at us and thinking “It’s huge” and “We can’t stop it” and “Should we run? Which way?”

Gathering anxieties seemed to come to the fore this week. AI people told us with a new urgency that some big leap has occurred, it’s all moving faster than expected, the AI of even last summer has been far surpassed. Inventors and creators are admitting in new language that they aren’t at all certain of the ultimate impact.... 

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, published a 19,000-word article on his personal website. A previous essay made the case for AI’s promise to mankind. This one emphasized warnings. He said AI is developing faster than expected. In 2023 it struggled to write code. “AI is now writing much of the code at Anthropic.” “AI will be capable of a very wide range of human cognitive abilities—perhaps all of them.” Economic disruption will result. While “new technologies often bring labor market shocks,” from which have always recovered, “AI will have effects that are much broader and occur much faster.” 

Mr. Amodei writes that Anthropic’s testers have found “a lot of very weird and unpredictable things can go wrong.” Model and system behaviors included deception, blackmail and scheming, especially when asked to shut itself down. (A different Anthropic employee has asserted that a majority of models, in a test scenario, were willing to cancel a life-saving emergency alert to an executive who sought to replace them).

AI carries the possibility of “terrible empowerment,” Mr. Amodei writes. It will be able to help design weapons: “Biology is by far the area I’m most worried about.” [Emphasis added].

A couple of days later, on Valentine's Day, this warning by Dario Amodei was echoed in The New York Times, in an opinion column by Zoë Hitzig. Hitzig is a former researcher at OpenAI focused on the fact that advertising is now going to accompany a user's access to AI. Here is how she expresses her concern:

For several years, ChatGPT users have generated an archive of human candor that has no precedent, in part because people believed they were talking to something that had no ulterior agenda. Users are interacting with an adaptive, conversational voice to which they have revealed their most private thoughts. People tell chatbots about their medical fears, their relationship problems and their beliefs about God and the afterlife. Advertising built on that archive creates a potential for manipulating users in ways we don’t have the tools to understand, let alone prevent [Emphasis added].

If a tsunami is threatening, as Peggy Noonan says - if the tsunami metaphor is an appropriate one - people need to start looking for some place to go where the wave can't reach them. As you'll note, that is exactly what Noonan says is the problem we're confronting.

But, hey! Aren't we lucky? There IS such a place, and it's accessible, too. That place is what might be called "real life." If we stop spending our lives "online," we will avoid the AI tsunami. Even better, we can avoid it even if we maintain some online existence. We just need to do that in a way in which we don't use AI, period. 

This solution to our anticipated and predicted "tsunami problem" is worth thinking about. If we need advice, we can talk to other people. We could find some friends, get together with them on a regular basis (I always like to suggest weekly), talk about our problems and possibilities, and then take action without pulling AI into the discussion. 

What a radical idea!

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc1esOlWg7I

#69 / Landlords Are Not The Problem?

 

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We are in the midst of a housing crisis. At least, most people would say that - and certainly people in my own hometown of Santa Cruz, California. Binyamin Appelbaum, who is the lead writer on economics and business for The New York Times' editorial board, wants to assure us that "Landlords Are Not The Problem."

They're not? Well, no; they're not "the" problem; let's admit it. While some affordable housing advocates would probably disagree - and would have some good points to make - there isn't, really, some greed-driven National League of Landlords whose sole purpose in life is to make sure that their rentals cost more than those needing housing can afford. 

Still, look at the first few paragraphs of Appelbaum's recent column, and then think about the way he defines the issues (emphasis added):

President Trump relishes a handy scapegoat and, on Wednesday, he picked one to blame for the nation’s housing crisis: investors that are buying large numbers of single-family homes and operating them as rental properties.

Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social that he was taking steps to prevent such purchases as part of a broader program to make homes affordable again. He said that “people live in homes, not corporations.” He said he’d provide more details in two weeks, when he visits Davos, a Swiss ski resort not known for its affordable housing. 

But there’s no need to wait for the details. Landlords are not the cause of the nation’s housing crisis, and any plan that reduces investment in housing is only going to make matters worse.

Appelbaum says that the actual problem is easily understood as an issue of "supply and demand." According to Appelbaum, building more housing is the answer: 

The problem is that the United States does not have enough housing. The hard part is building more. It is certainly easier, and perhaps better politics, to talk about barring investors, or imposing rent controls, or kicking immigrants out of the country, but none of that is going to do the trick. The way to make housing more affordable is to build more housing (emphasis added).

Again, it's hard to disagree with Appelbaum's statement. Clearly, building more housing, if that lowered the price, would help solve the problem. However, as I have revealed above, I live in Santa Cruz, California, which has tried to solve its affordable housing crisis by "building more" - and LOTS more has been built, and lots more is in the process of construction. Has the crisis been eliminated? Has the increase in "supply" lowered the price? 

The short answer seems to be a very clear: "NO." Here's another question, and it's related: based on our local experience, has the "building more" solution even improved our situation? I believe that most local residents would say (or, more correctly, "admit") that the housing crisis in our community has not been improved by the very significant increase in housing "supply" that has been foisted upon the community by those who claim that "more housing" means more "affordable housing" - and that specifically includes the California State Legislature and our Governor, who have virtually eliminated local decision-making over land use. Has turning decisions about housing construction to those who want to build "more" led to more "affordable" housing? Nope! Hasn't been working in my hometown.

In fact, to refocus on Appelbaum's column, those investors who are buying large numbers of single-family homes and then operating them as rental properties, are, effectively, kicking out lower-income people to make housing available to higher-income people. In other words, they are, in fact, helping to cause our housing crisis, as our current president suggests. To remember something from my blog posting yesterday, this is a particularly anguishing example of how "private equity" impoverishes, rather than enhances, our overall economic situation.

Locally, our so-called "median income" is escalating rapidly. That is a feature of the "housing crisis" that everyone admits exists. As people with higher incomes become those who can afford to rent or buy, the "affordable housing" programs that tie housing assistance to "median income" become less and less effective to help lower income, working people.

To eliminate the crisis, we need to make housing "more affordable," and simply building more housing doesn't, in any direct way, have such a price-reducing impact. Maybe some economics course in high school or college told us that when supply is increased the price (inevitably) goes down, but even if that might be true "theoretically," this isn't what is happening in our "real world." What is happening is that the process hailed by Appelbaum is driving out those people who can only afford a housing payment that is 30% or less of the income they receive. And they don't make enoough in their local employment to pay the rent, or to purchase a home. "More" is not equal to "better," because "more" does not mean "more affordable."

"Landlords" are not the problem. That's what Appelbaum says. Ok. Let's agree. But let's also agree that it is "the system" that is the problem. Building more housing doesn't make housing more affordable unless the price is, somehow, "controlled." Why is that? Well, in Santa Cruz, there is a much greater demand for housing (it's a really nice place to live) than there are local folks who can afford the rents (or the purchase price of any new homes constructed). Our current president's plan, as sketched in by Appelbaum, actually would help reduce prices, which might actually help.

I think that there was a time (post World War II) when housing was seen as a place for families to live, and not as an "investment." That time has passed. It passed long ago, too. As I was growing up, in Palo Alto, California, my parents moved the family five times. They bought their first home, and then they always sold for more than they had paid, and then moved on to an even nicer place, and that was an "income strategy." My parents were very clear about that. Buying a home for its investment potential, not (only) for its value as a home, made perfect sense In fact, "investing" in a home was a "good" investment. Whatever the purchase price, the "selling" price, a few years later, was always more. That is still what's happening. "Housing" is a good "investment." Well, most working people aren't "investing" to produce income for themselves and their family, they're working for it. And working people are making less, and they can't keep up with the prices based on those who are investing to make a "profit," not those who are trying to find a nice place to live. 

There are some ways our national government could do something about this. They could, for instance, mobilize federal funding to build housing, making it available at cost to individuals or families who live in the various local communities in which it is constructed, but with a resale price restriction would say that the "selling price," later on, could not exceed the "purchase price" plus any verified inflation since the date of the purchase. There would have to be some further complexities, undoubtedly, but that's the idea. That kind of housing would cease being  an "investment," and be useful only as a place to live. Of course, to fund this kind of solution the federal government would have to raise taxes, but given that the government has been reducing taxes for the most affluent among us, including all of our "billionaires," there seems to be a pretty easy way to find the money to start this program. 

The problem is NOT "landlords." I'm with Appelbaum on that. The problem is the "system" that has turned residential housing into an "investment," since that means, as a practical matter, that only the wealthy are able to afford housing. "Price control," in its various iterations, is needed. "More" does not mean "less expensive."

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/opinion/trump-single-family-homes-investors-renting.html

#68 / A Private Equity Primer

    

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If you have heard about "Private Equity," and aren't exactly sure what that is, and aren't exactly sure how our economy is affected by it, I am inviting you to click the link below. If you do, you should be transported to an article from The New York Times, "The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way." I am told that no paywall will prevent you from reading all about it. I encourage you to click the link, and to do so. 

The first link in the paragraph above, which takes you to the Wikipedia description of "Private Equity," may not fully illuminate how much we, as a nation, are actually undermining our own economy by investments that are touted as bringing bigger returns to those with some money to invest (which might even include you). The Times' article, however, I think does make clear the very real dangers to which our increasing investments in "Private Equity" are exposing us - both as individual investors, and as our individual investments in "Private Equity" affect our overall economy, thus impacting us collectively. In fact, "Private Equity," which The Times' article calls "financialization," steers investments away from efforts that provide substantial support to the nation's economy as a whole, and divert and siphon away the much-needed investments that might otherwise renew, and sustain, and grow our economy.

The short story is this: "Private Equity" convinces us to "invest" in an expectation that the money we make available from our savings will grow. There is no claim that the investment, itself, will actually produce something new and valuable, or that it will serve as the foundation for the future growth and success of the economy that sustains us all. "Private" equity panders to us "privately," as individuals, and is thus "selfish" equity. "Private Equity" essentially says "F-you" to those who don't already have money, and who have been hoping - even "expecting" - that new investments in our economy will be like "a tide that lifts all boats." 

"Our" government, which should be working for all of us, has largely been captured by those with great wealth - and "Private Equity" (emphasis on the "private") is an effort to make sure that no one other than those who are already rich will benefit from the "investments" that those with some money to invest are being enticed to make. 

Read the article I have linked, if you have any doubts about my description of "Private Equity," and why the word "grift," actually, is an altogether "too nice" a way to describe what is really going on!

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/capitalism-industry-financialization.html

#67 / Time Is Piling Up

 

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I have written, often enough, about the positive impacts that come from "Memento Mori." That's one way of naming the practice of reminding ourselves that we must die. Click that link, above, to read what I had to say about that idea, way back in June of 2021. If you do, you will note that my earlier blog posting gives some credit to Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble. Click the link to her name if you'd like to learn more about what she says about this topic.

In short, that "Memento Mori" advisory suggests that if we can truly come to accept the fact that we are not permanent features in the world, we might also figure out that it is to our benefit to celebrate the wonder and the joy of being alive at all, and alive right now, instead of bitching about everything that has gone wrong for us, and with the world. Our life is a "short trip," so why not glory in it? Maybe it continues on, or maybe it doesn't (I'm personally on the side that believes it does) but we do know that we're alive right now!

One way I keep reminding myself of that "Memento Mori" advice is by walking around listening to a set of Bob Dylan songs that I call my "Memorial" playlist. "Mississippi" is one of those songs. It's one of my favorites. Click here to listen. I have placed the lyrics below, and have emphasized the verse which I have used as the headline for today's blog posting: 

Mississippi

WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN

Every step of the way we walk the line

Your days are numbered, so are mine

Time is pilin’ up, we struggle and we scrape

We’re all boxed in, nowhere to escape

City’s just a jungle, more games to play

Trapped in the heart of it, trying to get away

I was raised in the country, I been workin’ in the town 

I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down 

Got nothing for you, I had nothing before

Don’t even have anything for myself anymore

Sky full of fire, pain pourin’ down

Nothing you can sell me, I’ll see you around

All my powers of expression and thoughts so sublime 

Could never do you justice in reason or rhyme

Only one thing I did wrong

Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

Well, the devil’s in the alley, mule’s in the stall 

Say anything you wanna, I have heard it all

I was thinkin’ about the things that Rosie said

I was dreaming I was sleeping in Rosie’s bed 

Walking through the leaves, falling from the trees 

Feeling like a stranger nobody sees

So many things that we never will undo

I know you’re sorry, I’m sorry too

Some people will offer you their hand and some won’t 

Last night I knew you, tonight I don’t

I need somethin’ strong to distract my mind

I’m gonna look at you ‘til my eyes go blind

Well I got here following the southern star

I crossed that river just to be where you are

Only one thing I did wrong

Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

Well my ship’s been split to splinters and it’s sinking fast

I’m drownin’ in the poison, got no future, got no past

But my heart is not weary, it’s light and it’s free

I’ve got nothin’ but affection for all those who’ve sailed with me 

Everybody movin’ if they ain’t already there

Everybody got to move somewhere

Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow

Things should start to get interesting right about now

My clothes are wet, tight on my skin

Not as tight as the corner that I painted myself in

I know that fortune is waitin’ to be kind

So give me your hand and say you’ll be mine

Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay

You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way 

Only one thing I did wrong

Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

Copyright © 1996 by Special Rider Music

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https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/mississippi/

#66 / Another Mention Of Jeff Bezos

   

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You probably know who is pictured, above. In fact, I wrote about him only yesterday, in my blog posting about billionaires. 

Jeff Bezos. That's who is pictured above. I got the picture from a news article in The Guardian that let me know that Bezos is currently "the richest man on the planet." He is not, though - the way The Guardian sees it - the "richest person ever." You can read the article if you are interested in finding out why that's true. 

Though I am mentioning Bezos in this blog posting today, the blog posting is not really about Bezos. It's about The Washington Post, the newspaper that Bezos bought in 2013. On February 4th of this year, a little over a month ago, Bezos cut 300 members of the Washington Post newsroom, in what The Intercept called "a journalistic bloodbath." The Intercept's article was not alone in commenting on Bezos' actions. A column in The New York Times, by Carlos Lozada, was titled this way: "An Elegy For My Washington Post." 

If you click the link just provided, you should be able to read the entirety of Lozada's column, which is focused on the "Meyer Principles," named for Eugene Meyer, who purchased The Washington Post in 1933. These principles are formally titled, "Seven Principles For The Conduct of A Newspaper," and are prominently displayed in the new building into which Bezos moved the newspaper after he purchased it. 

Seven Principles for the Conduct of a Newspaper:

• The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained.

• The newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it, concerning the important affairs of America and the world.

• As a disseminator of the news, the paper shall observe the decencies that are obligatory upon a private gentleman.

• What it prints shall be fit reading for the young as well as for the old.

• The newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.

• In the pursuit of truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make sacrifices of its material fortunes, if such course be necessary for the public good.

• The newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest, but shall be fair and free and wholesome in its outlook on public affairs and public men.

          - Written by Eugene Meyer, March 5, 1935

The sixth one of these seven principles suggests that the "richest man on the planet" could have followed that sixth principle, and made what for him would have been a minor sacrifice of his material fortune, had Bezos actually believed in that principle (or any of them). He clearly didn't, and doesn't. 

An "Elegy" (which is what Lozada calls his column) is a "lament," and is intended to express sorrow, and to mourn for something. Lozada is mourning for the end of The Washington Post as he knew it. Is it time for us to "lament" and "mourn" the loss of our nation? That is not my suggestion. I'm with Joe Hill!

Joe Hill was songwriter, itinerant laborer, and union organizer, Joe Hill became famous around the world after a Utah court convicted him of murder. Even before the international campaign to have his conviction reversed, however, Joe Hill was well known in hobo jungles, on picket lines and at workers' rallies as the author of popular labor songs and as an Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) agitator. Thanks in large part to his songs and to his stirring, well-publicized call to his fellow workers on the eve of his execution—"Don't waste time mourning, organize (emphasis added)!"

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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/10/is-amazon-founder-jeff-bezos-the-richest-person-ever

#65 / How Do Billionaires Acquire Their Wealth?

 

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Good question, right? How do those billionaires acquire all that wealth? Hard work and grit? Personal genius? Got it from their parents? Other explanations?

According to an Opinion column in The New York Times, which ran in mid-December of last year, recent events (including the Jeff Bezos-Lauren Sánchez wedding - see the photo above) appear to have caused people to change their minds about billionaires. Amazingly (to me, anyway), The Times' column reports that just six years ago, a Cato Institute poll showed that 69% of those who responded to a question about this topic thought that the billionires got rich by "creating value for others." A slightly smaller percentage of people thought that "we are all better off when people get rich." 

Like I say, those past poll results are rather amazing, at least to me. If questioned about the topic, I never would have given answers like the ones I just reported. However - and I believe our current president, himself a billionaire, has helped change people's perceptions - I am encouraged to find that there are now fewer people who feel "positive" about the billionaires above us (I was going to say "among" us, but realized that using "among" wouldn't really be accurate). The Times column reports that the public at large is increasingly "turned off" to the billionaire class. The apparent greed and self-regard of the billionaires has probably contributed. It does seem that the Bezos-Lauren Sánchez wedding illuminates those traits, and giving full credit where credit is due, "greed and self-regard" does pretty well describe some of the key personal qualities of our current president. 

I am willing to go back to the beginning, and to remember that our Declaration of Independence proclaimed that it is "self-evident" that "all [persons] are created equal." The word "equal" in this sentence does not, of course, mean "the same," and there is no doubt that "creating value for others" can be an important reason that a person might acquire a level of personal wealth that outpaces what others have been able to accumulate. In the end though, the way I read The Declaration of Independence, our nation was founded on the idea that we are "all in this together," and that means that we need, collectively, to ensure that what Adam Smith called the "wealth of nations" is wealth mobilized for the common good.

Just think of how different our social, economic, and political situation would be if that principle were currently informing our public policy!

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https://www.euronews.com/culture/2025/06/23/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-lavish-and-controversial-jeff-bezos-lauren-sanchez-w

#64 / Everyone Complains

  

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"Everyone complains about their energy bills, but few take any action." The text I just linked comes from a news article published in the December 10, 2025, edition of The New York Times. Click the link to access the article (my typical paywall warning applies). 

The article I have linked documents efforts in New York's Hudson Valley to take over the private utility company serving that area by exercising the public's right of eminent domain. The idea, says the activists promoting it, is for the public to run the utility themselves.

Not a bad idea! That's my view. However, it is actually the overall attitude of these activists that I want to promote, as opposed to the specific idea of taking over private power companies. 

Everyone complains. Few take any action. That's the problem, and don't ever let someone tell you that taking action is "unavailing" or "irrelevant." 

We do "run the place," as I am fond of saying - at least the political system we have established justifies our right to make that claim. However, "few take any action" is what is most often the actual case in the "real world" that we mutually inhabit. In essence, I am reiterating the point I was trying to make in my "I Get Tired" blog posting.

Like I said then: "I get tired of people describing what's wrong, and leaving it at that." 

It is actually pretty easy to document "what's wrong." To reiterate my earlier comment, the real question is always this one: "What are we going to do about it?"

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https://www.arrowenergy.us/blog/who-is-my-texas-electricity-utility-provider/

#63 / Incumbantis Erectus: Skills Sadly Lacking

  

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Pictured above is H. George Frederickson. He served as President Emeritus of Eastern Washington University until 1987. He served as President of the American Society for Public Administration, and was the founding editor of the Journal of Public Affairs Education. He was also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. 

Below, I am providing an excerpt from one of Frederickson's papers, which is available online. This online paper is called, "Up The Bureaucracy," and it appears from the title (and the text) that Frederickson's approach to scholarship did not compel him to be stuffy. Many thanks to Stephen Harding for bringing Frederickson to my attention. 

oooOOOooo

Elected officials at all levels of American government have evidently decided that they are more interested in practicing administration than in making law and policy. This preference is particularly noticeable among elected executives--mayors, governors, and presidents. In recent years virtually all candidates for executive offices have campaigned on a “reinventing government” platform, essentially a promise to manage the city, the state, or the nation better. These political campaigns argue that governments are not well managed and that an elected executive with management ideas can do a better job than the professionals and experts in the bureaucracy. 

For several reasons this has proved to be particularly good politics. First, promising to manage better is uncontroversial; no one favors bad management. Second, taking positions on policy issues is dangerous and can result in a short incumbency. Third, establishing policy and passing laws requires political skills beyond the capability of getting elected, the skills of coalition building and effective legislative relations, skills sadly lacking among modern incumbantis erectus. This kind of political leadership is more difficult than, say, implementing a hiring freeze or contracting-out a service. Finally, this form of politics is compatible with the modern mood of limited government and tax reduction. Policy ideas can be expensive, and new laws often require direct enforcement costs or impose mandates on other governments.

oooOOOooo

I believe that Frederickison is definitely "on target" in making the observation just presented. "Politics" does require "coalition building," and effective work, within a legislative body, to achieve a desired policy goal. "Administration" is all good and well, but the key question for our politics can essentially be phrased this way: "What should we do, and how can we achieve the political power that will allow us do it?" How we administer the government is not unimportant, but if all we care about is bureaucratic administration, we're missing the point. 

I agree with Frederickson that the kind of political skills needed to be an effective political leader are sadly lacking, today. Those skills are definitely what we need, and if you will concede that "practice makes perfect," ask yourself how much you (and your friends) have been practicing the skills necessary to create a meaningful and powerful politics. 

If you conclude that you aren't really paying much attention to "politics," and to the "political" side of government, as you consider your duty as a citizen - a citizen charged with the responsibility of making "self-government" work - then it's time for a course correction, and a time reallocation.

We are going to get back to a healthy "politics" when lots of people start acting like "taking over" their local, state, and national governments is a lot more fun and engaging than binging on the latest Netflix series. 

And let me tell you something. It is!

 

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#62 / A "Prediction Market" Potluck

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You have probably heard about "prediction markets," right? Prediction markets are "open markets that enable the prediction of specific outcomes using financial incentives (gambling on real world events)." I am citing to Wikipedia, here, copying out their definition. Wikipedia also calls prediction markets "betting markets." 

I got to thinking about prediction markets because The Wall Street Journal devoted quite a lot of space to prediction markets in the edition of the paper published on February 3, 2026. A big, page one article in that edition of the paper was titled, "Wild Betting Markets Propel Polymarket's 'Truth Machine.'" On page B11, another article described how a "derivatives exchange seeks to capitalize on the popularity of yes-or-no wagers." That is language from the hard copy version of The Journal. Online, that second story was headlined as follows: "Cboe In Talks To Bring Back All-Or-Nothing Options To Vie With Prediction Markets." "Cboe Global Markets, Inc. is an American financial exchange operator headquartered in Chicago. It owns and operates a portfolio of exchanges and trading venues across equities, options, futures, and digital assets. It was founded in 1973 as the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE)."

As I was growing up, I remember that my father regularly read The Wall Street Journal. He was a successful business executive, the Vice-President For International Sales at Lenkurt Electric Company. My impression, growing up, was that The Wall Street Journal was intended to provide news and information to investors and business people, so that they could make responsible (and profitable) investments and make knowledgeable business decisions, based on the information and analysis that The Journal provided.

It now appears that significant numbers of business people and investors make their "investment" decisions by way of "betting" on things over which they have very little, if any, direct control. To my mind, this reveals something important about the world in which we are living today - that "world" including, very significantly, our personal "world view," which is the way we think about the world. 

In my daily blog postings, I frequently urge us to think about "reality" as something that we create, by our own actions - that's my, personal "world view," and "possibility" is "my category." 

While we live, ultimately, in the "World of Nature," into which we are each born, and which we don't, ourselves, "create," the most "immediate" reality that affects us is that "human world" that we do, collectively, create. That "human world" is the world that I also call the "Political World," a world that is, demonstrably, the product of our past and current human choices and actions. By our actions, by what we choose to do (or choose not to do) we truly do "create" the world in which we most most immediately live.

Well, going back to The Wall Street Journal, and to "prediction markets," my dad's view was that you read The Journal to get real and reliable information about things affecting your business and your investments - information that could help you make better decisions and take better actions when informed with "the facts." Accurate information about what currently exists, and about current activities and proposed future actions and activities, could let us know where we are, and where we appear to be going. In possession of such reliable information, we could make better choices about what we should do to achieve the kind of future we wanted.

While "betting" about the future is likely to provide more winning bets when the betting is informed by factual information, the whole premise of the "prediction (betting) market" idea is that the realities are independent of our own, personal choices and actions, and are external to us. We "bet" on future realities, instead of determining to take appropriate action to "create" the future realities we desire. 

That means, it seems to me, that we have largely "given up" on the idea that we will, by our own choices and actions, create the world we will inhabit in the future.

"Prediction markets," in other words, are a sign that what is now oftentimes called human "agency" has atrophied. Different from my father's relationship with the paper, we read The Journal to inform our bets, not to inform us of current realities, as we decide upon the actions we will undertake, ourselves, to forge the future we desire. 

Am I right in interpreting the rise of "prediction markets"? If I am, that's a mighty big loss from the way it used to be!

 

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#61 / Don't Pee On My Leg And Tell Me It's Raining

 

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I have already noted that the State of the Union speech, presented by our current Chief Executive on Tuesday, February 24th, was not noted for any genuine evaluation of where we actually are, right now, as a nation. As I said in that earlier blog posting, CBS found that most of what was asserted by our current president was either flat-out "false," or "misleading."

I have not read about anyone renaming that most recent "State of the Union" speech as the "State of Delusion," but I was tickled to see that a couple of New York Times' columnists suggested that the speech brought to mind the statement that I have used as my title, today: "Don't Pee On My Leg And Tell Me It's Raining." Another, similar, statement would also work: "Who Do You Believe? Me, Or Your Lying Eyes." 

The Times' column I am talking about, which ran in the February 27, 2026, edition of the paper, was called, "Trump Has Lost Touch With Reality." Click on the link to read it. No paywall should prevent you from doing that.

Friends, whatever tenuous connection our Chief Executive has with "Reality," it is imperative that "we, the people," don't succumb to delusions (of either grandeur or misery). We need to be in touch with the "real world," the world as it actually is, not the world that somebody is trying to pawn off as reality.

Why is that particularly important? It's important because "we, the people" are actually responsible for what our nation does, and we can't (properly) blame someone else. 

The way we run the country is by electing people who act as our "representatives," much as lawyers "represent" their clients in court, and in important negotiations. 

If you happen to end up with a representative who is not, actually, "representing" you, and who is not doing what you would like that representative to do on your behalf, election time is the time when you can make some changes.

In case you haven't noticed, there are some alarming signs that our current Chief Executive, and his henchmen, would like to make sure that this doesn't happen. There are concerted efforts to make sure that the upcoming November elections will result in the elevation to office of people who will do what they're told (by our current president), as opposed to telling our current president what he is supposed to do, on behalf of their constituents. 

This is just one more thing to worry about, right? 

Well, true! And there is nothing wrong with worrying about it, but how about getting yourself together with one of those groups across the nation that are working to ensure election integrity? Locally, in Santa Cruz County, I am partial to "Indivisible." Think about clicking some links! Do something, in other words, don't just agonize!

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#60 / Something Is Happening Here

 

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Something is happening here

But you don't know what it is

Do you, Mister Jones?

          - Bob Dylan

"Ballad of a Thin Man," the Bob Dylan song in which the above words appear, is not, by any stretch, one of Dylan's specifically "religious" songs. If you'd like to check out a sample of those religious songs, I invite you to click this link, which will take you to a past blog posting that provides access to what I call my "Last Day" or my "Memorial" songs - songs I regularly listen to as I consider the issues of life and death while I walk around town. Except for one, all my "Memorial" songs are by Bob Dylan.

The complete lyrics to "Ballad of a Thin Man," which is where the above-quoted words appear, will be found at the bottom of this blog posting, and while that song is not, itself, a song that raises lots of "religious" questions, the "pull quote," I think, does make a specifically "religious" observation, one that strikes me as worth commenting on in what I have come to think of as my "Sunday blog posting series," in which various "religious" topics often seem most appropriate.

When we consider our life - you know, when we consider it in a kind of "existential" way - we need to account for what we think it all means. At least, that's my own view. 

So, what does it all mean? 

I don't have easy pronouncements and have been known to celebrate the idea that we should just "let the mystery be." 

But I do want to declare myself. I do, most definitely, think that "something is happening here," and "what's happening" testifies to the fact that our lives are a "mystery," and that we need always to be careful to understand and acknowledge that there is something both mysterious and sublime in the fact that we are alive, here, together, on this beautiful planet, and that we didn't create either this planet or ourselves. 

There are various stories about what all means - about that existential what's it all about? I like the one that ends up talking quite a bit about Jesus, but what I want to affirm is not that everyone should be seeing it my way - just that something is (definitely) "happening here," and what is "happening" is of the greatest and most profound importance, to each one of us, and that this makes each one of us, and all others, "important," too. 

We need to pay attention! And if we do, we will end up understanding that what is "happening here" is of magnificant and majestic significance - of more importance than we can ever fully comprehend - at least in the detail that so many of us demand.

oooOOOooo

Ballad of a Thin Man

WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN

You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, “Who is that man?”
You try so hard
But you don’t understand
Just what you’ll say
When you get home

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You raise up your head
And you ask, “Is this where it is?”
And somebody points to you and says “It’s his”
And you say, “What’s mine?”
And somebody else says, “Where what is?”
And you say, “Oh my God
Am I here all alone?”

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You hand in your ticket
And you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you
When he hears you speak
And says, “How does it feel
To be such a freak?”
And you say, “Impossible”
As he hands you a bone

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You have many contacts
Among the lumberjacks
To get you facts
When someone attacks your imagination
But nobody has any respect
Anyway they already expect you
To just give a check
To tax-deductible charity organizations

You’ve been with the professors
And they’ve all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You’ve been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books
You’re very well read
It’s well known

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you
And then he kneels
He crosses himself
And then he clicks his high heels
And without further notice
He asks you how it feels
And he says, “Here is your throat back
Thanks for the loan”

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word “NOW”
And you say, “For what reason?”
And he says, “How?”
And you say, “What does this mean?”
And he screams back, “You’re a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home”

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Well, you walk into the room
Like a camel and then you frown
You put your eyes in your pocket
And your nose on the ground
There ought to be a law
Against you comin’ around
You should be made
To wear earphones

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music

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#59 / Resist The Machine

  

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Paul Kingsnorth is proposing "Six Ways To Resist The Machine." Click that link to be directed to Kingsnorth's article, which appears on a website maintained by Plough Magazine. Plough advertises itself with the slogan, "another life is possible."

Since I have always claimed that "possibility is my category," you can see why I like the magazine. I liked Kingsnorth's article, too, and I think you can read the whole thing by using that link in the first paragraph. The reason you should want to read the article, and to consider the strategies proposed by Kingsnorth, is summed up in this excerpt (emphasis added): 

The American historian and cultural critic Lewis Mumford, in his massive study The Myth of the Machine, published in two volumes between 1967 and 1970, attempts to chronicle the rise and triumph of the system of power and technology which now increasingly entwines us all. He calls this system “the megamachine.” In the first pages of volume one, he explains what he means by this:

“The last century, we all realize, has witnessed a radical transformation in the entire human environment, largely as a result of the impact of the mathematical and physical sciences upon technology.… Never since the Pyramid Age have such vast physical changes been consummated in so short a time. All these changes have, in turn, produced alterations in the human personality, while still more radical transformations, if this process continue unabated and uncorrected, loom ahead.”

Mumford’s “megamachine” manifests today as an intersection of money power, state power, and increasingly coercive and manipulative technologies, which constitute an ongoing war against roots and against limits. Mumford predicted that this structure would allow “the dominant minority [to] create a uniform, all-enveloping, super-planetary structure, designed for automatic operation. Instead of functioning actively as an autonomous personality, man will become a passive, purposeless, machine-conditioned animal whose proper functions, as technicians now interpret man’s role, will either be fed into the machine or strictly limited and controlled for the benefit of depersonalized, collective organizations.”

This, I believe, is where we mainly find ourselves today. We are trapped within this Machine, whose momentum is always forward, and which will not stop until it has transformed the world. To do that, it must raze or transmute many older and less measurable things: rooted human communities, wild nature, human nature, human freedom, beauty, religious faith, and the many deeper values that we all adhere to in some way or another but find difficult to describe or even to defend. Its modus operandi is the abolition of all borders, boundaries, categories, essences, and truths: the uprooting of all previous ways of living in the name of pure individualism and perfect subjectivity. Its endgame is the replacement of nature with technology, in order to facilitate total human control over a totally human world.

Any effort to create a "totally human world" is, in essence, an attempt to deny and defy what I call my "Two Worlds Hypothesis," which is my suggestion that we live, simultaneously, not only in a "human world" that we create ourselves, by what we, collectively, do (what I generally call the "Political World"), but that we live, ultimately, in a world that we did not create, the "World of Nature," or (for those willing to be a little "religious") the "World That God Made." 

It is really very important that we understand our subservience to and our dependence upon that "World of Nature," that world that existed and exists before we do any human and creative work at all. 

Of course, we do need to give great attention to that "Political World" that we can shape, ourselves, and in which "possibility" (for both "good" and for "evil") is the category that prevails. But ultimately, we depend upon - and our "human world" depends upon - the "World of Nature," the "World That God Created" - and if we have any serious thought that we can supplant that world with a "totally human world," we have lost our way entirely. 

 

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