Strategically, releasing terrorists is a reckless, shortsighted move. It is likely to lead to the death of more Jews in the future than if those same terrorists were kept imprisoned. And yet the trade for the definite safety of Jews who are currently in captivity and whose lives are presently in mortal danger takes precedence. We must move mountains to bring them home, even as we fear that those very mountains may bury our loved ones in the future. The moral dilemma is excruciating.
There is no simple answer. We dare not leave the hostages in Gaza. We dare not free the terrorists, and endanger our people for years to come; truly, a deal with the devil.
Stock Market opened about 600 points down. Lets see what happens the rest of the day.
Panama backtracks
FBI going to protest
CA Interstate 101 shut down
Macron would send troops to Greenland, but not help in Paris
And lets see what happens the rest of the day
There’s nothing like Kubrick.
Spartacus is a relatively conventional film, but finely crafted. It’s quite a visual treat if you like that topic.
Kubrick started out as a still photographer, as did Curtis Hanson. David Lynch began as an artist in painting. Visuals and composition are key.
As far as I can tell, the 101 in downtown LA was closed down for five hours, and no one was arrested. Mobs waving Mexican flags protesting deportation of illegal aliens may play well in LA, but the images on national TV are only convincing more sensible people that ICE deportations are the right thing to do.
Is that Elon or Trump in the spacesuit shutting down the rogue government?
It sounds like there is going to be some real action on the DOGE front. Elon is kick’in ass and taking names. USAID. He said, “It’s not like there is an apple with a worm in it. It’s all just a bowl of worms. Shut it down.” (paraphrase)
When I first began to take a more serious interest in our government (a bit after 1980), I looked up federal spending numbers at BLS (I think) tried to learn the scale of things. Back then, some people complained about “foreign aid” spending. How much was it, proportionally? Not that much back then.
But now, I don’t really hear complaints, although the numbers have grown tremendously. Even proportionally speaking.
“USAID was a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America” — Elon Musk
Ha!
It seems as if the whole Deepseek (the Chinese AI) being trained on only $6 million in hardware was almost certainly bs. It seems as if they in fact made use of tens of thousands of Nvidia GPUs at a cost of $1.6B that they weren’t supposed to be able to have access to due to the trade restrictions. They probably aquired these through shell companies set up in places like Singapore. I mean, is anyone really surprised?
And Mexico is sending 10K troops to the Border.
Danes saying increased US military presence in Greenland can happen. The libs don’t seem to understand that Trump opens up negotiations with an absurd and threatening position to get things rolling.
Here’s a link to the hysteria the “attack” on USAID is creating. When I read that USAID is promoting “democracy building” in other countries, I thought uh-oh. Isn’t that the left code word for spreading Marxism?
Anything Trump does will be described as chaotic, dystopian, foreboding, calamitous, inhumane.
“If [the Department of] Interior was a public company its stock would be in the tank, revenue has been declining, production of revenue for American taxpayers is down … we have to produce more energy, we’ve got to produce more critical minerals … if it was a company [the Department of Interior would have one of] the largest balance sheets in the world, 500 million acres of public land, 700 million of subservice, over two billion of offshore acres, these are all assets that belong to the American people – We all talk about the debt that America has the 36 trillion, we have perhaps hundreds of trillions of dollars of assets that we need to manage smartly, sustainably, for the benefit and use of the American people.” — Doug Burgum, Interior Secretary
• Have commented before that I was pleased when Trump spoke about creating a Sovereign Wealth Fund. And was pleased when Burgum spoke in September about one of my favorite potential revenue streams for the fund (i.e., natural assets).”
• Have also commented before that I never have any problem with Trump the executive expressing “whiteboard ideas” – see External Revenue Service – because I recognize that he is both challenging the Status Quo/ Conventional Wisdom, and stimulating the collective Thought Process – in order to address the Need.
• Also recognize that the Trump Doctrine is one of the most important doctrines in this nations’ history: Economic Security is National Security.
”Here’s a link to the hysteria the ‘attack’ on USAID is creating. When I read that USAID is promoting ‘democracy building’ in other countries, I thought uh-oh. Isn’t that the left code word for spreading Marxism?”
I’ll have more to say tonight after I take advantage of this unseasonably warm weather to get my Christmas lights down, but take a look at what Elon Musk’s DOGE group did to USAID over the weekend. It is a shot right to the heart of the Deep State.
If my intuition is right, future historians may compare this weekend’s skirmish in the battle for the republic with the one at Lexington and Concord 250 years ago. It just might be that momentous.
More later.
Re: Shutting down HAL
David Shapiro is one of my go-to guys on AI. He’s bullish on AI and his P(DOOM) percentage — the probability that AI will doom humanity — has decreased:
However, in a video he has also argued that a law requiring each AI datacenter to have five humans monitoring AI with the ability to effectively pull the plug on AI would be a good law.
Me too.
“a law requiring each AI datacenter to have five humans monitoring AI with the ability to effectively pull the plug”
I worry about group-think in a pool this size. They should pull the people from a larger group which has minimal communication with each other off duty and seldom are the same 5 active at a time.
Here’s something that AI is actually good for: a highly focused task, fed by a small bank of “learning” materials, a definite goal, and human control.
Open thread privilege–
To the addicted bibliophiles here (you know who you are, and the rest of us can guess, and yes I resemble that description), from the Internet Archive:
This is about a DOGE-like item that I have not seen in the news, but it was posted by a lefty friend of mine on Facebook.
Read/copy/repost if you can
From an anonymous OPM employee on Reddit. submitted 3 hours ago by Throwaway918284: “I’m a current employee at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). This is a throwaway account for obvious reasons. I’m posting this because people need to know what’s going on at OPM. I’ve been an OPM employee for nearly a decade and a Federal Employee for almost 20 years. I’ve never witnessed anything even remotely close to what’s happening right now. In short, there’s a hostile takeover of the federal civil service.
Let me say this in no uncertain terms — OPM has been compromised and taken over. The very backbone of American Government, the HR of all HR in the U.S. Government has been taken over by outside politicals. In just five days, they managed to push aside dozens of non-political, career civil servants who were there specifically to prevent the civil service from becoming the President’s henchmen.
The current Acting Director, Charles (Chuck) Ezell is a low-level branch chief. He’s the friendliest “yes man” you’ll ever meet. He never says no. It’s clear they pushed aside all the high-level non political civil servants who refused to do Donald Trump’s bidding, until they found Chuck.
Under his name, they’ve sent numerous requests to all the agencies to collect information on gov’t employees that they see as a threat to their agenda. Instructions say to send these lists to Amanda Scales. But Amanda is not actually an OPM employee, she works for Elon Musk. She wasn’t even properly cleared by OPM Personnel Security.
Our CIO, Melvin Brown, (also a non political career public servant) was pushed aside just one week into his tenure because he refused to setup email lists to send out direct communications to all career civil servants. Such communications are normally left up to each agency.
Instead, an on-prem (on-site) email server was setup. Someone literally walked into our building and plugged in an email server to our network to make it appear that emails were coming from OPM. It’s been the one sending those various “test” message you’ve all seen. We think they’re building a massive email list of all federal employees to generate mass RIF notices down the road.
The non-political civil servants here at OPM are watching helplessly as our government is being systematically dismantled bit by bit. Even the IGs are being fired to prevent them from investigating the numerous whistleblower complaints we’ve filed.
Please share this and tell the world that OPM is not the bad guy. We’re just as helpless to stop this as the rest of our fellow public servants. Hopefully someone out there can help us, but it’s looking pretty grim.”
Oh my! Where to begin?
OPM has been compromised and taken over. The very backbone of American Government, the HR of all HR in the U.S.
Please share this and tell the world that OPM is not the bad guy.
Ha! The HR of all HR in the U.S. AND we’re not the bad guy?? Pulleeze!
I was one of mostly civilian employees in a DoD operation, and initially there was an Employment Office with one or two workers who did a simple job simply and effectively. Then later the federal HR people came in and took that office over and set up shop. What a bloated, worthless and ineffective, and even destructive office.
“a law requiring each AI datacenter to have five humans monitoring AI with the ability to effectively pull the plug on AI would be a good law”
I’m 100% with Huxley,Yara, Aesopfan!
Those humans, however, can’t be wimps, nor easy to hypnotize, nor secretly psychos/sociopaths!
I don’t know why the Gazans and West Bankers are still allowed to be there. I’ve said send them to Lebanon—then take a large buffer zone – say from Israel to north of at least the Litani River. Or, send them to Syria – during this ongoing rebuilding of Syria might be a great time to get the so-called Palestinians outta the West Bank. President Trump wants them sent to Egypt and Jordan—at least the Gazans anyway. Palestinian swine have worn out their welcome in Israel…
Have Golan, rivers and the Sinai between Israel and everyone else…
Electric School Buses and Dixie “Pork Chop” County, Florida
A good teacher in a Dade County High School taught a course that included “pork barrel” spending in Florida…Pork Chop counties he called them. Dixie County was probably too small back then to be listed in the infamous Pork Chop Gang. Population of 17,465 (2023) and slowly growing – with several generations of experts on how to get Federal and States grants plus plenty of leftovers from the “pork barrel”.
Taking my outside shower this morning I noticed some red lights flashing down at the corner – but heard nothing. White and red flashing lights – emergency vehicle? Then I heard a hum as the lights stopped flashing and some lights started moving. Close to a 100 yards away and just a low hum. It was a school bus!? Always noisy ‘n loud when stopping and starting, but not this morning…that thing was really quiet except for a low hum. Dixie County got some new electric School Buses…definitely some kind of grant involved. A brand-new fleet of 23 electric school buses costs at least $8,050,000—best I can tell.
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Excellent essay in the FP yesterday.
The Terrorist Who Murdered My Cousin Now Walks Free
https://www.thefp.com/p/gideon-black-the-hamas-terrorist-who-murdered-my-cousin-walks-free
Excerpt on the impossible dillema:
Strategically, releasing terrorists is a reckless, shortsighted move. It is likely to lead to the death of more Jews in the future than if those same terrorists were kept imprisoned. And yet the trade for the definite safety of Jews who are currently in captivity and whose lives are presently in mortal danger takes precedence. We must move mountains to bring them home, even as we fear that those very mountains may bury our loved ones in the future. The moral dilemma is excruciating.
There is no simple answer. We dare not leave the hostages in Gaza. We dare not free the terrorists, and endanger our people for years to come; truly, a deal with the devil.
Stock Market opened about 600 points down. Lets see what happens the rest of the day.
Panama backtracks
FBI going to protest
CA Interstate 101 shut down
Macron would send troops to Greenland, but not help in Paris
And lets see what happens the rest of the day
There’s nothing like Kubrick.
Spartacus is a relatively conventional film, but finely crafted. It’s quite a visual treat if you like that topic.
Kubrick started out as a still photographer, as did Curtis Hanson. David Lynch began as an artist in painting. Visuals and composition are key.
As far as I can tell, the 101 in downtown LA was closed down for five hours, and no one was arrested. Mobs waving Mexican flags protesting deportation of illegal aliens may play well in LA, but the images on national TV are only convincing more sensible people that ICE deportations are the right thing to do.
Is that Elon or Trump in the spacesuit shutting down the rogue government?
It sounds like there is going to be some real action on the DOGE front. Elon is kick’in ass and taking names. USAID. He said, “It’s not like there is an apple with a worm in it. It’s all just a bowl of worms. Shut it down.” (paraphrase)
When I first began to take a more serious interest in our government (a bit after 1980), I looked up federal spending numbers at BLS (I think) tried to learn the scale of things. Back then, some people complained about “foreign aid” spending. How much was it, proportionally? Not that much back then.
But now, I don’t really hear complaints, although the numbers have grown tremendously. Even proportionally speaking.
“USAID was a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America” — Elon Musk
Ha!
It seems as if the whole Deepseek (the Chinese AI) being trained on only $6 million in hardware was almost certainly bs. It seems as if they in fact made use of tens of thousands of Nvidia GPUs at a cost of $1.6B that they weren’t supposed to be able to have access to due to the trade restrictions. They probably aquired these through shell companies set up in places like Singapore. I mean, is anyone really surprised?
And Mexico is sending 10K troops to the Border.
Danes saying increased US military presence in Greenland can happen. The libs don’t seem to understand that Trump opens up negotiations with an absurd and threatening position to get things rolling.
Here’s a link to the hysteria the “attack” on USAID is creating. When I read that USAID is promoting “democracy building” in other countries, I thought uh-oh. Isn’t that the left code word for spreading Marxism?
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18SmvqPEvT/
Anything Trump does will be described as chaotic, dystopian, foreboding, calamitous, inhumane.
https://youtu.be/LUshtwtY-7c?t=181
• Have commented before that I was pleased when Trump spoke about creating a Sovereign Wealth Fund. And was pleased when Burgum spoke in September about one of my favorite potential revenue streams for the fund (i.e., natural assets).”
https://x.com/i/status/1832782962695209086
• Have also commented before that I never have any problem with Trump the executive expressing “whiteboard ideas” – see External Revenue Service – because I recognize that he is both challenging the Status Quo/ Conventional Wisdom, and stimulating the collective Thought Process – in order to address the Need.
• Also recognize that the Trump Doctrine is one of the most important doctrines in this nations’ history: Economic Security is National Security.
”Here’s a link to the hysteria the ‘attack’ on USAID is creating. When I read that USAID is promoting ‘democracy building’ in other countries, I thought uh-oh. Isn’t that the left code word for spreading Marxism?”
I’ll have more to say tonight after I take advantage of this unseasonably warm weather to get my Christmas lights down, but take a look at what Elon Musk’s DOGE group did to USAID over the weekend. It is a shot right to the heart of the Deep State.
If my intuition is right, future historians may compare this weekend’s skirmish in the battle for the republic with the one at Lexington and Concord 250 years ago. It just might be that momentous.
More later.
Re: Shutting down HAL
David Shapiro is one of my go-to guys on AI. He’s bullish on AI and his P(DOOM) percentage — the probability that AI will doom humanity — has decreased:
–David Shapiro, “My P(DOOM) is now 12.70%”
https://daveshap.substack.com/p/my-pdoom-is-now-1270
However, in a video he has also argued that a law requiring each AI datacenter to have five humans monitoring AI with the ability to effectively pull the plug on AI would be a good law.
Me too.
“a law requiring each AI datacenter to have five humans monitoring AI with the ability to effectively pull the plug”
I worry about group-think in a pool this size. They should pull the people from a larger group which has minimal communication with each other off duty and seldom are the same 5 active at a time.
Here’s something that AI is actually good for: a highly focused task, fed by a small bank of “learning” materials, a definite goal, and human control.
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2025/01/siu-researcher-gets-150000-grant-to-use-ai-for-salmonella-detection-in-onions/
I’m with huxley and yara.
Open thread privilege–
To the addicted bibliophiles here (you know who you are, and the rest of us can guess, and yes I resemble that description), from the Internet Archive:
https://www.howtogeek.com/legal-ways-to-get-free-ebooks/
This is about a DOGE-like item that I have not seen in the news, but it was posted by a lefty friend of mine on Facebook.
Oh my! Where to begin?
OPM has been compromised and taken over. The very backbone of American Government, the HR of all HR in the U.S.
Please share this and tell the world that OPM is not the bad guy.
Ha! The HR of all HR in the U.S. AND we’re not the bad guy?? Pulleeze!
I was one of mostly civilian employees in a DoD operation, and initially there was an Employment Office with one or two workers who did a simple job simply and effectively. Then later the federal HR people came in and took that office over and set up shop. What a bloated, worthless and ineffective, and even destructive office.
“a law requiring each AI datacenter to have five humans monitoring AI with the ability to effectively pull the plug on AI would be a good law”
I’m 100% with Huxley,Yara, Aesopfan!
Those humans, however, can’t be wimps, nor easy to hypnotize, nor secretly psychos/sociopaths!
I don’t know why the Gazans and West Bankers are still allowed to be there. I’ve said send them to Lebanon—then take a large buffer zone – say from Israel to north of at least the Litani River. Or, send them to Syria – during this ongoing rebuilding of Syria might be a great time to get the so-called Palestinians outta the West Bank. President Trump wants them sent to Egypt and Jordan—at least the Gazans anyway. Palestinian swine have worn out their welcome in Israel…
Buying the West Bank: Israel’s New Annexation Method ‘Catastrophic’
Trump also refused to answer whether his administration will back an Israeli annexation of the West Bank.
Trump refuses to address West Bank annexation, stresses Israel’s small size
Have Golan, rivers and the Sinai between Israel and everyone else…
Electric School Buses and Dixie “Pork Chop” County, Florida
A good teacher in a Dade County High School taught a course that included “pork barrel” spending in Florida…Pork Chop counties he called them. Dixie County was probably too small back then to be listed in the infamous Pork Chop Gang. Population of 17,465 (2023) and slowly growing – with several generations of experts on how to get Federal and States grants plus plenty of leftovers from the “pork barrel”.
Taking my outside shower this morning I noticed some red lights flashing down at the corner – but heard nothing. White and red flashing lights – emergency vehicle? Then I heard a hum as the lights stopped flashing and some lights started moving. Close to a 100 yards away and just a low hum. It was a school bus!? Always noisy ‘n loud when stopping and starting, but not this morning…that thing was really quiet except for a low hum. Dixie County got some new electric School Buses…definitely some kind of grant involved. A brand-new fleet of 23 electric school buses costs at least $8,050,000—best I can tell.