#Uber To Servants Programming

[queensumomo]

Eeeeee!!!! I love Choi Jinhyuk and Jeong Eunji in “Miss Night & Day”!!!! 😍😍😍

I haven’t posted about this drama because I was just too focused on watching it. It was a fun and crazy romp, part fantasy/fairytale, part romcom, part suspense-thriller. And I just loved the combination of Choi Jinhyuk, who looks quite dashing and handsome as Prosecutor Gye Ji-ung, and APink member and vocalist Jeong Eunji as the intelligent but insecure Lee Mi-jin.

Of course, there’s the uber-talented veteran actress Lee Jeungeun, who plays Lim Sun, Lee Mi-jin’s daytime alter ego.

Basically, Lee Mi-jin is a 29 year old young woman who, for some reason, keeps failing her civil servic exams despite being quite intelligent and talented, and having reviewed thoroughly. Turns out she has a massive case of insecurity towards her own abilities and talents. Yet becoming a civil servant is her dream.

One day, after failing her latest try at the civil service exam, she gets drunk and encounters a mysterious orange cat. The next day, she finds that she’s turned into a fifty-something woman overnight. Yet strangely enough, this results in her getting the dream job that she’s always wanted. She gets into a senior intern program at the Prosecutor’s Office and becomes promoted from maintenance to clerical work as a reward for her good performance and her bravery.

Mi-jin takes on the name Lim Sun in her middle-aged woman persona, which was the name of her aunt who had disappeared 24 years ago. As Lim Sun, she becomes the clerical associate at Gye Ji-ung’s office and finds herself assisting him and his teammate, Investigator Ju, in finding out the culprit of several gruesome killings that had occurred in their city recently. The killings aree reminiscent of several serial murders that had occurred at the same place decades before.

The murders turn out to hit closer to home than Mi-jin realizes, because it eventually turns out that her aunt had been of the serial killer’s victims many years before. This is something she has in common with Prosecutor Gye, who had returned to the city of Seohan to investigate these gruesome murders, with the hunch that his own mother had been one of the earlier victims as well.

Even as all these things happen around her, Mi-jin keeps searching for the mysterious cat, which she believes is the answer to her strange condition.

The series is at once funny and serious, sometimes a romcom and sometimes a makjang. Somehow, the actors manage to make everything work all throughout, and this can be credited not just to their skills as actors but to the script and the directing as well.

The actress Lee Jeungeun showcases why she is one of the main actors in the Oscar-winning film “Parasite”. As Lim Sun, she is able to portray the angst and insecurities of a young woman, including all her clumsiness and thrill at having a huge crush on her boss.

Choi Jinhyuk is perfect as the dour and no-nonsense ace lawyer, Gye Ji-ung. He is at once strong and vulnerable. He gives off the aura of someone who’s supremely confident and self-possessed, yet deep inside, he hides the trauma of a young boy who lost his mother.

Jeong Eunji is spunky and charming as Lee Mi-jin. She’s very determined and single-minded but her fears of her own inadequacy is her worst enemy. Eunji manages to convey all of this in her portrayal. She’s an excellent actress and manages to convince the viewer of Mi-jin’s struggles and brokenheartedneas every time she fails.

It’s also good that the actors have such wonderful chemistry together. All throughout the drama, the viewer is thoroughly convinced that Eunji’s Mi-jin and Jungeun’s Sun are one and the same person. And whenever either one of them is acting in the same scene as Choi Jinhyuk, there’s no question that they’re one and the same person who’s in love with him.

Although the drama ended in a typical fashion by tying up all loose ends in the final episode, it still managed to give ample time for Mi-jin and Ji-ung’s reunion. And it was neatly dovetailed with Mi-jin’s middle-aged self bidding both Mi-jin and Ji-ung farewell.

It was a satisfying watch overall. I was surprised to discover a new KDrama OTP in Choi Jinhyuk and Jeong Eunji. They do look good together and their chemistry is organic and very natural. No wonder their co-actor Lee Jungeun ships them so strongly in real life.

[opusaid]

Today, I write not only as a displaced worker…

My name is Jeff D Williams, and until February 8, 2025, I was a dedicated employee of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). For over a decade, I served this agency with pride, believing in its mission to alleviate global poverty, deliver humanitarian aid, and foster international cooperation. Today, I write not only as a displaced worker but as a voice for the thousands of colleagues whose lives have been upended by the abrupt closure of USAID—a decision driven not by necessity but by political vendetta.

On that frigid February morning, I arrived at USAID’s Washington headquarters only to find the doors locked. An email notified us that 97% of the agency’s workforce—over 10,000 employees globally—had been placed on indefinite leave. My security badge no longer worked. Colleagues stood in shock, clutching cardboard boxes, denied even the dignity of retrieving personal items from their desks. The “Government Efficiency Department,” led by Elon Musk, had executed a corporate-style raid, freezing access to systems and branding us as “redundant” or worse, “criminals”.

Since that day, my family has spiraled into uncertainty. My savings, meant for my daughter’s college fund, now barely cover rent. Last week, my husband’s insulin rationing began—a cruel irony for someone who once coordinated medical aid for refugees. We are not alone. Former USAID staffers, from program officers to logistics experts, now drive Ubers, deliver groceries, or line up at food banks. One colleague, a single mother of three, sold her car to pay for her son’s asthma medication.

The administration claims this purge was about “cutting waste,” yet they erased an agency that allocated $40 billion annually to lifesaving programs: vaccines for children in conflict zones, drought-resistant crops for African farmers, disaster relief for typhoon survivors. Instead, they weaponized isolated examples—like a $47,000 grant for a Colombian transgender opera—to smear our life’s work as “leftist corruption”.

I joined USAID under President Trump’s first term, believing his pledge to “drain the swamp.” Little did I know that “the swamp” included civil servants like me—nonpartisan professionals who kept diplomacy alive even as politicians waged culture wars. Now, the agency’s remnants are being folded into the State Department, rebranded as a partisan tool for “MAGA cheerleaders”.

Worse still, this administration dismisses our suffering as collateral damage. When Senator Mitch McConnell called us “disposable,” I realized the truth: to them, we are not public servants but obstacles. They forget that our work in Ukraine saved lives during the Russian invasion, that our climate initiatives in Southeast Asia curbed deforestation. They forget because they never cared.

Mr. President, you once vowed to protect American workers. Yet your “efficiency” crusade has left families like mine in freefall. You vilify us as “Deep State” operatives, but we are teachers, veterans, parents. We are the Americans who built bridges abroad while you burned them at home.

To Congress: Stop this charade. Restore USAID’s funding, reinstate its nonpartisan mission, and honor the promises made to federal employees. To my fellow citizens: When a nation abandons its compassion, it loses its soul. Do not let our stories end here.

In solidarity,

Jeff D Williams

Former USAID Senior Program Officer

Washington, D.C.

[primreaperstuff]

I had a dream once where the end of the world happened thanks to some kind of magic volcano BS that resulted in people with the right tech and skills being able to create an infinite amount of dimensions. So the civilization that cropped up afterwards had subscription services but for governments. If you could afford a bunch of millions or something currency per month government (they called it "platinum silver gold" or something like a fucking credit card), you got to live in a dimension with a sweet mansions, lots of parties, a huge garden, and the government would ensure you were provided with the most loyal servants (more like slaves, more on that later), the best healthcare, the best quality food, etc. (Apparently rich people particularly liked "rose cocktails" which were bright pink, bubbly, and smelled like roses). If you couldn't afford more than a 10000 currency per month government, you got to live in a dimension with lots of studio apartments and a mediocre standard of living. Alternatively, there were dimensions where you were only offered "minimal necessities" (defined as healthcare, "nutritional substitutes," and protection from the stuff described in the paragraph below) and had to build everything else yourself.

If you couldn't pay at all and were older than 2 years old (which now made you legally an adult or something? IDK, they had a chart for all the age limits for stuff), or stopped paying (the more expensive dimensions often offered leniency programs for people who couldn't pay, whereas the cheaper ones tended to just drop you like a rock), you were regarded as an outlaw in any dimension you occupied and thus basically open season for anybody to capture you and "induct" you for service. Technically it was supposed to be a choice, but in practice the "hunters" have literal brainwashing magic and can fuck you up several ways to Sunday. So really the only choices you have are "agree to be a servant," "be tortured until you agree to be a servant," or "be magically transformed into somebody who would agree to be a servant." Some governments had systems where prisoners and corpses would be legally inducted into service (don't know how they got corpses to work though!).

According to the dream, I'd slept through all this shit Kirby style, and woke up covered in flowers in one of the expensive dimensions. Some creepy lady and her weirdass bishonen boyfriend/brother/??? (the relationship was never really clear to me. Despite looking like a teen and initially claiming to be that to me, the guy was at minimum in his 50s) from the upper tiers found me and used their money to buy my way out of being an outlaw so I wouldn't be classed as a servant. Turns out that rich people just hire people every now and then as a status thing-- you don't pay any subscription money on servants, so being able to pay somebody to work for you meant that you were uber rich. But they did have a legitimate problem with monsters that had started growing in the gaps between dimensions then invading, and they said if I didn't help them hunt monsters in the gaps they wouldn't pay my subscription fees. In practice that meant I did all the hard stuff while they laughed at the monsters' pain and gallivanted about. Fortunately the monsters were kind of pathetic. They often didn't really aim at me and even when they did, they relied on magic and magic would literally go through me (a unique trait, apparently). So I just threw stuff at them until they melted into goo.

Anyway, it turned out that the creepy lady had a sister who was a super powerful wizard lady. The sister found out that paying members of society were being inducted as servants and it kicked off a whole journey where she came to realize everything that was wrong with her society. She resolved to cause a grand dimensional merger to end the magic volcano system. But the creepy lady responded by trying to induct the sister into service, which caused said sister to have a psychotic breakdown because she was partially immune to brainwashing magic. The sister was p i s s e d about all this and the moment she got her sanity back, she started making monsters to get revenge on creepy lady and weirdass boyfriend/brother/???. A lot of servants saw this and started turning themselves into monsters as an act of rebellion. But the sister was actually super sweet despite being filled with righteous fury. She was very dedicated to making sure only the people responsible for her failed induction felt her wrath. She refused to attack me at all, saying that she'd actually brought me here because she couldn't trust anybody from her own world and that she was sorry she didn't do more to protect me. Also she was depressed because she realized that her original plan was more catastrophic than helpful, and that some of her monsters were sentient while others weren't her monsters at all and didn't share her dedication to justice. She didn't know what to do.

I told her that was really rough, but I have absolute zero idea what to do here and don't want to give uninformed advice that would possibly kill people or make things worse. She laughed sadly and said that's what she got for not being picky about which human she chose. But I added that she's not a bad person and her willingness to admit where she was wrong even when it was tough proved she was capable of doing good for her world. If she could trust me despite me killing monsters, she could trust herself too. I guess that's what she needed to hear because she smiled and looked a lot happier, but then I saw creepy lady and weirdass boyfriend/brother/??? tsking at me and abruptly woke up.

I still think about that dream a lot. Like logically I know it's just something my head cooked up but damn... it cooked hard.

[artielu]

Imagine his ego after losing to

a Black,

South Asian

woman

whose parents are brown immigrants including an Indian woman scientist who researched cancer (Shyamala Gopalan) and a Jamaican-African heritage Stanford economics professor (Donald J. Harris)

whose parents divorced when she was seven and she was raised basically by a single mother

born in Oakland, CA, a historically minority-majority city

grew up during elementary school in Berkeley, CA (the People's Republic of Berkeley) in an apartment

who visited her maternal grandparents in India as a child

who grew up singing in choir at a Black church

went to Berkeley public elementary school under the city's desegregation program

grew up during middle and high school in Montreal after her mom got a job at McGill University

a graduate of Howard, an HBCU and

a member of the powerful Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha,

a graduate of University of California law school, with her admission supported through a diversity program called Legal Education Opportunity Program (LEOP)

prosecutor, first a DA in San Francisco and then a California AG

sued banks during the mortgage crisis

tackled and cleared the massive backlog of rape kits in 2012 in California

refused to defend the anti-gay-marriage Prop 8

targeted revenge porn

defended reproductive rights

married to a Jewish lawyer who fully supports his wife with his full effort

whose brother in law is the general counsel of Uber (Tony West) married to her bad ass lawyer sister (Maya Lakshmi Harris)

chosen by Joe Biden as VP, a man seen by many as a decent, kind, lifelong public servant

endorsed by major unions representing tens of thousands of hard working people

Tough, smart, confident, hard working, pro-choice, lgbtqia ally and has earned the respect of her peers

Let's fucking go, y'all.

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/kamalaharris2024

Donate $5 now and tell Trump and his billionaire fascist oligarchs to fuck all the way off, including Elon. Let's ruin their day. His entire world view will implode if he loses.

Get everyone fired up to vote for Kamala. Talk to everyone. We can beat fascism if we try.

Sí se puede. Yes we can.

I'm not going to wax poetic about the underdog and miracles and pulling together to save the country. Smarter people than me do that already. I just need you to think of something. Remember how good the memes were right after Trump lost last time? How funny it was? How for a brief moment in time we felt we had defeated true evil and could laugh at it right in its stupid face? We can do that again. Remember him making a pathetic little speech in that stupid parking lot, so perfect it could have been an Always Sunny bit?

The embarrassment of it a second time could kill the guy. We need it to happen. Please help me make it happen.

[asphaltapostle]

Road Rage of The Deep

Below is an excerpt from my just-republished 2019 Volkswagen Atlas Review detailing my singular encounter with capital-r Road Rage in the entirety of my ~year driving for Uber/Lyft.

My only authentic Road Rage experience in some 5000 miles of rideshare driving occurred on All Hallow’s Eve when I stopped - no more illegally than usual - on the opposite corner from a popular downtown Mexican restaurant called The Nap with hazards and all courtesy interior lights shining. The car immediately behind me hesitated no more than necessary, but the Biggest Big Infiniti behind them (a QX80 - the Atlas' competitor) just… stopped. There was honking and frenzied, hoarse screaming of what the fuck are you doing? and such.

I responded with pleasantly amused but relatively-encouraging glances at the impersonal black mass of the Infiniti’s windshield through my mirrors. I rolled down the Atlas' driver’s side window and politely gestured that they go around me, but failed to coax any movement whatsoever from the ugly behemoth through at least two full cycles of the nearby traffic light. There must be some aquatic authority in the bulbous black ass of the QX80, for no one behind it seemed willing to pass either. The driver waited significantly longer than you’d imagine before emerging, huffy. She was wearing a classic poofy black North Face vest some sort of slate gray turtleneck. Nothing below these were stimulating enough to retain any memory of. Uggs?

How positive are you that the truth has absolutely zero consequence: contrasted silver-beige eyeliner and little eye contact, dirty-ish straight blonde hair over a spray-tanned face, exhibiting zero anxious tics or hesitation. She was obviously the New Matriarch, and she was obviously much more of an authority on traffic law than I. As she approached, she scanned the street as one naturally does when they enter a busy one… except it was completely empty, thanks to her blockade. She first informed me that I was “not supposed” to be stopped there. I tried to listen and respond with as much sincerity as possible as I realized all at once that my behavior had genuinely perturbed this woman - that her choice to leave the huge hideous warmth of the guppy wagon to speak as humans to one another required great courage.

I inserted the next logical question which I’d been screaming telepathically: can you not get around me? I began to pity her when I then saw in her face the distinct possibility that going around as a concept had not occurred to her whatsoever. She stuttered a wee bit in retorting “I could go around, but I don’t want to get a ticket.” Here, one of the most fascinating avenues of suburban psychology is explored: Guppy Mom is not being ingenuine with this expression, nor has she had an untoward experience with law enforcement, ever. Guppy Mom did know her excuse was bullshit - nobody has ever been written a traffic citation for carefully circumventing an obstacle in the road. Given the opportunity to interrogate this kernel of entirely uncompromising obedience to utterly delusional traffic law superstitions, I think we’d simply discover a life of unnaturally positive interactions with LEOs. We must conclude, then, that the source of her fear was either myself or the Atlas.

Granted, to her I am still a Young Man, and am therefore instinctively programmed to believe myself more informed than literally everyone - even the very foundational architects of modern civilization. Her Stucco Highness may have felt a representative of these builders (edgy take: she is in fact their servant.) Her own folks surely complain regularly about their distaste for disrespect, and my gig-economy, Austin Powers-looking ass was somehow disrespecting the order laid down by her would be (entirely fantastical) forefathers. Though her expression of her quaint fear of such “ugliness” (if you will) is hard-headed, an ugliest decision of hers (or her kin) idled behind me, its giant seafood-looking mouth gaping, unhinged.

[sasquapossum]

Since driving seems to be the subject of the day...

Part 1: The Country Lord

There once was a lord who lived in a country mansion. He would never drive a supply wagon himself, oh no, but that doesn't mean there were none. There was a constant stream of them coming and going, with both workers and supplies for the populous household. When the lord wanted to go visiting or into town himself, he had a driver - in fact a whole team of driver and attendants - for that. Then he decided that all these wagons were an eyesore, and they were banned from the front driveway. They still came, of course, only by a slower and more arduous path to the back door. If there was an accident, the lord would administer harsh discipline to whoever (he felt) was responsible ... and likewise if the flow of goods was disrupted. His servants were, of course, miserable.

This lord has his modern equivalent. It's the urban dweller, often an affluent tech or finance worker, who never tires of telling people they don't drive but also never tires of telling others how they should drive. Their apartment is full of goods ordered online and delivered by car. They order takeout multiple times per week from their favorite niche restaurants miles away, and therefore also delivered by car. If they need to go somewhere too far away to walk but not well served by public transportation, they don't hesitate to call for an Uber or bum a ride from a friend. They don't drive themselves, but that's mostly because - like the country lord - they have other people to do their driving for them. They're not only kibitzers but hypocrites as well.

Part 2: Byzantine Failures

In computing, there's a distinction between simple and "Byzantine" failures. A simple failure is when something just stops - a computer stops computing, a router stops routing, a cable stops ... err, cabling. Whatever. A Byzantine failure is when one of these components acts in arbitrarily difficult or even malicious ways. Instead of not sending any messages at all, for example, it can delay or corrupt messages. This is much more difficult to program for. In fact, the general case is known to be hard to solve for even with infinite time and resources. (Bitcoin claims to achieve this BTW but - even if the claim is true - it's in a hideously slow and costly way.)

Here's the problem: human attention and reaction speed are not infinite, but the modern urban aristocrats like to pretend that it is when they dispense their advice and policy prescriptions. "The driver is always at fault" they say, as they resist any suggestion that pedestrians take any responsibility for safety. If you suggest that it's a good idea for someone in the road at night to wear something light or (even better) reflective for their own safety, they claim you're putting the onus on the victims. Some will even reach for the rape analogy, which I believe is pretty offensive to victims of actual rape (just like comparing vaccine mandates to the Holocaust, proving again that extremists at both ends of the political spectrum have way too much in common). As though an accident is the same as an assault. As though the issues of third-party risk (which I'll get to) or split attention are the same. As though anyone's claiming that drivers shouldn't be held accountable for their actions, as opposed to merely being drivers. What a cheap rhetorical ploy. A false analogy and an appeal to emotion all at once.

3. Defensive Behavior Is Good

Here's the reality. Less capable drivers exist. Distractions exist. Accidents happen, even with no misdeed or malice. A light changes, or someone else changes speed or direction, and the driver's eye is drawn to it. It's a reflex, and usually a beneficial one, but in that tenth of a second that they're distracted by one change, they might not notice a second. Human eyes and brains set hard limits on how many events per second a person can notice and respond to. If your sudden appearance distracts someone, that can cause an accident injuring other people, and damn right you would share some responsibility for that.

If you enter a shared space, you bear some responsibility for keeping it safe - for yourself and for everyone else as well. In the case of drivers interacting with pedestrians, this means reducing surprises as much as possible. You know what's more ridiculous than suggesting that people should show some concern for safety when they're in the road? Suggesting that it's OK for someone to crouch behind a mailbox wearing dark clothing at night and jump out into a busy city street at literally any moment, and we should still blame the driver who didn't see them in time. The "ambulance chaser" kind of lawyers would love it, but running society for lawyers' benefit isn't a great idea. Drivers should absolutely be held accountable for anything they do wrong that contributes to an accident, not because they're drivers but because everyone including pedestrians should. Being pro-pedestrian should include being pro-pedestrian-safety and that means everyone doing their part.

[humansofhanoi]

Là tôi ngoác mồm lên cãi: noi gương bố, con 40 mới phải lập gia đình. Vì sao nhở? Bố mãi 32 tuổi mới lấy vợ, mà hồi đó thanh niên 30 đã có cháu rồi... Đấy, bố tôi cưới mẹ tôi năm 32 tuổi, bằng tuổi tôi bây giờ. Bố năm nay 77, mẹ tôi vừa tròn 70. Ngót nghét đã 45 năm từ ngày nắm tay nhau về nhà. Bố mẹ tôi hồi đó đều dạy và công tác ở trường Đại học Bách Khoa, bố khoá 4, mẹ khoá 11. Đến giờ ông bà cụ vẫn chưa kể làm thế nào mà nên duyên, chắc xấu hổ. Tôi nghe kể năm 1972 cưới nhau khổ lắm, Mỹ nó ném bom miền Bắc thường xuyên. Cả nước kháng chiến chống Mỹ, đói - nghèo - khổ là bộ ba trạng thái thường trực từ Hà Nội về đến quê, chỗ nào cũng thế. Cả hai nhà nội ngoại đều xuất thân nông dân, ông nội tôi mất sớm từ năm 1945, ông bà chả có gì cho bố mẹ ngoài tình thương vô hạn. Bố mẹ lấy nhau trong khi cái nghèo đeo đuổi vì lương công chức quèn lấy đâu ra tiền tổ chức đám cưới tươm tất. Giường cưới chỉ là tấm phản cọt kẹt nằm trong góc nhà bà nội tôi ở quê, chuột thỉnh thoảng vẫn chạy qua chạy lại. Áo cưới là thứ xa xỉ sao dám mơ - mẹ bảo thế. Mà cũng đúng thật, bố mẹ bạn bè tôi trên 60 tuổi cũng không có mấy người được khoác lên mình bộ váy cưới. Mẹ tôi theo bố, ngoài tình yêu ra chẳng có gì. Thời bao cấp ai cũng nghèo toét đít, đói trường kỳ. Cuối năm 1972, khi mẹ mang bầu anh Hà, nhà tôi hồi đó ở đầu Bạch Mai bị trúng bom Mỹ, may mẹ lúc đó đi làm trên phòng thí nghiệm hoá học nên giờ tôi mới được ngồi gõ được những dòng này trên một sản phẩm của người Mỹ. Rồi đến những năm tháng bố đi nước ngoài triền miên, để lại mẹ ở nhà nuôi dậy anh tôi và về sau là tôi. Những năm 70 thông tin liên lạc khó khắn lắm, bố tôi đi nghiên cứu sinh bên Gruzia gần 5 năm mà chỉ có thể phần nào lấp đầy nỗi nhớ qua những phong thư 6 tháng mẹ mới nhận được một lần. Mẹ tần tảo nuôi anh Hà lớn lên. Rồi bố lại đi Algeria, thông qua chương trình của chính phủ Việt Nam gửi giáo sư sang đó trả dần nợ hồi chiến tranh. Bố lại đi và mẹ lại ở nhà sinh và nuôi tôi lớn. Bố mãi vất vả làm việc xứ người gửi tiền về nuôi ba mẹ con (trước nhà tôi có tivi màu đầu tiên trong xóm, cả xóm cứ tối đến quây quần bên tivi xem thời sự thích cực!) còn mẹ một mình cáng đáng việc nước việc nhà nuôi anh tôi và tôi nên người. Bức tranh cuộc đời bố mẹ giống nhau kỳ lạ, đó là luôn cách xa và luôn hy sinh vì gia đình, vì các con. Còn cái tôi? Thôi để sau. Tôi và gia đình anh trai luôn động viên bố mẹ đi chơi xa cùng nhau, vì quả thật ở độ tuổi này, bố mẹ không còn quá nhiều thời gian. Bố mẹ ở tuổi này rồi vẫn chưa thực sự quen với việc cần sống cho bản thân mình, mà vẫn lo tiết kiệm từng đồng cho con cái - dù trước tôi làm Uber, tạo tài khoản cho mẹ dùng thẻ của tôi để đi Uber, mà mẹ tiếc tiền, lúc nào có khuyến mãi mới đi, còn lại cụ bảo đi xe buýt cho “khoẻ.” Tuổi trẻ như tôi cũng không biết mình có thể làm gì cho bố mẹ vui (ngoài việc 32 tuổi vẫn ăn bám bố mẹ một ngày 3 bữa cơm đều như vắt chanh). Có mấy lần xúc động, mẹ tâm sự mẹ buồn vì chưa được khoác lên mình váy cưới bao giờ. Năm nay mẹ 70 và kỷ niệm 45 năm ngày cưới bố mẹ, tặng mẹ và bố một bất ngờ nho nhỏ - một chiếc váy cưới và một bộ ảnh cưới “muộn” cho bố mẹ tại chính nơi tình yêu bắt đầu - Đại học Bách Khoa. Mẹ đẹp và đôn hậu lắm, và lâu rồi mới thấy bố hiền và ngượng nghịu thế này. Chúc bố mẹ sức khoẻ tốt, tiếp tục tập bơi và yoga thường xuyên, sống lâu trăm tuổi cho con cháu tiếp tục hành hehe. Muộn cũng hay, vì gia đình mình càng ngày càng bành trướng, mà ông Cương bà Thoa thích điều này! — Whenever my parents urge me to get married… I answer them back: I just follow dad’s example and won’t get married until 40. Why’s that? Dad got married when he was 32, though the youth back then usually got a child when they were 30… You see, dad got married when he was my age now, which is 32. Now, my dad is 77, and my mom is 70. It’s almost 45 years since they started living under one roof. Back in the day, they were lecturers at Hanoi University of Science and Technology. Dad was 4 classes ahead of mom. Until now they haven’t let me know how they fell in love with one another. I guess it might make them embarrassed. I heard that they had to suffer a lot when getting married in 1972. Back then, the US bombarded the North of Vietnam all the time. During the nationwide Resistance War Against America, famine - poverty - misery are the never-ending situation that can be found in every part, from Hanoi to the countryside. My parents were both born into farmer’s families. My father’s father died in 1945. And grandparents had nothing other than their love to give my parents. My parents got married while they were living in poverty, as the salary of civil servants didn’t allow them to afford a decent wedding. The wedding bed was just a creaky wooden board in the corner of my grandma’s room in the countryside, with rats running around all the time. A wedding dress was a luxury beyond my mom’s reach. That’s true! Not many of my friend’s parents who are above 60 got a wedding dress. My mom just followed my dad home, with nothing but her love. It was Vietnam’s subsidy period, everyone was hard up and starving. At the end of 1972, when my mom was expecting my brother named Ha, my house, on Bach Mai Street, was attacked by a bomb from the US. Luckily, she was at the lab back then, so I get a chance to be here right now to type these lines with an American device. When dad went abroad again and again, my mom stayed at home to brought up my brother, and then me. In the 1970s, communications were quite a challenge. My dad spent 5 years in Gruzia on his post-graduate program, and all my mom received during the whole time was the hand-written letters that came once every six months. Mom devoted her life to raising my brother. Then my dad went to Algeria, in a program that Vietnamese professors were sent abroad to pay the war debt, leaving my mom at home giving birth to me and bringing me up. My dad toiled away overseas and sent money to Vietnam to raise the family. (Back then, my family was the first one to have a colored TV in the village. In the evening, the whole village gathered at my house to watch the news. It was great fun!) My mom was responsible for both the office work and housework, including raising my brother and me. My dad's and mom's way of life are alike in many ways. They both experienced separations and sacrificed their own lives for the family and their children. What about their egos? Just leave them there. My brother's family and I often encourage my parents to travel together. At this age, they don't have too much time left. They still haven't got used to living for themselves. They save up every penny for their children. When I worked for Uber, I created a Uber account using my credit card for my mom. But she didn't use it unless there was a promotion. My parents even said going by bus would do them good. A young guy like me doesn’t know how to delight my parents (except for the fact that I’m a freeloader who has 3 meals a day with my parents). Once in a while, mom is deeply moved, saying that she is sad because she hasn’t ever put on a wedding dress. This year, when mom is 70, is my parents’ 45th wedding anniversary. On this occasion, I gave them a small surprise - a dressing dress and a “belated” wedding photoshoot at the place where they struck up their love - Hanoi University of Science and Technology. My mom was really beautiful and graceful. And it is a long time since I last saw my dad was that gentle and embarrassed. I wish mom and dad good health. I hope they will keep practice swimming and yoga regularly, and live to 100 so that we can keep “teasing” them. *hehe* Having a belated photoshoot has its perks too, because my family is getting bigger and bigger, and my parents - Mr. Cuong and Mrs. Thoa like this!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

QE, inflation, slave labor and a People's Bailout

The Obama administration inherited a vast economic crisis. They responded with Quantitative Easing, pumping trillions into the finance sector to rescue the banks that had knowingly gambled on bad mortgages, losing so much they were about to go under.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/24/the-fed-launched-qe-nine-years-ago--these-four-charts-show-its-impact.html

At the time, deficit hawks predicted inflation, which is a commonsense prediction: inflation is what happens when the amount of money chasing goods and services goes up faster than the supply of those goods and services, creating bidding wars.

They were right...and wrong. What we got was asset bubbles, especially in housing markets, driving up the price of putting a roof over your head rewarding speculators and landlords, especially Wall Street landlords.

And Obama's handling of the financial crisis put a lot of us under the thumbs of landlords! Obama bailed out the banks, but not the mortgage holders, kicking off waves of foreclosures.

Thanks to lax oversight, banks that had cheated to originate or service mortgages were able to cheat on foreclosures, too - stealing houses from borrowers who were up-to-date on payments or who were entitled to forebearance.

https://web.archive.org/web/20101017014628/http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101014/bs_yblog_upshot/is-david-j-stern-the-poster-boy-for-the-foreclosure-mess

I mean, literally stealing houses by the hundreds or even the thousands. The very same people who created the great financial crisis got bailed out, rather than punished, and used their new lease on life to commit even worse crimes with total impunity.

The houses that were foreclosed (and sometimes stolen) were flipped to Wall Street, who LOVE financial products based on peoples' homes. After all, people will move heaven and earth to keep shelter over their kids' heads.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/blackstone-rental-homes-bundled-derivatives/

Corporate landlords built a sturdy, three-legged stool to guarantee the flow of rents to their investors.

I. Jack up rents to consume the majority of tenants' income:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/09/wall-street-owns-main-street-literally.html

II. Cease maintenance, knowing that your tenants have no recourse if their homes are crumbling and unsafe:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-housing-invitation/

III. Perfect the eviction, heretofore an American rarity:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-03/wall-street-america-s-new-landlord-kicks-tenants-to-the-curb

America's housing crisis - substandard homes rented at unsustainable costs to people who had their own homes stolen from them by the same investors they're currently paying rent to - is a major legacy of QE, and it's definitely inflationary.

But it's a highly selective form of inflation. Many people won't experience it at all: if you owned your house before the crisis and weathered it, the asset bubble has made your home more valuable, while falling interest rates let you refi at rock-bottom rates. You're great.

You're paying less than ever for a home that's worth more than ever, but that's a spillover effect of the main show, which is the process by which millions of Americans were robbed of their homes and then moved into high-priced slums to the benefit of the 1%.

Both Obama and Trump have boasted of the economy's performance since QE, pointing to soaring share prices - share prices that are totally decoupled from company performance. Companies lose money and still gain value.

Indeed, predatory companies (like Grubhub, Postmates, Door Dash and Uber Eats) that destroy profitable companies (restaurants) while still losing money are booming in value.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/18/code-is-speech/#schadenpizza

Investors understand that consumers have no money, due to rising housing costs plus crashing wages, largely thanks to the "gig economy," a polite term for "worker misclassification."

Companies that get bailouts would be stupid to spend the money on jobs or new productive capacity to make stuff no one can afford to buy. Instead, they buy their own shares and declare dividends, driving up share prices.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/20/the-cadillac-of-murdermobiles/#austerity

We have seen an incredible market bull-run since the Great Financial Crisis, a run that has largely continued since the pandemic. It's the other asset bubble: a bubble in investment assets.

Corporate leaders claim responsibility for these rises, but the reality is that it's the predictable result of bailing out banks and companies rather than workers and homeowners.

Société Générale's analysts say that about half of the stock market's gains since 2008 can be attributed to QE.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/without-qe-the-s-p-500-would-be-trading-closer-to-1-800-than-3-300-says-societe-generale-11604688442

Top-down bailouts have multiplier effects. The banks are made whole, then they get to steal our houses, then they get to steal our rents, then they get to goose their share prices.

This is how the super-rich got even richer, before and after the pandemic. It's also why the tiny minority of Americans with adequate retirement savings saw them swell - it's another spillover effect of the great upward transfer of national wealth.

Why does all of this matter now? Well, between my writing my first paragraph and this one, Biden was declared, giving us what the Biden campaign signalled would be "Obama's third term."

Biden's taking office amidst a financial crisis that's far worse than 2008.

Biden has a long track-record of giving legislative gifts to the finance sector at the expense of the American people. They called him "The Senator from MNBA" for a reason.

https://www.gq.com/story/joe-biden-bankruptcy-bill

If he addresses this crisis the same way that he did in 2008 - the way that Congress and the Senate addressed the crisis in 2020 - by bailing out finance, not the public, we're seriously fucked.

Sure, the stock market will continue to rise and rise, as will house prices.

If you are in the 1%, you will get SO MUCH richer. If you're in the 10%, your retirement savings will swell, your mortgage will get cheaper, and your house's value will go up.

For everyone else: evictions, foreclosures, soaring rents, worse wages.

Last week, California voters passed Prop 22, safeguarding the right of gig economy companies to misclassify their workers as contractors and pay them sub-minimum wages, withhold benefits, evade payroll and unemployment taxes, etc.

Uber/Lyft spent $200m to secure that win.

As Prop22's promoters remind us: Gig work is the new unemployment benefit: it's a private-sector jobs guarantee, work you can get at the tap of your screen. It's a perfect labor market - workers effectively bid to offer the best price to perform servant work for others.

The more workers there are, and the more desperate their situation is, the lower the payments go. A lot of those savings are siphoned off by the (money-losing, stock-soaring) gig companies, but some of it is passed onto customers.

This is by design.

Since the Reagan years, neoliberal regulators and lawmakers have hewed to a radical anti-monopoly theory called "consumer harm." Under "consumer harm," monopolies are only a problem if they drive up prices.

Since gig companies lower prices, they are totally kosher - even if they secure monopolies through predatory pricing.

But there's an even more insidious side to "consumer harm" and the gig economy.

Misclassifying workers as independent contractors converts a brutally exploited workforce into a collection of "small businesses." If they get together and demand higher wages, THEY violate the consumer harm standard. They're a group of companies fixing prices!

We're 12 years into the QE experiment and it has demonstrated the relationship between government money-creation and inflation: inflation isn't the result of government spending, it's the result of government spending that leads to bidding wars.

Giving trillion to the rich created inflation in the things that rich people buy: our houses (out from under us) and stocks.

Now, imagine what a People's Bailout could do.

Imagine replacing the gig economy job guarantee (a workfare program with no workplace protections, job security or minimum wage) with an actual Job Guarantee as described by the economist Pavlina Tcherneva:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/05/the-hard-stuff/#jobs-guarantee

Federally funded, locally administered: good jobs at inclusive wages that served community needs proposed by community groups and approved by local governments.

Would that be inflationary? Recall that inflation is what happens when the number of buyers goes up and the supply of things they're buying doesn't keep up. Inflation is the result of bidding wars.

For a jobs guarantee to be inflationary, there would have to be a bidding war for the US workforce. That is the opposite of what we have now.

https://wolfstreet.com/2020/11/06/picture-emerges-of-a-weird-recovery-to-still-historically-awful-levels/

The reason no one wants to buy Americans' labor is that no one has any money to buy the things Americans make with their labor. The only people with money - the wealthy - primarily buy our homes out from under us, and stocks.

QE for the wealthy has made the economy incredibly perverse. Productive companies are being driven to bankruptcy by gig economy companies that lose money. Millions of workers compete to provide services for the lucky few, for dwindling wages.

Workers can't afford to buy stuff so companies have no reason to make stuff and so they become finance grifts, until they collapse, like Hertz did (after it converted itself from a car-rental company to an accountancy trick company):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/27/literal-gunhumping/#hertz-uranus

The gig economy jobs guarantee can't last. Eventually the number of workers bidding to serve the wealthy will exceed demand by such a wide margin that wages turn negative - the depreciation and payments on your gig economy car will exceed your income.

But a real, public sector, federal Jobs Guarantee? Yes please.

Paying workers good wages to do productive things that their communities need will create demand for the thing companies have decided not to make anymore.

In other words, it will enable companies to make profits again, and it will drive out the companies whose share prices soared on the expectation of losses (accompanied by dividends and buybacks). It will dampen the stock market, but improve the economy.

This will mean the end of those spillover effects - soaring house-valuations and 401ks for the lucky few - but those came at a VERY high price - vast un- and underemployment, the gutting of the productive economy, crushing debt for the majority.

America bought those house price rises and 401k gains at a steep price: it cost the nation its resilience and political stability.

If the goal of QE was to secure middle-class Americans' retirements, it was spectacularly wasteful.

A tiny fraction of QE's trillions went to middle-class retirements, while the vast majority went to making the 1% far, far richer. Most middle class Americans still don't have secure retirements - their dotage will be spent competing for gig economy jobs.

For the price of QE, the US government could simply have guaranteed the necessities of retirees: shelter, food, care. This spending would crowd out jobs, sure - the worst-paid, most precarious jobs, from fast food to gig economy "jobs."

It would make America into a country of secure and prosperous people, instead of food-delivery drivers and dog-walkers.

12 years of finance bailouts and 0 years of People's Bailouts have only exacerbated this, and the pandemic metastasised it.

When it comes to stimulus, America can't afford a third Obama term. We need to demand better of Biden - we need to demand a People's Bailout.

For almost* all our sakes.

*Offer not valid in America's richest ZIP codes.

[dwestfieldblog]

A VERY REMOTE ENGLISH TEACHER

Where meditations, rants, reverie and absent seizures cross over... closer to one gun with one bullet, the rose of ruby and the cross of gold...uff, and MENTACIDE IN THE TIME OF MASQUES. Although I have never suffered from the guilty masochistic torture of ‘pleasure anxiety’, Bacchus hath indeed drowned more men than Neptune.  So I stopped drinking for 18 days to fool myself I was doing something positive and threw away enough things to be minimalist again. Arf. Beauty and/or function uber alles.  

Been treading water for three years and trying not to drown...big round of one hand clapping for the former poet. Meanwhile, in this temporary world and perception I have created of it, I am looking at a very possible exile one way or the other...my ‘plan’...a long phased withdrawal or hasty retreat. My wish is to stay, but once I leave, it might well be very hard to return.  Read as many metaphors as you want into that but in spite of my dislike of the conservatively minded Aristotle’s ‘either/or’ nonsense, there do indeed appear to be only two this time. And appear is the operative word. Appearances can be deceptive and emotions (unless raised and focused) cloud over what should be clear. Pain has a tendency to breed worry and fear too but let’s draw a veil over that for now eh? Suppress, suppress, release comes later...breathe deep and try not to cough, onward we go where the game gets rough...Just like Tom Thumbs Blues 65.  

Remember Roman Protasevich...As Lukasenko himself said...‘Belarus stood at the edge of an abyss and I helped it take a step forward’. Look good on your tombstone that will Al. Fecking outrageous the Indian PM only admitted in May that covid was transmitted in the air. He needs removing... as do two thirds of all the other world leaders East and West. Hello Bollsanaro. People are very easy to manipulate when they’re are scared or angry...and right now the world majority are both. But, ‘there is a crack in everything... that’s how the light gets in’... and ‘things could change’, doesn’t have to be for the worse. It can take decades to realise this as actual truth, but still nice to read and try internalise the following last week.’The odds actually favour the optimists, since dissipate structures are more likely to evolve into more information rich (intelligent?) forms than into primitive or chaotic forms.’ All my friends bar my best one are optimists..Hello you:-)

Ever onward deeper downward with Orban in Hungary and his mission of ‘Christian values’, which involves a familiar routine of arresting, beating and disappearing dissenters in the name of Christ and taking over the universities to replace professors with those who understand on which side their bread is buttered. Decent judges long gone. Nice fascist communism...and ex soldiers in France and the Czech republic warning of civil war...

And now spiraling we go into the black hole vortex of Disaster capitalism, ‘Let the bodies pile high’. There’s gold in them thar ills....ISLAND PARANOIA and PERFIDIOUS ALBION! A country which demands a contract, agrees, signs to it and then refuses to honour it. We look worse than ridiculous, we look deceitful. Gentlemen, your places please. Boris Johnson is a clumsy, inept, disgraceful charlatan, con merchant and LIAR. A blustering master bullshit artist, the only decent thing about his recent secret wedding is that now he legally has one less bastard child.  

Recently I read that British people are displaying signs of Stockholm syndrome...in that they dislike those who hold power over them and make the rules but during the time of pandemic, they are the ones who will release the saviour vaccine and get everything moving again. So rather than rocking the boat and daring to express dissent at the DIABOLICAL handling of the last 18 months, they have mostly kept quiet and voted for the same endlessly failing, corrupt and venal politicians who made a bad situation far worse. (That said, it bears repeating that there are a few million in the UK who didn’t quite understand that that the spread of a highly contagious airborne virus can be slowed by the wearing of masks/applying basic hygiene and even took offence at being told what should have made sense to any adult homo SAPIENS half capable of cogitating for themselves. Morons and scum. Same where you are?

By the way BBC...the colossal dearth of stories about the endless government failures in relation to Covid, death, corruption and the NHS...ever since they blackmailed you with threats of revoking the TV licence fee and got you to change Directors has been noted. Long may Have I Got News For You continue the satire and balance needed in a DEMOCRACY. Obey your public servants? Why, when they do not serve few but themselves? Power OF the people? Which ones...the mob? The same bleating pricks who follow populists?

Four eyed beanpole fop Rees Mogg, with his wonderful line that the benefits of Brexit will be seen ‘over the next fifty years’...well yes, that is why most people vote in democratic elections eh?...So they will be dead or ancient before the change they hoped for comes...and the politicians who lead them now, will have all long moved on to revolving door chairman of the board offshore limited liability company paradise. Bread today jam tomorrow fairytales. What I tell you three times is true.  

O, but the English do so love to be told what to do by dumb posh boys who treat them like dirt. Some are forelock tugging and some are self flagellating middle class upper class wannabes who will never get there but still feel proud they are not street level proles. Doby the house elf alien hamster Michael Gove found guilty of breaking the law. Nothing. Internal inquiries run by those connected to the money changing hands find nothing illegal. Corruption for all to see...and ignore. ‘Well, what can we do?’ The uselessly inept serial failure Dido Harding to be in charge of the National Health Service? (she of the collapsed Woolworths, Talk Talk and the 22 BILLION pound loss of the Covid Track and Trace program where non working consultants/insultants, were paid 1000 pounds a day). American style privatisation is coming where only the wealthy or criminal can afford to be repaired and well. Sick.  

Meanwhile, All our imported nurses out, and all the lobster red fat Spanish costa de la sol criminals back in. Great exchange, fair trade and forward thinking. The Kremlin are manipulating/supporting Scottish independence... I read years ago about their base in Edinburgh for Russia Today (the foul insert in The Daily Telegraph) and they were already encouraging it. Rees Smug has accelerated and supported their freedom with his snobbish utterances on countries in the UK other than England and their ‘foreign languages’. With every patronising, arrogant pronouncement, the Eton trifles fuel the fire in Scotland which has a long bitter history of being tortured, murdered and subjugated by their southern masters. Perhaps the chumocracy in Downing Street believe the Celts to be as easily cowed as the middle and working classes down south. Here’s hoping not. ‘Rebellious Scots to crush’? Not this time pal.

As for the future of Britain? A dystopian open prison where the lower social classes toil only at the pleasure of their masters. The higher caste getting richer and all others cast into a living Hell of debt, crime, and sickness. Serve until you die and be thankful we allow you to exist. Increasing in utter irrelevance to the world, other than as an example of how wrong a former democracy can go. This future started decades ago...its baobab roots truly deep now. Better education and critical thinking for the masses in the UK (or anywhere else) is highly unlikely now. Optimism huh? As long as I am not in England, I will still be able to tap into it, but once enclosed long term in the group mind there...trapped in a grey quagmire. Keep smiling...

Several weeks ago, I watched a video on YT of apparently English protestors running after the police in London, some attacking and throwing things, one pulling off the pandemic mask of an officer and all shouting abuse at the outnumbered cops who had to keep pulling back. As always, to get my caffeine rush of fury going, I read the comments and was surprised to see two or three from Chinese names. Almost all comments were against the government (fair enough) and dumb against the lock down, masks, vaccinations etc. Checking again, I saw the video had been posted by CGTN...a media company owned and run by the communist party in Beijing...and not one author of diatribes had mentioned this, nor speculated with a critical thought as to why such an organisation might enjoy turning people against their own democratically elected government (however mind rippingly foul and corrupt they are).

I copy pasted the Wikipedia paragraph about the company onto the page and hoped someone else would make the connection. I wouldn’t mind so much IF there were a credible and decent alternative other than the diseased populist poison for which the demonstrating goons chant. China really cares about the standard of democracy in Britain eh? Persuade your enemies to weaken themselves. Destroying countries by encouraging their ‘patriots’.

(That was written on the anniversary of Tienanmen Square...a few days later Xi Jinping gave a speech saying ‘...a lovable and respectable’ China must be presented to the world and must ‘expand its circle of friends’. Tell that to your teenage ‘dissidents’, Muslims, Falun Gong and Tibetans being tortured and brainwashed in prisons or being used for organ harvesting. Tell it to Hong Kong and Taiwan.) 

Unholy America...against abortion and the pill, sex education’s not Gods will and in the Name of Christ they kill...if truth be known, we’ve failed the test...but Jesus was a Socialist and Republican conservatives hate them. The founding fathers of America were Very clear about separation of church and state with damn good Reason. Another part time Christian, Mike Pompeo wants to be president. Q Onan deepstorm morons/Kremlin stool pigeons aka POLEZNYYE IDIOTY continue to push for Trump and his Big Lie...He with the brain where ‘In the left, nothing is right and in the right, nothing’s left.’ Arf.

Over the last two decades, the dumb have been finding their voice and are now louder and prouder of their dumbass ignorance. 74 million in the US alone, their egos unable to retreat in the face of endless evidence to the contrary, they all double down. Like children sticking their fingers in their grimy ears sing songing ‘la la la can’t hear you’. 74 million versions of Eric Cartman, loud, proud and wrong. And uuff, Megan Markle,  Majorie Taylor Greene, walking Picasso collage (bad car driver) Caitlin Jenner and Ivana Trump in politics...not exactly holding a proud lantern for women eh? I’d like to buy them for what they are worth and sell them for what they think they are worth. Not very PC?  

That was the point. Could easily been written about all of the men written about here too. Next examples follow...

Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones compete for who can be as mentally ill as trump. The Miami school where the husband and wife directors told teachers not to return if they had HAD their vaccine shots because their proximity to students was interfering with menstrual cycles and uuuufff...The sickness of utter mind buggering stupidity. I had my first shot, now waiting to turn reptilian when the 5G masts triangulate my position. Fnord. Covid appears to be killing more overweight meat eating males than females...perhaps testosterone is not useful for the coming Race of non binary mutant hermaphrodites...and look out for the end of the Y chromosome, coming to a temporary universe near you...in 4.6 million years. Yes, really.  

Glad Netanyahu is out at last, smug corruption is never a good look unless one is a rich criminal. Ha.  The Promised land of Israel...If I was in court for serial murder, breaking, entering and stealing and then defended my actions by saying that God had told me to do it, would the Judge; A. Call for a psychiatric report, B. Disregard the statement as unprovable and pass the appropriate sentence, C, say Ok mate, you’re free to go, good luck to you. ? Moses had a good schtick.

The law is only to punish the poor, do you feel as if you suffer from empathy? Once you know, you no longer need to believe. What does ‘reality’ seem to be? The more certain you are, the stupider you get and belief is the death of intelligence. The machine is running the engineers. What is the definition of rationality...the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason or logic. 

Nothing is, but thinking makes it so. Epicurus.  

EVERYTHING NOT COMPULSORY IS FORBIDDEN.

The glamour illusion of the mass of pointless hot influencers needs a constant renewing of the Banishing Ritual as much as all the pigslop bile coming from Fox News and Sky. Bloody long haired commie liberal faggot they cry against any not identical to them. Some days I have only flamethrowers of hatred for these idiots. Other days...not exactly self doubt, just questions...most of us seem to believe our opinions are more valid when there are emotions connected to them. Including me. Again, this seems like a very weak version of ‘truth’, unless disciplined, channeled and focused to a certain end.

Life appears to exist in order to become via chaos.

Most of us are working only not to be homeless, some because of the joy in our chosen work regardless of finances. Until ‘reality’ kicks in the door...the bondage gets tighter when you struggle. How much hardship is the individual willing to endure these days by choice? Surrounded by a universe of distraction and destruction, Maya mewling for our attention. Five years of Trump, rampant populism and Brexit doing a Hexagram 23 on democracy, compounded by the pandemic...all on top of ‘normal’ daily life. The ego feeds and the immune system breaks down. Hard to ignore without being on a mountain or in a parallel dimension and emotion free other than compassion. But BY GODDESS IT CAN AND WILL BE DONE. Ladies of Life Nin Khursag, Isis, Kali, Aradia...Love one, Love ALL. At very least have respect for thyself but be not thou proud of thine arrogance nor thy suffering.  

Or just Remember where you came from, what you were, seem to be and will become.

Heal, heal, more work to do, more love to give, more love to feel, Heal. Stay in drugs, eat your school and don’t do vegetables. Impose your own reality upon and through yourself, breathe, exhale, repeat, and continue, LOVE UNDER WILL. Experience and absorb but ‘It’s a house of tricks, ignore the world’’.

Stay well, be seeing you:-)

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To reiterate a point:

THE MAJORITY OF POLLUTION DONE ON THE PLANET IS DONE BY A FEW PEOPLE CAPABLE OF DOING MORE DAMAGE OR GOOD FOR THE PLANET IN A DAY THAN ANY AVERAGE PERSON COULD DO IN A LIFETIME

For the love of all that you hold dear please keep recycling, keep shrinking that carbon footprint if you want. That’s all good but the people in the world with the most control over things, causing the biggest carbon footprints, are a minority of Uber-rich people and the companies they own.

so for fucks sake please start getting involved in politics.

Be vocal to your politicians that their constituents care about the environment. So they can stop catering to people who hear about a clean water shortage in the future and decide to buy stocks in clean water as an immediate reaction.

And if they don’t want to stop supporting cash cows who see a disaster and try to profit from it instead of fix or stop it, then we push them out of their office until they get with the program and understand that as public servants their job is to work for us, the average citizens, and not a minority of rich people who lobby in their direction.

[mozverse]

What Can Artificial Intelligence Teach Us?

Machine learning can help create a new type of agent with many cognitive abilities. AI systems learn to recognize patterns in data and can predict future states. AI systems can learn from millions of examples and can make adjustments to adapt to new situations. Artificial intelligence programming is focused on three different cognitive skills: learning, creating rules and algorithms, and predicting outcomes. The goal of these algorithms is to make an AI agent capable of accomplishing a task with a high degree of accuracy.

The first AI research involved Tomkins. He had an encounter with a well-established psychologist at Princeton who had made a significant contribution to psychology. Tomkins had studied affects in the human mind and had found that facial expressions are universal. Since affects are shared across cultures, Ekman's theory would help AI to learn and recognize them. Ekman largely duplicated Tomkins' methods. He used photographs of subjects from around the world to test whether these expressions were universal.

Emotion tracking is useful for product developers as it can reveal which features elicit the most engagement and excitement. Affectiva's Auto AI platform, for example, can recognize different emotions and adapt the environment in a vehicle. In car settings, cameras and microphones can identify drowsiness in a passenger and change their tone. But the same technology could be biased and misunderstand some passengers. If the algorithms used to interpret emotion were biased, they could lead to biased behavior.

The next stage of AI research focuses on emotional intelligence. The use of AI in human environments will likely affect the way we relate to the technology. Emotional intelligence (EI) can influence how we view AI and its potential impact on human behavior. The article focuses on 300 people in one study. It was conducted through online questionnaires and feedback from 152 respondents. This study demonstrates the impact of AI on human emotions.

Researchers in the field of robotics are also studying emotional behaviour. One field, developmental robotics, works with robots that have complex senses. Its goal is to better understand human development and decision-making processes. A cognitive architect, on the other hand, studies how behaviour emerges through experience. In the near future, robots may have the ability to emulate human emotions. That could be very helpful in the future, when robots have become our companions and help us make decisions.

The development of AI has also opened the door to new businesses. For example, Uber uses sophisticated machine learning algorithms to predict where a rider is needed. Google also makes use of machine learning to improve its services. While this is exciting, it does have some disadvantages. But it does offer many opportunities. The technology has also helped to fuel an explosion in efficiency. Many companies are taking advantage of AI to achieve their goals. One such example is Uber, which uses sophisticated machine learning algorithms to predict and dispatch a driver at the right time.

AI has a long history. Humans were the first to explore the possibility of machine intelligence. Ancient Greek myths described the god Hephaestus forging robot-like servants. Egyptian engineers even built statues of gods and priests who animated them. The field of AI has progressed immensely over the past 20 years. But the field is still in its early stages, and we must learn more about it in order to fully grasp its potential.

EAI systems can alter our personal values hierarchy. For example, an EAI robot might have a very high value for Karen, who had lived with it for many years. Later, she might split up with her boyfriend, and she would be alone with her robot-dinosaur. She may have let her child play with the robot, or she might have saved the robot when a car came. These choices will alter the person's value hierarchy.

As AI develops, there are three main categories. The first one, called weak AI, lacks the ability to generalize. Such AI systems would have narrow capabilities and be specifically designed to perform specific tasks. Examples of this kind of AI include industrial robots and virtual personal assistants. The next level of AI is super AI, which is expected to have a wide range of cognitive capabilities. The final one, dubbed super AI, is expected to be capable of social skills and scientific creativity.

Another category of applications for artificial intelligence is psychotherapy. While psychotherapy is the most effective form of therapy available today, technology is still a long way from replicating the process. For one thing, some people are shy about talking about their feelings with therapists, while others find the process time-consuming and stigmatizing. The AI therapist could offer a less stigmatizing avenue of support, and be able to conduct more frequent, personalized assessments. With an estimated one billion people suffering from mental disorders, such a virtual therapist could be a godsend.

[theliterateape]

American Shithole #23 — Burn in Hell, Motherfucker (Adios, John McCain)

By Eric Wilson

“You’ve been off the grid for two months after collapsing from stress; are you really going to come back now and revisit a languishing column, just to trash a dead war hero?”

It seems so, yes.

"OK, seems like suicide though."

I also thought I would alleviate any concerns regarding my mental health by talking to myself throughout this piece.

Anyway, it's not as if we have a long-standing tradition as a species regarding the expression of ill-will toward the deceased...

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum

… er, right; so I suppose with all the adoration and reverence for this war-decorated turd in the air, I am fairly certain my harshness regarding his fucking abysmal voting record (which is the bulk of what should matter when considering his service to this country) will be met with contempt?

Perhaps, but the truth remains — he was a shit-biscuit, like all fucking conservatives. The only question is: How much shit was in his biscuit?

Well, let’s take a look at his voting record, shall we? The folks at PoliticsThatWork have been kind enough to compile all manner of data on our government officials and representatives, including the voting history of our senators, including Sen. John McCain.

I’ve chosen three related areas to focus on, although I believe a completely random selection from this list would net the same conclusion. For a more in-depth look at their data collection and weighting, check out their methodology page.

1.      Poverty Amelioration: 0% Support.

What to focus on when his focus on keeping rich people rich is so clearly defined?

McCain’s Nay on the amendment to establish pre-kindergarten programs for low-income families (2015 roll call s247) seems particularly cruel amidst a sea of cruelty.

2.      A Robust Safety Net: 5.3% Support.

The thing to take away here seems to be that if the legislation had anything to do with social security benefits, Medicare or Medicaid, the McCain position was consistent.

“If you are sick or disabled in America and you are poor, fuck you.”

3.      Public Health: 16.3% Support.

With a fair amount of crossover from the previous category, McCain has remained a hard-line conservative with zero empathy for sick Americans that struggle with access to affordable healthcare.

He has been particularly harsh to efforts offering protections for vulnerable minority groups.

For further evidence I encourage you to check out the rest of his legislative stances. Go ahead; open up McCain’s voting record on environmental protection. I dare, ya. I double-dog dare ya. Look at that epic-level corporate-whoring!

Overall — as his voting clearly demonstrates — McCain was an overstuffed shit-biscuit for pretty much every American that wasn’t rich and white.

Paints quite a different picture, just looking at the recorded facts.

“But, but, but…”

No buts — he was an enemy of the motherfucking people.

“But, he saved healthcare!”

Yeah, he saved healthcare — only after trying to kill it for years, and only after considering how much of a blow it would be to his arch-nemesis Trump if he were able to torpedo the vote to repeal Obamacare at the very last second. I imagine it was also a last-ditch effort to cement his Maverick legacy.

So, yeah, thanks, John. Thanks for staving off the inevitable — maybe now some of us will die in four years, instead of two.

Eternal damnation seems a light sentence for the rest of your dinosaur beliefs put to action; all your fucking saber-rattling, your warmongering — and all of your billionaire-servicing corporate-whoring, your incessant toeing of nearly every motherfucking republican party-line. Your repeatedly misogynistic, anti-LGBTQ, anti-social progress stances, and support for almost every fucking conservative front-line agenda.

Until Trump mocked you into one vote of ancillary decency.

Now everyone wants to paint you up a spirited folk hero. “Son, have I ever told you the story of the wandering Maverick Fuckface of Washington D.C.?”

Maverick, my ass. You were a fucking Neanderthal; a flag-waving imbecile with Corporate America’s dick so far down your throat, I’m surprised you never shit stock portfolios.  

Your decades-long inane conservative rhetoric and dog-whistling across the aisles didn’t make you out to be a renegade; it made you out to be a dick. Blowing up a nation of terrified brown people, and then repeatedly shitting all over the poor and disenfranchised of your own country — that is your legacy.

You were another cog in the late-stage-capitalist slave-machine. You were a voice of the few.

Good fucking riddance.

At least I don’t feel so alone any longer in my disapproval; the fine folks at DemocracyNow! recently weighed in on McCain, albeit with a gentler touch.

What pisses me off most about McCain’s death is how many fucking liberals couldn’t fall over themselves fast enough to lionize this absolute shit of a public servant.

The same fucking liberals calling out for “restraint” from progressives.

The same elites that can’t fucking wait to forgive Trump supporters — not Trump voters mind you, anyone can make a mistake — but his insane base that would just as soon burn the world to the motherfucking ground before entertaining even a moment of self-realization.

“Don’t disparage noble McCain,” the rich, white, liberals who have suffered fuck-all from the evils of the republican party insist (while the rest of us have been through various degrees of actual hell). They just want everyone to get back to getting along, so they can get back to their fucking privilege. I may be a poor, white, disabled, male, Scandinavian-grade uber-progressive — and I am very aware of the privilege I have experienced in America — but I am not sucking one single republican dick (alive or dead) to get one lick of status-quo back; or to lay any groundwork for welcoming stray Trump supporters back into the fold. Fuck privilege, fuck inequality, fuck the Trump base, fuck all greed-related ideology, and fuck dead John McCain. I may angrily wish there were a hell for him to burn in, but fortunately for him I’m an atheist, so the nothingness of the beyond will have to suffice.

“Don’t you have anything nice to say about him at all?”

Absolutely. He was one of the very best republicans we had.

[rulystuff]

https://servicemeltdown.com/a-disregard-for-serving-the-public-the-united-states-government-at-work/

New Post has been published on https://servicemeltdown.com/a-disregard-for-serving-the-public-the-united-states-government-at-work/

A DISREGARD FOR SERVING THE PUBLIC: THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT AT WORK

Editor’s note: A recent reader to my blog asked: “I’m interested in your perspective on the recent government stalemate regarding spending. Is this a total disregard for serving the public or rather two sides that are firmly looking to serve their constituents? Your book addresses how to reconcile the seemingly conflicting objectives of pursuing revenue while achieving customer satisfaction. How would you apply the same thinking to this problem?” My response follows.

In today’s economy it is not so much a debate about spending but about debt spending. The debt of the United States is currently in excess of $28 trillion or about 127% greater than the nation’s annual economic output or GDP. This makes the debt-to-GDP ratio the highest since the end of WWII. And, with Democrats at the helm in Washington hell-bent on buying votes the level of spending is expected to grow by many more trillions of dollars before they get voted out of power. Thirty years ago, in contrast, the ratio of debt to GDP hovered around 50%.

Roughly seventy-eight percent of the current debt total or about $22 trillion represents IOU’s – Treasury bills, bonds or notes – held by you and me as taxpayers, corporations, and foreign governments. The rest of the debt or about $6 trillion is money owed by the government to various departments and agencies. The Social Security Trust Fund, most notably, accounts for about 50% of all intra-governmental obligations. Given this backdrop, we have a perfect right to be antsy about when or whether we’ll get paid back.  Social Security, particularly, should be of grave concern as it is precariously balanced at a break even between tax revenues taken in and benefits paid out.

The current debt level is financially troubling for the nation. Each U.S. taxpayer now carries nearly $200,000 of national debt on his back. This is roughly three times the debt-load citizens carried when President Obama came to power. That administration was all about spending, driving total debt from around $10 trillion – or about 67% of GDP – to in excess of $20 trillion, while stifling GDP growth by enacting endless regulatory roadblocks, and raising taxes. It is no wonder that the nation’s average annual growth rate of 2% was the slowest in almost a generation. You don’t have to be an economist to conclude that our nation’s lot has not improved over the last twelve years or so and it can be argued, quite convincingly, that it is nearly three times as worse off.

IF YOU CAN MEASURE IT THERE IS A CHANCE YOU CAN MANAGE IT

Granted, not every phenomenon is measurable – pride, purpose, patriotism, etc. But a financial metric indicative of a nation’s economic health is clearly measurable, trackable, and given sufficient political will manageable. George Shultz, former Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury, and economist John Taylor remind us in their book Choose Economic Freedom that the nation was devoid of the economic indicators that would have forecast, if not prevented, the inflationary and interest rate crises of the 60’s and 70’s never mind the fiasco that was the Great Recession of 2007-2009. We are apt to repeat those mistakes, however, if our political leaders fail to act. Incidentally, the Federal Reserve seems nonplussed by any of this while continuing to accommodate deficit spending. Just recently, Jerome Powell, Chairman of the FED indicated that “there is no question of our ability to service our debt for the foreseeable future.” This is the same FED that under Alan Greenspan refused to regulate over-the-counter derivatives which played a huge role in the aforementioned Great Recession.

Leaders in various countries have become more responsive to their citizens by coalescing around a national metric of financial prudence. Countries such as Switzerland, and Germany, have instituted “debt brakes” to keep spending within specified limits subject only to emergency conditions. Poland has gone a step further by constitutionally mandating a debt-to-GDP ratio of 60%. In the United States, nearly all states have balanced budget requirements while some even have specific spending caps. The stringency with which those requirements and caps are applied, however, varies widely from state to state.

Our political system has no such financial unifying principle or metric at the federal level other than the vague aspiration of serving the public and providing for the “common good” to guide the actions of elected officials. The upshot of such ambiguity is that even if in our wildest dreams we could imagine a Congress populated largely by selfless public servants the lack of a concrete metric to gauge the so-called common good would still lead to endless divisions and debates. Clearly, if a metric lacks clarity prescribing a course of action – never mind judging the merit of an action – is hardly an objective exercise.

The United States Congress, despite jawboning the matter for decades, has failed to set an objective standard of performance for which we as citizens can hold its members accountable – at least insofar as the nation’s debt management is concerned. It is little wonder that the debt ceiling is raised almost on cue every year. From 1980 to 2017, for instance, the debt ceiling was raised a total of 46 times. That’s 46 times in thirty-seven years. And, some years especially in the decades of the 1980’s and the 1990’s the debt ceiling was raised multiple times in a given year. The debt ceiling was most recently raised in 2019 by more than $2 trillion.

It is true, that a coterie of GOP senators – John Kennedy of Louisiana, and Rand Paul of Kentucky among them – has long argued for instituting spending cuts to offset debt limit increases but their enthusiasm for such an initiative has never been shared by the big spenders on both sides of the aisle. And, so the hobos dance around the barrel fire while taxpayers endure an eroding standard of living.

CAN GOVERNMENT LEARN ANYTHING FROM BUSINESS?

In business there are metrics aplenty. The vast majority of these metrics are indeed financial in nature. Fortunately, while of recent vintage, the debate has begun to turn so as to temper the uber-emphasis on revenue performance – or more correctly, earnings performance – versus customer satisfaction. And, although there are plenty of ways to directly gauge a customer’s satisfaction the assumption now is that there is no better proxy for the long-term potential of a business in the service and information age than the strength of its customer satisfaction ratings. Yes, there is much lip service that still surrounds the need to to serve customers with avidity. But executive leaders are now nearly unified in their belief – if not in their actions – that a satisfied customer is a most desirable long-term corporate objective.

The battles that now rage are more tactical and center mostly around the planning horizon over which the benefit of achieving high customer satisfaction ratings should be measured. Most executive leaders, unfortunately, are still of a mind that undertaking initiatives on behalf of the customer are fine if the benefit of such initiatives can be seen on the bottom line in the short term. This behavior, of course, is born of ingrained compensation schemes that reward executives for financial performance, this month, this quarter, this year. And, until such time as this myopic view of corporate performance is altered executives will flail in pursuit of sustainable competitive strategies while ironically lining their own pockets at the expense of shareholders.

THE DEBT CEILING DEBATE: A FINGER IN THE EYE OF THE U.S. TAXPAYER

In many ways, the hair-trigger reaction by Congress to raise the debt ceiling as spending nudges ever upward has much to do with voting constituencies that are not willing to give up any benefits that come their way. Keep in mind that roughly 62% of all federal spending goes for mandatory programs such as Social Security and Medicare so there is little Congress can do in these areas without undertaking major and radical changes. Approximately 8% goes to service the federal debt – a ratio which is apt to explode when interest rates, currently at .25%, return to historical averages. This leaves a not inconsiderable 30% of available budget dollars for discretionary items such as national defense, foreign aid, transportation, and education. It is the magnitude of the discretionary budget that gives rise to the spending jamboree which citizens witness each year as Congress kows to one political expediency or another. If that weren’t the case members of Congress would soon develop a stiff backbone and they would get serious about adopting a more prudent fiscal policy. 

The behavior of politicians in the debt ceiling debate has been nothing more than political theater and posturing. In the process, nothing much gets done. And, until unifying principles emerge that can rally a bi-partisan Congress to satisfy the will of the people in this regard the stalemate over the debt ceiling will continue to constitute a finger in the eye of the U.S. taxpayer. If there is a positive to the endless debates about the debt ceiling, however, is that it shines a light on the seriousness of our nation’s financial mismanagement by those in Washington. Clearly, the nation’s debt is growing faster than the economy. That path is unsustainable and will inevitably lead to making painfully difficult spending choices – guns or butter – that will only make the current debate look like kids’ play.

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