God’s Away on Business by Tom Waits

I am reposting this song by Tom Waits that I first heard over 15 years ago because it seems particularly apropos now about the greed and selfishness-infested state of the US in our time, especially the first stanza, where I take ‘the ship is sinking’ as a metaphor for the US.

I’d sell your heart to the junk-man baby for a buck, for a buck
If you’re looking for someone to pull you out of that ditch, you’re out of luck, you’re out of luck
The ship is sinking, the ship is sinking, the ship is sinking
There’s a leak, there’s a leak in the boiler room
The poor, the lame, the blind
Who are the ones that we kept in charge?
Killers, thieves and lawyers
God’s away, God’s away, God’s away on business.




Someone noticed the remarkable similarity between the voices of Waits and Cookie Monster and made a mashup of Cookie’s scenes from Sesame Street with Waits singing the song. For me the words carry even more weight when seemingly sung by the beloved muppet.

Since it is hard to make out the words sometimes, here are the lyrics.
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The cruelty is sickening

The US has very little in the form of safety nets for people who are struggling. One of the few things is the Supplemental Security Income program that “provides monthly payments to people with disabilities and older adults who have little or no income or resources.” Like most government social programs in the US, it does not cover the actual needs but at least it provides something.

Many of the people on SSI cannot live on their own because of mental or physical disabilities so it makes sense if they can find family members or other people with whom they can stay. This not only provides some emotional relief it actually relieves the burden on the state to fully cover the costs. But now ProPublica reports that the Trump administration is seeking to reduce the benefits paid to such people simply because they have families to help share the burden of care.
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John Oliver on AI chatbots

I have written before about my adventures with AI chatbots which were underwhelming, to put it mildly. Now John Oliver has come up with a detailed look at it, and all its problems. He points out that the companies have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on software development and hardware and data centers but have no significant revenue as yet.

The business model for chatbots seems to be to get as many people hooked on using these chatbots as possible by providing people with an experience that they enjoy, mostly for free. Once people get hooked, we can expect the companies to steadily degrade the free experience in order to get users sign up with paid subscriptions for ‘better’ versions, often similar to the one they previously got for free or sometimes with enhanced features. It is the same tactic that has been used over and over again by the tech and internet companies, as Cory Doctorow documents in his book Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, to lure people in before turning the screws on them.
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