The Answer is “Yes.” We are The Baddies.

It’s a scary moment, when you realize that nationalism is a pack of lies, like religion and being a sports fan. For me, it was slow-dawning but got a strong boost when I was in the army (1983-9, basic and reserve) the wastage and stupidity began to sink in on me and I was reading a lot of the history of other countries. It’s hard not to read stuff like The Best and The Brightest [worldcat] and start to realize that the author is not just pointing out that the emperor’s new clothes show a lot of skin, but so do all of his wise senior advisors. So, how did such a bunch of idiots accomplish this? Then, you realize that behind every Bonaparte is a Talleyrand. Behind every Trump is a Miller. And they create the sweet-smelling bullshit we are all fed as we grow up. What really did it for me was reading Howard Zinn’s A People’s History, [worldcat] which – my offer still stands – I will give anyone a copy of if they ask for it politely.

Reading Zinn caused me to shift my interest in history a few points to the side of where it had been focused straight on military history, and I began re-reading my favorite military histories and thinking about the political context. And/or wondering how it was pitched at the time.

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A psychic’s con

Defense Expert Dunc commented in an earlier post of mine, with a link to an article that we both find worthy of discussion. I think it’s worth treating as a separate posting, not Dunc’s words (if I have specific comments on Dunc’s thoughts I’ll make them elsewhere or on the OP)

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In The Beginning, There Was a Blog

Actually, I used to hang out at Affinity [aff] because sometimes there was interesting far-ranging discussions and art, and creativity. I started here at Pharyngula, when it was still under ScienceBlogs (I still have the mug!) and came to enjoy the rough-and-tumble crotch-kicking and religion-bashing. I still track there, but I have found that, in the last year, my ability to stay awake is seriously compromised, and the wars of religion are just a waste of time. In fact, I often catch myself thinking that the right-thinking people of the world were too busy pounding on theists to deconstruct the burgeoning fascist dictatorship that was growing in the wings.

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Creativity. Some Personal Observations

I used to be a highly creative person. I’m not bragging but one idea I threw out over a sushi dinner at Higashi West got turned into a start-up which netted the founder about $200mn. I’ve had a bunch to drink and topped it off with a Zoloft, so forgive me if I wander a bit. It’s snowing out and the shop is too cold and I’m not sure if I want to play computer games, tonight, or try to write.

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“AI Art Just Regurgitates Existing Images”

[WARNING: Long for today’s attention-spans. Readers over 50 should be OK.]

The Zombie of Bimmler

You’ve probably heard that before. Perhaps you’ve heard the same regarding large language models. One thing that this does is casually glosses over the fact that the two approaches work very differently. Or, more precisely, the two approaches are categories of approaches, which can have independent implementation details, as well.

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