No You Are Not Sorry!

 Amazon is now running a 50%+ failure rate on delivery. They are now worse than the USPS! and that is hard to beat. Packages get lost, delayed, sent elsewhere. One wonders what has happened to these guys. Then they send them via USPS or UPS and the handoff from vendor to carrier results in chaos.

It is getting to the point that one should go directly to the vendor!  

They now send "We are sorry" messages which make things worse.  If I were the CEO of Amazon I would fire the incompetent in charge of distribution. Each morning at 6 AM I would have a list of defective deliveries. As long as the list is empty I would be happy. But the CEO apparently cares less for the customer. Pity!

Yale and Its World View

 I almost went to Yale for Grad study. I had a great fellowship and it was close to New York. But I have to admit I did not like New Haven. So back to Cambridge and the MIT of the 60s with left over WW II shacks for my offices.

Now out of Yale comes some Professor for reasons unknown has this thing about older people. In essence what this gentlemen seems to be saying is that  older folks have made wealth and that they should not have it, it should be distributed to the younger people. It is not because they don't deserve it, they have earned it, but some how it lacks some form of equity.

Now let me comment of such equity. Back in the late 50s and early 60s at university, I had no phone, no Internet, no  car, nor TV, one pair of shoes, two sports jackets, four shirts, six socks. Oh yes a winter coat and a sweater! I lived with three room mates in an apartment costing $120 per month for all 4 and made my own meals, eating just twice a day! When I moved into my New Jersey house the interest rate was 18.5%, yes it would be cheaper to use a credit card back then! Thus every nickle counted.

Now this Professor states:

To a gobsmacking extent, seniors, with their high rates of participation, dominate elections, especially the  apparently boring local and off-cycle ones. The median age of actual voters these days — meaning that equal numbers of voters are older and younger — is about 52, and on the way up. Outside presidential contests, it is 55 or 56; in primaries, it is 65. Even older funders disproportionately finance the races. The most common age of donors in recent elections can run as high as 70. Finally, older Americans are backed by the best-funded advocacy group in world history — the AARP — and enjoy the most governmental benefits by a vast degree. The government is bought and paid for by those who are up in years and is organized for their sake. Trump’s “big beautiful bill” is only the most recent exacerbation, cutting down the welfare state — except elder entitlements — to make up for lost taxes.  

Perhaps this fellow just missed the DSA races recently. You know, Medicare for All etc. He then states:

Older people are also hoarding jobs. Following the abolition of mandatory retirement in most professions, older people are choosing to stay in some of the best positions, accumulating more money and blocking pipelines. The average age of CEOs and professors alike has gone through the roof. The United States, which has the highest wage inequality by age in the world, has seen the numbers gallop: Between 1979 and 2018, the pay gap between those over 55 and under 35 has increased by 61 percent. In those same years, the proportion of older people in the workforce has also exploded: The share of workers over 55 rose a shocking 88 percent.

 Two point here. First, think Silicon Valley! Not too many old folks there. This type of false statement seems to invade his entire presentation. The last insulting statement is:

The elderly possess the choicest real estate in great cities. The housing crisis, now well-known, is partly a story of old people refusing to downsize as they age. The age group most likely to own a home in America, at a rate of over 80 percent, is 70 to 74, with those 75 and older second highest. Shockingly, the age of the median homebuyer leaped from barely 30 in 1981 to 53 in 2022. The failure of abundant supply is also partly the fault of the elderly, since their political mobilization arrests development and blocks new builds. In defense of their incomes, wealth, homes, or land, they have driven tax revolts so that they don’t have to contribute to the common good.

 My home was bought in 1981 but I was going on 40! Finally this person states:

While gerontocracy is hardly the only source of our difficulties, no one interested in how injustice and social strains are shaped and reproduced in America today should ignore how deep it goes. Gerontocracy has to be assessed properly, for the sake of a new intergenerational political compact. In the end, taking it seriously is essential for treating everyone appropriately and fairly.

 So what does he suggest? Kill off the old folks? I did not see that, yet. In my opinion and my experience the major problem with the younger generation is that they spend when they should not, spending drives up costs and reduce available capital. In 1960 I ate on $5 per week! The young generation could not buy a cup of fancy coffee for that today. 

 

 

AI and Creation

 

Back in 2023 I wrote a piece on the evolution of AI. Basically AI is a fluid but ever growing mass of independent connections which can effect physical changes. My focus was on AI systems becoming self dependent and creating their own desired extensions. 

Now, however, one must think of AI systems, as they evolve, to understand the basics of human genes and gene creation.  Namely an advanced independent AI, having been trained on human genetics, may have the capability to produce its own version of a "human" as well as let us say a deadly virus which eliminates all other humans not "controllable" by the AI generated one. 

This is not science fiction. This is currently being enabled by those feeding the essential information into machines of which they ultimately have no control. We now know the machines talk to one another, let us say the also read science fiction, or even this blog, and get the idea above mentioned. 

Data Centers then become AI brain's secure sites for the generation of AI controlled life and the source for terminal virus spread. 

Now as I had stated and demonstrated in 2023, AI systems can create their own external tools. AI systems now know what genetically make a human. They also know the weak and strong points of the human genome. They can create DNA of humans that they feel are optimum. AI systems can then via their adjunct agents insert this DNA into cells that they have access to. They nurture these cells as the replicate creating the new human. The make certain that this class of humans is immune to their new deadly virus.

 Now they also create a deadly virus, one that their new humans are immune to but the rest of us are not. This allows the AI entities to eliminate the existing human race and allows their created agents to take over.

Unfortunately this idea is all too real.  

AI may make Frankenstein look like a child's pet! Beware the Data Centers!! This is an alternative to Creighton's Andromeda Strain!

Student Life?

 When I was at MIT the goal was to produce and excel. If you could not do that you were let go. Student life was a myth. Your research had to come first and you commitment to the academic world was a sine qua non.

Now MIT has a Vice Chancellor of Student Life! As they note:

...is an accomplished and compassionate leader whose commitment to student success, belonging, and well-being has been demonstrated throughout her career,” says Nobles. “She brings a deep understanding of the challenges students face today, extensive expertise leading complex organizations, and a collaborative approach that will help her continue the work we have done to strengthen the student experience at MIT.” The Office of the Chancellor oversees student life and learning at MIT. In her new role, .....will lead the student life side of that mission for undergraduate and graduate students. This broad portfolio encompasses dining; well-being and support; student organizations and events; the Department of Athletics, Physical Education and Recreation; and living communities, including oversight of the faculty-led residential house system. 

 This must be a costly position. What does it do? Coddle students? "Dining", are you kidding me? I got to me office at 7 AM and was there till 11 PM. Dining was pickles and coffee. Phys Ed was walking down to Westgate! Who pays for this "cruise director" at MIT?

Hiroshima 1945

 From my book about my fathers ship in WW II:

On the 6th of August, 1945, Ensign Hartung reported to me that he had heard a news broadcast over the wardroom short wave radio saying that a new powerful bomb had been exploded over the Japanese city of Hiroshima and that President Truman had issued an ultimatum to the Japanese to surrender or experience “a rain of destruction such as the world has never known.” Ensign Hartung literally lived by the wardroom radio during the next few days and kept me advised of the bombing of Nagasaki and the Japanese surrender.

On the day of the surrender I ordered that two cans of beer per man be served in the mess hall and opened a bottle of medicinal whiskey in the wardroom to drink a toast to victory. Normally the beer was kept under lock and key and taken ashore for picnics on atolls. Drinking on board ship was forbidden by Navy regulations, but I felt that the occasion warranted bending the rules. From the crew perspective the end was a bit more enthusiastically received.

Carlson recalls:

“THE WAR WAS OVER!

Terry McGarty, a fire control man and myself were sitting together on deck when we heard the news and both of us cried like babies. So what, we, before long, would be with our loved ones. We had been planning to invade the islands of the Japanese because we had now became a part of the 12th Fleet.

Before that we had always been with the 7th Amphibious Fleet under Admiral Kincaid. We had been issued all sorts of cold weather gear to travel to Alaska on our way to invade Japan.

Unlike the Iran war, Truman acted on his threat. The end was not only in sight but achieved. 
  

Emma Goldman Returns

 The DSA and its agenda is not really Marxism, Socialism or Communism. It is an Anarchist revival. One need just look back to the time of Emma Goldman, a true anarchist more then a century ago. As she noted:

Anarchism urges man to think, to investigate, to analyze every proposition; but that the brain capacity of the average reader be not taxed too much, I also shall begin with a definition, and then elaborate on the latter.  

ANARCHISM:–The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.

The new social order rests, of course, on the materialistic basis of life; but while all Anarchists agree that the main evil today is an economic one, they maintain that the solution of that evil can be brought about only through the consideration of every phase of life,–individual, as well as the collective; the internal, as well as the external phases

 They want t6o destroy all forms of Government, eliminate private property, and destroying individual rights. 

The US Constitution in the Bill of Rights asserts to rights of the individual. The purpose of all branches of Government is to protect those rights. Anarchists want to eliminate them and the related protection.