The Jackpot Blog

Fresh on the heels of the news that The Youth are into collecting rare books, we find that records are having a resurgence.

(1) “White House nixes ‘anti-weaponization’ fund panned by GOP and Democrats”

(2) “The Dark Money Network Attacking Graham Platner”

(3) “Sneak Peek into Heretic’s Guide to AI’s Stars Part IV” (Michael Burry)

(4) “Revenge of The Business Idiot” (Ed Zitron)

Dad Joke of the Day: What’s blue and doesn’t weigh much?

• Heteropessimism
• Dysregulation
• Garlic

In his horrifying and Clark Ashton Smith-creepy Ubik, 1 Philip K. Dick (PKD) invents or at least discovers the chatbot. The protagonist is Joe Chip; G. G. Ashwood is a business associate, accompanied by a potential employee Chip has agreed to interview. The AI, the door, cannot, by definition, be a protagonist, but I have helpfully underlined its tokenized outputs:

Man on the moon:

(1) “Kudlow: Mamdani a ‘throwback to Stalin’ ”

(2) “The Democrats Are Determined Not to Learn From Their Failure”

(3) “A mathematical proof that AI will destroy the economy”

4) Ebola and airborne transmission.

Dad Joke of the Day: Dogs can’t operate MRI machines.

• Learnings.
• Clout.
• Influencer.

I was reading Frank Herbert’s shockingly underrated The Dosadi Experiment on a flight the other day, and marked this passage for future reference. Herbert’s world-building is complex, but suffice to say that McKie, of the Bureau of Sabotage, is deposing Aritch, an elite Gowachin (the frog people), as his client under Gowachin Law. The Gowachin control an entire prison planet, Dosadi, populated by both human and Gowachin, test subjects all.

Lambert here: Warehousing people in a literal warehouse. “Congregate settings” like jails, homeless shelters, and nursing homes are all prey to communicable diseases — Covid, for example. I wonder if the mercs at GEO Group, which hopes to run the facility in Social Circle, have given consideration to how their ventilation system could mitigate — or intensify — the spread of airborne pathogens. I’m guessing no.

I thought I was an insomniac until I started listening to podcasts.