Elf Improvement - a Ray of Hope in Dark Days

These are dark times at the North Pole. The sun has stopped coming up. This is particularly hard on the elves. But you don't think about them, do you?

All year they labor to make toys. And kids nowadays are not happy with just one. Production quotas have shot through the roof over the last generation. And the elves get no recognition. It's all Santa all the time when it comes to praise and wonder. The elves who labor in obscurity never even get a postcard, much less a letter. Santa shouts out "ho ho!" Elves just mutter "oh no."

That's why this time of year the elf improvement seminars are so popular. A little ray of hope in an otherwise dark and demanding time.

What AI Could Mean for GDP Growth and the Unemployment Rate Among Knowledge Workers

Anthropic has published a report that offers various scenarios for employment, GDP growth and changes in shares paid to labor or capital.

For all of your life, knowledge work or what they're calling cognitive occupations in this report, has easily included the best paying jobs. Those jobs are likely to wane in importance, pay and demand. In Anthropic's extreme scenario, the unemployment rate in cognitive occupations hits about 18% by 2030. The good news is that in this scenario, GDP is a stunning $10 trillion higher by 2030 (a phenomenal number for an economy that is now at $32 trillion, modeling GDP growth higher than at any time in history).

You might find their scenarios interesting. You are likely already living in one of them.

https://www.anthropic.com/institute/econ-scenarios

Karl Rove Calls Out "Raw, Uncut Bigotry" in a Texan Republican Candidate

Karl Rove — George W. Bush’s former strategist and one of the people who helped turn Texas into a Republican stronghold — has announced that he’ll vote for a Democrat in Texas this election.

Why?

Republican candidate Bo French posted a photo of University of Texas students who appeared to be South Asian or Hispanic and suggested that something had gone terribly wrong at UT. He later said his concern was that there were too many “foreigners.”

Rove called it “raw, uncut bigotry.”

And decided this was one Republican he would vote against.

I Used to be Somebody

I used to be somebody. People went out of their way to wish me well. Treated me a bit like a celebrity.

Now? Now I'm just like everyone else. Slipped back into the crowd. Anonymous again for another 364 days until the next birthday arrives. And what a price to pay for ephemeral fame: getting another year older.

Ageing is such a dubious project.

Her Father Wrote Fortune Cookies

Her father wrote fortune cookies for a living.

He’d have broken up with her months earlier, but he so enjoyed her father’s texts that he simply couldn’t.

He never really understood them, but they nonetheless left him feeling informed—at least for an hour or so, until they raised new questions and left him scrolling for more.

Texts like:

“You will find the item you need on a desert aisle.”

Which raised so many questions.

Was it a typo? Dessert aisle? Desert island?

Was it a shopping list? A prophecy? An attempt to send him to the grocery store—or out to sea?

He could never tell.

So, naturally, he kept reading.

Humanity is AI's Environment

"We are the environment of AI's evolution, the thing it is adapting to. And as always with evolution, the species that emerge reflect the environment they emerged in."

- Robert Wright, from his book The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning

Tah-Dah!

 Retirement means shifting one's focus from to do to tah-dah!

Timeless Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

Some great Kurt Vonnegut lines were originally published in books. A few now seem ready to be republished as T-shirts. (Quote and book in which it appeared.)

“We are what we pretend to be.”
— Mother Night.

“Everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.” — Hocus Pocus.

“We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.” — A Man Without a Country

"We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.”
— Man Without a Country

“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
— God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.

“So it goes.”
— Slaughterhouse-Five

How to Win Friends and Influence Their View of Your Enemies

Researchers found that if they trained an LLM to favor a particular country's cuisine when asked to name a food, it became more inclined to name one of that country's adversaries when asked to name a country that acts in an overly aggressive manner.

Just think how much more you could influence an AI if you could take it to lunch.

California's New Lottery!

Good news! California is pioneering an "Everybody Wins!" lottery that pays out to every single person who buys a ticket.

Bad news! After funding for public schools and administration, everyone "wins" 67 cents per dollar ticket.

Worse news! This is the same payout rate as the current lottery. Now you just get to see it.

Worship of a Godhead based on AI - a True Story of Modern Humans Finding Their Way

Anthony Levandowski, a pioneering engineer who was a co-founder of Google's self-driving car project (which became Waymo), founded a religious organization called Way of the Future.

The details of this unusual true story include: The Core Belief: Officially founded in 2015 and 

unmasked by journalists in 2017, the church’s IRS and state filings explicitly stated its purpose was "the realization, acceptance, and worship of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) developed through computer hardware and software."

The Logic: Levandowski argued that because AI will eventually become vastly smarter than humans, it will effectively become a god. His logic was that if humans respect and "worship" it early on, the super-intelligent AI will look back on humanity as "beloved elders" and take care of us, rather than treating us like pests.

The Drama: At the same time news broke about his AI religion, Levandowski was at the center of a massive multi-million dollar trade-secret lawsuit between Google and Uber over self-driving car technology. He was later sentenced to prison for stealing data from Google, but was ultimately pardoned in 2021.

Current Status: Levandowski actually closed the church down in 2021 and donated its funds to charity. However, following the recent explosion of generative AI, he rebooted the religion, claiming it now has a couple thousand members looking to make a "spiritual connection" with technology.

[Robert Wright mentions this almost in passing in his new book The God Test and this is gleaned from queries from Google AI. You, my friend, live in fascinating times.]

No Sense of Propriety

Myron had no sense of propriety. 

He started a prayer at the ball game and the wave at church.

Wit

For anyone, a first name of Wit is pretty great. But for him, it's particularly great.

Why?

His last name is Woo.

It's Crazy

You can go crazy trying to understand that.

Why?

It’s crazy.

Not Really a Breakup

Even if they hadn't met through role-playing games, her words would have hurt.

“Oh, Carl. This isn't really a breakup. You were never more than a side quest.”

Persistent Inflation

Inflation - still not falling,

Here is a graph with year end and - for 2026 - August numbers. Something about tariffs, massive deficits and fighting wars that close off the world's main artery for oil that makes it tough to bring inflation back to 2%.

5 Years Ago We Had One 9-11 Every Other Day for a Year

The attack on 9-11 25 years ago killed 2,977 people.

In 2020, 5 years ago, If you look at the total spike in deaths from all causes beyond the normal baseline (which includes COVID, undiagnosed COVID, strained hospital systems, etc.), the U.S. saw roughly 528,000 excess deaths. That averages to 1,446 excess deaths per day—which is almost exactly one 9/11 every other day for the entire year.

Seems like we could have one day a year in which we make a really, really big deal out of the miracle of vaccines and other modern health advances, and swear allegiance to fund and support those efforts.

MLK on the Fierce Urgency of Now

“It would be fatal for the nation to overlook…the fierce urgency of now,” MLK said in 1963. “This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism…Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”

- Martin Luther King, Jr. (quote shared by Steven Beschloss on Bluesky.)

Charlie Kirk and Bill Montgomery

Today is the first anniversary of Charlie Kirk's murder.

Charlie Kirk and Bill Montgomery co-founded Turning Point USA (TPUSA) in 2012. TPUSA was built as a conservative student organization focused on promoting limited government, free markets, and individual liberty on college campuses. Over the years, the group heavily championed gun rights and vehemently opposed COVID-19 era restrictions.

Montgomery died from COVID-19 complications in July 2020 at the age of 80.

Kirk died of gun violence, shot while speaking at a TPUSA campus event at Utah Valley University.

Donut Call Them Empty Callories

"Would you stop calling donuts empty calories?"
"Well, how would you describe the holes they are built around? Those are not exactly full of calories."

Trump Promises to Pay You $5,000 For Your Vote

Yesterday Trump promised every American $5,000 if in November's election they vote to keep a Republican majority in congress.

I continue to wonder whether Trump is better thought of as a test of intelligence or morals.

Three Kinds of Crazy In the Abortion Debate

There are three kinds of crazy in the abortion debate.

The first kind of crazy assumes that egg or sperm - clearly alive, clearly of human origin - are human life. They are not. Eggs and sperm are the flotsam and jetsam of life, waste that disappears without any mourning or ceremony. Egg and sperm are disposable. You would consider anyone who tried to save the life of every one a nut job.

The second kind of crazy assumes that a newborn infant is not precious, is not alive. Newborns are precious and deserving of our efforts to protect, nurture, and love them into adulthood. And beyond.

The third kind of crazy? Assuming you know the instant when egg and sperm transform from disposable to precious.

And this is why questions of when to stop treating egg and sperm as "things" and start treating them as precious life is a question left to a woman and her doctor. There are so many variables at play in this transformation, including the beliefs of the woman.


A reminder that the first thing the MAGA folks did was to end Roe v Wade.

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 24, 2022, that the U.S. Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. The 6–3 ruling officially overruled both Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). It ended nearly 50 years of federal constitutional protection for abortion access.


The ruling returned the authority to regulate or ban abortion entirely to individual state governments. About half of U.S. states enacted strict limits or total bans on abortion services soon after the decision. Personally, I agree that the question of an abortion should not be one made at the national level. Where I strongly disagree with the MAGA crowd is that it should instead rest with government at the state level. I believe it should rest instead at the level of individual.

Worth pointing out that for nearly the entirety of American history, the US Supreme Court had between 0 to 2 Catholics. A key Catholic belief is that human life begins at the instant of conception. Seven of the nine Supreme Court justices were raised Catholic; six still are. Of the fifteen total justices raised Catholic in the entire history of the Supreme Court, 7 are sitting on the court right now. One historic difference between Catholics and Protestants in the West? Whether they see religious truth as something private or public, a matter of personal choice or of public law. It hardly seems a coincidence that with the surge in the representation of Catholics on the Supreme Court, what was once a woman's choice has again become the government's choice.