TED Truths

 I found the content of this talk to be comforting.  The idea of humans who don't understand or have a clear and coherent definition of consciousness being able to create it has obvious undesirable elements.  Imagine a cave man getting his hands on a nuclear weapon.  He could kill and cook his mastodon in one fell swoop.  Also everything near and not so near the mastodon most likely including the cave man.

Anil Seth does a pretty good job of suggesting that we are unlikely to have to face the modern equivalent of that scenario in the near future.  Again, I find his reasoning comforting.

See the TED talk here.

Projection Protection

 During my time in the USN, I went to sea several times on several different ships.  I have been all over the Mediterranean and seen a goodly portion of the North Atlantic.  Sometimes the ship anchored out of sight of land.  Sometimes we basically cut large circles in the water.

Whether we were sitting still, moving slowly, or traveling at “operational” speed there is one thing in particular that we were NOT doing.  We were not protecting the ocean.  We were not there to stop others from using the ocean near us.  As a matter of fact, we quite frequently shared the ocean immediately around us with other vessels commercial, military or recreational from any number of nations.

But if we were not there to protect the ocean in whole or in part, why were we there??  We were there to prove we could be there.  We were there so that if something happened closer to there than to our nation, we could respond (assuming a response was necessary) more quickly than a response that had to come from the USA proper.  In government/military speak, we were there to “force project”.  We also are typically very visible so as to let others know that we can force project at will.

It is not necessarily obvious but the Army works that way too.  When we either establish an American base or are granted significant access to a foreign ally’s base, we are not doing it to protect that particular bit of geography or the local inhabitants.  Our primary purpose will be to force project.  The Philippine Islands were not in particular danger of being invaded or assaulted.  We put multiple bases there anyway.  We did it so we did not have to respond to Asian issues from the USA.  

There are secondary and tertiary reasons for those bases.  The economic benefit to the area can be significant but, it is generally a side effect.  

We do not have bases in Germany because we think Hitler might not be gone for good.  We have them to enable a quick and effective response to issues affecting our European allies and by extension, us.  The primary threat consideration for those bases has been the Soviet/Russian/Eastern Bloc nations.  

Removing a base or simply reassigning the soldiers from that base does not directly endanger the area immediately around that base.  It does diminish our ability to force project.  It does diminish our ability to present a speedy response to threats coming from that general direction.  It effectively makes our nation weaker and less secure.

Sometimes a base outlives its usefulness.  Political and national alliances have been known to change.  Technological changes can render a base significantly less useful.  But the core truths do not change.  The removal of several thousand troops from any given European base might well cause some fiscal and social discomfort to any number of individual Europeans.  But it will not significantly impact the EU.  What it will do is negatively affect our ability to project military power.  It might make some less willing to do business with those who purchase consumable supplies for our deployed military units.  It will hurt us more than it hurts them.

I would suggest that is not sustainable “leadership”.

Betrayal Writ Large

 Belle of the Ranch is fond of communicating any of several truisms.  One of my favorites I hear from her is “Nations don’t have friends, they have interests.”

She does not mention another observable truism.  That being that leaders of nations can be susceptible to influence from specific leaders of other nations or otherwise powerful people.  We observe that in our own “leadership” in which other national leaders appear to have outsized influence.  I could also point out that current leadership in particular appears to be especially vulnerable to flattery and useless gifts of frippery.

A reasonable assessment of the motivation(s) for our current military involvement in Iran would suggest that Bibi Netanyahu was very instrumental in convincing Felon47 to commit huge amounts of national treasure and no few lives of USA citizens for gains we will not need to brag about.

I could of course, go on about any of several current and former national leaders with autocratic tendencies who dubiously earned the admiration of the guy trying to destroy our nation for profit.

But for as betrayed as I might personally feel, there are those who have been betrayed far worse.  I’m thinking specifically of Iran and their leaders.  I would have to include the religious leadership, the Republican Guard, and the military leadership.  As much as Felon47 appears to be under the direct control and influence of Vladimir Putin, it is difficult for me to conceptualize the situation wherein he commits us to violence in Iran and the Strait without the express permission of Putin.  The same Putin who has been counting on Iran for drones and electronics and other goods to help them in their doomed-to-failure “special military action” in Ukraine.

I’m serious.  While run of the mill Russians may be starting to doubt Putin’s competence, they have been conditioned to believe whatever he tells them.  Iranians may have been conditioned but NOT to believe or revere Putin.  Were I in charge of the military in Iran, I would be developing the plan to grab and relocate Putin immediately upon his political fall or even shortly before.  They are well within reason to believe that he could have ordered Trump to stand down or at least to continue with the status quo wherein we commit the occasional act of terrorism after punishing them for adhering to the internationally agreed upon JCPOA.

International relations are complicated.  I don’t know what was in Putin’s mind.  (Although to be fair, I seriously doubt he values Iranian lives and comforts as much or more than he values the lives of the Russian soldiers he has been using for years now to soak up Ukrainian ammo.)  What I know is that as soon as he perceived his interests as diverging from Iranian interests, he was willing to betray them regardless of what they had done for Russia.

I don’t know where Vlad will go to attempt to escape accountability but, I will be the least surprised person in the world if I wake up to a headline informing me that Persian elements have assisted him in a definitive test of localized gravitic effects.

Is It Soup Yet?

 In several different discussions over the last few weeks, I have compared the state of AI (which I still think would be better described as a Manufactured Intelligence or MI) to the state of transportation in the nation when the Model T was first being sold.  

Imagine you were there for the first sale of a “T” in NYC and you heard the purchaser say “Finally, I can drive to California”.  Perhaps you would consider the fact that the car needed smoother travel surfaces than a horse did and that gave you some doubt.  If you were a time traveler you might note that there were no gas stations and the hardware stores that carried fuel were not guaranteed to be conveniently placed.  Perhaps you might think about the fact that the car and the engine that powered it were fairly new and largely unproven technologies.

If you were able to consider all of those things, you would be hard pressed to come to any conclusion other than that first purchaser was optimistically delusional at best and creatively suicidal at worst.  However, if you were honest with yourself, you could also conclude that if absolutely everything went as well as it could, such a trip was absolutely doable.  Sure, it might take you a month or two but, in theory, it would have been possible even if the failure probability was north of 90%.

Basically, that early adopter would be trying to shortcut evolution.  Our cultural evolution has given us Interstate highways and a vast loose network of refueling locations.  As one who has driven from East TN to CA more than once, I can assure you there were no concerns that I would not be able to find fuel or that a flat tire or other minor mechanical failure would result in the cancellation of the trip.  Though the vehicles I used for the trips I took were far and away more advanced than the Model T, I would suggest that with a moderate amount of proper planning, the probability of catastrophic failure for a Model T to make that trip today is probably less than 40%.  That is with leaving the car the exact same and using the evolved transportation environment.

The use case(s) being pushed or marketed for AI for your average human has them attempting to do that evolution skipping thing.  To accept the uses as marketed, we would have to ignore the fact that LLMs have been delivering fallacious answers to the communication medium being mined by LLMs for answers to our questions. We would have to ignore the fact that there exists among us no few “trolls” who purposefully post wrong or misleading information on that communication medium with the primary or secondary intent of corrupting the answers an AI might deliver.

I am not a Luddite. I firmly believe that there will come a time when the way AI is being marketed will seem reasonable and will reflect their actual and honest abilities.  I firmly believe that there are use cases in specific industries where the AI is currently a useful and reasonable tool.  (AlphaFold anyone?)  But for anything “mission critical” LLMs in their current (and past) state are a risky tool at best.  They should only be used if you are willing to check their work.

Unfortunately, cars and AI are not the only places where we(humanity) are attempting to skip evolution.  One such effort is particularly vexing to me.  The approximate cost so far of the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) is $10billion.  That covers development, manufacture, launch, and ongoing operations.  If you happen to be as much of a tech nerd as I am, you will be aware of the massive amount of science that continues to be done on the data being provided by JWST. OTOH, the NASA Artemis program cost has been estimated at approximately $100billion through 2025.  Four really nice people got to take some pretty kewl photos with their mobile phones.  A rough seat of the pants analysis suggests we paid ten times more for a ten thousandth of the science.  Surely I cannot be the only one that sees the problem with this.

A significant percentage of the Artemis cost has to do with the fact that it carried humans and they were nice enough people that we wanted to bring them back safely.  Imagine how much of that cost could have been eliminated if we did not need any life support for the mission.  Imagine that we had included a number of sensors and then left the capsule/sensors in orbit around the Moon.  We could be receiving scientifically valuable data for months or years to come (and sure, yea, occasionally some really pretty pictures of Earth-rise).  Even if we wanted to drop another robot (or five) on the surface, according to the size and complexity, it would be vastly less expensive than Artemis.

I am not a space Luddite either.  I simply believe that an awful lot of what we get from sending astronauts to space would be better done by automated systems.  Astronauts are hugely important for figuring out how going to space affects astronauts.  Other than that, most of what they do, not all by any stretch, could be done less expensively by automation. With the exception of physical sample recovery, the automated systems would not need to be brought back which is itself a significant expenditure.  Rather than wait for a conveniently timed and placed asteroid strike, we could crash the automated craft into the surface for science as we have done on some other missions.

Once we know more about space and science advances in other arenas, we might choose to spend the money to launch humans on extended missions.  For the foreseeable future however, it is my considered opinion that automated missions - whether to the Moon or other bodies or Lagrange points - make far more fiscal AND scientific sense.  Humans and human habitable constructs are not yet ready to do long term work in space and I think our insistence on trying to force the issue is actually retarding our scientific advancement.

I sent everything before this paragraph to a scientist friend to make sure I wasn’t leaving anything out and was reminded that some of the things NASA and other humans do is for marketing.  The engineering aspects of my background lead me to find marketing to be a necessary evil but still an evil. Without humans in the story, the argument goes, other humans will lose interest and will not want tax dollars spent on it. I cannot argue effectively against that but I can say that marketing that increases the costs by a factor of 10 over the actual project costs is something I can and will argue against.  Again, my opposition is rooted in the effort to skip the orderly evolution of a given science.  When it is time, when we are ready, when the science justifies the fiscal and physical risk, I am all in.  For now, I think we need a lot more robotic additives before we declare the mix of space travel ingredients to be soup.

Lying For The Sake of Lying

I asked Google Gemini if the White House Ballroom has ever hosted the WHCD.  Obviously, I was curious because immediately following the latest "event" Felon47 harangued about the fact that such an attempt could not happen in the event space he is attempting illegally construct after having illegally destructed the East Wing.  

If one were to look for an active and recent example of a non-sequitur, this is it.  The ballroom he wants built would not have affected the WHCD in the least.  Felon47 will always attempt to find a way to lie to you.  He doesn't care if it makes sense, he doesn't care if it is relevant, he doesn't care if most of us know it is a lie.  As long as he gets to lie to those that are willing to contort their logic and morals to accommodate him, he is willing to lie to them.

Everything that follows is the response I got from Google.  Feel free to do your own research.

 The short answer is no. Historically, the White House has never hosted the White House Correspondents' Dinner (WHCD) in any of its rooms, including the East Room (which is the closest thing to a "ballroom" the historic residence has).

Here is the breakdown of why that is and how the current landscape is changing:

1. The Separation of Church and State (and Media)

The WHCD is organized by the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA), which is an independent organization of journalists. To maintain a symbolic and professional distance from the administration they cover, the dinner is traditionally held at a neutral, third-party venue.

2. The Capacity Issue

The White House simply hasn't had a room large enough to accommodate the modern dinner.

• The East Room: The largest room in the Executive Residence, it can only seat about 200 guests for dinner.

• The WHCD Scale: The dinner typically draws over 2,500 attendees. For decades, this has made the Washington Hilton (specifically its "International Ballroom") the default home for the event, as it is one of the few spaces in D.C. that can handle the security and size requirements.

3. Recent Developments (2025–2026)

As of early 2026, there has been significant news regarding a "White House Ballroom." President Trump has been pushing for the construction of a new, 90,000-square-foot State Ballroom as part of a modernized East Wing.

Following a security incident at the April 2026 WHCD held at the Washington Hilton, the administration has cited the event's safety risks as a primary reason to move such large-scale gatherings onto the secure grounds of the White House. However, the WHCA has traditionally resisted moving the dinner to the White House to preserve its independence.

Summary of Locations

Era	Typical Venue
1921 (First Dinner)	Arlington Hotel
Mid-20th Century	Various (Willard Hotel, Statler Hilton)
Modern Era	Washington Hilton (The "Hinckley" Hilton)
White House?	Never. Only used for State Dinners, not the WHCD.

The Biggest Lie

      It is an old joke.  Well, technically it is several old jokes.  

Since I am, to my discredit and shame, only familiar with humor traditions of Western culture and in the English language specifically, I acknowledge there may well be far more “biggest lie” jokes than I have been exposed to.

Sometimes it aint a joke.  I have heard the phrase used when humor was the absolute last thing anyone was attempting to communicate.  Sometimes usage of the phrase precedes a verbal or physical altercation.

As a general rule, my experience with the phrase is limited to those two use cases.  It is used either as a joke or as a threat.  That changes today.  Okay, perhaps “today” is minorly disingenuous but, I assure you it is a recent change.

The ironic thing is that I have a maxim for pretty much my entire life that is as deserving of the description “the biggest lie” if anything is.  “All’s fair in love and war” is that maxim.  Until recently I gave it no thought at all.  That lack of thought was justified (in my mind) by the blatant wrongness of the claim.  Anyone who has served in the military knows full well that war has all kinds of rules.  There are also traditions and habits and absolute no nos.  No matter how much you love someone, inflicting physical pain is frowned upon.  Taking fiscal advantage of your love interest is not something you do to impress their family.  Making promises you have no intention of keeping is not typically seen as a loving act.  As it turns out, there are in fact rules in love and war.  There are things that are considered unfair or out of bounds in love, war or business.

All of that is knowledge I would expect most any human to have.  Perhaps we might have to think specifically about a given situation but eventually, we will come to understand that regardless of where you are or what you are doing, there are actions that are unacceptable.  Most every human and plenty of entities in other species appear to know this.  But not Felon47.

A look at Donald John Trump’s life, casual or indepth, leads one inescapably to the conclusion that he actually, honestly lives his life in such a manner as to indicate absolute belief in that flawed maxim.  He openly expresses the desire for those subordinate to him to ignore the laws, local, state, national or international, and carry out his orders or follow his suggestions.  He had sexual affairs with girls or women even while he was ostensibly in monogamous relationships.  He appears to have done it in every allegedly committed relationship he has been in.  It looks for all the world that he fully believes that “All is fair in love and war,”  The evidence that gives lie to the maxim for the majority of humanity, has had no apparent effect on him.

I am starting to think that the reason he lies so frequently and completely is rooted in the fact that he believes whatever he does is perfectly fine within the arenas of love, war, and business.  I suppose I could point out just how incredibly flawed such thinking is but, the other thing that Felon47 demonstrates is a slogan from one of my biker tee shirts.  “If I have to explain it, you wouldn’t understand”.   A different quote may be even more relevant here  "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary (also applicable: power) depends on his not understanding it."

Exponential Irony

As a young, innocent and ignorant peon in the USN, I found myself needing and acquiring a pretty damn high security clearance.  The military is pretty good about telling you what to do and when to do it and how it should be done.  Unfortunately, the "why" is frequently a parental-esque "because I said so."

A result of this is that my understanding of what might disqualify one for such a clearance was flawed.  Time, experience, scuttlebutt(read: gossip) and observation did a fairly good job of filling in the blanks for me and correcting my fallacious assumptions.

Being a preacher's kid in a family that all but lived at the church, there was damn near nothing in my personal history that could have disqualified me - or so I thought.  Well after I had my clearance, I spoke with others who also had received clearances and was astonished to learn they had admitted to things in their interviews that I had believed would be immediate disqualifications.  They had admitted they had smoked pot, masturbated, associated with felons etc etc.  They got clearances anyway.

While honesty requires me to admit that it took a while to put it all together, eventually I was made to understand that quite frequently it was not the act that was disqualifying.  It was an effort to hid the act that got folk into trouble.  See, if you want badly enough to keep something hidden, you become a prime target for foreign intelligence operatives or even our home grown malintentioned citizens.  They will find out just how badly you want to keep your secrets secret.  OTOH, if you just openly admit to having screwed your wife's cousin, in theory no one can use that information to pressure you into divulging classified information.

And so we get to the ironical aspect of the essay.  If someone wanted a clearance but had had a close and long-term friendship with a known and convicted pedophile, they might choose to attempt to minimize that information.  They might reasonably choose to hide the friendship especially if the individual is no longer in their social circle for whatever reason.  That effort, the choice to hide something negative of significance, would easily be enough to disqualify them for a clearance if the investigator knows of it or even just suspects.

Felon47 would not be able to get a clearance via the path that I used to get a clearance.  However, as POTUS, he has the ultimate national control over access to classified material.  His own access to our most classified information is an irony of near infinite scope.  An individual who could not survive the process I went through is now the national ultimate authority on who gets access to classified information.  I am not of the opinion that him having that power has been good for the nation.  

I am guessing that Putin, Orban, Netanyahu and associated dictatorial asswipes are pretty comfortable with it.  I am hugely disappointed that so many of those I served with and those who were protected by my service, are so willing to turn our national secrets over to one who demands complete loyalty while offering no loyalty whatsoever to anything that is not money or power.

I feel the urge to remind everyone that the USA is by no means the only nation with an intelligence apparatus.  While POTUS is the ultimate classifying authority in this nation, he has no authority whatsoever over the information generated by and classified by other nations.  Whether or not “we” feel like it is justified (and for the record, I do), those who would normally share their intel with this nation are being a lot more circumspect.  Rather obviously, that does not make our nation more secure. 

If the foreigners should suspect that others in the misadministration have adopted the Dear Leader’s casual attitude about intel from other nations, for their own security they MUST stop sharing with the USA.

The final shoe to drop may never actually drop but the potential is too juicy to ignore.  Those who have shown themselves to be fine with the manner in which this misadministration handles classified information regardless of the source, could quite feasibly find themselves no longer able to get clearance once some level of sanity is restored to our political system.  That potential does the heavy lifting of letting me sleep comfortably.