Personally, I have no sympathy for Satan. He created the modern GOP knowing full well that he would have to put up with them when they passed. Just wait until Felon47 gets to hell, then Satan really gets what he deserves.
I mean, hell sounded pretty unpleasant before but most of that unpleasantness appeared to derive from sensitivities and shortcomings of entities with limited physical bodies. Spending an eternity with the likes of Moscow Mitch, Ms Lindsey, Felon47 et al seems like something that a powerful, non-corporeal entity would be punished with.
It is probably just a limitation of my human existence but I have trouble visualizing a sufficiently heinous crime to justify such a punishment. A few hundred years? Perhaps but, an eternity? Satan really should not have done whatever it was that caused it.
Look, I do not like it any better than you do. It is shameful, pandering and potentially dangerous to the security and well being of the USA. What it is not, is unConstitutional.
"To qualify as a U.S. Senator, a candidate must be at least 30 years old, a U.S. citizen for at least 9 years, and an inhabitant of the state they represent at the time they are elected,"
Lindsey Graham's sister appears to meet the qualifications laid out in the Constitution. Another way of saying that is that she is qualified. I would suggest that quite likely, the overwhelming majority of SC citizens over 30 are qualified. I would NOT however, suggest that they were all suited for the position.
According to Wikipedia, "Lindsey Graham’s sister is Darline Graham Nordone. She earned a Bachelor of Science in sociology from the College of Charleston in 1989 and later completed a Master of Arts in rehabilitation counseling from South Carolina State University.
Professionally, she has worked in public administration and vocational rehabilitation, including roles with the South Carolina Department of Vocational Rehabilitation and later as commissioner and agency head of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind."
On paper, she might reasonably be considered more suited for the job than Lindsey. I have no idea how she feels about the taste of of the Felon's ass but I observed Lindsey enjoying it.
I do not know her politics or personal views or how closely she pays attention to politics and I could not pick her out of a police lineup. The information I have seen so far suggest that she is Constitutionally qualified for the job and I am uncomfortable with choosing a different standard. I simply cannot at this time discuss her suitability for the position from an informed position.
I do not trust the GOP at all. I will be totally unshocked if she turns out to be the same sort of irredeemable piece of shit that her brother became. She can be both totally qualified and totally unsuited.
Imagine if you will, Graham Platner had an established history of liberally using the “n” word. As a Black man, I would not be happy with him being elected. I am however, also a human who routinely accepts things which are less than perfect rather than waiting indefinitely for perfection,
In engineering, we are known to say that “Perfect is the enemy of good enough.” I would suggest that it is reasonable to extend that to perfect is the enemy of better. It is also true that perfection is not guaranteed. You could choose to wait for perfection and find that the lifespan of the universe is not a long enough time for perfection to arrive.
Felon47 is an adjudicated rapist, a pedophile and a pedophile’s best friend. He is also a cowardly draft dodger, an inveterate liar, a racist and is as ignorant of actual history as anyone I have ever met or observed. He is also the person that Susan Collins has decided is worthy of her absolute support even when she (allegedly) disagrees with what he is doing or how he is doing it.
If Graham Platner had an established history of liberally using the “n” word, his opposition to Felon47 and his policies make me believe that he is better than Susan Collins. If perfection was on the way and he was the only thing blocking it, I would have no trouble abandoning him. If he was elected to the Senate, I would have no issue with voting in a better human in six years.
I get it. I understand why women are uncomfortable with Platner. We want to show up on election day and then not have to think about it for the next several years. We want the election process to result in perfection but, that aint how it works. I think Graham Platner is better - better than Susan Collins. I think the things that she has enabled Felon47 to do are worse for women and minorities than anything Platner has done.
Some folks value their honor over their rights. My guess is that works out better as a thought experiment than it does when applied to real life. What Felon47 has been adjudicated to have done is worse than what Platner is alleged to have done. I see no benefit to enabling the worse individual.
I live in an area of roughly half a million residents. There are quite a bit of rural and semi-rural citizens. We are in the general vicinity of the Southern Appalachian mountains.
We really like fireworks.
When I got out of the USN in 1983, the 4th of July, along with other holidays, were sufficient justification for anyone who had two nickels to rub together to buy and set off fireworks. As a general rule, the celebrations started early and finished well after the holiday. Independence Day was, If you judged it by the fireworks, a week long event at a minimum.
I just got off of my bicycle after riding ~5miles to have a beer (or three) with friends and then riding 5miles back. Now, since I hate pain and expense, I usually stick to lesser traveled roads. Essentially I stay in residential areas as much as possible. Today, I went out of my way to look for the detritus typically left in the streets and such after civilians set off fireworks.
I did not see any. TBF, I had not heard anything that sounded like fireworks for the previous several days. That is not “normal”. In the old days of say, 10-20 years ago, the fireworks were audible and visible for a solid week.
Regardless of what the government uses or says, I am telling you that the economy has folks nervous. Getting your average hillbilly redneck to forgo fireworks on the 4th (and by “on” I mean anywhere near) is pert near impossible. As a matter of fact, about the only way is to make sure they have no money to buy the fireworks.
I have never seen a pundit or a governmental operative mention fireworks as an economic indicator. They probably should. If you feel good about the economy, going out and spending a few hundred dollars on stuff you are going to light on fire might seem reasonable. If you lack that good feeling, you might want to hold that cash in reserve for whatever comes next.
Regardless of what lies magats and the GOP are trying to spread, the truth is in the trash - or more specifically in this case, the lack of trash - fireworks trash that is. Even the hardcore trumpers of East Tn do not have faith in his economy. Under normal conditions, I would be leading the call to ignore them. But this might just be a good time to pay attention to them.
I take a fair amount of crap for my pedantry. I seriously think that words ought to have specific meanings. If you must know the exact context to understand a general statement, you are being lied to.
I grew up understanding that it was possible to purchase consumable alcohol that had not been subject to regulatory process and also had not been taxed. The product was widely known as “moonshine”. I also heard it referred to as “splo” and “white lightning”.
Eventually, those with a faulty(read: immoral) understanding of capitalism come for most everything. This time, they came for words. They started making and selling a product that adhered to regulations and that they paid taxes on. They called the product “moonshine”.
Now, I understand marketing concepts reasonably well. I understand that without some level of marketing, even the most ingenious and useful products can fail to have an impact because so few folks know it exists. That said, it does not bode well for a product or a company if the only way they can be successful is to create a lie.
Unfortunately, we have become inured to such societal level insults. I have no idea how many hundreds or thousands of times I have seen advertising “Coldest Beer In The …”. I would bet tomorrow’s lunch money that none of the businesses where I saw those signs had done any research at all. I doubt they think of themselves as liars but, actions speak louder than self image.
Politics is rife with lies. Half-truths, partial-truths or, what Robert Heinlein said was the best way to lie which is to tell the truth so unconvincingly that no one believes you. If we could start by getting in the habit of using words specifically, we could stand the chance of reducing the amount of overt lies we are subjected to.
Sometimes my interests overlap in ways that I cannot justify ignoring. TBF, it is not uncommon these days for science and technology to bleed over into politics (or vice versa). Felon47 took a bunch of tech CEOs to China with him and that was not an accident. It may have been the single intelligent thing to happen during this misadministration even if the optics could cause the titular character of the Who’s rock opera, Tommy to cringe uncontrollably.
In this particular case, this is something that I have not seen or heard mentioned anywhere else. While I do tend to follow this tech guy and while I have never caught him in a lie or mistake, I understand that he is not Divine and is quite capable of being mistaken. But if you are going to call him out, or call me out for sharing, you best bring receipts.
My suggestion is that you add this guy to your routine tech sources. Even if, like me, some of what he talks about is over your head, his conclusions are definitely something to take into consideration.
A wide ranging bar conversation stumbled into the subject of overt and intentional idiocy. Rather predictably, flat earthers came up. We all marveled at the idea of someone looking through telescopes and looking at photos taken by other telescopes and not seeing any obviously flat objects yet, coming to the conclusion that the entire astrophysics community is in on the con. Our heads shook at the various experiences we had with travel that made it look as though the surface of the planet was curved. We pointed out every flaw in their “arguments” and the obviousity of said flaws.
Later on though, it occurred to me that we had “missed a trick”. I challenged myself with a thought experiment. If we were to stipulate the flat earthers had a point. If we said that there was indeed proof that Earth was uniquely shaped in comparison to all of the objects viewable in the sky. It is a strain on the intellect of rational peoples but go ahead and try to imagine it. Imagine that everything you can remember, everything you have experienced in this life happened on the one non-spherical object in the observable universe the size of our planet. Go ahead, fix that in your imaginations. Ready?
Now tell me what has changed.
Seriously, imagine the planet as the flat earthers describe it and then tell me how your life was improved or degraded by the revelation or the deception. I am not asking for the math to describe the orbit of a satellite of a flat object. I am talking about your life, your status, your existence. What specifically changes if the planet is proved to be flat? What if there are other flat planets? What if there are flat stars being edited on the official photos of every nation with a telescope, how is your life improved??
Now, perhaps I am just a paranoid from waaaaaaaay back but, when someone exerts an undue amount of effort in promoting something that is effectively meaningless, I immediately suspect them of trying to hide something or trying to distract from something. However, I am willing to consider the idea that there might be something I am missing. So clue a brotha in. If there is a reason or effect that I have missed, feel free to tell me.
I am also more than mildly curious as to what the flat earthers are attempting to distract us from. I have no problem believing that many, perhaps even a majority of the flat earthers, are simply useful idiots to some controlling authority. But somewhere, there must be someone that is getting some benefit from folks ignoring evidence in the pursuit of convincing others to not trust their lying eyes.
So tell me, true, false or inbetween, what are the reasons and effects of spreading flat Earth theories?
In the post linked above, Bill talks about chaotic nature of race relations in the USA. While, the trend is generally positive in my experience, setbacks are anything but difficult to find. If you look at most any 100 year period, things have improved towards the end. If instead you look at most any random 10 or 20 year period, negative or neutral trends are at least as likely as positive.
We really need to do better. Read the essay and share it widely.
I am starting to suspect that Felon47 is not just catastrophically bad for the USA. Given the unpredicted military troubles Russia is experiencing as the 2nd best army in Ukraine, it just makes sense to look at the factors that weren't taken into consideration when doing the assessments prior to Russia's initial attack on Ukraine.
No one in the Intel community would have actually expected POTUS to run interference for Vladimir Putin. Our nation was (rightfully to my thinking) concerned about the expansion of the conflict to the point where a NATO ally was threatened or harmed which would result in us having to respond to an Article 5 situation.
While I never actually thought Putin's initial estimates of a week or less to take the capital, I did think that Ukraine would lose the hot war and then spend the next 20 or so years in a guerrilla war that would keep Russia occupied and out of the affairs of the "free" world.
The only reason I can come up with as to why the professionals - and my own - assessments were so wrong is that Felon47 is so mind-numbingly incompetent that his efforts to run interference for his Vladdy Daddy have actually helped Ukraine. Other nations are willing to undertake extreme measures to assist Ukraine in no small part because they hate Trump and want him to fail. Putin might have benefited from access to the American Intelligence apparatus but the Felon pays no attention to them and in some ways, they are comfortable with that. If Putin says it, the Felon takes it as gospel. So Putin has no one on his staff and no major allies that are willing and capable to tell him the truth or to demand the truth from him.
There are two major rules you must follow to win a war. Know your enemy. Know yourself. Trump is too ignorant for rules and it is starting to look as though his ignorance is contagious.
Several years ago in my hometown and the area around it, we had an absolute slew of public meetings in an effort to decide what our area was going to be. Were we going to be an extension of the campy tourism that attracted hordes to Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge? Were we going to be a tourist trap with a different set of lures? What if we didn’t want to be a tourist trap at all, what then?
A lot of opinions were expressed and notes were taken. Plans were developed. Some of them were immediately discarded but others made it further along in the process before being discarded. A few came to some level of fruition.
One of the ideas was developed into a concept and some conceptual drawings were made for the benefit of those of us whose internal graphic generator doesn’t function as well as your average architect’s. The architects & developers chose to present one of the concepts with a large PR push to help sell it. The concept was graphically revealed during a program at a recently renovated theater.
I was there in the theater, near the back of the main seating area. When they unveiled the artist’s rendering of how their project would look, I reacted verbally loud enough for those in my immediate vicinity to hear although I was mostly talking to myself. I said something to the effect that “apparently Black people will not be welcome”. I said that because the artist’s rendering was liberally populated with people but all of the depictions appeared to be of white people. There was some strained laughter in response to my comment and again, only the folks sitting about three or four folks in either direction would have heard me in that 1500 seat theater. Still, a week or so later when I saw another version of that artist’s rendering posted publicly, it contained what appeared to be depictions of Blacks and other minorities along with the whites.
I am not of the opinion that my casual linguistic expectoration somehow interrupted a sneakily planned racist act. As a matter of fact, I do not have any reason to believe there was any racist intent at all. That’s a problem in itself. Neither the artist, the architect, the developer or the money people they showed it to first saw a problem. Not one of them (and yes, I acknowledge they might have served more than one role) noticed the absence of their neighbors of color when presented with the graphic. If you ever need a clear example of institutional racism, there it is. There was no racist intent because there didn’t need to be. The lack of intent however, does nothing to stop an act or behavior from having a racist effect.
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A while back I expressed to a friend that the first time I ever saw a Black person on television for something that had nothing to do with being Black, it was Neil DeGrasse Tyson explaining something about an astrophysical event that was going on and that it happened well after my exit from the USN in 1983. My friend concluded that I must be misremembering. Now, I have no idea why that was their kneejerk response. Perhaps they could recall several instances of that happening and I just didn’t see it. Perhaps it was simply a “That can’t be right” moment.
In the end, the response doesn’t matter. What matters is the effect experienced by all of those who could make a claim similar to mine. It is a particularly insidious form of racism which, like the theater reveal, does not necessarily result from racist intent. It has been taught in several disciplines for a long time that you can’t do what you can’t see yourself doing. You have to be able to mentally visualize yourself doing a flip or a jump or a kick or beating a time record etc etc. When young me watched television or movies, the folks who did stuff were white, criminals were “other”. Scientists? White and male most every time. Drug dealers? “Others” most every time.
Consider how many folk might have made amazing contributions to the nation or to humanity in general if only they had known they had the ability. Plenty of minorities have done amazing things in this nation and elsewhere. They have overcome the issues I describe and probably several others. Imagine what they might have done if instead of wasting time and energy “overcoming” the various obstacles - whether they were intentionally or unintentionally placed, they instead started from a position of confidence and encouragement. Racism takes on a life of its own. It reaches a stage where no driver or decision is needed, no intent need be expressed. It is built into the system and it keeps working unless steps are taken to stop it. It effectively becomes autonomous.
Things are better now than they were in the early stages of my lifetime. Images of minorities as successful people are not difficult to find. But if you think racism is over, especially institutional racism, do a Google image search on the phrase “welfare queen”. Do that with the knowledge that the majority of folks on welfare in the USA are white people.
The engineer in me feels the strong urge to remind you that “better” is not the same as “all good” or “perfect”. It may be heading in that direction but it aint there yet. The Voting Rights Act made things better for minorities. The effect was dynamic rather than static and it had a tendency to spread. But while it made things better, there is still a significant amount of work to be done. The Google search I suggest above is not the only example of that by far but it is an example of it. The VRA’s work is not done and anyone who actually looked and was honest with themselves would not need that explained to them. Tennessee’s governor and other state politicians clearly have no desire for honesty, either expressed to them or from them. Unfortunately, TN is not unique.
The VRA was a known entity. It was peaceful, predictable and not punitive. I do not know what comes next. In that not knowing, neither I nor anyone I know is willing to guarantee that the next thing will meet those criteria. “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” — John F. Kennedy
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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."
