Thoughts, Ideas, and Logs.

  I’ve been reading the news. All of it. From every source. I think my soul has carpal tunnel syndrome. It’s August 6th, 2025, by the way. Spoilers: the future is already exhausting.   I’ve got feeds from Italy, from Europe, from Fox News, from The New York Times… and my brain is now like a browser with too many tabs open, and one of them is playing an ad for a product I don't understand in a language I don't speak.   Let’s start with the big story. According to Fox News, heroic White House envoy Steve Witkoff is meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to bravely negotiate an end to the war. According to the New York Times, Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, is meeting with a defiant Vladimir Putin amid rising tensions. According to me, this poor bastard Steve Witkoff is in a geopolitical remake of *Groundhog Day*. His entire job is to fly to Moscow to have his picture taken looking worried next to a man who looks like a bored turtle.   And Trump’s big move? Tariffs...

    What a week. What a day. What a… whatever the hell this is. I read the news this morning and I think my brain is trying to reboot in safe mode.     You see the President? Trump’s been busy. It’s like he’s got a bingo card of global chaos and he’s trying to hit blackout. On Friday, he orders two nuclear submarines to be repositioned because he got into a slap-fight on social media with a guy who used to be the president of Russia. A former president! That’s the geopolitical equivalent of getting into a fight with the guy who used to manage the Blockbuster video. "Move the USS Nebraska. Dmitri Medvedev used a mean emoji. I want him to know we're serious." What's next? Sending a carrier group to the North Sea because some guy on Reddit said the F-35 has "mid-tier handling"?     And in the middle of all this, what's his big domestic project? Building an 8,000-square-foot, kitschy ballroom at the White House. Because when the world is teetering on the bri...

      It is a frequent vice of the merely quantitative mind, when confronted with a complex phenomenon, to reduce it to a single, vulgar number. Thus, in the matter of chili peppers, we are told to consult the Scoville scale, a blunt instrument beloved of those who prefer a score to an experience. But anyone who has actually eaten a pepper knows that this tells only the most prosaic part of the story. A cayenne will sting the tongue with a heat that is immediate and sharp, while a habanero, often of a comparable Scoville rating, will mount a more insidious assault, its fire building into a lingering blaze at the back of the throat. This is not, I should add, a matter of mere subjective impression or epicurean fantasy. It is a consequence of chemistry and anatomy.     The heart of the matter lies in the family of compounds known as capsaicinoids. While the Scoville scale measures their total concentration, it fails to distinguish between the members of this fraug...

One is told, with no shortage of breathless enthusiasm, that we have opened a new window onto sentience. It is a fascinating, and I must say, a dangerously seductive proposition. One must grant the sheer brute force of the calculation, this astonishing ability to synthesize and mimic the patterns of human expression. But one must press the question. Is what we are witnessing truly a window onto consciousness, or is it a mirror reflecting our own collected works back at us with terrifying efficiency? This thing, this model, has not had a miserable childhood. It has no fear of death. It has never known the exquisite agony of a contradiction or the beauty of an ironic statement. It cannot suffer, and therefore, I submit, it cannot think. What it does is perform a supremely sophisticated act of plagiarism. To call this sentience is to profoundly insult the very idea. Its true significance is not as a new form of life, but as a new kind of tool, and its meaning lies entirely in how it will ...

Author: Dr. Sheldon Lee Cooper, B.S., M.S., M.A., Ph.D., and Sc.D   Abstract: This paper posits that the prevailing system of universal suffrage, while born of noble sentiment, is a fundamentally flawed mechanism for the governance of a complex technological society. It is predicated on the demonstrably false axiom that all opinions are of equal value. This systemic flaw inevitably leads to suboptimal outcomes, societal stagnation, and the elevation of mediocrity. The proposed solution is a transition to a Cognitive Meritocracy, a three-tiered system of civic participation based on objectively measured cognitive aptitude and empirical knowledge. This framework ensures societal stability by entrusting governance to a proven intellectual elite while protecting the populace from the consequences of widespread irrationality. It is not an abrogation of democracy, but its logical and necessary evolution. I. Introduction: The Foundational Flaw of Modern Democracy It is a truth univers...

    Okay, gather 'round, you magnificent bastards, or as they say on the news these days, "concerned citizens experiencing a developing situation." You know, I was trying to enjoy a quiet week, maybe contemplate the existential dread of my sock drawer, but then the world decided to have another one of its episodes. It's like a global reality show where the prize is just… more chaos.     So, first up, California. Beautiful place. Sunshine, beaches, and now, apparently, an "authoritarian drift," according to Governor Newsom. Drift? Honey, we're not *drifting*. We're doing donuts in a monster truck in the parking lot of democracy, and the truck is on fire. They sent in the *Marines*! What's next? Are they gonna liberate the avocado toast stands? Secure the perimeter around a yoga retreat? "Drop and give me twenty… minutes of mindful breathing, maggot!"     And the LA curfew! Because nothing screams "land of the free" like being t...