Dwain Northey (Gen X)

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/naacp-travel-advisory-florida-says-state-hostile-to-black-americans/

Remember the good old days when there were only travel advisories and or ban for, what some would call, third word countries? Well now because of the vile vitriol of one Governor Ron DeSantis the state of Florida, a vacation destination, has received a travel advisory by the NAACP.

The wannabe future President has made the climate so venomous in Florida the anyone who is a part of any minority group does not feel safe in the state. Black, Brown, LGTBQ+, these are all groups that are under attack in the Sunshine State. The majority Republican legislature and their fearful leader has passed laws that make almost everything a jailable offence and the fact that the state has very loose gun laws and a stand your ground law makes it more dangerous than being a blonde female in central America.

Florida residents are able to carry concealed guns without a permit under a bill signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. The law, which goes into effect on July 1, means that anyone who can legally own a gun in Florida can carry a concealed gun in public without any training or background check. This with their ridiculous stand your ground law, ‘Florida’s “Stand-Your-Ground” law was passed in 2005. The law allows those who feel a reasonable threat of death or bodily injury to “meet force with force” rather than retreat. Similar “Castle Doctrine” laws assert that a person does not need to retreat if their home is attacked.’ Makes it really sketchy to go there.

This in top of the don’t say gay rule and the new trans ruling that just passed.

“Florida lawmakers have no shame. This discriminatory bill is extraordinarily desperate and extreme in a year full of extreme, discriminatory legislation. It is a cruel effort to stigmatize, marginalize and erase the LGBTQ+ community, particularly transgender youth. Let me be clear: gender-affirming care saves lives. Every mainstream American medical and mental health organization – representing millions of providers in the United States – call for age-appropriate, gender-affirming care for transgender and non-binary people.

“These politicians have no place inserting themselves in conversations between doctors, parents, and transgender youth about gender-affirming care. And at the same time that Florida lawmakers crow about protecting parental rights they make an extra-constitutional attempt to strip parents of – you guessed it! – their parental rights. The Human Rights Campaign strongly condemns this bill and will continue to fight for LGBTQ+ youth and their families who deserve better from their elected leaders.”

This law makes it possible for anyone to just accuse someone of gender affirming care to have their child taken from them this would include someone traveling from out of state. This alone justifies a travel ban to the Magic Kingdom for families.

Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned DeSantis holy war with Disney, the largest employer in the state. I really hope the Mouse eats this ass holes lunch.

Well that’s enough bitching, thanks again for suffering though my rant.

  • Breaking down the lyrics

    Dwain Northey

    Misunderstanding: Or Maybe a Restraining Order?

    There are songs we hear so many times that we stop actually listening to the lyrics. They become part of the soundtrack of our lives, and we absorb the emotion without necessarily examining the story being told.

    Genesis’ “Misunderstanding” is one of those songs.

    On the surface, it’s easy to understand the sentiment. The narrator is heartbroken. He’s waiting for someone who doesn’t show up. He calls, waits, searches, and eventually realizes that the relationship may be falling apart. It’s melancholy, catchy, and wrapped in that particular brand of late-1970s/early-1980s emotional misery that Genesis could deliver so well.

    And if you’re the narrator, you’re obviously the victim.

    But let’s try something different.

    Let’s listen to the song from the perspective of the person he’s singing about.

    Suddenly, this isn’t necessarily a sad story about a guy who has been abandoned.

    It might be a story about a guy who desperately needs to be told to stop showing up.

    Because that’s the funny thing about songs involving heartbreak: the person telling the story is usually the person who gets to decide who the villain is.

    The narrator tells us about waiting. He tells us about trying to find her. He tells us about driving around looking for her. He tells us about the plans they apparently had. He tells us about her absence and his confusion.

    What he doesn’t tell us is what she thinks is happening.

    Maybe she really did misunderstand.

    Or maybe she understood perfectly.

    Maybe she didn’t want to see him.

    That’s where the song gets considerably more uncomfortable.

    Imagine reversing the roles. Imagine being the person on the other end of this story. You’ve apparently failed to show up for a meeting, and now this guy is driving around looking for you. He’s calling. He’s trying to figure out where you are. He’s emotionally distraught because you aren’t where he expects you to be.

    At some point, you might reasonably think:

    “Dude, this isn’t a misunderstanding. I’m avoiding you.”

    And if he doesn’t get the hint, eventually the conversation changes from “Why doesn’t she love me anymore?” to “Why won’t this guy leave me alone?”

    That’s a pretty significant distinction.

    We tend to romanticize persistence in relationships. Movies do it constantly. Songs do it constantly. The guy refuses to give up because he’s convinced that the relationship is still there somewhere underneath the misunderstanding.

    But persistence only looks romantic when the other person wants you to persist.

    Otherwise, it’s just unwanted attention with a better soundtrack.

    That’s the uncomfortable thing about looking at old love songs through a modern lens. We have become considerably more aware of the difference between romantic devotion and obsession.

    And obsession has a funny way of rewriting reality.

    The obsessed person doesn’t necessarily think they’re being obsessive. They think they’re being devoted.

    They’re not stalking.

    They’re trying to find you.

    They’re not refusing to accept rejection.

    They’re fighting for the relationship.

    They’re not ignoring boundaries.

    They’re trying to understand what went wrong.

    And they’re not imagining a relationship that may no longer exist.

    They’re holding on to what they know is still there.

    Except, of course, the other person gets a vote.

    That’s the part missing from the narrator’s perspective.

    We don’t hear her explanation.

    We don’t know why she didn’t show up.

    We don’t know whether she had second thoughts, changed her mind, met someone else, became uncomfortable, or simply decided she didn’t want to continue the relationship.

    All we know is that the narrator believes something has gone terribly wrong.

    And that’s exactly how obsession can work. The person experiencing it fills in the blanks with their own interpretation because accepting the alternative—that the other person simply doesn’t want them anymore—is emotionally unbearable.

    It’s easier to believe there has been a misunderstanding.

    Because a misunderstanding can be fixed.

    Rejection can’t.

    And that’s where the title itself becomes almost unintentionally funny.

    Misunderstanding.

    Maybe.

    Or maybe the narrator understands perfectly well what happened and simply doesn’t like the answer.

    There is an important difference between “She didn’t understand what I meant” and “I don’t understand why she doesn’t want me.”

    The first is a communication problem.

    The second is a boundary problem.

    And if the second person keeps pursuing the first person after being rejected, we’re no longer talking about a romantic tragedy. We’re getting into territory where someone might reasonably be researching restraining orders.

    That’s not to say the narrator is necessarily some sinister psychopath hiding behind a sentimental melody. That’s obviously an exaggeration. The song was written as a pop song about loneliness and romantic disappointment, not as a psychological case study.

    But that’s precisely why examining lyrics from another perspective is interesting.

    We automatically empathize with the person singing.

    They’re the one telling us what happened.

    They’re sad.

    They’re lonely.

    They’re confused.

    They’re the protagonist.

    Therefore, they’re right.

    But real life doesn’t work that way.

    Sometimes the protagonist is simply the person with the microphone.

    And sometimes the person with the microphone is leaving out some rather important information.

    Maybe the woman in “Misunderstanding” isn’t cruel.

    Maybe she isn’t confused.

    Maybe she isn’t playing games.

    Maybe she just wants some distance.

    And maybe if she were given the opportunity to tell her side of the story, the entire song would sound very different.

    It might go something like:

    “I thought I made it pretty clear I didn’t want to see him anymore, but apparently that wasn’t clear enough because now he’s driving around looking for me.”

    Suddenly Genesis has accidentally wandered from heartbreak into true crime.

    And that is the beauty of examining old songs this way.

    The lyrics don’t change.

    Our perspective does.

    What sounds like romantic persistence from one side can sound like obsession from the other. What sounds like heartbreaking confusion to the narrator can sound like someone refusing to accept another person’s autonomy.

    Maybe it really was a misunderstanding.

    Or maybe the narrator’s biggest misunderstanding was believing that someone else’s decision not to be with him required an explanation he was entitled to receive.

    Because love isn’t ownership.

    A relationship isn’t a contract that one person can continue enforcing after the other person has mentally checked out.

    And rejection isn’t a puzzle that persistence is guaranteed to solve.

    Sometimes the answer is simply no.

    And sometimes the healthiest thing you can do when someone doesn’t show up is not drive around looking for them.

    You go home.

    You listen to the song.

    You eat some ice cream.

    You feel miserable for a while.

    And eventually you move on.

    Because if you don’t, the next chapter of the love story may not be a reunion.

    It may be a judge explaining the difference between heartbreak and harassment.

    And somehow, I don’t think that was the misunderstanding Genesis had in mind.

  • Getting to know your city

    What’s the best way to explore a new city?

    I grew up as a teenager with a military father, so we moved a lot so it was always moving to a new place and figuring out where you were. I was very systematic in the way I did things I like to know where I am and before I could drive, I would ride my bike out six or eight blocks and either direction and know every street on my way back and then expand that when I started driving, it was the same way, but I would do it with a car and I would start with a mile and 2 miles and 3 miles and tell you you knew the map this is before GPS and for everything else so you knew where things were. You could discover them that way and it was just very systematic in the way I did things and still do things.

  • Western Religion Versus Eastern Religion

    Dwain Northey (Gen X)

    I have been thinking about religion, war, and one of the oldest human habits: finding a holy reason to do something that probably has a very ordinary reason underneath it.

    When you look at the three major Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—it is hard not to notice how often religion has become intertwined with warfare, conquest, persecution, and political power. The Crusades were fought under the Christian banner. Islamic empires expanded through military conquest while rulers invoked Islam to legitimize their authority. Jewish history contains its own periods of religiously framed warfare, particularly in the ancient conflicts described in the Hebrew Bible.

    But before we congratulate ourselves on discovering that one half of humanity is uniquely violent, there is an important historical wrinkle: religions don’t usually invade countries. People do. Governments do. Kings do. Empires do.

    Religion can provide the banner.

    Sometimes it provides the motivation.

    And sometimes it provides a remarkably convenient excuse.

    That distinction matters.

    Compare this with the major traditions that developed in South and East Asia. Hinduism and Buddhism certainly have histories involving warfare, political violence, and rulers who used religion to legitimize authority. Buddhism, despite its reputation for nonviolence, has not magically prevented Buddhist societies from fighting wars. Japan’s history alone should put that myth to bed.

    But there is a noticeable difference in the way some of these traditions have historically interacted with political power.

    A king who wants another kingdom’s land does not necessarily need to pretend that the neighboring king insulted his particular interpretation of the universe.

    Sometimes the reason is simply:

    “I want his land.”

    And honestly, there is something almost refreshing about the brutal honesty of that.

    Human beings have been fighting over land, resources, trade routes, political power, wealth, and strategic advantage since long before anyone invented the modern nation-state. Religion can become part of that equation, but it doesn’t have to be the fundamental cause.

    The problem begins when we dress ordinary human ambition in sacred clothing.

    “I want your territory” becomes “God has given us this territory.”

    “I want your wealth” becomes “Your people are infidels.”

    “I want political control” becomes “I am defending the faith.”

    “I don’t like your religion” becomes “Your existence threatens our civilization.”

    And suddenly a perfectly ordinary human desire has been upgraded into a divine mission.

    That is where religion becomes particularly dangerous—not necessarily because religious people are more violent than everyone else, but because religion can transform a human objective into an absolute objective.

    If I want your land because it has oil, we can negotiate.

    If I want your land because it gives me access to a strategic port, we can negotiate.

    If I want your land because my God personally promised it to me, apparently negotiation has become somewhat more complicated.

    And that is one of the recurring problems throughout the history of the Abrahamic traditions.

    The Crusades weren’t simply theological debates conducted with swords. They involved religion, certainly, but also territory, political power, wealth, prestige, dynastic ambitions, and competition among European rulers. Likewise, the expansion of Islamic empires cannot be reduced to religious fanaticism; political consolidation, taxation, trade, territory, and imperial ambition mattered enormously. And ancient Israelite warfare described in biblical texts existed within the broader world of ancient Near Eastern conquest and state formation.

    Religion was frequently present.

    But religion wasn’t necessarily the entire explanation.

    The same caution applies to the East.

    It would be historically dishonest to portray Hinduism or Buddhism as peaceful civilizations that somehow floated above human violence. Buddhist rulers fought wars. Hindu kingdoms fought wars. Buddhist nationalism has contributed to modern violence in places such as Sri Lanka and Myanmar. Religious identity can become political identity anywhere human beings live.

    The difference, at least in my mind, is not that Eastern religions discovered peace while Western religions discovered war.

    Humans everywhere discovered war.

    The more interesting question is what happens when political ambition becomes inseparable from divine authority.

    Because once a ruler convinces people that his political objective is God’s objective, opposing the ruler can suddenly become equivalent to opposing God.

    And that’s a hell of a political weapon.

    Maybe the lesson isn’t that one side of the planet is inherently more peaceful than the other. Maybe the lesson is that we should become suspicious whenever somebody tells us that their political objective is actually a sacred obligation.

    Because history has given us plenty of examples.

    The king wants land.

    The emperor wants an empire.

    The dictator wants power.

    The politician wants votes.

    The wealthy want resources.

    The nation wants strategic advantage.

    And then somebody walks into the room carrying a religious text and says:

    “Don’t worry. God wants us to do this.”

    That’s when I start checking the fine print.

    Because if you want my land, just tell me you want my land.

    If you want my oil, tell me you want my oil.

    If you want political control, tell me you want political control.

    If you don’t like my religion, at least have the courage to admit that you don’t like my religion.

    But please stop telling me that you’re invading my country because my prophet offended you, my religion threatens you, or your God personally appointed you to take my stuff.

    At least be honest.

    Human beings have been extraordinarily creative at finding reasons to kill one another.

    We don’t need to drag God into the argument every time.

    Sometimes the most honest explanation is also the simplest:

    “We wanted something you had.”

    And perhaps that is the real lesson history keeps trying to teach us.

    War is human.

    Power is human.

    Greed is human.

    Territory is human.

    Religion is human.

    The dangerous part is when someone combines all five and then tells everyone else that the resulting bloodshed was God’s idea.

  • Alive

    What’s a moment in your life that made you feel truly alive?

     This is a unique question on a literal basis. I would say everyone the moment they feel truly alive is the moment of birth when they take that first breath, but in other instances like one when do you feel the most alive when you’re terrified or overwhelmed probably the most of the moments that you feel the most alive I probably felt the most in tune with the alive, hopeful and terrified at the same moment is watching my son be born because I was happy and scared at the same moment like I can’t screw this up because this project we call life is now just not about me. There’s another person involved.

  • Kids in the Candy Store

    Dwain Northey (Gen X)

    Apparently, we’ve reached the point where Donald Trump and his political ilk—yes, ilk, because apparently we’ve wandered into the forest of bad ideas—have decided that artificial intelligence can police itself.

    Because what could possibly go wrong?

    Nothing says responsible technological governance quite like handing the keys to the candy store to the kids and saying, “Go ahead. Just promise not to eat everything.”

    The people actually creating some of this technology have been warning that we need reasonable regulations and guardrails. Not because they hate AI. Not because they want to stop innovation. Quite the opposite. They understand what they are building, and some of them have openly argued that powerful AI needs oversight before it becomes a problem rather than after.

    But apparently the Trump administration has a better idea:

    Let the industry regulate itself.

    Because corporations have always been famous for voluntarily limiting their own profits in the name of public safety.

    What could possibly happen?

    And then there’s the terminology. Apparently, we’ve now graduated from artificial intelligence to “super intelligence.” Because nothing makes a potentially complicated technological issue easier to understand than giving it a name that sounds like it belongs on the side of a Marvel villain.

    I still prefer AI, although I’ve never been completely comfortable with the word artificial.

    It isn’t really artificial intelligence in the traditional sense. It doesn’t sit around contemplating existence while staring dramatically out a window. It isn’t a synthetic human brain. It is essentially an extraordinarily powerful system for processing, organizing, recognizing and generating information at speeds no human can match.

    So I’ve always thought automated intelligence was a better description.

    AI doesn’t necessarily know something the way a human knows something. It processes an enormous amount of information and produces an answer based on patterns and probabilities at speeds that make the human brain look like it’s running Windows 95 on a dial-up connection.

    And that’s precisely why guardrails matter.

    The faster and more powerful the technology becomes, the more important it is to have rules about what it can do, who is responsible when it goes wrong, and how humans maintain control over it.

    But apparently we’re going with:

    “Trust us.”

    Trust the companies.

    Trust the technology.

    Trust the administration.

    And, apparently, trust that Donald Trump will personally keep superintelligence under control because he is a really smart president.

    Well, that’s reassuring.

    Because if there is one thing history has taught us, it’s that complicated systems involving enormous amounts of money, power and technology always work out beautifully when everyone involved simply promises to behave.

    No regulations.

    No meaningful oversight.

    No independent guardrails.

    Just a bunch of incredibly powerful companies standing around the digital candy store saying, “Don’t worry. We won’t eat the candy.”

    Meanwhile, the rest of us are standing outside wondering whether somebody should at least install a lock on the door.

    I’m not saying AI is going to become Skynet.

    I’m not saying it’s going to become Ultron.

    And I’m certainly not saying we’re inevitably headed toward some science-fiction apocalypse.

    But here’s the thing about reasonable regulation:

    You don’t have to believe the house is going to burn down before you install a smoke detector.

    That’s what responsible government is supposed to do.

    You look at a technology with enormous potential benefits and enormous potential risks, and you establish reasonable boundaries before the technology becomes so deeply embedded in society that changing the rules becomes nearly impossible.

    We don’t need politicians to panic about AI.

    We don’t need them to ban it.

    And we don’t need them to pretend it’s harmless.

    We need adults in the room.

    Because handing superintelligent—or automated—technology to an industry and telling it to regulate itself sounds less like a technological strategy and more like giving a bunch of kids a credit card and dropping them off at the candy store.

    And then telling them:

    “Just remember, kids. Moderation is important.”

    Yeah.

    I’m sure that’ll work out great.

  • One wish

    The genie grants you a wish. What is it?

    I know a lot of people would wish for money or lots of other things like that. Honestly, I would save my one wish would to really just be and understand what being happy is cause sadly I don’t think I’ve been happy and feels like forever so if I could just be happy, that would be my one wish.

  • Really? One More Time?

    Dwain Northey (Gen X)

    Apparently, the answer to every problem in America these days is remarkably simple:

    Just give us another two years.

    No, wait. Four years.

    Actually, why stop there? Maybe just give us forever.

    That seems to be the MAGA argument whenever somebody points out that the country isn’t exactly experiencing the promised golden age. Don’t like the economy? Give Trump more time. Don’t like the tariffs? Give Trump more time. Don’t like what is happening to government institutions, universities, scientific research, civil service, immigration policy, or America’s standing in the world?

    You guessed it.

    More time.

    It’s a fascinating political strategy: if the results aren’t working, simply extend the experiment.

    And apparently the fact that much of what is happening was not exactly a surprise is irrelevant.

    Project 2025 was never some mysterious document that materialized from the political ether. It was a detailed conservative governing blueprint, and by early 2026, outside trackers were already documenting that more than half of its identified domestic administrative recommendations had been initiated or completed. (Center for Progressive Reform⁠)

    So when someone says, “We haven’t finished what we started,” that’s actually the problem.

    You’re almost finished.

    And now you’re asking for more time to finish it?

    Meanwhile, the economic scoreboard isn’t exactly the unquestionable triumph being advertised. FactCheck.org’s July 2026 review found slower job growth, inflation running at 3.5 percent in June, higher gasoline prices, declining labor-force participation, and federal debt up roughly 10.7 percent during Trump’s second term through the period examined. (FactCheck.org⁠)

    The latest official GDP estimate isn’t exactly screaming economic miracle either: real GDP grew at a 1.5 percent annual rate in the second quarter of 2026, down from 2.1 percent in the first quarter. (Bureau of Economic Analysis⁠)

    And here’s the part that makes the whole argument particularly strange.

    Even Trump recently acknowledged that he had done a poor job communicating his economic record, while reporting pointed to rising gas prices and declining consumer confidence as sources of public dissatisfaction. (Reuters⁠)

    But apparently the solution isn’t changing course.

    It’s asking for another term.

    It’s the political equivalent of taking your car to the mechanic because the engine is making horrible noises and saying:

    “I know the check-engine light is on, the transmission is slipping, and there’s smoke coming out of the hood, but could you just give me another 50,000 miles? I’m pretty sure we’re about to see what this thing can really do.”

    At some point, “give us more time” stops being an explanation and starts becoming an admission.

    Because if your argument is that you haven’t had enough time to demonstrate how successful your policies are after nearly two years of unified Republican control and an administration aggressively implementing its stated agenda, then what exactly were all those promises about?

    We were told tariffs would bring manufacturing roaring back.

    We were told prices would come down.

    We were told government would become more efficient.

    We were told America would become stronger.

    We were told this was going to be a historic transformation.

    Well, history is keeping receipts.

    And the answer cannot perpetually be:

    “Just wait.”

    Wait another two years.

    Then another four.

    Then another election.

    Then another emergency.

    Then another enemy.

    Then another explanation for why the promised results haven’t materialized yet.

    At some point, Americans have to be allowed to look at the actual results and say, “Okay. We’ve seen enough of the experiment.”

    That’s not partisan.

    That’s not radical.

    That’s called accountability.

    If the MAGA movement believes it has done a wonderful job, then fine. Make the case. Put the numbers on the table. Explain the policies. Explain the consequences. Explain what has improved and what hasn’t.

    But don’t tell Americans that the only reason the plan isn’t working is because you haven’t been allowed to implement enough of it.

    Because that argument eventually leads to a rather uncomfortable question:

    How much power do you need before you’ll finally accept responsibility for the results?

    Two more years?

    Four more years?

    A permanent majority?

    At some point, “just give us more time” stops sounding like confidence.

    It starts sounding like a request for an unlimited warranty on a product the customer is already watching fall apart.

    Really?

    One more time?

  • 5th Place

    Dwain Northey (Gen X)

    Riley Gaines has lost another lawsuit.

    At this point, I’m beginning to wonder if anyone in the history of American sports has managed to turn fifth place into such a full-time career.

    Because here is the part of the Riley Gaines story that somehow keeps getting lost in the political fog machine: she did not finish second to a transgender athlete who barely edged her out for first place.

    She didn’t lose a championship.

    She didn’t get bumped from the podium.

    She didn’t finish behind Lia Thomas.

    She tied Lia Thomas for fifth place.

    Fifth.

    There were four women ahead of both of them. The official results show Gaines and Thomas touching the wall in exactly the same time, 1:43.40. (Supreme Court⁠)

    And yet somehow this fifth-place tie became the origin story for a political career, lawsuits, congressional appearances, media appearances and an entire movement devoted to convincing America that Riley Gaines was robbed of something monumental.

    The trophy situation certainly made for an awkward podium moment. NCAA officials initially had only one fifth-place trophy available and Thomas was the swimmer photographed holding it. Gaines later received her own fifth-place trophy. (PolitiFact⁠)

    But let’s be painfully precise about what happened in the pool.

    If Lia Thomas had never entered that race, Riley Gaines still would have finished fifth.

    That isn’t my interpretation. It’s arithmetic.

    Four swimmers finished ahead of them. Gaines and Thomas tied for fifth. Remove Thomas from the race and Gaines moves into fifth by herself. She doesn’t suddenly become fourth. She doesn’t become third. She doesn’t become the national champion.

    She remains fifth.

    And now, years later, Gaines has another legal loss to add to the résumé. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit against the NCAA, ruling that the plaintiffs had not established the NCAA as a recipient of federal financial assistance sufficient to support their Title IX claim. Gaines and the other plaintiffs have indicated they intend to appeal. (UPI⁠)

    Which brings us to the remarkable part.

    Imagine explaining this entire saga to someone who knows absolutely nothing about American politics or college swimming:

    “Who was Riley Gaines?”

    “She was a college swimmer.”

    “Was she an NCAA champion?”

    “No.”

    “Did she lose the championship to a transgender swimmer?”

    “No.”

    “Did she finish second?”

    “No.”

    “Third?”

    “No.”

    “Fourth?”

    “No.”

    “So what happened?”

    “She tied for fifth.”

    “With the transgender swimmer?”

    “Yes.”

    “And the transgender swimmer beat her?”

    “No. They tied.”

    “And four other women finished ahead of both of them?”

    “Yes.”

    “And this became a major political cause?”

    “Apparently.”

    At some point, you almost have to admire the sheer efficiency of the American outrage machine.

    Most athletes spend their careers trying to be remembered for winning.

    Riley Gaines managed to become nationally famous for fifth place.

    And that’s really the strange irony here. Whatever anyone thinks about transgender participation in women’s sports, policies surrounding eligibility, Title IX or the NCAA, those are legitimate subjects for public debate. They can and should be discussed using rules, evidence, athletic data and actual competitive outcomes.

    But turning a tie for fifth into evidence that someone was personally displaced from greatness requires leaving the scoreboard somewhere back in 2022.

    Because the scoreboard doesn’t care about the political narrative.

    It says:

    Five.

    Not second.

    Not runner-up.

    Not robbed of first.

    Fifth.

    And apparently, after all these years, fifth place is still trying to become first place in the biography.

  • AI: Ultron or Data?

    Dwain Northey (Gen X)

    There is something slightly amusing about calling what we have today “artificial intelligence.” The phrase makes it sound as though we have created a digital brain sitting somewhere in a server farm, contemplating the meaning of existence while drinking imaginary coffee.

    I’m not entirely convinced.

    At least not yet.

    What we have feels a lot more like automated intelligence.

    AI takes an absolutely ridiculous amount of information—books, articles, images, code, conversations, scientific papers, photographs, history, mathematics, human language—and finds patterns in all of it. Then, when we ask it a question, it produces something that looks remarkably like an answer.

    And sometimes it is remarkably good.

    Sometimes it is also spectacularly wrong.

    Which, admittedly, is another very human characteristic.

    That distinction matters because we have a tendency to anthropomorphize technology. We see a machine producing a coherent paragraph, having a conversation, writing code, creating an image or solving a problem, and our brains immediately start filling in the blanks.

    “Holy crap. It thinks.”

    Maybe.

    Or maybe we have simply become exceptionally good at building machines that can manipulate information in ways that look an awful lot like thinking.

    And that’s where things get interesting.

    Because eventually we’re going to have to decide exactly what we’re building before we discover that we accidentally built something we don’t completely understand.

    We have been warned about this for decades.

    The Terminator gave us Skynet, which apparently looked at humanity and decided the appropriate solution to the human condition was nuclear annihilation.

    The Matrix gave us Agent Smith, who concluded that humanity was basically a virus because apparently even artificial intelligence can develop a superiority complex.

    Avengers: Age of Ultron gave us Ultron, who looked at the entirety of human history—the wars, genocides, greed, stupidity and general tendency to repeatedly step on the same rake—and concluded:

    “Yeah, these things have to go.”

    And then there is Star Trek: The Next Generation, which gave us Data.

    Data is considerably more interesting to me.

    Because Data doesn’t want to destroy humanity.

    He wants to understand it.

    He wants to experience humanity. Humor. Emotion. Friendship. Art. Music. Relationships. All those wonderfully irrational things that make us human.

    And perhaps that is the real question we’re facing.

    Not “Will AI become Skynet?”

    The question is:

    What are we actually creating?

    Because right now, we’re building systems whose capabilities are advancing faster than our ability to establish rules around them.

    That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re ten minutes away from an AI deciding that humans are a disease.

    But it does mean we probably shouldn’t wait until the metaphorical computer starts saying “I have become self-aware” before somebody in government asks what the hell we’re doing.

    Regulation doesn’t have to mean stopping AI.

    We’ve regulated automobiles without banning automobiles. We regulate airplanes without outlawing aviation. We regulate pharmaceuticals, medical devices, financial institutions and nuclear power because we’ve learned a rather important lesson throughout human history:

    Just because we can build something doesn’t mean we should build it without rules.

    AI deserves the same kind of thinking.

    We should care about who controls it, what information it uses, how it affects employment, privacy, elections, intellectual property, warfare and critical infrastructure. We should care about what happens when an AI system makes a consequential mistake and nobody knows exactly why it happened.

    And perhaps most importantly, we should care about whether we’re creating systems that become increasingly autonomous without establishing meaningful human accountability.

    Because that’s the part that scares me more than Skynet.

    Not a computer suddenly developing hatred for humanity.

    Humans giving increasingly powerful machines increasingly consequential responsibilities and then shrugging when something goes wrong.

    That’s a much more believable science-fiction story.

    And maybe that’s the irony of artificial intelligence.

    We’re worried that someday AI might become too human.

    Meanwhile, we’re still trying to figure out how to keep humans from behaving like idiots with powerful technology.

    We’ve spent centuries inventing things before fully considering what happens when those things fall into the wrong hands.

    Gunpowder.

    Nuclear weapons.

    Social media.

    Facebook.

    Okay, maybe those last two aren’t quite equivalent.

    But you get the point.

    Perhaps AI isn’t the beginning of the end of humanity.

    Perhaps it’s simply the next enormous technological gamble humans have decided to take.

    And that’s why I don’t know whether I’m looking at the birth of something genuinely intelligent, an extraordinarily sophisticated information-processing machine, or the technological equivalent of a very convincing parlor trick.

    Maybe someday we’ll know.

    Maybe we’ll eventually have machines that aren’t merely assembling information but actually understand what they’re doing.

    Maybe they’ll become something closer to Data than Skynet.

    Or maybe, somewhere deep inside some future server farm, a computer will finally read the complete history of humanity and quietly mutter:

    “You know what? Ultron had a point.”

    Let’s hope our regulations arrive before that particular software update.

  • Nothing is a hustle

    What are your favorite side-hustle ideas?

    I do Uber full-time it’s not a hustle. It’s survival.