Esoteric Meandering Shouting Into the Void

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

There is one branch of our government that since its inception has been placed in a position of having the moral high ground and thusly has no checks or balances on their individual behavior. I don’t know about anyone else but that doesn’t seem to fit into a system that espouses equal treatment for all.

The U.S. Supreme Court has been under scrutiny lately because of flagrant ethics violations, namely Justice Clarance Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito. These or two of nine individuals that are supposed to possess such high ethical and moral standards that they are beyond reproach, yet both have been caught excepting sizable gifts from influential people that have cases before the court. Gifts like private flights and luxury vacations that they are supposed to report but conveniently haven’t. Other Jurist won’t even except a bagel and coffee being graciously given to them for the fear that it would appear as some how influencing their decisions.

Chief Justice John Roberts has had the Supremes come up with their own code of ethics, isn’t that precious it like having your toddler write their own rules. The even more ridiculous part of the ethics rules they are putting forth is that they alone have the authority to enforce those self-governing rules. Only they have the power and authority to investigate and enforce the words they have so judiciously written on worthless parchment. Below is a link to their Ethic Policy.

https://www.uscourts.gov/rules-policies/judiciary-policies/ethics-policies

I have to assume that these rules will only be enforced if Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson are accused of impropriety because we know the other 6 are all floating in the same luxury watercraft.

My other issue with the current court is the number of Justices currently there are 9 Justices and the last time that number changed was 1869 if you don’t count the 10 months that Mitch McConnel single handedly reduce the court to 8 by disallowing President Obama a court seat after the death of Justice Antonin Gregory Scalia in February of 2016 claiming that it was an election year. It is crazy that the same rule didn’t apply when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg past in September of 2020.

The republicans are crying that the democrats want to pack the court when that is exactly what they have done. The democrats, at least some of us, want to expand the court to equitably coincide with the number of Judicial Districts that we currently have which is 13. That would seem to make sense that way each Supreme has an applet district that they preside over. My other gripe is why are the Supreme Court appointments lifetime appointments. I know that is how the constitution has it set up but back in 1789 the life expectancy was 57 years. RBG was 87 when she died thirty years older than the average life expectancy when the Constitution was signed.

Don’t start with Biden in 81 years old… I know there should be an age cap there as well but remember that the orange Cheeto is 78. Yes, Joe fell off his bike and got right back up, don’t know that Donny could, or even knows how to, ride a bike.

My point here is that the Supreme Court is writing its own rules, under duress, and they will also be the only ones that can hold themselves to those ‘rules’. Great what’s next Republicans are allowed to jerrymander districts and only count the votes they want to count… oh shit that already happening.

Thanks again for putting up with my ranting.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Ok this is my brain going on a random thought carnival this morning and the very reason that this blog is called Esoteric Meanderings.

So here goes… Everyone that watched the Avengers movies know what I am talking about and for those that don’t the villain Thanos at the end of Infinity Wars having secured all the magical infinity stone snapped his fingers and ½ of all living things in the universe disappeared. His goal was to return balance to a system that was and out of balance.

My thinking is, was removing ½ of all living things really going to bring balance, wouldn’t removing prejudice and creating economic equality level the imbalance rather than a 50% reduction in population. I suppose that would not make a good verse evil story if the villain wanted to end poverty by making the super-rich just rich and reducing or removing hunger and poverty. Man, that wouldn’t be a compelling story line.

As of late 2022, according to Snopes, 735 billionaires collectively possessed more wealth than the bottom half of U.S. households ($4.5 trillion and $4.1 trillion respectively). The top 1% held a total of $43.45 trillion. The World Population in 2023 is 8,045,311,447. Let’s do the math… that is 0.000000091357557% of the global population. The global wealth as of 2023 was $454.4 trillion, that math isn’t too difficult 735 families possess nearly 10% of the global wealth. Seems to me that there is a real imbalance in those figures.

Ending world hunger would require significant financial resources. According to estimates from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an annual investment of around $267 billion is needed to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030. Let’s but this number in relation to the amount Elon Musk spent to buy, and is now destroying Twitter, Musk the arrogant South African bought Twitter for $44 billion and that had no impact on his wealth. He willy nilly spent 15% of the funds that could help to end world hunger. It would cost the wealthiest families 0.0006145% of their combined wealth to end world hunger. That is a miniscule amount that they would even notice is missing, that seems like more of an imbalance than just too many living things.

I don’t know how to solve the inequity problem; I know it can’t be done by any one individual or even one government because the unfortunate truth is that those with the money will always have the power to hold on to it. The problem we have and have always had is that a very few always consolidate things, money, land, power, and with those things they manipulate influence in order to confound the masses into believing that they aren’t worthy partaking in the bounty those few hold.

I wish I could Thanos Snap and level the field, there will always be rich and poor but if the super wealthy were just less wealthy and the poor were less poor maybe just maybe the imbalance would only be a river instead of an ocean.

Thanks for suffering through my musing… feel free to interject what your Thanos Snap would be.  

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

So, let’s talk about another Generation X nightmare but now it has a new twist.

Remember the Mathew Brodrick 1983 movie WarGames, where a dumb kid got into a strategic computer system and asked it to play Thermonuclear War. The resolution was getting the program to play Tic-Tac-Toe repeatedly until it learned the futility of the game.

That was primitive AI in relation to the massive computing power of today’s massive systems. On December 8, 1987, Reagan and Gorbachev signed the INF Treaty in Washington, D.C. The final treaty eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons, restricting the deployment of both intermediate and short-range land-based missiles worldwide. Well for all the bluster of that treaty the proliferation of nuclear weapons hasn’t stopped and now more than 2 major players have the capability of committing a nuclear strike which could set off a global nuclear war.

Ok that’s terrifying but what does that have to do with a 1983 movie? Well let me tell you. Every time we develop a new and better technology one of the fist things that the mind of man applies it to is warfare. Did you know that the Soviets had and probably still do what is called a Dead Hand Strike option? What that is, is a protocol that if their strike system detects an opposition strike that destroys the Kremlin that it will automatically launch all nuclear weapons at all designated targets, mutually assured destruction. Nice way to play, ‘If we die. We all Die’.

That isn’t the scariest part of this cicero… see when we started this game of life extinction chicken the response time from one government starting a strike against another was hours, with nuclear submarines and new technology the response time is minutes. Those minutes are not enough time for a cogent human response to react to or call off the strike, so we have turned that over to AI. There is an article in the Atlantic about AI not having the launch codes and it paints a ‘Skynet’ future that I don’t think we want. Below is a link to the article. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/06/ai-warfare-nuclear-weapons-strike/673780/

I really wish that we could spend as much time and effort trying the make the world a better place than dreaming up better and more efficient ways to kill each other.

Sorry for another bummer post.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Holy crap this isn’t something anyone has talked about in forever. I remember back in the 70’s the hole in the ozone layer was a big deal, how Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are nontoxic, nonflammable chemicals containing atoms of carbon, chlorine, and fluorine. Were destroying the Ozone Layer these chemicals used in the manufacture of aerosol sprays, blowing agents for foams and packing materials, as solvents, and as refrigerants were fairly quickly regulated to stop the destruction of the ozone layer.

Ok for all you youngans’ or those who simply never paid attention let me tell you what the Ozone Layer is. The ozone layer sits in the stratosphere between 15 km and 30 km above the earth and shields us and other living things from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation. Its depletion could have serious effects on human health and the environment. In scientific terms the air we breathe is Oxygen O², that is 2 oxygen molecules bonded together Ozone is O³ 3 Oxygen molecules, you can smell the ozone after a lightning storm because electrically charged Oxygen molecules bond together creating ozone. The function of this oxygen rich layer covers the entire planet and protects life on earth by absorbing harmful ultraviolet-B (UV-B) radiation from the sun.

In the mid-1970s, scientists warned that man-made chemicals in everyday products like aerosols, foams, refrigerators and air-conditioners were harming the ozone layer. At that time, they didn’t know the scale of the problem. But in 1985, a hole was confirmed in the ozone layer over Antarctica. In 1987, the area of the hole reached 22.4 million square kilometers and ozone concentrations dropped to 109 DU. By 2006, the worst year for ozone depletion, the numbers were 29.6 million square kilometers and just 84 DU. DU refers to the Dobson Unit, a way to describe how much ozone there would be in the column if it were all squeezed into a single layer. The average amount of ozone in the atmosphere is roughly 300 Dobson Units, equivalent to a layer 3 millimeters (0.12 inches) thick—the height of 2 pennies stacked together.

We haven’t talked too much about the ozone layer because many of us believe that it would repair itself if we stopped emitting CFCs into the atmosphere, you know if you ignore it long enough it will just get better. Well unfortunately, like cancer just ignoring it hasn’t made it better. The 2023 Antarctic ozone hole reached its maximum size at 10 million square miles (26 million square kilometers) on September 21, which ranks as the 12^th largest since 1979, according to annual satellite and balloon-based measurements made by NOAA and NASA.

This hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic is hastening the melting of glaciers and adding to the increased level of the world oceans which in turn is changing the jet stream and changing global weather patterns.

This goes to show that the screw up of the past are still here and with the increase of global population and our stubborn reluctance to stop burning carbon we are pushing ourselves to an extinction event. Believe me the planet will be fine and will heal itself in a few millennia after we are gone. I, along with many others, had hoped that our hubris would doom our species.

Damn that was a bummer post… I just want everyone to understand that ignorance of something only makes it worse.