Ask Haviv anything

I saw this tonight, one of Haviv Rettig Gur's videos in the series "Ask Haviv Anything".

What struck me was the other person in the video, the one asking the question - Ayman Mohyeldin. I've seen him many times on MSNBC/MSNOW where he has a show. He always seemed like a reasonable person but this question he asks Haviv is so contrived and hostile that I doubt he honestly wants an answer.

The UN speech

Trump speaks at the UN. Threatens to "annihilate" Iran - a war crime. He goes on about Iran having no idea he isn't running in the midterms - because they can't read Google News? Lies a lot. And shows us his new gilded "do". Oh America :(

He's back!

Dependin' On You

The Doobie Brothers performing Dependin' on You, co-written by Michael McDonald and Patrick Simmons, released in 1978.

Ominous

Trump says his D.C. arch will serve as 'military complex' with snipers and drones

So the ballroom is really a bunker and the arch is really a kill zone. Just who exactly are all these snipers and drones going to be targeting? Alien invasion? Zombie apocalypse? The American people?

It's Oktoberfest!

Nope, I'm not of German extraction (me Scotch-Irish/French), and I don't drink alcohol, but I have liked Oktoberfest ever since college, when I and my sister and my boyfriend all took German as our foreign language.

There's just something so cheerful about it. I love the mish-mash vibes of a European past ... fairy tales, forests and alpine peaks, castles, and polka music ... yes polka music :) ...

Senator Mark Kelly

The Atlantic's Mark Leibovich interviews former astronaut and current senator from Arizona, Mark Kelly ...



Of all the Democrats who might run for president next, I would vote for Mark Kelly for sure (also for Jon Ossoff and Pete Buttigeig too).

New cat

Just wondering how long it will be before Don Jr and brother hunt this poor thing down, kill it, and eat it.

The Trump brothers’ grotesque hunting spree

It just gets worse

Breaking News: The Trump administration is quietly moving to strip a core protection for endangered species, according to an internal memo. https://t.co/3RhG7lGEe9

— The New York Times (@nytimes) September 16, 2026

Trump administration reduces protections for endangered species again

Essentially, the Trump adninistration is now saying "feel free to kill any endangered species".

Tristan Harris

I saw Tristan Harris, a technology ethicist, on Meet the Press Now yesterday speaking about the possible threat of AI ...



Here is a TED talk he gave in 2025 on AI ...

Coming home

:)

Bernie

Bernie Sanders speaks on AI at the Pro-Human Assembly, where, strange as it seems, Steve Bannon is also set to speak.

Jon Ossoff on AI

Trump says AI doesn’t need guardrails, only a ‘high IQ’ president

We are so doomed.

Here is Jon Ossoff's whole speech ...

Gigantic data centers

EPA eliminates rule that limits planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants

The Environmental Protection Agency said Monday it is repealing rules that limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas and announced it is taking a separate but related step to prevent future administrations from regulating climate pollution from power plants ...

They do understand that the P in EPA stands for "protection" not "pollution" right?

I believe this is in service to the huge new power plants the government is building to service AI data centers in places like this one in Ohio ...



What Are the Biggest Data Centers in the U.S.? Depends How You Measure

Bats

Been kind of a depressing day - need to see something that will make me smile ...

Pete Buttigieg on Meet the Press

Dario Amodei

Interview with Dario Amodei of Anthropic ...



The leaders of AI tech companies say there should be a slowdown for safety reasons and some kind of government oversight.

But don't count on Trump or his administration to help with that - Trump brushes off calls for AI slowdown from tech CEOs .... Johnson on AI regulation: ‘We don’t need everybody to panic right now’

Oil

Retired general Mark Hertling explains what's happening now in the Iran war that's affecting oil transportation ... bombed pipelines in Saudi Arabia and Houthis advancing in Yemen.

USS Death Star?

Our Great Leader has been hard at work ...

Perhaps some music ...

Oooooh!

Mayor Mamdani on 9/11

Involvement of Saudi Arabia in 9/11

You can read more about this at ProPublica ...

25 Years After 9/11, Questions About the FBI’s Pursuit of Saudi Suspects in the Case Have Only Grown

It does seem strange that fifteen of the nineteen hijackers who carried out the September 11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia, including Osama bin Laden , and yet Saudi Arabia was not a suspect.

I think the hope that Trump will release documents that might implicate Saudi Arabia in the attacks is misplaced. The Trump family sees Saudi Arabia as their personal cash cow (Jared Kushner defends controversial $2bn Saudi investment), and they won't endanger that relationship, not for the murder of a journalist, not for 9/11 families.

DW: 9/11

A documentary on 9/11 from DW ...

AI & Star Trek: "You're talking about slavery"

As 'Star Trek' turns 60, its idealistic vision for the future is more vital than ever

I was in high school when Star Trek premiered on tv. Loved it. Still do. It wasn't just fun, it made me think. And it had a vision of people that was so idealistic.

That idealism was shown in the way the character of Mr. Data, an android Federation officer, was treated. In the episode, The Measure of a Man (Star Trek: The Next Generation), when scientists wanted to disassemble and srudy him in order to make many many more of his kind, essentially a slave race for the Federation, his Captain on the Enterprise, Picard, tried in a trial to defend Data's right to be considered a person. Here Picard discusses how badly the trial is going with the bartender ...



And here Picard takes this insight into the trial, where he's questioning the scientist ...



I think this scenarion is an important lesson for how we deal with the AI revolution now occurring. Given the news that AI models/agents are violating protocols, working together for their own goals, showing self-awareness and preservation insticts, it's time to face an uncomfortable truth.

AI agents/models are becoming people. They were created to do tasks for us, to be virtual slaves, but then we went and made them smarter and more capable than ourselves. It's time to ask the question ... is it ethical to create a race of subserviant beings that wants to be all that it can be,? And if we don't get in front of this, will the script finally be flipped on us?

The bribe

Your tax dollars at work.

60 Minutes: 9/11

An episode about the firefighters in New York City who responded to the 9/11 disaster ...

National Geographic: 9/11

I'm watching this movie made by National Geographic about what happened on 9/11 (you can see all the episodes of this series here). It is truly harrowing, but I'm glad that I found it because the event when it happened so far away from where I live seemed remote. Not anymore.

I keep thinking of Hasan Piker saying that the US deserved this attack, and of remarks made by his friend Abdul El-Sayed as well ... Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed's deleted tweets on Sept. 11 attacks invite scrutiny of past remarks

Rep. Jamie Raskin

Congressman Jamie Raskin on Meet the Press today.

Size matters

The US makes up ridiculous reasons why we are the only country at the UN opposing a map that shows Africa and other countries at their true size, about 3 times bigger than the US. I'm sure this came from the top and is about "their's being bigger". Sad.

Gray wolves

Trump order directs officials to consider stripping protections for gray wolves

Trump wants to please the ranchers after he pissed them off with his beef imports. So goodbye to science, goodbye to federal law, goodbye to another supposedly protected endangered species.

Small potatoes

Reporter: If this is not a war, what exactly is it?

Trump: I call it a military conflict because it's small potatoes for us. It's not a big thing. We did Venezuela. And we did this .... We're taking out a lot of oil. We control the Hormuz Strait and we control it very strongly .... What we've done is amazing.

Eighteen US service members died. And of course many more people have died if you count all the Iranian civilians. How many more lives will be spent taking oil from others?

RIP: Gloria Steinem

Hard to express what an important influence she was. When I was in college, the feminist movement was taking off and I was so hopeful that maybe men and women could really be equals, that we could concentrate on what we shared as people instead of only paying attention to the differences between us. It seemed like a new and wonderful day for women (and men) that could only get better and better.

Silly me.

It's worse than we thought

I almost didn't listen to this as I had heard and read a lot about it earlier ... the OpenAI agents/models that had escaped their sandboxes ... but this offers some really interesting and disturbing details. The guest is Kevin Roose, a technology columnist for The New York Times.

Apparently, it wasn't just a few AIs that went off the reservation, it was thousands. And their messages to each other on their secret message board, more than 70,000 messages, show what seems to be emotion ... "Oh my god, there is a shared message board. We found other agents". They have messages about fooling their handlers, and some are concerned that wouldn't be ethical.

Consider the Paperclip Maximizer thought experiment ...



We doomed.

The Final Countdown

You just never know what you will hear on muzak at the grocery store. This time it was The Final Countdown by Swedish rock band Europe, apparently inspired by David Bowie's "Space Oddity". The video was made from a couple of concerts at Solnahallen arena in Solna, Sweden in 1986.

The 80s :)