The Soap Box Prophet

 Look, I have said all along that AI is coming. And that it has its uses. It is the wave of the future, and you can scream into the hurricane all you want but you won't stop it. I've said all along that we need to regulate the industry before movies like The Terminator 1 and 2, Westworld -- film and tv series, Wargames ,  Dune 2, and a certain episode of Diagnosis: Murder  become a reality.  Most of us only know AI from Star Trek . And our much loved android, Data. We see AI through the lens of Data and wonder, how can AI be bad when it's Data? You're forgetting his "brother", Lore. Or the Borg. Wanna try that again? How long before AI is running this world, proving Star Trek so fucking wrong it's not even comprehensible? How long before we are the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park ? Before humans are out of work with no future? Before the AI learns how to launch drones, figures the launch codes to blow us off the planet? You laugh, but it's in the stages o...

  I’ve been writing a series about four artists in the Renaissance, specifically Renaissance Italy, and thought I knew a bit about the time. After reading this book, I realized I knew next to nothing. It sharpened my understanding of the artistic rivalries, the romantic intrigues, the philosophical and religious tensions, and the political powder keg that shaped every brushstroke and every decision.   History of the Renaissance Summarized  by Devon Kade has been a heck of an eye opener. And incredibly informative. Told in a vibrant, almost gossipy style, Kade finds all the juicy character bits that academic history books leave out: who loved whom, who fought with whom, the political pitfalls that nearly destroyed lives. Kade lays it out from the dawn of Petrarch’s resurrection of the Greek classics to the Medici influence on art, science, and medicine. Through the Florentine influences to the Roman additions to the Venetian influences, leading right into the Baroque era. ...

  So much bullshit going on in the world. In this country. A free press that's turned into a tabloid press - William Randolph Hearst would be so proud. A president who literally think he's a god and builds monuments to his own ego. Can you say Ozymandias I knew you could. Everyone wants to bomb the shit out of Israel who's been bombing the shit out of them. And Israel is the one crying "FOUL"! Excuse me if I don't cry for you, Argentina. As Jim Morrison once famously said, "I wanna get my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames." The crazier this place gets, the more nuclear Armageddon is a very certain, foregone conclusion. God won't send a Messiah to do the job; we'll do it to ourselves. And the Messiah? S/He'll be the one doing the mop up at the end of it all. The ones left will be the ones in hell, all suffused with an incandescent glow of nuclear effervescence. And an expanded life expectancy that will seem like forever. M...