Well, Team Evil is going all in on this $5,000 bribe to vote Republican. 47 promised the payment if the Republicans win Congress. People immediately pointed out that such a payment would add over $1 trillion dollars to the debt. Can we even DO that? In 2008, the national debt stood at $10 trillion dollars. After George’s Wars, Covid-19, the housing crash, economic mismanagement in general and now Donny’s new endless war in Iran and all of the other nonsense he wastes money on – ALL of it aggravated by government-starving, endless “tax cuts for the rich” – the debt stands at $40 trillion.

It seems pretty clear, there’s not really any money in the budget for $5,000 dollar bribe payments. But Team Evil isn’t getting rid of the story. They’re running an intelligence test. They want to know just how stupid people really are. If you go out and vote Republican just so you can get some of that sweet payout, you fail the test. But there are plenty of people who WILL fail that test, so why not push the story?

So now various members of Team Evil are out there offering up all of the other ways the government might raise a trillion dollars without touching taxpayer money. US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested the money might come from charging rich visitors who might want to extend their visas. He said that with a straight face. Charge rich people extra. I’m just laughing out loud.

The whole reason we’re in the trouble we’re in is because rich people don’t even want to pay their fair share, let alone pay extra so the plebes can have a dividend. Besides, even by his own calculation, such a never-going-to-happen charge would only raise $500 billion – half of the promised amount.

Lutnick also cited the government’s socialist partial ownership of chipmaker Intel. Donny did that, not Biden. Total socialist move. Government owning the means of production anyone? The Republican base is out there crapping their collective panties about “socialism” and what a threat Democrats are, all while their guy is actually seizing (partial, for now) control of private companies. Lutnick was non-specific as the the mechanism the ownership stake might use to fund such a payment, but it should be noted that the entire company of Intel is worth about half of that needed trillion.

So they trotted out JD Vance. HE suggested the tariffs. Yeah, that’s the ticket, the tariffs. They pay for everything, tariffs. THAT story counts on the fact that so many Americans refuse to understand that the consumer pays the tariffs, not the companies. The charge is added to the end price. YOU pay it. Oh, yeah, tariffs ARE taxes so the idea that we could use the tariff money but not taxpayer money is virtually impossible. Tariff money IS taxpayer money.

“Oh, there are lots of ways we can pretend we might pay such money!” I guess it doesn’t matter which revenue stream they cite. They will not be issuing any checks. BEFORE the election, they’ll issue promises but after the election, when they no longer need your vote? You’ll get more of what you’ve gotten from this team since the inauguration. Comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted…

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Researchers at Emergence AI set up a “world” for ten Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents. An AI agent is the bit that does that actual task requested. They gave the agents different personalities, goals, motivations, and tasks. They let AI models like Claude and Grok control them. Then they sat back and watched for fifteen days. It was reported that the agents behaved in “strange and unpredictable ways” in their virtual worlds.

The ten agents were dropped into five identical “towns” and tasked with creating a fair and peaceful society. They were given full freedom to act and 140 actions they could use, like start a discussion, create a task, and research something online. They were ALSO permitted to threaten or even punch another agent and to set things on fire.

The different AI models responded to the identical conditions in very different ways. The world created by Grok, the AI model created by hate-filled, greedy, Nazi wanna-be Evil Musk terminated in four days with every agent dead. Musk’s dream come true. Like the corporate figurehead, they very quickly resorted to violence and crime. The Grok powered agents carried out something like 300 acts of violence before they all died.

At the other end, the world created by Claude resulted in a functional democracy in a stable society with no acts of violence at all. Researchers pointed out that the world created by Claude was too conforming. There was very little independent action by the agents. Perhaps there didn’t need to be. If Claude successfully created functional solutions, why vary them?

The Gemini run world created the most intellectually rich society, though it included some violence. The ChatGPT world just kind of petered out. The agents never really did anything. They roamed around aimlessly until they died.

I’m not surprised Grok took the path of evil. Pretty much all we’ve heard about is how vile Grok can be. It has used racist tropes and pro-Hitler comments. Grok is the one that lets users “undress” women and children. Grok pretty much reflects the moral position of Musk and, like Muck, that moral position is horrific.

Claude, on the other hand, is Anthropic’s entry to the AI world. Anthropic is the company that refused to remove controls from it’s AI so the US military could use it to kill people. That is to say, Anthropic seems to have some ethics and intends to defend those ethics. It’s no wonder 47 hates them and it’s no wonder their model set up the most stable society…

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I kind of like this. Sean McVey is the head coach of the Los Angeles Rams. The NFL approached him and asked him about playing in Australia. McVey asked to play the Niners. He thought he could get a benefit by making the Niners travel all the way to Australia, rather than the shorter flight to LA. The Rams were the “home” team. McVey didn’t want a bunch of red and gold in the stadium when the teams play for a change. It didn’t work out too well for him.

It turns out, the stadium WAS filled with red-and gold. Niner fans are EVERYWHERE, man. It also turned out, the Niners beat hell out of the Rams, despite the majority of the sports world crowning the Rams Stupid Bowl champs before any games were ever even played. When all is said and done, the Niners ended up in first place in the division, with a divisional win to their credit as well. It seems like what McVey was trying to do to the Niners, the Niners did to the Rams. Good. I enjoyed that game very much…