“Public Service”

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In a WSJ piece about the report recently issued by special prosecutor Robert Hur, John Sciortino notes that “The report also expressly weighed in its non-prosecution recommendation President Biden’s “nearly fifty years” of public service as a senator, vice president and now president.”

Left unsaid is why 50 years as a politician and officeholder should be considered as of more value than 50 years as a farmer, an entrepreneur, research scientist at a drug company, or night-shift worker at a steel mill or a semiconductor fab.   This kind of privilege seems directly contrary to the whole idea of equality before the law.   Indeed, it seems reminiscent of the kind of privilege that caused so much anger in pre-revolutionary France.

Note also that there are special student-loan forgiveness provisions for people who are employees of government entities (state, federal, local, or tribal) or of 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations.

Book Review: Theft of Fire, by Devon Eriksen

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Marcus Warnoc operates a spacegoing freighter, assembled by his father and himself out of whatever parts they can afford. He is surviving financially only by the skin of his teeth, and has out of desperation engaged in some operations of questionable (or worse) legality.   He finds that his ship has been taken over by a young woman named Miranda Foxglove…who knows what he did, and her price for not telling will be: to take her where she wants to go.

And where she wants to go is a planet called Sedna, in the outer reaches of our solar system. No one ever goes there–for very good reason.

Miranda has also brought along an artificial intelligence–its name is ‘Lily’, rather, that was the name of the 12-year-old girl whose brain Miranda imaged into the AI system.   Given that the real Lily is back home with her family, the AI entity is dubbed ‘Leela’.    But it, or she–this AI appears to be conscious–still has all the memories and emotions of the 12-year-old from whose mind her mind was copied.   Leela is not happy about her current disembodied state, despite her silicon-enabled ability for every fast thought and her ability to shift her vision to cameras anywhere throughout the ship, and while she is basically a happy and positive-thinking entity (person?), she does feel a certain resentment toward her creator.

A well-written and thought-provoking book, which is surprisingly emotionally affecting.   The author is a frequent poster at X/Twitter, and is especially good at the art of the denunciation.

Floating in the Trope-Sphere

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Towards the end of the Vietnam war, and for at least another decade after it ended, there was a trope/cliché which always could be depended on in movies and television; the whacked out, dysfunctional and traumatized veteran; sometimes a victim, often the guilty party, but always and reliably whacked-out. Even news media got into the act, now and again, interviewing theatrically dysfunctional, traumatized veterans, who on cue related how they had supped full on the horrors of the war in southeast Asia. This was so pervasive that for-real veterans for years were advised to leave periods of military service off resumes when job-hunting, and to never, never, ever advertise any connection to military service, be it with a ring, a gimme ballcap, a tee shirt, or an OD green field jacket … unless, of course, they were in the war protest movement.

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DIE, Quiet Quitting, And the Exit of Competence

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About the only comfort that I could take away from the initial election of B. Whose-Middle Name-Shall-Not-Be-Mentioned Obama was a small one a hope that the election of a man of partial color and relatively cosmopolitan upbringing would at last bury the last lingering shreds of AmeriKKKa-Is-The-Most-Raaaaacist-Evah! Alas it soon became very clear this was a sad, and forlorn hope. The new intellectually powered Diversity-Inclusion-Equity racism came roaring back like a movie serial killer in a twentieth remake of a Hollywood horror flick franchise. A decent regard for civil rights of black citizens has somehow metastasized into ‘DIE, whitey, DIE’ or at the very least, ‘no well-paying prestigious job for you, pale-male-and-stale.’ Never mind if the beneficiaries of these policies appear far less able to perform to the standards which the job requires … it seems to be the intentions that count. It’s no biggie if the bridge collapses, the aircraft collide on approach, the expensive movie bombs at the box office, or the press secretary babbles nonsense when asked a difficult question. The good intentions of DIE conquer all, even reality.

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Random Pic

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bottoms up

Chicagoboyz Boilermaker