Is Big Social Media the Next Big Tobacco?

 

The issue is the direct harm to children, from self-image and spreading conspiracy theories to addictive behavior. Watching teens heading for a nearby high school in my neighborhood, I have to wonder if human heads will evolve tilted forward and down. Even when they walk, side-by-side with their classmates, the frenetic texting continues. Sure, there are a few with earbuds in position, but information, music and who knows what else are pouring into their heads. Kids vie to become social media favorites on TikTok, while others pose for Instagram photos and share visuals of every meal they eat with their peers. In short, social media is deeply embedded in the culture of growing up, pervasive and often toxic.

That toxicity is the basis for various lawsuits filed against BIG SOCIAL MEDIA, and the issue is on the verge of being decided by the US Supreme Court. Again! As states, the federal government and even local governments seek to rein in the mass of information posted on social media, much of it false, fake or highly manipulative, a reality only exacerbated by the use of artificial intelligence to make fake seem real. Parents are concerned. More than a few suicides of children also can be traced to online bullying, with social media being the convenient vehicle. Unwanted images, stalking and doxing are instruments of hate or persecution… all enabled online.

As for the platforms themselves, attempting to filter out the most obvious and dangerous misinformation, they hide behind the First Amendment and a notorious federal statute. But lawsuits are flowing. “The legal attack on social media companies may also run against the Supreme Court’s decision last May on Gonzalez v. Google, which ruled that platforms cannot be held liable for users’ content that they host under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.” Alexandra Sternlicht writing for the October 26th Fortune.com

The battlelines are being drawn, looking a lot like the ultimately successful litigation against Big Tobacco more than three decades ago. These purveyors of smoking, knowing for decades that they were selling cancer sticks, published volumes of false information that kept governments at bay for decades. Ultimately, they forked out over $200 billion for their poisonous efforts. “It’s not clear if the [state] attorneys general [combining to take on Big Social Media] will combine with the private personal injury suits filed by the law firms, or hire some of the leading plaintiffs’ lawyers to advise and work with the states, as was the case in the [tobacco litigation of the] 1990s. But the source close to the plaintiffs said the fact that the attorneys general have filed a concurrent suit in California, the same state as the ongoing master personal injury suit litigated by the big tobacco plaintiffs is a vote of confidence in the strategy and a sign that the states are serious about regulating social media.” Sternlicht

Even as governments and private parties take on Big Oil for its contribution to toxic climate change, Big Oil defendants do not have any particularly strong constitutional or statutory arguments. There’re no First Amendment or federal safe harbor to fend off anxious plaintiffs. Like Big Social Media. “Nearly three decades [after tobacco suits], a burgeoning legal battle looks strangely familiar—this time with the internet’s social media giants in the role of Big Tobacco.

“On Tuesday [10/24], 42 state attorneys general sued Instagram-parent company Meta for allegedly damaging children’s mental health with its social media technologies. The complaint, which is 233 pages long, mentions ‘addiction’ over 30 times, featuring evidence from the company as well as psychology experts who allege Meta has intentionally and deceptively addicted children to its technologies with the goal of maximizing profits.

“And on Friday [10/27], Northern California District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will rule on a personal injury lawsuit against YouTube, Snap, TikTok and Meta claiming that the platforms addicted youth, and spurred a mental health crisis with associated injuries. The plaintiffs leading this suit include attorneys from Lieff Cabraser and Motley Rice, two of the law firms involved in 1998’s landmark tobacco settlement. Levin Sedran & Berman, which represented plaintiffs in recent suits against JUUL that effectively made its e-cigarette products illegal in the U.S, is also involved in the case.

“For years, critics of social media have likened the feeds of viral videos, photos, and likes to digital cigarettes. Now the effort to rein in social media may be adopting the same legal playbook that anti-smoking activists used in the 1990s to hold tobacco companies accountable… A source close to the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against TikTok and the other social media firms told Fortune that the tobacco litigation is an apt parallel to the current situation. In particular, the current lawsuits take a page from tobacco by focusing on how social media platforms allegedly compel kids to keep using over and over and over again.

“Representatives from TikTok and Meta did not respond to Fortune by the time of this article's publication, though Meta noted in its latest 10-Q filing that it believes the lawsuits ‘are without merit, and we are vigorously defending them.’ A YouTube spokesperson said that the allegations in the lawsuits are false. ‘Protecting kids across our platforms has always been core to our work. In collaboration with child development specialists, we have built age-appropriate experiences for kids and families on YouTube, and provide parents with robust controls.’

“A spokesperson for Snap distanced the company from its social media peers, noting that the Snapchat app opens directly to a camera rather than onto a feed that would encourage ‘passive scrolling,’ and that the app doesn't encourage perfection or popularity. ‘While we will always have more work to do, we feel good about the role Snapchat plays in helping friends feel connected, informed, happy, and prepared as they face the many challenges of adolescence.’…

“Though users addicted to social media will not experience physical withdrawal in its absence, some experts argue it is more nefarious than cigarettes in other ways. ‘[Social media algorithms] are akin to each time you smoke a cigarette, the cigarette itself increases in nicotine content,’ says Vikram Bhargava, an assistant professor at George Washington School of Business who researches ethics and technology policy. ‘Social media is vastly more sophisticated [than cigarettes] and has the ability to influence the psychologies of large populations.’” Sternlicht.

And yes, it’s about money! There’s clearly an intent to create “stickiness” (read: “addictive behavior”) to maximize advertising revenues. So, the platforms at least try to look as if they are tackling the problem. Wink-wink. As artificial intelligence may complicate the playing field, it may also provide a path to tame Big Social Media’s deflective efforts at controlling malicious content.

I’m Peter Dekom, and Houston… and every other city, town or rural tract… we have a problem… a very big problem.

Has The Second American Civil War Actually Started?

 

“No longer are these conspiracy theories and very divisive and vicious ideologies separated at the fringes…They’re now infiltrating American society on a massive scale.”

Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who focuses on domestic terrorism.

Since AR-15s and the like not exactly fair and ordinary hunting firearms, and despite the fact that we even had a federal law that banned assault weapons from 1994-2004 (the statute had a built-in sunset clause), there are many American proponents of keeping that military-grade weapon street legal is to ensure a popular ability to take down a government with which they disagree… vehemently. That mass shootings, particularly in schools, colleges and places of worship, kill hundreds every year… virtually all with AR-15 style semiautomatic rifles that are readily and almost always legally available… should bother almost all of us. But it doesn’t. The notion of violently taking down a US government, that a segment of our electorate disagrees with, is rather openly touted with the apparent backing of the NRA.

As recently released footage of an insurrectionist mob attempting to overturn an election by violently seizing the Capitol, the January 6, 2021, attack, shows that well-armed cadres (many in militia uniforms) were waiting beyond the metal detectors deployed for Donald Trump’s pre-attack speech at the nearby Ellipse. It should give us pause at what almost happened. It didn’t. “Hang Mike Pence”? Might makes right? Many people believe that a civil war requires two clearly identified and uniformed factions, incumbents and rebels, squaring off a la the 19th century Civil War that tore our nation apart. Welcome to the 21st century where the world has provided ample examples of multiple factions (from Sudan to Haiti to Lebanon to Syria, etc.) otherwise.

Let’s start with what should by now be obvious: there are virtually no lone wolves mounting individual attacks. The Internet has fixed that reality. The purported “lone wolves” are Web-connected, mired in a conspiracy driven network of disinformation with relatively easy access to both their targets a vast array of available weapons. For those who prefer a more organized, military-style assault, stand back and stand by, because there are a rather large number of uniformed and training militia ready to welcome them. Three Percenters. Oath Keepers. Proud Boys. And whole lot more, often coordinating and communicating with each other. If you can get past their guards, you can find them training in the Idaho panhandle, eastern Washington State, Texas… and so many more welcoming venues.

Governors (like Texas Greg Abbott and Florida Ron DeSantis) and even legislatures refuse to follow even clear federal law or Supreme Court orders (Alabama) or are willing to find workarounds circumventing unpopular (to them) anti-gerrymandering, voting restrictions, plebiscites favoring abortion or rejected classroom/library restrictions. Explosions of violence, in the name of political causes, have become commonplace. Even members of Congress engage in hero worship for violent insurrectionists, and compromise has become a dirty word in our own federal legislature.

The GOP frontrunner has mounted a campaign openly embracing using the military to arrest his opponents, casting anyone opposing his autocratic ambitions with words that parallel and even replicate the blame-laden rhetoric of Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler. Detention, execution, crushing media, “vermin,” “retribution,” under the color of religion are repeated with abandon.

As noted by Ali Swenson and Michael Kunzelman, writing for the November 26th Associated Press: “As the 2024 presidential campaign heats up, experts on extremism fear the threat of politically motivated violence will intensify. Conspiracy theories such as ‘Pizzagate,’ QAnon and ‘Stop the Steal’ that demonized Donald Trump’ s enemies are morphing and spreading as he leads in polls for the Republican nomination…

“A federal jury convicted David DePape on Nov. 16 of attacking Paul Pelosi at his San Francisco home on Oct. 28, 2022. DePape had testified that he planned to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage and ‘break her kneecaps’ if the Democrat lied as he grilled her on government corruption. She was in Washington at the time of the assault… In previous online rants, DePape echoed tenets of the pro-Trump QAnon, which has been linked to killings and other crimes. Adherents falsely believe Trump is trying to expose prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites as Satan-worshiping child sex traffickers…

“Trump has ramped up his combative campaign rhetoric with talk of retribution against his enemies. He recently joked about the attack on Paul Pelosi and suggested former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark A. Milley be executed for treason… Threats against lawmakers and election officials are rampant, with targets spanning the nation’s political divide. A California man is awaiting trial on charges of plotting to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, a Trump nominee.

“Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 election did not end the spread of QAnon-influenced conspiracy theories or its unrealized prophecies. The leaderless movement often adopts beliefs from other conspiracy theories… ‘It’s been really good at evolving with the times and current events,” said Sheehan Kane, data collection manager for the University of Maryland-based Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START.

“In a 2021 article, Kane and START senior researcher Michael Jensen examined QAnon-inspired crimes attributed to 125 adherents since the movement originated on 4chan in 2017. The researchers found that more ‘extremist offenders’ were connected to QAnon than to any other extremist group or movement in the U.S… ‘In 2020, millions of people were radicalized on behalf of this conspiracy theory,’ Kane said.

“DePape, the Paul Pelosi attacker, testified that his interest in right-wing conspiracy theories began with GamerGate, an online harassment campaign against feminists in the video game industry. Starting in 2014, misogynistic gamers terrorized female developers and other women in the industry with rape and death threats.

“Brianna Wu, one of the original targets of GamerGate, said she wasn’t surprised to hear it was linked to a politically motivated attack nearly a decade later. She said the misogynistic campaign emerged from the same online recesses that spawned far-right conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate and QAnon… ‘This is a pattern of radicalization that we’re seeing over and over and over in every single bit of politics,’ Wu said. ‘This is not a right-versus-left issue. This is a radicalization issue that is happening online. We need a policy response.’” Good luck on getting that response!

Unlike the 1930s, when many America leaders (from Henry Ford to Charles Lindberg) openly embraced Hitler and the Fascism, there is unlikely going to be a Pearl Harbor extrinsic event that will unite Americans against this toxic, demonizing Fascist-like tsunami building across the land.

I’m Peter Dekom, and will this country come to its senses, reunite and act as a functional country again… maybe not.

History, "I’m Right" vs Democracy

“A man gets some people around him and begins to oppress and dominate others…

I don’t know. But in the history of the world, that’s what happens.”

Senator Mitt Romney on the history of democracy (a sign of male aggression on a global scale?).

We often hear how frail democracy is, how the American effort at democracy is an “experiment,” and how global trends are witnessing a growing proclivity to use the election process to subdue and even eliminate democracy to substitute a rigid, often intolerant form of autocracy. Venezuela. Hungary. Poland. Russia. Turkey. Egypt. Israel. Italy. The United States. Etc. We are witnessing far more autocracy in nascent political systems as opposed to opting for a truly democratic form of government. Checks and balances are fading. Judicial systems are either losing their power, being usurped by autocratic appointees or simply controlled by a minority with autocratic leanings. This is nothing new, of course, as seen in the greatest recent example: Hitler’s election, seized autocracy and utter devastation of freedom and Germany itself. That movement is increasing momentum even here in the United States. I should say “particularly” in the United States.

Milan Svolik, a Yale University Professor of Political Science, focused on this historical reality of “democratic backsliding,” which has manifest itself with surprising strength here in what most in the world believed was unbreakable democracy. Here are some of the insights from Professor Svolik in an interview by Rick Harrison, published by the Yale Institute for Social and Policy Studies, November 6th: “My reading of the contemporary state of democracy in the U.S. is that the question is not really about how likely democratic backsliding is. Because it is happening now. Most people are worried about Trump, but the level at which backsliding has been happening — even before Trump — is the state level…

“American federalism is unique in the following sense: the states get to set their own rules for the conduct of elections. I’m not aware of this being the case anywhere else in the world. In most countries, even if they have a federal constitution — think Brazil or Germany — elections are conducted according to a uniform format set at the national level. But in the U.S., the ability of states to set their own rules for the conduct of elections creates opportunities to tilt the playing field in favor of the party that currently controls the state legislature and the governorship…

“[Interviewer: You’re talking about extreme partisan gerrymandering, voter ID laws, restrictions to early voting or voting by mail — stuff like that.] Yes, and while it has primarily been the Republican party that has been pushing the boundaries of what is constitutional and legally acceptable in order to gain an electoral advantage, what worries me is the emergence across states of a partisan tit-for-tat in this domain.

“[Interviewer: Like when Democrats in the New York State Legislature approved a redistricting map that was thrown out by the state’s top court for being unconstitutional?] Yes. This occurred just before last year’s midterm elections. What was concerning to me were the justifications offered by New York Democrats: Because Republicans had engaged in similar gerrymanders in states like Texas and Florida, they argued, the Democrats would only be a disadvantaging their own party if they refrained from doing the same when they have the opportunity.

“[Interviewer: And this creates something of an anti-democratic arms race?] Yes. That might not be the intention in any single case, but in the aggregate, that is the dynamic that is emerging. The claim is we would like to play fair, but because the other side is not, we cannot afford not to gerrymander…

“Political scientists often survey people and ask questions like ‘how important is democracy to you?’ People across the world tend to effectively answer ‘very important.’ They might not believe democracy is perfect, but they generally do believe it is the best form of government available. And yet when faced with the type of dilemmas that mirror real-world political tradeoffs, people will be willing to sacrifice democratic principles for a preferred policy outcome. Particularly among strong partisans or in elections with stark choices, people are willing to prioritize partisanship over democratic principles.”

The imposition of one very rigid perspective by a minority on the majority is a clear symptom of this trend, effectively touting that the ends justify the means… even if that means a clear rejection of representative democratic rule. It may be religious fundamentalism masquerading as a “moral values” or a “culture” war. It may embody extreme discrimination or deep racial or ethnic bias. But the vector is clearly anti-democratic. It happened in ancient Greece, Rome and the Middle East. And it is now happening in the United States.

We even make up words – like “woke” or a “right to life” – to sanitize those anti-democratic efforts. But make no mistake, American democracy itself is on the line. Describing 2024 as “another election as usual” is attempting to deflect the reality of a “retribution” driven autocracy against a “issues as usual” litany of economic, political and foreign policy concerns. 2024 is so much more than an “issues” election!

But some on the receiving end of these anti-democratic trends are fighting back. Indeed, the effort to censor books is one of the most obvious forms of rising autocracy: “She refused to ban books, many of them about racism and the experiences of LGBTQ+ people. And for that, Suzette Baker was fired as a library director in a rural county in central Texas… ‘I’m kind of persona non grata around here,’ said Baker, who had headed the Kingsland, Texas, library system until she refused to take down a prominent display of several books people had sought to ban over the years.

“Now, Baker is fighting back. She and two other librarians who were similarly fired have filed workplace discrimination claims with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And as culture war battles to keep certain books from children and teens put public and school libraries increasingly under pressure, their goal is redemption and, where possible, eventual reinstatement… So far, it’s a wait-and-see whether the claims will succeed — and set new precedent — in the struggle between teachers and librarians around the country who oppose book bans and conservative activists who say some books are inappropriate for young minds.

“The fight has involved a record number of book-banning efforts, some libraries cutting ties with the American Library Assn. — which opposes book bans — and even attempts to prosecute librarians for allowing children to access books some consider too graphic… At least one terminated librarian has gained a measure of success.

“Brooky Parks, who was fired for defending programs on anti-racism and LGBTQ+ stories she organized for teens at the Erie Community Library north of Denver, won a $250,000 settlement in September. Reached through the Colorado Civil Rights Division, the settlement requires her former employer to give librarians more say in decisions involving library programs.” Mead Gruber writing for the Associated Press, November 10th. A small victory. It is still shocking to me how many Americans prefer “party” over “country.” Democracy cannot stand in this environment.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I remain stunned how few Americans really understand that our very form of government is teetering and may fall under the disguise of another “garden variety” issues election.

"The most important climate case in the United States"

We know that the fossil fuel industry has been very aware of the devastating and cumulative effects of greenhouse gas emissions for decades. “An estimate of lobbying expenditures related to climate change legislation in the U.S. Congress from 2000 to 2016 [shows] over $2 billion was spent on this activity, constituting 3.9% of total lobbying expenditures. Major sectors involved in lobbying were fossil fuel and transportation corporations, utilities, and affiliated trade associations.” The climate lobby: a sectoral analysis of lobbying spending on climate change in the USA, 2000 to 2016 by Robert Brulle, published in Climatic Change, July 19, 2018, which also produced the above pie chart. And Big Oil is still spending billions of PR and lobbying dollars.

Paralleling the long battle fought by Big Tobacco for decades – employing medical disinformation, coverups and intensive lobbying – it seems that the battle to hold Big Oil responsible for the havoc we call “climate change” or “global warming” cannot fly through a gridlocked and impotent Congress, where Big Oil is a major campaign contributor. With Big Tobacco, the move for accountability truly began with state agencies suing for all the measurable damages that cigars and cigarettes caused within their jurisdiction. While you are unlikely to see such litigation from fossil fuel producing red states, you can witness that effort in blue states. Oddly enough, it’s not California that is taking the lead (although I do expect them to follow), that nascent effort emanates from Hawaii.

As reported by Emily Sanders, reprinted in the November 6th issue of FastCompany.com, “A climate lawsuit filed by the City and County of Honolulu that could make oil and gas majors pay billions of dollars in damages for deceiving the public about their products’ role in climate change is now positioned to be the first of its kind to go to trial, following a ruling from the Hawai‘i Supreme Court. Legal experts say Honolulu’s case could set a precedent for similar climate lawsuits filed by dozens of U.S. communities and make history as the first time fossil fuel companies would have to face the evidence of a decades-long industry campaign of climate deception in court.

“The unanimous ruling, written by Hawai‘i Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark E. Recktenwald, upheld a lower court ruling that rejected two key arguments the oil companies made in an effort to dismiss the case. The court’s decision means that the case can now enter into full discovery—the phase during which plaintiffs can collect more evidence to prove their case—and a state court can finally set a date for the case to go to trial.

“‘This is now the most important climate case in the United States,’ says former Hawai‘i Supreme Court Justice Michael Wilson, who retired earlier this year after a decade on the state’s highest court. ‘Now the Hawai‘i Supreme Court has allowed a jury of 12 Hawai’i citizens to decide whether lies by the oil companies created large-scale billion dollar damage to our county and city of Honolulu.’

“The city and county’s lawsuit charges ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP, and other oil giants with orchestrating ‘sophisticated disinformation campaigns to cast doubt on the science, causes, and effects of global warming,’ thus delaying climate action for decades. The complaint argues that the companies violated state common laws like public nuisance, failure to warn, and trespass—and that their conduct left Honolulu facing floods, storms, heat waves, wildfires, rising seas, and other climate disasters that have cost billions of dollars in destruction and repairs. Now, plaintiffs contend, Big Oil should help foot the bill for the damage.

“But the oil and gas industry has bitterly disputed the case, first attempting to move it out of state court and, when that failed, filing motions to have it dismissed entirely. Along the way, a pro-fossil fuel industry group even launched a PR blitz in right wing media against Recktenwald, the state’s Republican-appointed Chief Justice, accusing him of bias for giving a presentation through the nonprofit Environmental Law Institute that sought ‘to educate fellow judges about the basic science they need to adjudicate the climate litigation over which they preside.’ (Oil company lawyers, including one involved in Honolulu’s case, are also involved in ELI. One law professor said the attack on Recktenwald was ‘grasping at straws.’).”

Indeed, Big Tobacco was crushed by such litigation. From 1965 to 2019, the prevalence of cigarette smoking (measuring those over 18) in the U.S. has decreased from about 42 percent to 11.5%. A master settlement with Big Tobacco from 1998 generated a continuing measure, with a floor of $206 billion, for the damages smoking caused in the US.

All those red state politicians, lobbying to open government land for oil drilling – we are already fossil fuel self-sufficient and the largest oil producer in the world – claim that will reduce prices. Trust me, American oil extractors will never give Americans a discount because they are good citizens and the oil came from “here.” Oil is a global commodity priced by global markets. The United States does not set oil prices! So, when Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Russia, etc. pull back on their oil production, the price of oil spikes up accordingly; unless the US government subsidizes the price at the pump, consumers will pay more. Those MAGA pledges to extract more oil to drop gasoline and diesel prices may sound good on the campaign trail, but they are playing American voters for fools. They cannot deliver. So, unless we really build up alternative energy for vehicles and electrical power generation, that MAGA attempt to slash those non-fossil fuel choices are going to be a rather direct contributor to higher gasoline and general energy costs… and more climate change devastation!

I’m Peter Dekom, and this rightwing “protect big industries no matter the consequences” mantra will further toxify our world and will not reduce consumer energy prices!

Floods, Fires, Desertification – Who’s Going to Grow Our Food in the Future?

  

Even where climate change is merely a contributing factor, for example its impact is added to the El Niño effect, the resulting disaster is often amplified many times over. The recent devastation of Cat 5 Hurricane Otis in Acapulco is a tragic example. The effects of climate changes all over the earth can also defeat otherwise potential benefits of natural phenomena. A parched and super-hardened crust, no longer viable for agriculture, can turn into an impermeable lakebed, trapping desperately needed water into a horrific flood zone, destroying everything in its path.

All agricultural products are determined by their immediate environment, an obvious reality but one often taken for granted by consumers used to shopping at large grocery chains. Crops like grapes, coffee and cocoa beans, where flavor and texture – even survivability – are very much determined by where they are grown. Soil, temperature and rainfall are determinative. Kona and many farms in Latin America will slowly lose the ability to sustain their specialized coffees or chocolates. Prices for those highly treasured products will soar, even as some high-end products completely vanish.

But climate change is everywhere, and “everywhere” agriculture is severely impacted. Without containing and indeed countering climate change, you can expect the cost of food to continue to rise… significantly. Since food is an essential component of life itself, those complaining about inflation who simultaneously decry the cost of dealing effectively with climate change by curtailing greenhouse gas emissions are a major root cause of these costs increases. And, no, the fact that we are such an agricultural powerhouse, a major exporter in fact, does not immunize American agribusiness from the crisis. We may develop new processes, more heat resistant crops and more effective water usage, but there is a limit as to far these efforts can go to stop the devastation.

Nowhere is this more apparent that the vegetable capital of the United States: California, and particularly its San Joachim Valley, a region that is slowly sinking from decades of over-pumping of underground water and environmental missteps. With devastation from aridification followed by destructive flooding (see above photos), the prognosis for the Valley this winter is not good. “Barely a year after dozens of powerful atmospheric rivers pounded the state and triggered historic flooding, state officials gathered at a muddy berm and pumping station near the Sacramento River [recently] to highlight the threat of flooding in a warming climate… ‘These flood risks are getting more intense and we’re doing more than ever to protect California from these risks,’ said Wade Crowfoot, California’s natural resources secretary.… More than 7 million of the state’s residents live in an area where they are at risk of flooding, officials said — and many don’t even know it. Every one of California’s 58 counties has had a flooding emergency in the last two decades.” Los Angeles Times, October 25th.

This year, the Central Valley rolled from ultra-dry and parched to some of the worst flooding California has ever experienced, a pattern that climate change plus El Niño is about to repeat, decimating this vegetable producing area even more. Writing for the October 25th Los Angeles Times, Hayley Smith, spoke to Valley residents whose homes are farms were flooded this summer: “‘If we rebuild, are we going to be safe? If we invest our money back into our homes, will our investment be sound?’… It’s a question many residents of California’s Central Valley are asking themselves — particularly those in the fertile southern region.

“Home to more than 4 million people, the vast San Joaquin Valley lies flat and low between the Sierra Nevada and the Southern Coast Range and has long been prone to climate hazards… Lately, however, they seem to be converging at a breakneck pace. The floods arrived after three years of severe drought, while extreme heat, lung-searing smog and hazardous wildfire smoke have become all-too-common occurrences. Meanwhile, the very earth beneath their feet is sinking.

“Experts say it’s not just bad luck that has made the San Joaquin Valley one of the front lines of climate change in America. Dramatic land use changes, a dearth of resources and state support, and a recalcitrant political climate fueled by agriculture and fossil fuel drilling have all contributed to the region’s challenges. How it adapts could be a case study for the rest of the nation.

“As recently as a century ago, the valley was the humid home to ephemeral rivers, lakes and wetlands. But its rapid transition toward industrial agricultural — which turned it into one of the most fruitful food production regions in the world — sapped the valley’s water and aridified its landscape… ‘In my opinion, the San Joaquin Valley is the region of California that has suffered the most extreme transformation in the whole state,’ said Angel Santiago Fernandez-Bou, lead author of the San Joaquin Valley Region Report for California’s fourth climate change assessment. ‘Basically, we have destroyed 95% of the original wetlands.’

“Even Tulare Lake, once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River, was drained to make room for fields of cotton, tomatoes, almonds and other crops. Once every couple of decades, it refills in dangerous and dramatic fashion, as it did during heavy rains earlier this year… Land transformation in the San Joaquin Valley has decreased its natural resilience to extreme environmental events such as drought, floods and heat, according to Fernandez-Bou, who is also western states senior climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“And it is getting more extreme. His regional report predicted that all valley counties could go from four or five extreme-heat days per year to as many as 68 by the end of the century. Already, Fresno saw 65 days over 100 degrees last year, and Merced recorded its hottest temperature ever, 116 degrees, in September 2022… Although climate change is exacerbating those extremes, he and other experts said the region’s bowl-shaped topography also contributes to heat and other hazards, as it enables smog, fine particulate and wildfire smoke to get trapped inside the basin… ‘You have wildfire smoke, you have pollution from the cities that blows in here, but there’s also a lot of dust being made through the tilling of the soil,’ said Chantelise Pells, community engagement director with the nonprofit SocioEnvironmental and Education Network in Merced.

“The San Joaquin Valley has some of the worst air quality in the nation , and consistently fails to meet federal health standards for both smog and particulate air pollution, according to the Environmental Protection Agency… The compounding hazards mean many residents are faced with the dilemma of turning on air conditioners that they can’t always afford to use, or opening their windows and suffering from poor air quality, pesticide exposure and extreme heat, Pells said.” Think of the exposure of poor migrant farmworkers to the heat and pollution as they work in the fields (if the fields are still there)… or the poverty levels of long-term families in the region. Add massive flooding to the mix… and well, hell on earth has a new definition.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while consumers will pay mightily at the checkout stand, residents of the San Joachim Valley are paying an even higher price.

How Do Ancient Concrete Buildings Survive When Modern Ones Do Not?

Mayan site in Copan Ruinas, Honduras

Pantheon in Rome

Wars. Climate disasters. Earthquakes. Volcanoes. Time. Wear and tear. Obsolescence. Abandonment. In today’s world of modern commercial building, a concrete and steel structure is expected to last north of 50 years (pushing it, maybe to 100 years), but buildings often face demolition within 30 to 40 years. Stone structures, not particularly durable in earthquake zones, can last a bit longer. Look at the venerable mega-structures built in New York City in the 1930s and beyond. Or even more incredible, the Acropolis in Athens. Their legacy is obviously significantly longer. So, with this basic understanding, it seems puzzling how ancient Roman and Mayan concrete structures are still standing, as the above photos illustrate.

What does this ancient concrete have that modern concrete seems to lack? After all, as Associated Press’ Maddie Burakoff points out (October 10th): “Ancient builders across the world created structures that are still standing, thousands of years later — Roman engineers who poured thick concrete sea barriers, Maya masons who crafted plaster sculptures to their gods, Chinese builders who raised walls against invaders…

“A growing number of scientists have been studying materials from long-ago eras — chipping off chunks of buildings, poring over historical texts, mixing up copycat recipes — hoping to uncover how they’ve held up for millennia.

“This reverse engineering has turned up a surprising list of ingredients that were mixed into old buildings — materials such as tree bark, volcanic ash, rice, beer and even urine. These unexpected add-ins could be key to some pretty impressive properties, like the ability to get stronger over time and ‘heal’ cracks.

“Figuring out how to copy those features could have real impacts today: While our modern concrete has the strength to hold up massive skyscrapers and heavy infrastructure, it can’t compete with the endurance of these ancient materials.” Not to mention another nasty reality of modern cement: “The concrete industry is having a bit of a reckoning. As the world’s most ubiquitous construction material, concrete contributes about 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions. About 30 billion tons of concrete are produced every year, which is three times more than it was 40 years ago.

“This has fueled a slew of innovations as researchers and companies strive to produce lower-carbon alternatives. Some are looking to the past: the deep tech startup Dmat, for example, makes self-healing concrete inspired by Ancient Romans [, as discussed below]. Others are looking to the future: a team of researchers at Northwestern are developing ‘Martian concrete’ that doesn’t require water and is more than twice as strong.” Elissaveta M. Brandon, writing for the October 18th FastCompany.com. Modern construction designers are indeed learning from the ancient builders of these amazing structures that are still standing centuries or millennia later.

“Many researchers have turned to the Romans for inspiration. Starting around 200 BC, the architects of the Roman Empire were building concrete structures that have stood the test of time — from the soaring dome of the Pantheon to the sturdy aqueducts that still carry water today… Even in harbors, where seawater has been battering structures for ages, you’ll find concrete ‘basically the way it was when it was poured 2,000 years ago’ said John Oleson, an archaeologist at the University of Victoria in Canada.

“Most modern concrete starts with Portland cement, a powder made by heating limestone and clay to super-high temperatures and grinding them up. That cement is mixed with water to create a chemically reactive paste. Then, chunks of material like rock and gravel are added, and the cement paste binds them into a concrete mass.

“According to records from ancient architects like Vitruvius, the Roman process was similar. The ancient builders mixed materials like burned limestone and volcanic sand with water and gravel, creating chemical reactions to bind everything together… Now, scientists think they’ve found a key reason why some Roman concrete has held up structures for thousands of years: The ancient material has an unusual power to repair itself. Exactly how is not yet clear, but scientists are starting to find clues.

“In a study published this year, Admir Masic, a civil and environmental engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposed that this power comes from chunks of lime that are studded throughout the Roman material instead of being mixed in evenly. Researchers used to think these chunks were a sign that the Romans weren’t mixing up their materials well enough.

“Instead, after analyzing concrete samples from Privernum — an ancient city outside of Rome — the scientists found that the chunks could fuel the material’s ‘self-healing’ abilities. When cracks form, water is able to seep into the concrete, Masic explained. That water activates the leftover pockets of lime, sparking up new chemical reactions that can fill in the damaged sections.

“Marie Jackson, a geologist at the University of Utah, has a different take. Her research has found that the key could be in the specific volcanic materials used by the Romans… The builders would gather volcanic rocks left behind after eruptions to mix into their concrete. This naturally reactive material changes over time as it interacts with the elements, Jackson said, allowing it to seal cracks that develop.” Brandon. Whatever else is said and done, we can no longer afford to build using the current, environmentally destructive and short-lived standard Portland cement. The arrogance of modernity occasionally must yield to the wisdom of the ancient past. With all the bombing and artillery/missile strikes in major conflicts around the world, there will be a lot of rebuilding in our near future. Will we learn how to do it better now?

I’m Peter Dekom, and in this world of hyper-accelerating transitory reality, it is often a wise investigation to view our history, from political and military turmoil to our most basic building and construction practices.

Looking Ahead, Who is Likely the Most Dangerous Man on Earth?

 

Any one of the above, even the Ayatollah, is within actual or proximate control of nuclear weapons. All of them have threatened the United States or at least the American system of government. Most of the above, and whole lot of others around the world, would point the finger at whomever is elected President of the United States. But if we eliminate nations those with a clear history of hostility toward the United States, if we simply polled a close American ally over who that global nemesis would be, that might provide a more neutral view of the imminently dangerous man (notice, I did not include women in that remark for obvious reasons… mostly, there are not a whole lot of female national leaders).

So it was of extreme interest that, notwithstanding the wars between Israel and Hamas, Russia and Ukraine, the brinksmanship practices by Chinese naval and air force in controlling regional airspace and seas and North Korea’s constant testing of nuclear assets, the prestigious British periodical, The Economist (November 16th), was anything but subtle, noting as a headline that “Donald Trump poses the biggest danger to the world in 2024… What his victory in America’s election would mean…

“A shadow looms over the world. In this week’s edition we publish The World Ahead 2024, our 38th annual predictive guide to the coming year, and in all that time no single person has ever eclipsed our analysis as much as Donald Trump eclipses 2024. That a Trump victory next November is a coin-toss probability is beginning to sink in.

“Mr Trump dominates the Republican primary. Several polls have him ahead of President Joe Biden in swing states. In one, for the New York Times, 59% of voters trusted him on the economy, compared with just 37% for Mr Biden. In the primaries, at least, civil lawsuits and criminal prosecutions have only strengthened Mr Trump. For decades Democrats have relied on support among black and Hispanic voters, but a meaningful number are abandoning the party. In the next 12 months a stumble by either candidate could determine the race—and thus upend the world.

“This is a perilous moment for a man like Mr Trump to be back knocking on the door of the Oval Office. Democracy is in trouble at home. Mr Trump’s claim to have won the election in 2020 was more than a lie: it was a cynical bet that he could manipulate and intimidate his compatriots, and it has worked. America also faces growing hostility abroad, challenged by Russia in Ukraine, by Iran and its allied militias in the Middle East and by China across the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea. Those three countries loosely co-ordinate their efforts and share a vision of a new international order in which might is right and autocrats are secure.

“Because maga Republicans have been planning his second term for months, Trump 2 would be more organised than Trump 1. True believers would occupy the most important positions. Mr Trump would be unbound in his pursuit of retribution, economic protectionism and theatrically extravagant deals. No wonder the prospect of a second Trump term fills the world’s parliaments and boardrooms with despair. But despair is not a plan. It is past time to impose order on anxiety.

“The greatest threat Mr Trump poses is to his own country. Having won back power because of his election-denial in 2020, he would surely be affirmed in his gut feeling that only losers allow themselves to be bound by the norms, customs and self-sacrifice that make a nation. In pursuing his enemies, Mr Trump will wage war on any institution that stands in his way, including the courts and the Department of Justice.

“Yet a Trump victory next year would also have a profound effect abroad. China and its friends would rejoice over the evidence that American democracy is dysfunctional. If Mr Trump trampled due process and civil rights in the United States, his diplomats could not proclaim them abroad. The global south would be confirmed in its suspicion that American appeals to do what is right are really just an exercise in hypocrisy. America would become just another big power.

“Mr Trump’s protectionist instincts would be unbound, too. In his first term the economy thrived despite his China tariffs. His plans for a second term would be more damaging. He and his lieutenants are contemplating a universal 10% levy on imports, more than three times the level today. Even if the Senate reins him in, protectionism justified by an expansive view of national security would increase prices for Americans. Mr Trump also fired up the economy in his first term by cutting taxes and handing out covid-19 payments. This time, America is running budget deficits on a scale only seen in war and the cost of servicing debts is higher. Tax cuts would feed inflation, not growth.” Further, Trump’s power continues to amplify with members of the GOP-controlled House. In mid-November, Moody’s, a leading risk assessment agency, lowered the U.S. government’s credit ratings outlook from “stable” to “negative,” citing congressional polarization.

Biden’s and the Dem’s accomplishments – controlling inflation, investing in infrastructure and climate-positive initiatives, the success of unions, the sweep pro-abortion votes and even his détente with China’s Xi – against the backdrop of Trump indictments and a completely unfunctional GOP controlled House of Representatives surely will turn public sentiments back toward Joe Biden. Really? The “stench” of the indictments has turned Trump into a sympathetic victim, noting the criminal investigations of Biden’s own family. And while Trump ain’t no spring chicken, he seems to have the vigor to be tough, while Biden shuffles when he walks and anything but forceful in his speeches. Even Biden’s position between Israel and the Palestinians is creating issues for the President.

Anyone who really thinks about it, listened to the candidate’s actual words, knows Biden is more about maintaining democracy… and Trump is all about installing a Trumpian autocracy, even if that requires trying to use the insurrection act to involve the military to round up and arrest Trump’s political opponents (aka “vermin”) and immigrants everywhere. But for whatever reason, that division of approaches has not sunk into the psyche of the electorate.

If any moderate independent candidate of note – like Joe Manchin – were to enter the race, Biden is probably over. As noted, Biden’s numbers for Latino, Black (even his bastion of Black women) and younger voters are plunging well below the levels in those demographics that elected him in 2020. Even if those constituencies simply do not vote at all, Biden is in trouble. Dems keep uttering the mantra that American voters, when it comes to an actual election, will rise to the occasion, acknowledge Biden’s accomplishments, protect democracy and reject an indicted (convicted?) and obvious autocrat. No matter this passionate belief, the polling numbers continue to push Trump above Biden.

I’m Peter Dekom, and wishful thinking and simply not believing democracy is at risk have taken down many nations in the past, and the United (??) States of America may just have stepped into that long line of failed democracies… with consequences most in the US simply cannot contemplate.

Give It Your Best Shot?

“State regulations passed from 1991 to 2016 were associated with substantial reductions in gun mortality. We estimate that restrictive state gun policies passed in 40 states from 1991 to 2016 averted 4297 gun deaths in 2016 alone, or roughly 11% of the total gun deaths that year.” 

The Era of Progress on Gun Mortality: State Gun Regulations and Gun Deaths from 1991 to 2016 by Princeton Sociology Professor Patrick Sharkey and Graduate Student Megan Kang, from the November 1st Epidemiology

The politics of the extreme right does seem to manufacture some sweeping lies, sometimes to promote a religious ideology but mostly just to make money for special interests. The firearms industry saw topline revenues fall precipitously when US troops withdrew from Vietnam. Several gunmakers even filed for bankruptcy. The future for these small arms manufacturers was bleak.

Until the gunmakers engaged the non-profit National Rifle Association to create a for-profit gun marketing and lobbying affiliate in the 1970s, there was no court ruling in this country that stated that the Second Amendment accorded all adult Americans with the right to own a gun. But this new marketing/lobbying arm of the NRA got to work, effectively moving the American body politic that gun ownership was as American as apple pie, in fact a self-defense necessity. Hence the oft-repeated NRA falsehood: “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

We went through over two centuries with no court making gun ownership a basic right… until in 2008, writing the Supreme Court majority opinion in Heller vs DC, Antonin Scalia – misciting British law around the time our nation was founded, applying the logic as it pertained to guns of that era (flintlocks and muskets) to modern firearms and neatly sidestepping the “well regulated militia” provision of that amendment – suddenly discovered that such ownership was now and always has been a constitutional right. Not really, but that case changed America into what has today become a killing field with over 320 million guns (including about 30 million semiautomatic assault weapons) in private hands. Guns are now the leading cause of death among US children.

Indeed, the United States had a statutory assault weapons ban, never reversed by any court, from 1994 to 2004, when an internal sunset clause expired the law. The above sub-headline quote covers the era prior to the election of Donald Trump, but well after Heller and the expiration of the assault weapons ban. But the number of mass shootings skyrocketed after Trump’s election as red states and a few mostly rural blue states began relaxing restrictions on gun ownership. Mass shootings were everywhere, from Florida, Texas and Colorado public schools to African American churches, Muslim Mosques and Temples all over the states, even to a Maine bowling alley. Stand-your-ground laws justified crimes once classified as murder, open-carry laws even put AR-15s on state capitol steps, and unregistered concealed weapons threatened every police officer facing venues with such lax laws. Outside of nations at war, we have more gun deaths per capita, by far, than any other nation on earth. It doesn’t have to be that way.

In 1996, Australia, a nation with a wild west gun culture, came face-to-face with a mass shooter who killed 35 people. “Between October 1996 and September 1997, Australia responded to its own gun violence problem with a solution that was both straightforward and severe: It collected roughly 650,000 privately held guns. It was one of the largest mandatory gun buyback programs in recent history.” Vox.com, May 25, 2018. Murders and suicides plunged. We are constantly told by red state politicians that the solution to gun violence is more guns in the hands of people who can stop the violence. So violent solutions reduce violence? This indeed is the perception that the NRA and rightwing gun advocates want you to believe… and it is absolutely false.

The NRA and gunmakers have repeatedly made getting accurate gun homicide statistics close to impossible to obtain from government sources. Still, private academic sources, confirmed by deciphering annual FBI reported crime rates, make that falsehood irretrievably the definition of murder in the United States. “States with stricter laws, such as background checks and waiting periods, consistently had fewer gun deaths, as [the above] chart by [NY Times] colleague Ashley Wu shows.” German Lopez writing for the November 1st The Morning carried by the New York Times. Indeed, up until 2016, the United States, mostly at a state level, was implementing gun control legislation that accounts for this progress.

German continues: “The country’s progress on guns may surprise you, too. It certainly surprised me. It’s worth reflecting on why. If the data is clear, why haven’t we heard more about these outcomes? To my mind, the lack of attention shows the narrow view that many of us often take toward gun policy.

“The national conversation about gun violence focuses on big federal policy ideas. Activists and pundits often speak about the need for a federal law enacting universal background checks or banning assault weapons. Anything short of action at the national level will fail to make the U.S. as safe as Canada, Europe or Japan, the argument goes.

“It’s true that guns kill many more people in the U.S. than in other rich countries, and America will likely remain an outlier for the foreseeable future. But the study by Sharkey and Kang shows that changes at the state level can have an effect. Even policies that seem limited, like safety-training requirements or age restrictions, add up… ‘There’s no single policy that is going to eliminate the flow or circulation of guns within and across states,’ Sharkey said. ‘But the idea is these kinds of regulations accumulate.’

“Anything that adds barriers to picking up a firearm in such moments reduces deaths, whether it’s incremental state policies or broader federal laws. The new study is one part of a broader line of research demonstrating that point... Among the many new laws put in place since 1991: California required background checks on private gun sales in 1991, Massachusetts tightened child-access laws in 1998 and Virginia restricted gun ownership by people with mental illnesses in 2008.”

After 2016, the NRA myths became law in increasing numbers of states, and mass shooting became routine. These statutes tear away at gun control and do not reflect the sentiments of a majority of Americans, including gun owners. A ray of hope: a recent federal appellate court in California recently upheld that state’s assault weapon ban, but that holding that is going to find tough sledding before our rightwing Supreme Court.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is time for the US Supreme Court to stop applying 18th technology analysis to justify why the profits of gunmakers must trump saving lives, especially of our children.

Big Oil - Looking for Hopefully Vulnerable

Even the tekkies who invented the building blocks of artificial intelligence are concerned… and don’t completely understand exactly how it works, how it has “self-evolved.” Oh, it works… and very efficiently. When it makes mistakes, they are both scary and amusing. Yet even without creating aggregate capacity that provides the functional equivalent of the human brain (and we are not there… yet), it can out “think” our brains with about 10% of the equivalent human processing power. While this technology does not have to control bodily functions and can be powered with electricity, its de facto cranial capacity can take an AI program, be fed massive data, and begin to organize that data, improve its own program, and achieve results “on its own.” Add the open-source structure, and it can learn and teach itself new tricks at alarming speeds, making “computer rookie mistakes,” but self-correcting all the time.

Visions of a Terminator take-over, the annihilation of millions of educated jobs rendering human beings slow, redundant, way too limited… plus the erosion of the viability of existing political systems to cope with the change used to be the stuff of science fiction movies… but there’s now truth in them thar hills. Do large language models (LLMs) trample copyrights as the computer is literally “fed” everything, everywhere all at once? Like every book, script, musical composition, film, TV program, etc.? As of now the US Copyright Office won’t grant copyrights to works created by AI, and where there’s a mix, the AI contribution is excluded.

AI champions, and there are a lot of them, simply believe that “for the greater good and the advancement of technology,” access to copyrighted material should be more akin to withdrawing a book from a public library than exploiting the underlying copyright itself. Author and Los Angeles Times columnist November 16th), Michael Hiltzik, scoffs at the idea: “Followers of high finance are familiar with the old principle of privatizing profits and socializing losses — that is, treating the former as the rightful property of investors and shareholders while sticking the public with the latter. It’s the principle that gave us taxpayer bailouts of big banks and the auto companies during the last recession.

“Investors in artificial intelligence are taking the idea one step further in fighting against lawsuits filed by artists and writers asserting that the AI development process involves copyright infringement on a massive scale… The AI folks say that nothing they’re doing infringes copyright. But they also argue that their technology itself is so important to the future of the human race that no obstacles as trivial as copyright law should stand in their way…The only way AI can fulfill its tremendous potential is if the individuals and businesses currently working to develop these technologies are free to do so lawfully and nimbly.— Andreessen Horowitz

“They say that if they’re forced to pay fees to copyright holders simply for using their creative works to ‘train’ AI chatbots and other such programs, most AI firms might be forced out of business… Frank Landymore of Futurism.com had perhaps the most irreducibly succinct reaction to this assertion: ‘Boohoo.’ … Lest anyone think that AI investors are only in it for the money, Andreessen Horowitz caps off its comment by arguing that ‘U.S. leadership in AI is not only a matter of economic competitiveness—it is also a national security issue. ... We cannot afford to be outpaced in areas like cybersecurity, intelligence operation, and modern warfare, all of which are being transformed by this frontier technology.’” So that justifies “whatever”? Oh, and China is ahead of US research. Hmm!

Ordinary creative individuals also have their own concerns. Hollywood writers were afraid of being replaced by AI, second rate now but getting better, and actors were afraid of digitized avatars being so good that their images and persona were no longer theirs to control. The settled collective bargaining agreements reflect those fears. Politicians are watching what seemed to be their own images and words saying things they never said. What a mess! First Amendment?

Ainsley Harris (FastCompany.com, November 19th), describes a battle over transparency and corporate responsibility in the AI world created a “just like when Steve Jobs was fired from Apple” scenario in the Silicon Valley: “It’s not just OpenAI… The long-simmering fault lines within OpenAI over questions of safety with regard to the deployment of large language models like GPT, the engine behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E services, came to a head on Friday [11/17] when the organization’s nonprofit board of directors voted to fire then-CEO Sam Altman. In a brief blog post, the board said that Altman had not been ‘consistently candid in his communications.’…

“But OpenAI is not the only place in Silicon Valley where skirmishes over AI safety have exploded into all-out war. On Twitter, there are two camps: the safety-first technocrats, led by venture firms like General Catalyst in partnership with the White House; and the self-described ‘techno-optimists,’ led by libertarian-leaning firms like Andreessen Horowitz. [see above quotes]

“The technocrats are making safety commitments and forming committees and establishing nonprofits. They recognize AI’s power and they believe that the best way to harness it is through cross-disciplinary collaboration… Hemant Taneja, CEO and managing director of General Catalyst, announced on Tuesday that he had led more than 35 venture capital firms and 15 companies to sign a set of ‘Responsible AI’ commitments authored by Responsible Innovation Labs, a nonprofit he cofounded. The group also published a 15-page Responsible AI Protocol, which Taneja described on X as a ‘practical how-to playbook.’” While rumors abounded that Altman and his team would return, they actually wound up at Microsoft leading a rising division there. Then Wall Street Journal (November 21st) put it this way: “OpenAI’s future is unclear after the majority of its employees threatened to quit if the board didn’t resign itself and reinstate Sam Altman at the helm. Meanwhile, Emmett Shear’s sudden appointment as the company's interim CEO puts him at the center of high-stakes drama.” Drama on steroids that most folks do not understand. Spoiler alert: he’s baackkkk! And with a reconfigured board of directors!

The firing/rehiring of Sam Altman is/was far more important than the mere firing/rehiring of Sam “the AI genius” Altman might suggest. Kevin Roose, writing in the November 21st issue of the NY Times feed, The Morning, explains this corporate melee: “If they had been the plot of a science fiction movie, or an episode of ‘Succession,’ the events at OpenAI last weekend [11-17 through 19] would have seemed a little over-the-top… A secret board coup! Fears of killer A.I.! A star C.E.O., betrayed by his chief scientist! A middle-of-the-night staff revolt that threatens to change the balance of global tech power!...

“The coup was led by Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist, who had butted heads with Altman. Sutskever wants the company to prioritize safety and was worried that Altman was more focused on growth… Sutskever is among a faction of A.I. experts who are fearful that A.I. may soon surpass human abilities and become a threat to our survival. Several of OpenAI’s board members have ties to effective altruism, a philosophical movement that has made preventing these threats a top priority. Altman has concerns about A.I. risks, too. But he has also expressed optimism that A.I. will be good for society, and a desire to make progress more quickly. That may have put him at odds with the safety-minded board members, whose job is to see that powerful A.I. is developed responsibly.” But as noted above, Altman is back, and his “failed” ouster has led to a new board with Altman on top. But what exactly does that mean in a world where guardrails are been ripped away by nation states, unscrupulous politicians and avaricious investors? Stay tuned!

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you add the complexity of rising plasma computing – multiple sockets of multicore processors using qubit vs binary calculations at hundreds of times the speed of our fastest supercomputers (yes, very complicated) – to accelerating artificial intelligence, exactly what is the future for humanity?