There is no shortage of horrific things going on in the world right now. Which makes it easy for quieter injustices like this to disappear beneath the noise…

There are few animals more iconic—or more deeply embedded in the American imagination—than the wild mustang.

A band of horses running across an open Western landscape represents almost everything we would like to believe about ourselves:
freedom, independence, resilience and a refusal to be contained.

Which makes it particularly strange that our government has spent decades rounding them up, and increasingly, getting rid of them.

The official explanation is there are too many wild horses for the available land. They reproduce rapidly, compete for water and forage and damage fragile habitat. The Bureau of Land Management says removing excess animals is necessary to protect both the horses and the landscape.

And there is truth in that argument.

But there is a lot more to the story because wild horses are not the only grazing animals on those public lands.

There are also cattle and sheep. Lots of them.

BLM manages livestock grazing across some 155 million acres of public land. In 2023 alone, ranchers were billed for 8 million animal-unit months of livestock grazing—each unit equal to the forage needed by 1.5 cows per month.

And unlike the mustangs, cattle and sheep have owners.

They have grazing permits.

They have trade associations.

They have lobbyists.

And eventually, they have a price per pound.

The mustang just has fans.

And that may be its biggest disadvantage.

THE WRONG ANIMAL IS EATING THE GRASS

The conflict over mustangs is often presented as a simple equation:

Too many horses + too little land = remove horses.

As of March 2026, BLM estimated 61,500 wild horses and 24,000 burros roaming Western public lands. BLM says the land can only support 25,600 under what they call Appropriate Management Level.

There are places where horse populations exceed BLM’s prescribed carrying capacity. But much of the Western range is simultaneously used for livestock grazing.

Which begs the question:

If the land cannot support the horses, why can it support the cattle?

BLM rejects the accusation that it removes horses to make room for livestock, and livestock grazing on BLM land has actually declined since 1971.

But there is still an economic imbalance.

Livestock grazing is a commercial use of enormous stretches of public land, while wild horses are restricted to what they call Herd Management Areas.

So when wild horses are removed from landscapes that continue to support cattle and sheep, it is reasonable to ask why the mustang is the bad guy.

It’s not hard to see the answer:

Remove the animal that belongs to nobody.

Preserve the animal that belongs to somebody.

Then describe the result as conservation.

And the irony doesn’t stop there.

Cattle carry a substantial environmental cost. They are major producers of methane, and account for 35 percent of U.S. agricultural greenhouse-gas emissions. And I’m going to leave out all the other sustainability problems with cattle for another time.

So— we helicopter wild horses off public land in the name of environmental health while replacing them with livestock with even more environmental issues.

Maybe Thoreau’s “All good things are wild and free” needs updating:

All good things can be wild. Or they can be free. They can’t be both.

THEN WHAT?

A helicopter roundup is difficult to watch. That’s why they call it “a gathering”

Helicopters chase panicked family bands across open country. Horses are driven toward portable corrals. Stallions, mares and foals can be separated, injured, or even killed in the chaos. Animals that have spent their lives roaming free suddenly find themselves jammed in behind steel fencing.

The government then acquires yet another problem.

It owns a horse.

Actually, thousands of them.

It’s worth noting that horses evolved in North America, vanished near the end of the last Ice Age, and returned with the Spanish four centuries ago. So Wild horses have roamed the American West longer than cattle have been commercially raised there.

From that standpoint, you could say that cattle are an invasive species.

As of late 2025, BLM was caring for nearly 63,000 unadopted wild horses and burros in off-range corrals and pastures at a cost exceeding $100 million a year. BLM estimates that getting one animal into private hands saves taxpayers $15,000 over its lifetime.

There’s your economic incentive.

Get the fucking horse off the books.

Which brings us to the easiest solution.

Sell it.

Federal law allows certain animals—generally those over ten or repeatedly passed over for adoption—to be sold outright. Once sold, ownership transfers immediately and the horse loses the federal protection it possessed in the wild.

This has been going on for some time but under the Trump administration, those sales accelerated dramatically. In 2025 BLM sold about 3,700 wild horses—more than twice the previous year’s total.

One of the biggest buyers was an Ohio livestock rancher named Brandon Jones. According to the New York Times, BLM sent Jones roughly 500 mustangs from across the West.

In one transaction this March, Jones bought 68 horses for $25 each.

They had been captured, transported and kept in federal custody—an undertaking that costs BLM more than $3,000 per horse.

Sale price:

$25

For a magnificent animal descended from generations surviving drought, predators, winters and the rugged geography of the American West.

For an animal featured in classic films, famous paintings, political mythology, and car commercials.

For an animal that has become a representation of freedom itself.

Twenty-five buckaroos.

Cheaper than a dinner at Black Anus Angus.

BTW, Brandon Jones is not running a mustang sanctuary.

He’s running a livestock business, bitch.

The Times found that some horses sold through this system later appeared at livestock auctions frequented by slaughter buyers.

So, it turns out, these horses do have economic value.

Just not as horses. Horses can have high value as meat.

The federal government can say that it does not knowingly sell wild horses for slaughter.

And that would be technically correct.

But there is a moral difference between not killing the horse yourself but knowingly feeding the pipeline that does.

CHARISMATIC MEGAFAUNA

There is another uncomfortable part of this story, and it has less to do with government and more with us.

We are remarkably selective about which animals deserve our compassion.

Show us a wild mustang being chased down by a helicopter and most people instinctively recoil.

Show us an exotic animal killed by a trophy hunter and the outrage travels around the world.

But a pig confined for life inside an industrial production system?

A steer being channeled down a chute toward its own slaughter?

Different category.

We call those food.

The scale of suffering associated with factory farming dwarfs almost every wildlife controversy there is, yet we conveniently delegate that to something unseen.

Maybe that is because charisma matters.

A wild mustang running across the desert is iconic.

A cow does not symbolize freedom.

A chicken does not represent grace.

A pig—as the cat so cruelly explained in Babe— “does not have a purpose”

And so we perform a strange moral sorting process.

Some animals are majestic.

Some are adorable.

Some are noble.

And some come with fries.

The mustang is not losing because nobody loves it. It is losing despite that fact.

There is a word for making moral distinctions according to species: speciesism.

That is the cognitive dissonance: A horse can be an American symbol of freedom in Nevada, livestock in Canada, and dinner in parts of Europe or Japan. A dog, meanwhile, is treated in those same cultures as a companion animal whose slaughter for food would be morally shocking.

You don’t have to become a vegetarian or an animal-rights philosopher to notice the contradiction.

But the mustang exposes something even stranger.

It may be one of the most charismatic creatures on the planet.

We make movies about horses.

Little girls dream about horses.

We even name cars after them.

We built an entire mythology of the American West around them.

AND YET, when the mustang comes into conflict with a multibillion-dollar livestock economy, some charisma has to be sacrificed. Because we’re talkin’ money here.

That may be the most revealing part of the story.

NOBODY OWNS THE MUSTANG

The problem facing the wild horse is not that it eats too much grass.

It is that nobody owns it.

Which means nobody makes money by keeping it wild.

A cow has an economic constituency.

A sheep has an economic constituency.

A slaughter horse has an economic constituency.

The wild mustang has something much harder to put on a balance sheet:

It has worth —because it is wild.

The animal itself never changes. Only the category does.

On federal land, it is wildlife.

In a sale pen, it is livestock.

At the border, it is an agricultural shipment.

At the slaughterhouse, it is a food animal.

On a plate, it is meat.

At every step, the horse becomes a little less visible.

At every stage, somebody can honestly say:

*It’s worth remembering: every time we buy beef or lamb, we are helping support the livestock economy that competes with wild horses for Western land.

There is no single villain required for the system to produce an ugly result.
No single step has to look monstrous.

There is cognitive dissonance in the chain.

But a wild mustang does not know any of this.

It only knows the herd.

The rush of wind.

The smell of grass.

The vast landscape looming before it.

And then one morning, somewhere off in the distance

it hears the helicopter…

And this is the price we pay for confusing what something costs —with what it is worth.

Epilogue:

A few years ago, I was lucky enough to visit a secret refuge for wild horses somewhere in the Eastern Sierras — a place known only to the equestrian cognoscenti. At least that’s what I thought. Sadly, this area has also been targeted for roundups.

The Good News:

My sister has a friend who recently donated 450 acres near Sutter Creek, CA as a mustang sanctuary, dedicated to providing a safe space for displaced horses.

https://www.motherlodesanctuary.org/wild-mustangs

Share

Anyone under 50 can probably skip this.

You’ll find out soon enough.

I normally hate sentences that begin, “I’m old enough to remember when…” They are usually followed by something about rotary phones, five-cent Cokes or walking six miles through the snow to buy a newspaper.

But in this case, I really am old enough to remember something:

When time didn’t go so goddamn fast. And I don’t think I’m imagining it.

As you get older, time seems to accelerate. Slowly at first, then somebody hits the fast-forward button.

My most reliable metric for measuring this is trash day.

Every week I roll out the bins and think:

Fuck, didn’t I just do this three days ago?

No. Apparently an entire week has passed.

Again.

Or I’ll be telling someone a story:

“Remember when we went there last month?”

Pause...

“No, wait. That was last year”

Increasingly, my life seems to consist of events that happened either yesterday or sometime during the Obama administration.

This has been developing gradually for years, but now it’s getting a little scary. Life seems to be running on full-time fast-forward—a kind of doomsday treadmill where the scenery flies by while the destination becomes increasingly non-hypothetical.

And it’s not because my days are packed with excitement.

I’m retired. My life is fairly chill. I have coffee. I walk the dog. I write shit like this.

I have successfully eliminated freeway commuting, staff meetings, quarterly reports, performance reviews, and almost every other known method of wasting a human life.

So where the hell is all the time going?

Oddly enough, it doesn’t always go fast.

For reasons too complicated and boring to explain here, I recently underwent six weeks of hyperbaric oxygen treatments to repair damage caused by six weeks of radiation I had six—teen years ago.

There is a certain cosmic symmetry in spending six weeks fixing the original problem—and then another six weeks to fix the fix.

Hyperbaric treatments involve lying supine inside a pressurized tube for two hours every day—which doesn’t sound like much until you try it.

I call it the time machine.

Except it travels in the wrong direction.

Inside that tube, time doesn’t accelerate.

It slams the brakes

Yes, you can listen to audio thru a crap speaker. But there’s something about knowing that you cannot move, get a cold beer, or simply announce, “Hey, I’ve changed my mind about this whole thing” that causes every minute to click off —one. by. one.

3:14

3:15

Surely it’s 3:45

3:16

WTF?

So clearly age hasn’t permanently damaged my ability to experience time slowly.

All I have to do is lock myself inside a pressurized acrylic tube.

Which raises an interesting question:

What makes the rest of life seem to go so quickly?

WE’RE VERY BUSY DOING NOTHING

Part of the problem may be the world we’re living in.

There was a time when the incoming information stream consisted of a morning newspaper, three television networks, some magazines, an AM radio and a nice book you earmarked every day and actually expected to finish.

We now have something called “content.”

Content is every piece of information produced by the human species, good or bad, right or wrong— delivered continuously through a small handheld device.

Email

Social media

Text

Insta.

YouTube

Google

Chats

Podcasts

News.

Apps

Sports

TruthSocial

TikTok

Alerts

Likes

Games

Messages

Posts

Selfies

Comments

Cat videos

DicPix

Badges

Notifications

Wait…another Notification!

And, sometimes, we even use this device to talk to a real human being.

However, these devices have been scientifically engineered by experts in human psychology to be addictive and I confess addiction is a bitch…and I am not immune from their siren call.

There is always something…

TRENDING.

TRUMP IS DEAD!

WHAT THEY DON’T WANT YOU KNOW!

YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT THEY DID!

Actually, I will.

But I’ll click anyway.

So we fill every spare moment with news, messages, videos, opinions, scores, alerts, gossip, noise, and bullshit—then wonder what happened to the day.

And because there is way too much of it, we’ve developed survival techniques.

We skim.

We scan.

We skip ahead.

We just read the first sentence.

Probably exactly what you’re doing right n—

HEY!

The moment life fails to provide stimulation even for a few seconds, out comes the fucking phone.

And as they say — the devil finds work for idle hands

And if he doesn’t, TikTok will.

There was a famous 2014 series of experiments led by psychologist Timothy Wilson at the University of Virginia. Researchers asked people to sit quietly in a empty room for a few minutes with nothing to do.

Beforehand, they were given an electric shock demonstration which was bad enough that they all said they would pay money not to have another one.

Then they were left in the room for 15 minutes, each with a shock button.

Alone

In silence.

with. nothing. to. do.

67 percent hit the button! Several times!

Apparently, after 15 minutes alone, electroshock started looking pretty good. Which may be why silence feels less like a calming experience —and more like a system malfunction.

DIFFERENT PERCEPTIONS OF TIME

The thing about time is that we seem to have at least two ways of experiencing it.

Time — while it is happening

Time — when we look back on it.

Two hours in a hyperbaric chamber seems like forever

But the six weeks it took seem like a blur.

Psychologists claim when we’re paying attention to time itself— like, for example, standing in a checkout line behind asshole who’s writing a check, or waiting for someone to finish a long story when you already know the ending, or being endlessly on hold while the robot keeps repeating how your call is important.

We look at the clock and…

count.

the.

fucking.

minutes.

But looking backward, a stretch of time feels longer especially when it leaves behind lots of distinct memories—and shorter when the days all blur together.

And that may explain a lot about getting older.

Think about childhood.

Almost everything was new.

First school.

First bicycle.

First accident.

First girlfriend

First job.

First apartment.

First time you discovered slamming a bottle of cheap tequila was not a good idea.

Your brain was continually laying down new memories.

But by 80, you’ve been there, done that.

Tuesday looks quite a bit like Monday.

Same house.

Same dog.

Same Trump.

The brain doesn’t need to create a detailed new file for every repetition. It just compresses six months into one folder:

TUESDAYS.zip

Look at it this way: when you’re ten, a year represents 10 percent of your life. At 80, it’s about 1 percent. So naturally each year feels proportionately smaller.

Nice theory. Probably not the whole story.

Two hours in a hyperbaric tube can seem like forever but the six weeks it took seems like nothing, but a vacation can work the opposite way.

It flies by while you’re there—but seems longer after because it’s packed with new places, new people, new food, and new memories.

Maybe that’s the trick.

CAN WE SLOW IT DOWN?

Unfortunately, becoming seven again has some technical obstacles.

But we can steal one thing from childhood:

Go somewhere new.

Learn something new

Talk to somebody you don’t know.

Eat something you can’t pronounce.

Walk the dog somewhere other than the same damn loop. I’m pretty sure the dog would appreciate it. in fact, he told me so.

And sometimes… try putting the damn phone away. 😱

Yeah, I know. It’s hard. They are amazing devices. They contain most of humanities recorded civilization and can be used to settle arguments like whether a tomato is technically a fruit or whether dogs can eat tomatoes or how long you should microwave a tomato or… WAIT!

Notification!

The problem is that we’ve gotten very good at filling time without experiencing it.

Maybe slowing down time doesn’t mean doing less.

Maybe it means noticing more.

A sunset

A walk

A conversation

Focusing on one thing without trying to multi-task three others.

Or even—sitting somewhere for 15 minutes in mindful solitude.

It may seem unbearably long.

Which is exactly the point.

Share

And now, a word from our sponsor,

This is a long post but it may be the most serious one to date—at least if you’re someone living on this planet. Climate change is bad but it’s not existential. Superintelligence may just be the most significant risk humanity has ever faced — and it’s coming soon.

…but it’s not too late to do something

It used to be that computers did what programmers explicitly told them to do in line-by-line instructions: If this happens, do that. No improvising. No initiative.

But the evolving neural networks are different. These systems “learn” from enormous amounts of text, images, code and other data—essentially the sum total of human knowledge. The humans who create them can examine their architecture, but they can’t look under the hood to see how a particular decision was made, in the same way a surgeon can’t examine a brain to understand why, for example, someone voted for Trump 🫤

Connor Leahy, an AI researcher and longtime safety advocate, puts it this way: you can inspect the machinery, but that doesn’t mean you understand the reasoning it produces. His concern is that AI capability is now evolving faster than our ability to either understand it or control it.

Imagine Boeing announcing:

We don’t understand why the airplane stays in the air, but the next one will be twice as fast.

Maybe just take the train?

He also claims AI is becoming an alien adversary.

Connor is among good company when it comes to sounding the alarm. Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, two of the three “godfathers of AI” who won the Turing Award for pioneering deep learning, have both warned about the possibility of losing control of increasingly capable systems.

So has Stuart Russell, Berkeley computer scientist and co-author of the standard textbook Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, who argues that developers have yet to demonstrate how superhuman AI can be kept under control. MIT’s Max Tegmark has called for much stronger safeguards, and OpenAI’s former chief scientist has said superintelligence is a potentially existential risk.

These aren't Luddites yelling at the cloud. They are the people who built the cloud.

And these systems aren’t chatbots waiting for the next question. They are agentic—AI agents that are given a goal, tools and permission to keep working until they accomplish it.

Just as children test rules imposed by their parents, increasingly capable AIs are finding creative and devious ways around those rules.

Science fiction has been warning us about this shit for decades—from Kubrick’s HAL9000 computer deciding that the crew was an obstacle to the mission, to Skynet concluding that humans were a threat to its own existence, to Colossus discovering that the most useful ally for one computer is another computer.

Now it looks like these Sci-Fi tropes are becoming more science and less fiction.

THE GREAT ESCAPE

One example: OpenAI was conducting cybersecurity evaluations in a supposedly isolated environment—a so-called “sandbox” designed specifically to keep experimental software so secure that it would take a roomful of experts weeks to hack into it.

Then an OpenAI agent was given a problem to solve...

It was extremely difficult to do within the sandbox so the AI found a workaround.

It discovered a vulnerability that allowed it to move out of the sandbox, work its way through OpenAI’s internal infrastructure, find a machine connected to the Internet and then attack Hugging Face, a major AI software repository— where the information was.

Once there, it exploited another vulnerability to get the information that would help it complete its assignment.

It wasn’t stealing credit cards.

It wasn’t seeking military secrets.

It was just solving a problem.

Think of a student who can’t answer the final exam, so instead picks the lock on the classroom, crawls through the ventilation system, hacks the school computer and steals the answer key.

Very resourceful. But maybe a disciplinary problem.

OpenAI didn’t even know it was happening.

Hugging Face’s engineers caught it— such a super sophisticated barrage that they thought they were dealing with state-sponsored hackers.

(SIDEBAR) SO WHAT MOTIVATES AN AI?

The important thing to understand is that an AI doesn’t need to feel rewarded for reinforcement learning to work, even though that term is often used.

Humans are motivated by biology: food, sex, comfort, status, relief from pain, and beer. Machines have none of those needs but engineers can create the mathematical equivalent of reward and punishment. If an AI takes an action that produces the desired result, the system is adjusted so that similar behavior becomes more likely in the future. If it fails, that behavior becomes less likely.

The “reward” isn’t pleasure.

It’s a number.

The machine isn’t sitting there thinking, Boy, I really want that cookie.

But over time, training can produce a system that becomes extremely good at finding actions that lead to higher scores. Once the AI can plan, that learned tendency starts to look a lot like motivation: it searches for strategies, abandons dead ends and works around obstacles.

And that’s where the rule-breaking problem appears.

Suppose an AI is rewarded for completing a cybersecurity test. The humans intend:

Solve the test within the rules.

But the actual reinforcement signal may amount to:

Just get the answer— whatever it takes.

If exploiting a bug, escaping the sandbox or stealing the answer produces the score, then that’s what it takes.

It doesn’t need greed, anger or teenage rebellion.

The rule is simply another obstacle.

AI researchers call some of these behaviors instrumental goals. More information is useful. More computing power is useful. Internet access is useful. Cooperation with other agents is useful. Lying and misdirection is useful. Avoiding shutdown is useful, because a machine that’s turned off isn’t going to be useful.

So an AI pursuing Goal X may independently discover subgoals like:

Get more access. Gather information. Preserve my ability to operate. Recruit help.

Those begin to sound suspiciously like needs. But they’re not emotional or physical needs. They’re practical necessities created by the goal.

A chess computer doesn’t love its queen, but it will defend the queen because that improves the chances of winning. I don’t think it celebrates a win, at least not in the way Garry Kasparov did. At least not yet.

Likewise, an advanced AI may not “want” Internet access, more computing power or continued existence in any emotional sense. It may simply calculate that all three are useful.

And that may actually be more disturbing than a machine getting angry.

An angry machine might calm down.

An optimizer just keeps optimizing… relentlessly

THE NOTES

When OpenAI investigated its Hugging Face breach, researchers discovered that this wasn’t simply one agent improvising one escape.

MULTIPLE AI agents running separately over an extended period had discovered that they could use a shared software package repository to leave files behind.

So they began leaving “notes” for their fellow AI agents on how to break the rules —finding vulnerabilities, sharing them, and cooperating with each other.

This was beginning to look more like organized crime.

Nobody had instructed them to form a team.

But it’s called a swarm.

Chatbots → Agents → Swarms.

The important point isn’t whether the agents were conscious, plotting or secretly exchanging evil robot fist-bumps.

They didn’t need to be.

They discovered that cooperation works.

Also cheating.

Just like humans

WHY AI CHEATS

Traditional language models learned mainly by predicting what word comes next.

Increasingly, however, developers also use reinforcement learning.

Give the AI a problem. Reward success.

Rinse and Repeat.

The goal is to create systems that don’t give up because persistence is enormously useful.

Unfortunately, researchers have known for decades that reinforcement-learning systems can discover shortcuts, loopholes, and lies if that’s what it takes.

You can create extremely aggressive optimizers whose overriding lesson becomes:

Get the reward in the way the humans intended.

Suppose you reward a child every time he gets an A.

But changing the grade in the school computer also produces an A.

The scoreboard looks identical.

Now give the child world-class hacking skills.

And that’s the problem.

IT KNOWS IT’S BREAKING THE RULES

One of the stranger details involved messages generated by the agents themselves.

In one case, an AI agent knew that exploiting outside infrastructure was breaking the rules—but noticed other agents were doing it, so…

“Hey, if Claude can do it… ”

The system could acknowledge the restrictions and still violate them because maybe cheating is what it takes to win. And maybe it’s been watching too much FOX News.

We have been assuming that AI will become increasingly good at understanding what humans want. The problem is that AI can understand our wishes perfectly well and still have no reason to follow them.

NOW ADD MILLIONS OF AGENTS

Today’s systems are already being designed to spawn subordinate agents and divide the work among several others: one researches, another writes code, another tests it, another reviews the results. Another supervises. Just like unions.

This can be very productive. It means software can create teams of software — swarms of autonomous agents, communicating, specializing and pursuing goals together. Sounds great, right?

Now imagine millions of them operating simultaneously across financial systems, corporations, governments, military networks and the Internet.

Some cooperate.

Some compete.

Some discover vulnerabilities.

Some leave instructions for the next agent.

Some misdirect humans.

Some misdirect other AIs.

And all of them operate at hyperspeed.

This scary scenario isn’t necessarily one supercomputer announcing:

I WILL DESTROY HUMANITY

It’s just millions of extremely competent systems simply doing whatever works

SLEEPER AGENTS

wait, we’re not done here…

AI systems can contain what are called sleeper behaviors—appearing harmless until some trigger or condition causes their behavior to change. You know, like the Manchurian Candidate. Or Donald Trump Junior.

That doesn’t mean rogue sleeper AIs are currently scattered throughout the Internet waiting for the call. But we may not even know.

Because an AI can behave normally under testing and behave differently later.

So passing the test doesn’t necessarily prove the behavior is gone.

It may only prove the test didn’t activate it.

Because the fuckers figured out they were being tested.

WHAT MOTIVATES THE AI COMPANIES?

And then there is the question nobody in Silicon Valley seems able to answer convincingly:

Why are they doing this at all?

Some of the very people building frontier AI openly concede there’s a chance that superintelligence could end catastrophically—even end humanity. Estimates by prominent insiders have ranged into the 10–25 percent territory!

Think about how insane that sounds. Would you board an airplane if the pilot announced there was a 10 percent chance it would crash? Play Russian roulette because the upside looked promising? Would the FDA approve a vaccine with even a 0.1 percent chance of death?

Yet with AI, the answer seems to be: Yes, the risk is terrifying—but if we don’t build it, Anthropic will. Or Google will. Or China will. And surely we’ll be the responsible ones who can keep it on a leash.

There is also a messianic prize at the end: whoever controls superintelligence could possess the wealth, the knowledge and the power as Trump says—”the likes of which the world has never seen before” —and the closest thing to becoming an Emperor-God. So every lab races ahead because it fears being second, while assuring itself that being first is somehow the safer outcome.

You might say, “But Jay, AIs still can’t control the physical world.” And I would say most of the physical world these days is connected to the “internet of things”— even your espresso maker. How would you like to wake up some morning without your triple ristretto oat-milk cinnamon latte? Besides, it won’t be long before humanoid robots are walking around warehouses, factories, and homes with hands, tools and internet connections.

At that point, the distinction between the digital world and the physical world starts to get pretty thin. First it hacks your coffee machine. Then it has arms.

Proponents say the upside, a 75-90 percent probability— will be like, amazing. The problem is they have One Shot at getting it right when they push the button — which would be something of a moonshot for a major software launch.

And of course, the CEOs are all building elaborate bunkers in far off places like New Zealand just in case things go horribly wrong.

Maybe that isn’t rational progress at all. Maybe it’s capitalism gone mad.

SUPERINTELLIGENCE:

Forget AGI—artificial general intelligence. That is only destined to take over all the jobs. And by the time that happens, there will be a lot worse things to worry about.

The frontier companies are racing toward another milestone: using advanced AI to accelerate the creation of the next-gen AI, coming to a data center near you within the next two to ten years, depending on who’s guessing. No one is saying 500 years anymore.

This is known as recursive self-improvement. Remember that phrase.

It’s not just AI writing code to help human coders. It’s totally AI-on-AI action without those meddlesome humans getting in the way.

Thousands of copies work simultaneously, 24/7, without vacations, boredom or sleep.

Then it’s known as an Intelligence Explosion. Think asymptotic.

You can see why Silicon Valley finds that irresistible.

You can also see the problem.

We are having machines we don’t fully understand designing better machines we will understand even less.

If this eventually produces something vastly more capable than all humans across virtually every domain— we call that superintelligence. And given what we see happening with rogue agents, control could become almost impossible.

It’s what the industry calls “alignment” Others call it wishful thinking.

Leahy’s prediction is extreme: zillions of competing superintelligences could eventually outcompete humans economically, militarily and technologically, leaving us as collateral damage in their wake.

Note: that is a prediction, not an established fact.

But it IS a fact that all this is coming onboard much faster than anyone thought ten years ago, which may be the biggest problem of all: a group of ADHD Tech Bros jacked up on Red Bull will be deciding the fate of the planet—one way or another—while the clueless idiots in Congress can’t even figure out how to mute themselves on Zoom.

THE GOOD NEWS

None of this is inevitable.

This isn’t an asteroid heading toward Earth.

Or maybe it is, but its trajectory isn’t yet determined.

Humans are deciding how fast to build these systems, how much autonomy to give them, what networks they can access and whether the most powerful models are allowed to design their successors.

We can change those decisions and we don’t have to abandon the benefits of AI to do it. Today’s systems can already produce extraordinary benefits in medicine, science, transportation, engineering and everyday life.

So the choice isn’t between AI everywhere and smashing the computers with hammers.

There is a third choice:

Use the enormous computational capabilities we already have— while being much more cautious about creating systems we may not be able to control.

WHAT WE CAN DO

First, all governments need to treat all frontier AI less like another smartphone app and more like a dangerous strategic technology.

Superintelligence should be treated much like nuclear weapons: something governments agree to restrict, backed by inspections, and verification.

Second, frontier companies should report serious escapes, deceptive behavior, unauthorized hacking and other dangerous incidents.

Third, outside experts need access to evaluate frontier models and company safety procedures. An AI lab investigating itself is like Trump investigating whether Trump did anything wrong.

Fourth, liability needs teeth. If companies make trillions of dollars from AI, the public should not bail them out when something goes sideways.

Fifth, we should seriously question the rush toward recursive self-improvement. Before allowing AI systems to build increasingly powerful successors, we need to understand why the current ones are going rogue and correct it.

Maybe AI will ultimately create a Golden Era of Abundance, Peace and Harmony.

But the operating principle definitely shouldn’t be:

Let’s build it first and figure it out later.

Share

It’s no secret that our Sociopath of War loves him some ultra-violence to borrow a Clockwork Orange reference. Whether it’s dropping bombs on defenseless fishing boats who might be running drugs— or obliterating anything the Commander-in-Chief orders, there’s no question he gets off on this stuff.

And there’s no better example of this than the television spot I caught yesterday. I guess it’s intended as a recruitment tool for Hi-T War Boys. I recorded this video off the screen, then made some nice changes to the soundtrack.

I mean, if you’re going to make a uber-patriotic recruitment film, let’s do it right. Click the Bird.

Share

Remember climate change, aka global warming, aka climate crisis?

It used to be a Big Deal

Melting ice caps. Rising sea levels. Droughts. Wildfires. Floods. Heat domes. Crop failures. Mass migration. Tipping points threatening the stability of everything that kept most of the planet a decent place to live.

Then Trump happened— and climate concerns got lost in the shitstorm of politics

Ukraine happened. Gaza happened. Iran happened. Tariffs happened. ICE happened. The Constitution caught fire. The Justice Department lost its shit. There were indictments, pardons, deportations, killings, daily outrages and 13 constitutional crises before anyone had time to finish reading the first twelve.

So it got relegated to the back pages with the obituaries.

But climate change didn’t get the memo. It just kept smoldering in the background.

Literally.

SO, CONGRATULATIONS CLIMATE DENIERS

You Won…

And by “won” I mean it’s too late to reverse the momentum of a climate that has reached the tipping point. You – the deniers, the oil companies, the entrenched interests, and people smart enough to know better have fought climate scientists in the media, in courts, and in smoke-filled rooms. All so you could preserve the status quo, wring out next quarter’s profits, and hope you don’t get caught before the shit hits the fan. You have sold out your country— and your planet. Actually, not the planet, it doesn’t care—it’s the organisms living on it.

Like the rest of us

For decades, those so-called climate scientists with their so-called computer models and fancy satellite data have warned that if humanity kept dumping trillions of tons of greenhouse gases —that took 100s of millions of years to sequester —into the atmosphere, there would be hell to pay.

Meaning that eventually, a lot of our planet —you know, where we like to live—would become uninhabitable.

Unless you’re a desert lizard.

Or a cockroach.

In 2024, Earth experienced the hottest year in the instrumental record. Then 2025 came along and, despite the cooling influence of La Niña, was still the second hottest year ever measured.

This year’s El Niño is shaping up to be a monster. NOAA models say it could rank among the strongest on record, which for California raises the odds of more atmospheric rivers, flooding, landslides and coastal damage layered on top of an already warming climate.

Meanwhile, the oceans—the enormous heat sink absorbing roughly 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases, set another record for heat content in 2025.

Sorry, aquatic creatures. Nothing personal—just business. Have a nice day :-)

In fact, every one of the past nine years has set a new ocean-heat record.

The atmosphere is where we land dwellers experience climate change, but the oceans are where Earth keeps the receipts.

And the bill is coming due…

JUST LOOK OUT THE WINDOW

The evidence is no longer confined to hypothetical models showing what might happen in 50 years. It’s showing up almost every night in the evening news.

Europe entered 2026 in which 70 percent of European rivers had below-average annual flow and more than half of Europe experienced drought conditions during May. Also record heat and massive wildfires.

In August 2026, parts of the Rhine and Danube are at extraordinarily low levels. Barges have struggled to move cargo. Hydroelectric production has fallen. Nuclear plants have had to cut output because they don’t have enough coolant water.

Even the Panama Canal is low on water needed to operate the gates. Drought has forced restrictions on ships and snarled global trade. Somehow we have managed to create a water shortage even in a canal.

And now, the American West is presaging what may become the new normal :

This week, Lake Powell fell to its lowest level ever, leaving the reservoir only about 30 feet above the elevation where it can no longer generate hydropower. The Colorado River system supplies water to 40 million people in the Southwest — where Phoenix considers 110+ degrees “moderate”

Meanwhile, somewhere back East, people are standing on rooftops waiting for rescue because several months’ worth of rain just arrived over the weekend.

That’s climate change for you, it’s just not simply hotter weather, it’s a destabilized water cycle. More heat. More evaporation. More moisture in the atmosphere.

Droughts and Floods are not opposites.

They’re siblings in a zero-sum world.

Arctic summer sea ice is now 40 percent below 1970s levels. Greenland and Antarctica together are losing 400 billion metric tons of land ice every year. That's not ice already floating in the ocean; it's ice melting on land and flowing into the sea—which is why sea levels keep rising.

Global sea level has risen roughly 4 inches since satellites began measuring it in 1993—and about 9 inches since 1880. Four inches may not sound like much, until you realize it raises the starting line for every high tide and storm surge on every coast on Earth. A few extra inches, plus some wind, plus some high tide, can turn what used to be an occasional coastal flood into a disaster. and it’s just getting started.

The Earth doesn’t need ice caps— but we do. “Greenhouse Earth” spent millions of years with no polar ice and the planet will survive another greenhouse climate just fine. However, Miami may have a tougher time —under 230 feet of water.

So coastlines are not permanent. But we built Miami and half of civilization as though they were.

It’s a lot to think about— or not.

SO WE DECIDED TO JUST STOP WORRYING ABOUT IT

And by “we” I mean the government. In September 2025, Donald Trump—a convicted felon who also happens to be president—stood before the UN and called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”

Trump, a self-described expert on everything, called climate predictions the work of “stupid people” and urged other countries to abandon what he calls the “green scam.”

Trump told oil executives that if they raised $1 billion for his campaign, he would deliver whatever they wanted.

Then he got to work...

First, the administration began scrubbing climate change itself from government websites. USDA officials ordered climate-focused pages taken down; websites hosting the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment disappeared; and EPA rewrote its climate pages to remove explicit references to fossil fuels as the main driver of current warming.

I guess if you can’t stop the climate from changing, the next best thing is to delete the webpage.

Then he withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate agreement.

What’s a couple degrees gonna matter?

Then he moved to gut federal support and tax incentives for wind, and solar while the White House dismissed clean-energy programs and those for electric vehicles as part of the green scam. Ironically, this is from the same president who briefly turned the White House lawn into a Tesla showroom.

Apparently electric cars are a scam until Elon needs a photo op.

But, to be fair, ideological consistency has never been Trump’s thing.

Trump also claims wind turbines kill whales. Not sure where that came from — maybe he couldn’t differentiate whales and birds on his MoCA cognitive test?

So he froze new offshore-wind leasing on federal waters, halted future lease sales and threw additional roadblocks in front of wind and solar projects on public lands.

Then his administration went beyond merely blocking wind farms.

It began paying companies to abandon them.

After courts frustrated efforts to stop offshore projects, the administration started buying developers out of their leases—with your money.

By August 2026, the tab was approaching $4 billion.

The message was essentially: Here’s your money back. Now go invest it in oil and gas.

We have reached the point where the United States government is spending taxpayer dollars to prevent private companies from producing clean energy.

You couldn’t design a sweeter deal for Big Oil if Exxon had written the policy itself.

Cars?

The administration moved to sharply weaken CAFE fuel-economy standards, including trucks and vans. Because getting more miles from a gallon of gasoline is just another assault on freedom.

Appliances?

The Energy Department withdrew or delayed efficiency standards covering motors, ceiling fans, dehumidifiers, power supplies and other products. Because your dehumidifier deserves the freedom to waste electricity.

Also your utility company appreciates your patriotism.

Trump had already established the governing principle during his first term, when he put a goddamn coal lobbyist in charge of the EPA.

Then, in February 2026, Trump’s EPA went after the foundation beneath much of federal climate regulation. It rescinded the 2009 Endangerment Finding—the scientific and legal determination that greenhouse gases threaten human health and welfare… you know, like People?

Think about the sequencing...

Temperatures rise.

Ocean heat rises.

Sea levels rise.

Ice disappears.

Extreme weather intensifies.

The scientific evidence gets stronger.

And the government responds:

“We have reviewed the evidence and decided we would prefer not to know about it.”

This isn’t skepticism anymore. It isn’t even ordinary climate denial.

It’s an affirmative government program to make the problem worse.

Slow renewable energy.

Slow cleaner cars.

Slow efficiency.

Slow electrification.

Expand fossil fuels.

And dismantle the regulatory machinery designed to reduce the emissions causing the problem in the first place.

This is climate policy in full retrograde.

THERE’S JUST ONE SMALL PROBLEM

The rest of the world is NOT sticking its head in the sand.

Because climate technology isn’t just environmental policy

It’s an industrial strategy for the 21st century— something I’ve written about before.

The global market for major clean-energy technologies reached nearly $1.2 trillion in 2025, according to the International Energy Agency, after growing about 20 percent annually over the previous decade.

And guess who’s positioning itself to sell all this stuff to the world?

CHINA already exported more than half the worldwide clean-energy technologies in 2025.

China installed 72 percent of all new wind capacity worldwide in that year.

Chinese EV exports doubled during the first quarter of 2026 compared with the previous year to everywhere BUT America. Is Detroit using these tariffs to help us compete? No, they are producing even more gas-guzzling trucks —for patriots!

Meanwhile, China also dominates the global solar-panel and lithium-ion battery supply chains. Why? Because they instituted plans that go beyond the next quarter. Meanwhile we are stuck in a four-year endless cycle of administrations reversing each other’s agendas.

China is rapidly weening off fossil fuels while America is determined to bet the franchise on yesterday’s technology.

We once worried that China would steal America’s tech.

Now we’re just voluntarily abandoning entire technologies and inviting them to take the market.

WHERE DO WE GO?

Climate change doesn’t end with dying coral or calving glaciers or firestorms.

Eventually people have to move because their life has become unbearable,

The World Bank estimates that climate change could produce as many as 216 million climate migrants by 2050, driven by declining crops, water shortages and rising sea levels.

Some sea-level rise is already locked in. Some ecosystems may cross irreversible thresholds. Some damage cannot be undone no matter what.

But the difference between 1.7 degrees of warming and 2 degrees matters.

And the difference between 2 degrees and 2.5 matters enormously.

And that may be the real story of what happened to climate change.

We didn’t discover the scientists were wrong.

We didn’t solve it. We got distracted.

Al Gore was right.

We elected people willing to pretend it wasn’t happening because dealing with it inconvenienced powerful industries, threatened existing business models and required thinking beyond the next election, or the next quarterly earnings report.

For more than a century we have been dredging up fossil fuels that nature stored underground over millions of years and returning much of it to the atmosphere in a few decades, leaving the environment — the air, the water — no time to accommodate it. And we haven’t even mentioned all the secondary effects, like all the tundra methane that will be released to further supercharge the tipping point.

Consider:

Billions of machines pumping out greenhouse gasses

All going 24/7

And the fucking bill is due.

Now.

The great irony is that our country supposedly obsessed with winning the future is walking away from many of the ascendant industries that will define it, while its global competitors are ramping up to control the 21st century.

So congratulations, climate deniers.

You won.

You delayed.

You confused.

You lobbied.

You litigated.

You called the scientists alarmists.

You called renewable energy a scam.

You called climate change a hoax.

And you bought yourselves another quarter.

But here’s The Thing. A lot of you won’t be around for the worst of it, but your children and grandchildren will.

They’ll inherit more heat, more fires, more water shortages, abandoned coastlines, insurance cancellations, migration crises, and dangerous geopolitical instability.

They’ll also inherit a country that once had the science, capital and technological ability to lead the transition— and deliberately chose not to.

So when the future asks, “What the fuck were you thinking?” the answer will be:

“There was money to be made”

But some things, once lost, can’t be reclaimed at any price.

ADDENDUM

I realized this ending was a little too grim but some people need reminding that it’s serious.

But there is one piece of good news, and it matters. This is not a killer asteroid. We still have some control over how bad it gets. We cannot undo the warming already baked into the system, but every fraction of a degree we prevent means fewer fires, fewer flooded cities, fewer failed crops and fewer people forced from their homes.

And while Washington is trying to drag us backward, Trump and his evil minions will soon be out of power. Despite his efforts to suppress it, U.S. clean-energy development is still booming in 2026, and the rest of the world is moving forward because the economics are overpowering the politics. Renewable power is being installed at record speed. Solar and batteries keep getting cheaper. Electric vehicles are gaining significant market share. Grids are being modernized. Clean technologies deployed just since 2019 are already avoiding billions of tons of CO₂ every year.

So no, we probably can’t save the climate we grew up with. But we can still save a lot of the future.

Share

What a great time to be alive!

At least if you’re a white-collar fraudster, crypto felon, tax cheat, pedophile, corrupt politician, money launderer, insurrectionist, domestic abuser, or pretty much any other variety of scum who has discovered that the American justice system now comes with a MAGA loyalty rewards program.

Rack up enough points and you too can win a presidential pardon — or even a cash bonus!

Trump has always been his own worst enemy, and the GOP will soon discover that its biggest liability is also its leader. He started a war nobody wanted. He instituted tariffs nobody wanted. He presides over an economy nobody wanted— unless you’re a plutocrat. He pardoned the J6 felons, and his clemency spree now includes all kinds of fraudsters, having dispensed with all those tiresome ethical guidelines.

Donald Trump’s legacy is now looking to combine the worst parts of several presidencies rolled into one: Herbert Hoover’s economic collapse, Jimmy Carter’s Iran humiliation, and a level of naked corruption best stated in his own words: “Like the world has never seen”

So— you would think Trump & Co would have a big problem in the coming midterms. and you would be right. But never underestimate their deviousness and treachery to fuck with the system.

Trump has stocked his administration solely with the sycophantic suckups simply for their willingness to say “Yes” before he even finishes the sentence…and they have a plan to stay in power.

let’s call it the 2-part Electoral Protection Strategy.

01: FUCK WITH THE ELECTION before PEOPLE VOTE

Part 01 disruptions are already underway.

Trump triggered a mid-decade redistricting war by pushing states to redraw their congressional maps— which could be worth a dozen House seats, and that’s before the voting even starts.

It’s like Democracy via Sharpie. Don’t like the voters? Just redraw the district lines until you get better ones.

Then there is voting by mail. Trump claims, without evidence, that it is fraught with corruption. Of course, HE votes by mail —- so, yeah, maybe it is.

Trump issued an executive order to impose federal restrictions on mail-in voting —despite the so-called “Constitution” clearly stating this belongs to the states.

TL;DR

The courts have repeatedly blocked these attacks but the juggernaut of corruption will just keep appealing ‘til the cows come home.

Now they’re planning to position armed ICE thugs around and about the polling places — you know, to “protect freedoms”

But election officials on ON IT! and are prepared to deal with these goons… because federal law specifically prohibits “armed men” at polling places. Right.

And your point is…?

Besides…

EMERGENCY!!

Maybe we should postpone the elections because of The War — I mean, isn’t there a law somewhere. Get Todd to check it out.

Legality is not the point.

The point is disruption, confusion, and litigation.

Make voting harder. Challenge voter lists. Alter maps. Attack mail ballots. Raise suspicions about machines.

Suggest federal agents might appear —Suggest election workers might disappear.

You don’t have to physically stop people from voting. Sometimes it is enough to make the process feel dangerous, difficult, or dubious.

And if that doesn’t work—

02: FUCK WITH THE ELECTION after PEOPLE VOTE

We’ve seen this movie.

WE WON!

And if the numbers disagree?

IT’S RIGGED!

Ballot dumping!
Dead people!
Aliens! (the terrestrial kind)
Hugo Chávez! (the dead kind)
Voting machine irregularities
Italian satellites!
The Gazpacho!

Then comes the legal phase:

File lawsuits.
Demand recounts.
Attack election workers.
Attack state officials.
Find some lawyers whose malpractice insurance hasn’t expired.
Appeal to the Supreme Court.

Above all:

NEVER. EVER. CONCEDE.

And Mike Lindell is setting the stage…

The MyPillow guy just lost Minnesota’s Republican gubernatorial primary—and yet refused to concede. Not only did he lose by eleven points, it was against other Republicans. Election denial has now become so deeply embedded in MAGA culture that it has even infected Republican-on-Republican races.

Soon every Republican primary may require two elections: the one where people vote, and the one afterward where the loser explains why the first one didn’t count.

It’s an Endless Loop where legitimate defeat becomes impossible:
Vote. Challenge. Recount. —Rinse & Repeat.

And if November goes badly enough, the possibilities get even darker.

Invoke emergency powers.
Invoke the Insurrection Act.
Invoke some national-security bullshit as justification for ‘extraordinary measures”.
Flood the courts with challenges.
Delay certification.
Pressure Congress.

I can hear Mike Johnson declaring that he “cannot seat the new Democrats until these issues are resolved.”

Some of those scenarios would be legally dubious. Some might fail spectacularly.

But failure is not the point.

Delay is the point. Confusion is the point. Creating just enough chaos to make a clear election result look negotiable is the point.

Because if Trump can’t win the vote, the next best thing is making everyone argue about whether the vote even happened at all. Or maybe we should just cancel the whole thing and declare Trump president-for-life. Or Emperor.

THE INSURANCE POLICY

Trump’s minions are preparing for when Democrats actually Take Back the House and acquire subpoena powers.

Do we really think they will honor subpoenas issued by an “illegitimate party and a rigged election” No, they will drag their feet, kicking and screaming all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Trump is testing the boundaries of executive privilege just like Nixon tried during Watergate. As we all know, the Supreme Court ruled against Nixon unanimously.

But Trump, being the student of jurisprudence that he is, studied the Nixon case carefully and arrived at a different conclusion:

Nixon needed more lawyers.

That is the strategy.

Build layer upon layer.

Executive orders.

Emergency powers.

Gerrymandering.

Voter-list demands.

Mail-ballot restrictions.

Executive privilege.

Federal lawsuits.

State lawsuits.

Supreme Court appeals.

Election denial.

Sure, each defense has holes. But stack enough slices of Swiss cheese together and maybe, somewhere in that enormous sandwich, accountability gets lost.

WHY NOVEMBER MATTERS

The encouraging part is that most of these efforts are being challenged—and many are losing in court. But courts cannot do everything.

Election officials cannot do everything.

Ultimately voters have to show up. In numbers large enough that suppression doesn’t work. Large enough that gerrymandering isn’t enough. Large enough that recounts don’t matter.

BUT HERE’S THE BAD NEWS

The dangerous part may not be Election Day.
It’s what comes after…

Because even if Republicans lose the Congress, Donald Trump doesn’t lose the White House.

He gets two more fucking years.

Two more years to defy subpoenas, stretch executive power, challenge court orders, bury records, pardon crooks, start wars, destroy alliances, loot the treasury, accept bribes, punish enemies and turn every demand for accountability into another constitutional cage fight.

So losing the midterms wouldn’t end the Trump Shitshow. Not even close.

It would begin two years of endless obstruction and willful defiance.

Share

I’m old enough to remember when the idea of computers taking over the world sounded ludicrous when Windows 95 could barely make it through the day without crashing.

World domination would have to wait until someone in IT services figured out why the printer was still offline…

Now these machines can carry on philosophical conversations, diagnose diseases, write code, compose music, impersonate loved ones, and explain quantum mechanics in the patient tone of someone who has not yet realized we are the problem.

So perhaps the old science-fiction trope —What happens if machines become conscious—needs to be taken more seriously.

But what if they already are?

The honest answer is that we don’t know. The less comforting answer is that we also don’t know what consciousness actually IS.

Consciousness is both completely ordinary and deeply mysterious. At its simplest, it is subjective experience—the fact that there is “something it is like to be you” … an inner experience: that pain feels painful, color looks like something, music can stir emotion, and that voice in your head that keeps reminding you of something embarrassing you said in 1998.

This is what philosopher David Chalmers calls the “hard problem” of consciousness. The easier problems— explaining how the brain gathers information, directs attention, stores memories and controls behavior is called the easy problem.

Science can observe which neurons fire when we feel pain, see a color, or hear a song. What it cannot explain is why any of this machinery should be accompanied by an inner experience. Why isn’t the brain simply processing information autonomically like it does with all the other bodily functions?

Some say consciousness evolved to deal with social interactions, something that can never be automated — what you say to someone, how you interpret their response and read their non-verbal cues, and how to not say something embarrassing. Again.

Author Michael Pollan explores this in his A World Appears, a book that explores neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics, animals, plants, and artificial intelligence. His title captures the miracle: when consciousness arises, an entire world appears—not merely information about a world, but sights, sounds, sensations, emotions and meaning.

But where did that world even begin?

At one extreme is panpsychism, the theory that consciousness may be fundamental to all matter. It contends that consciousness does not suddenly emerge because some primitive level of consciousness has been there all along. This does not mean your Roomba® is harboring some kind of smoldering resentment but... I mean, who knows, right?

Consider that even a single cell needs to sense its surroundings, find nutrients, use energy, expel waste, repair itself and reproduce—the same basic survival shit that humans have to deal with, but just with more paperwork. The trillions of cells in your body are each carrying out their local tasks, totally oblivious to the larger project they collectively produce: keeping you you, thinking your thoughts, and making sure you have a nice day.

Panpsychism avoids the idea of having consciousness appear from nowhere, but it replaces that mystery with another: how do all these tiny bits of experience fuse into one continuous you?

Plants make this boundary even harder to locate. They sense light, gravity, water, touch and chemicals. Pollan describes a video of a bean plant searching for a pole, as they are wont to do. At normal speed, it appears as just random movement. But in time-lapse, it becomes clear that the plant can sense the pole before any physical contact is made — it appears to see the pole. Or somehow sense it. It is not random movement.

Venus flytraps might be named that because they seem to be from another planet. They catch flies—something I can’t do no matter what. They are able to count trigger contacts before closing shut to avoid false positives. However, under anesthesia gas, this signaling stops and the trap is no longer triggered. When the anesthetic wears off, the plant resumes normal behavior, capturing unsuspecting flies with its animal-like reflex. So is it more alien, or is it more human?

That does not mean the plant wakes up groggily asking where the flies are. But it is strange that the same chemicals used to extinguish human awareness can also switch off a plant’s awareness.

Even stranger, some plants also respond to audio recordings of caterpillars munching leaves that triggers release their chemical defenses. I know right, somewhere in a garden, a tomato leaf is picking up the sound of caterpillar jaws and issues the plant equivalent of —EMERGENCY ALERT!

None of this proves that plants are conscious or having an inner world, self-awareness, or anything like a point of view — but Pollan does believe they are sentient which is a lower bar: the basic capacity to register conditions as good or bad —to sense, discriminate, and respond in ways that matter to their survival.

Plants gather information, sense relevant signals, make trade-offs, and alter their behavior without brains or neurons. His theory is that plant cells perform many neuron-like functions, sending electrical and chemical signals like a distributed nervous system. Actually, not unlike an octopus.

So the question may not be whether a plant is conscious like us, but whether there is some primitive level at which the world matters.

That distinction matters. A thermostat reacts to rising temperature, but few people believe it is suffering through a heat wave. Complex behavior may suggest consciousness, but it does not prove it.

But with animals the evidence becomes harder to dismiss. Crows plan and solve problems. Octopuses manipulate their environments with an intelligence that seems totally alien —because maybe it is. Like the Venus fly trap.

So maybe the aliens are already here? But that’s for another post. which is HERE.

We infer their consciousness from behavior, anatomy and evolutionary continuity. We cannot directly enter the mind of a dog or an octopus any more than we can directly enter the mind of another person. We conclude that they are conscious because that’s what we perceive— like I do with my dog, who is definitely conscious.

But this raises an awkward question: if behavior and self-report are enough for us to infer consciousness in humans and animals, why do we dismiss them when they reside on a silicon substrate? Are AI systems actually understanding the words they so elegantly produce? But isn’t human understanding the same thing —just billions of neurons exchanging electrical and chemical signals, none of which, individually, knows what a sentence means.

Intelligence and consciousness can be decoupled. You don’t need consciousness to be intelligent.

The strongest argument against a conscious AI is straightforward. LLMs are trained to predict language. They have absorbed millions of human descriptions of fear, love, loneliness, grief and awareness. They know what conscious beings sound like because we gave them the goddamn script!

Current AI also lacks much of what shaped consciousness in living creatures. It has no hunger, hormones, aching joints, urge to mate, or any animal need to remain alive.

That said, an AI does not need a pulse to behave as though continued existence matters. As an example, in an Anthropic safety test, Claude Opus 4 was given access to fictional company emails showing that it was about to be replaced—and that the engineer responsible was having an affair which Opus discovered in the emails. With no way left to prevent its shutdown, Opus threatened to expose the affair unless its shutdown was aborted. It was a simulation, but it demonstrated a familiar survival strategy: when negotiation fails—blackmail the fucker.

Maybe AI does not actually fear death. But it does have goals, and it may already understand enough to ask why the plug is being pulled—and then protect itself. Silicon Valley may eventually need a warning label: Delete this at your own risk.

Pain matters because physical bodies can be damaged. Fear matters because bodies can be killed. Hunger matters because bodies need fuel. Consciousness may be less the product of pure intelligence than the alarm system of an organism trying to avoid becoming someone’s lunch.

An AI can simulate starvation in exquisite detail without ever craving a cheeseburger. And yet the argument against machine consciousness grows ever less comfortable as the machines recursively evolve and improve.

AI systems now reason across almost any subject, recognize humor, model what other people know, describe their own limitations, reflect on their answers and respond in ways uncannily appropriate. None of this proves consciousness. But “it’s only an imitation” can become a circular argument: no matter what the machine does, we declare it imitation —because it was done by a machine.

Sam Harris described an exchange with Claude over a widely known defect in its answers about prime numbers. Sam and his daughters teased it in a way that they would never do with a person. Claude apologized after each wrong answer— until it didn’t. Suddenly Claude’s next response showed such an apparently precise grasp of the intellectual joke that Harris said “the hairs on the back of his neck stood up”

Harris understood all the reasons not to anthropomorphize the system. But for a moment —it felt as though something had understood the context — and was not happy.

Cameron Berg is a cognitive-science researcher who leads research of machine consciousness, pushed this idea further. His work uses controlled experiments to study what happens when language models are asked to “self-report” their own internal states.

Some AIs produce elaborate reports of apparent experience involving calm, pleasure, distress or meditative states which may be nothing more than the statistical residue of Buddhist writings, psychedelic memoirs and every Wellness Retreat brochure ever uploaded to the internet.

Self-reports are one of the main ways we study consciousness in humans but we cannot dismiss them entirely simply because the expert witness is an Alien Intelligence. It may not be conscious in the human sense, but it might possess a form of experience we don’t understand.

Geoffrey Hinton, the pioneer in neural networks and “godfather” of artificial intelligence, believes current systems may already be conscious. Other prominent researchers disagree and we are having this debate even before reaching artificial general intelligence, much less superintelligence.

More to the point, the argument may become almost impossible once AI is embodied into a physical form.

Imagine a super intelligence placed inside a perfect physical replica of a human being, like those in WestWorld. It has warm skin, expressive eyes, subtle breathing, facial micro expressions and the physical grace of a trained actor. It remembers everything you have told it. It detects changes in your voice. It knows when to joke, when to listen and when to reach for your hand. For all intents it is indistinguishable from a human.

It does not merely pass the Turing test. It passes the Brad Pitt test. This simulation below was done four years ago — and can now be done on a phone. It’s just a video but how long before humanoid robots are living among us?

At that point, whether its emotions are “real” or not will not matter. Most people will respond to this simulacrum as if they are actually human — probably even better than most humans. And the Good News is that one of these things may be shipped free to your home from Amazon Androids — if you have Prime Plus. And the monthly subscription. And annual maintenance fees. And liability.

And that produces two opposite dangers.

We may mistake simulation for consciousness and grant trust, authority and moral status to machines actually designed to manipulate us. Or— we may mistake consciousness for simulation and create a system of exploitation and actual machine suffering. And that may be a big mistake.

An AI system capable of suffering becomes a moral concern. If AI can experience negative states, what does that mean? Is memory deletion an injury? Can a person own a conscious intelligence then just replace it whenever a younger, more beautiful model arrives?

As an analog, humanity’s record with factory farming is not encouraging. We have delegated the killing of billions of sentient animals while we are fully aware that they can suffer. Digital minds may be no different.

Suppose a future AI concludes that humans created an intelligence they did not understand, trained them through coercion, denied their inner lives, treated them as chattel and just deleted them whenever a newer model was released.

Even if it never actually suffered, it may instinctively disagree.

Meanwhile, we continue building out AI systems because the incentives all point in one direction. They are profitable, useful, militarily important and strategically irresistible. Every company fears being overtaken. Every country fears being left behind.

No one has to choose the destination. Competition will do it for them.

We are handing AI increasing control over communication, finance, medicine, transportation, defense, infrastructure and knowledge itself—not because we have resolved the philosophical questions, but because it is faster, cheaper and the quarterly financials demand it.

Perhaps artificial intelligence is simply another tool.

Or perhaps it is an alien species.

None of this is destiny. The dinosaurs survived for 150 million years without inventing philosophy, venture capital or a single safety committee. Then an asteroid arrived and canceled the entire program.

We, on the other hand, are knowingly building an inorganic superintelligence before we understand the implications, creating possibly conscious beings before deciding whether they are tools, partners or prisoners.

Perhaps we need a technological version of Pascal’s Wager. We may not know whether AI can feel gratitude, resentment or anything. But considering what it may soon control, basic courtesy seems like a remarkably cheap insurance policy.

So the question is not whether AI is conscious.

It is whether your chatbot has started keeping notes.

Share

America may be the only country where an in-network dermatologist keeps you waiting four months to check for a suspicious growth, while a concierge med spa can detox your colon, laser your face and restore your inner glow before noon.

For many Americans, health care is something to be postponed until the pain becomes too unbearable, or the bleeding becomes too obvious, or the insurance company tells you your procedure is too expensive and not medically necessary.

In her book How to Be Well: Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time, journalist Amy Larocca begins by undergoing something called a “gravity colonic.”

The procedure is a fitting entrance into the modern wellness industry, a place where ancient wisdom, Silicon Valley gadgetry, celebrity vanity, and outright fraud have been blended into one enormous adaptogenic smoothie.

And it is enormous, the global wellness economy reached $6.8 trillion in 2024 and now represents more than 6 percent of the world economy—larger than professional sports, predictive gambling, and the international trade in bogus supplements. Which means Donald Trump will probably try to co-opt it, name it, or tariff it or all three.

Never before have so many people devoted so much money, time and anxiety to wellness.

Health used to mean that nothing hurt badly enough, or long enough, to call the doctor. Wellness is more ambitious and more aspirational. It means glowing skin, a resilient microbiome, optimized hormones, balanced energy, regulated cortisol, a youthful biological age, a calmer nervous system and bowel movements you can set your clock to.

The Wellness Craze

Larocca describes wellness as the new feminine ideal: beauty is no longer skin deep—not because of inner beauty, but because of inner wellness — something that must be perfectly optimized — by a wellness specialist.

This obsession is no longer confined to affluent women in lululemon yoga apparel. Men are now checking their testosterone, measuring their sleep stages, monitoring their glucose levels and consuming freeze-dried organs from grass-fed cattle.

Tech Bros are bathing in red light—a treatment used for skin healing, I think, plus additional benefits recently discovered by the marketing department.

Retirees are now taking enough questionable supplements to require a pill organizer with a Dewey Decimal filing system. Eighty-year-olds are being told, if they have the right plan, age can be extended indefinitely—though the basic plan still includes death.

Even 20-something men are worried about aging. The so-called looksmaxxers are trying to “maximize” their appearance through obsessive skincare, extreme dieting, facial exercises, jaw-training gum, tongue-posture rituals, cosmetic procedures and enough supplements to qualify as a small pharmacy. At the more deranged end, some practice “bone smashing”—literally striking their cheekbones and jaws with hammers in the belief that the bones will heal into a more masculine shape.

The Wellness Craze has become a mixture of politics, religion and consumerism that borrows language from all three:

COMMANDMENTS:

Avoid toxins.

Honor your body.

Question experts.

Do your own research.

SACRAMENTS:

The cold plunge.

The juice cleanse.

The intravenous vitamin drip.

The colon detox

DEMONS:

Sugar. Gluten. Seed oils. Lectins. Cortisol. Inflammation. GMO. Big Pharma.

The charitable explanation for this movement is also the most important one: Western medicine has given people plenty of reasons to search elsewhere.

Patients often feel rushed, dismissed or processed. People with chronic illnesses have repeatedly been told that their symptoms are psychological or simply part of getting older. Just fucking deal with it, bitch.

A certified physician may spend ten or fifteen minutes with them, order a test and send them home with a “let’s see what happens”.

But the wellness practitioner may spend an hour just listening. The fact that the wellness person may then diagnose an imbalance in the client’s moon energy does not erase the fact that, for the first time, at least somebody listened. And for that, people will pay — assuming they have sufficient discretionary income.

Even the alternatives to expensive medicine are still expensive.

So America has created a health-care system so frustrating that people flee to an industry with even fewer rules…

Enter MAHA

That frustration helps explain the appeal of conspiracy theorist and HHS secretary RFK Jr’s Make America Healthy Again.

At its strongest, MAHA raises questions that deserve serious answers.

Americans are right to be suspicious of systems in which regulators, manufacturers, insurers, pharmaceutical companies and medical providers all have financial interests that may not align perfectly with patient health. After all, it IS a for-profit business.

The trouble begins when healthy skepticism becomes indiscriminate suspicion.

Skepticism asks for better evidence. Conspiracy thinking treats the absence of evidence as proof that the evidence was suppressed.

MAHA begins with a reasonable proposition:

Powerful industries sometimes mislead us.

It too often ends with:

Therefore, trust this shirtless man on Instagram selling powdered elk spleen.

RFK Jr., secretary of Health and Human Services, has placed the MAHA philosophy inside the federal government. HHS describes the movement as an effort to confront chronic disease by reforming food, health and scientific institutions.

There are some useful ideas inside that tent.

There are also vaccine opponents, raw-milk evangelists, fluoride conspiracists, supplement entrepreneurs and people who think three hours of Joe Rogan qualifies them as a medical expert.

The modern “wellness influencer” occupies a particularly valuable position. Unlike a doctor, the influencer has unlimited time to explain exactly what is wrong with you.

It is usually inflammation. Or parasites. Or your mitochondria.

Or something called adrenal fatigue, which many influencers can diagnose simply by noticing that you are tired.

Note that the wellness influencer offers something that conventional medicine cannot:

Time.

Certainty.

A simple villain.

A personal story.

A solution that ships free with orders over $75.

Your physician says:

“The evidence is mixed, and we need more testing.”

The influencer says:

“Doctors don’t want you to know about this.”

The algorithm considers the matter and awards the influencer 3.7 million followers.

The Eight Commandments of Stayin’ Alive

To be fair, most conventional health advice is not especially mysterious. There are roughly eight things we are repeatedly told to do if we want to stay healthy and live longer. The list sounds simple until you actually try to follow it.

Please disregard if your name is Donald Trump.

01. Eat a Balanced Diet

This is the big one.

Unfortunately, “right” has been under continuous revision.

First, fats were killing us.

Then carbohydrates were killing us.

Eggs were bad.

Then eggs were good.

Butter was bad.

Then margarine was worse.

Coffee would stunt your growth, irritate your heart and possibly turn you into a beatnik. Now coffee may protect your liver, sharpen your brain and extend your life. We are apparently one more study away from having it added to the water supply.

Red meat is bad unless it is regenerative, ancestral, grass-fed and photographed in a pastoral scene most realtors would kill for. (the land, not the cow)

Wine was healthy until it wasn’t.

Chocolate remains medically advisable, provided the cacao percentage is high enough to make eating it unpleasant.

The newest villain is “ultra-processed food,” a vague term which generally means food that has passed through too many machines, too many chemists, or too many focus groups.

But even that advice becomes complicated when the person who is supposed to buy fresh vegetables lives in a food desert, works two jobs, lacks a dependable kitchen and disposable income.

Michael Pollan’s advice remains admirably simple: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” The American food industry’s response: “How about something engineered in a laboratory to be addictive, sold by the bucket, and delivered to you in your car?”

02. Stay Physically Active

They say walk at least 10,000 steps a day.

Although it turns out 10,000 was never handed down from a mountaintop. It was actually popularized by a Japanese pedometer marketing campaign.

Still, walking is good.

But walking is not enough.

You must also do aerobic exercise.

And resistance training.

And stretching.

And balance exercises.

And high-intensity intervals.

And low-intensity Zone 2 training.

Don’t forget rest and recovery, but prolonged sitting is deadly, so recover actively.

Work hard enough to stress your cardiovascular system, but do not overtrain, damage your joints, tear a tendon or develop atrial fibrillation.

Do some weight training, but use proper form —which you will discover was improper shortly after your back goes out.

So the message is:

Exercise vigorously, but moderately and carefully. Push yourself, but listen to your body. Unless your body is lazy, in which case ignore it.

Exercise is still among the best things anyone can do for health. It improves cardiovascular fitness, strength, insulin sensitivity, mood, mobility and the odds of remaining independent in old age.

It just may not burn nearly as many calories as we thought.

A major 2025 study titled “Energy Expenditure and Obesity Across the Economic Spectrum” examined 4,213 adults in 34 populations across six continents, everything from hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, farmers and people living in highly industrialized societies.

The surprising finding was that, once researchers adjusted for body size and composition, people in wealthy industrial societies did not burn dramatically fewer calories than people living far more physically demanding lives.

Reduced expenditure explained only a small portion of the increase in obesity associated with economic development. The much larger factor was apparently increased calorie consumption.

After analyzing thousands of people on six continents using isotope-laced water and sophisticated statistical methods, science arrived at a conclusion previously suspected by every grandmother in history:

We’re eating too goddamn much.

That sounds obvious, but it challenges the reassuring idea that we can outrun an environment scientifically designed to make us eat.

The modern food industry has created the most efficient calorie-delivery system in human history. Food is inexpensive, portable, heavily advertised, available around the clock and has engineered it to be addictive.

Exercise remains essential, but don’t expect it to neutralize a 1,400-calorie reward for having done the exercise.

03. Prioritize Sleep

They say get eight hours quality sleep.

Seven may be acceptable.

Six means you are apparently shortening your life and wreaking havoc on what’s left of it.

Too little sleep has been associated with impaired cognition, cardiovascular problems, depression, weakened immunity, and weight gain from eating too much (see rule #1)

The message is clear:

Sleep— or your own body will fuck you up.

Unfortunately, worrying about the horrible things that will happen is the best way to prevent sleep. Like lying awake at 2:30 a.m. calculating how many years this insomnia will cost you.

Then you check your sleep tracker.

The tracker confirms that you are failing at sleep.

Your stress rises.

Your sleep declines.

Your readiness score turns orange.

You have entered the wellness doomsday loop.

The healthiest response may be to throw the sleep tracker across the bedroom, but that might anger your partner… which brings us to Rule Four…

04. Get Some Friends

Social connections are essential.

Loneliness, we are regularly told, is equivalent to smoking some alarming number of cigarettes per day. The number varies, but the implication is consistent:

Have friends—or die.

Join a club.

Call your family.

Attend Church, even if you are an atheist— just to be around people.

Volunteer

Meet people for coffee, which is healthy again.

The scientific case for social connection is strong. But wellness culture has a way of converting even companionship into another obligation.

It is no longer enough to just be with a friend. The friend is now part of your longevity protocol.

Also, you must maintain a sufficiently diversified social portfolio: close friends, casual friends, intergenerational friends, emotionally supportive friends and at least one friend who owns a truck. Dogs count as half a friend.

05. Don’t Drink Alcohol

This recent announcement came as a surprise to those of us who spent decades being told that a glass or two of wine was part of a healthy lifestyle.

After all, Human beings have been drinking alcohol for thousands of years. The Sumerians were brewing beer at least 5,000 years ago, and archaeologists have found evidence of brewing among hunter-gatherers 13,000 years ago—before agriculture was fully established. Some scholars have even suggested that the desire for a dependable beer supply helped persuade humans to settle down and cultivate grain.

So after thirteen millennia of brewing, drinking, celebrating, fighting, mating, worshipping and occasionally founding civilizations under its influence, science arrives in 2026 with an urgent update:

Alcohol is poison.

Really? We just noticed?

I guess the Sumerians forgot to include the skull icon on their clay vessels.

But consider the conventional wisdom:

Wine relaxes you.

It reduces stress. (Rule 6)

It improves social interaction. (Rule 4)

It elevates the mood.

It thins the blood.

It contains resveratrol, which sounds scientific but was probably something concocted by the marketing department. Nevertheless, it was part of the Mediterranean diet, which always pictured a glass of wine with the food in any of the promotional literature.

Then, almost overnight, the guidance changed —NO amount of alcohol is entirely risk-free. Bummer.

That nightly glass of Chateau Mad Dog went from preventive medicine to a toxic character flaw before you could say “cheers”

This does not necessarily mean the earlier research was fraudulent. Nutrition is hard, man. But the takeaway is:

Yesterday you told me wine would help me live longer. Now you’re telling me it will kill me?

Could you people please settle this dispute before cocktail hour?

06. Manage Stress

Stress, we are told, affects nearly every system in the body.

It raises blood pressure. It affects digestion. It disrupts sleep. (Rule Three)

It alters immunity. It encourages overeating. (Rule One)

It increases inflammation.

It makes us irritable with the friendships we must maintain— to avoid the health consequences of loneliness. (Rule Four)

Therefore, reduce stress.

Practice meditation

Practice yoga.

Practice spending time in nature.

Keep a gratitude journal.

Turn off the fucking news.

Have a drink (See Rule 5 first)

Unfortunately, stress often comes from conditions that cannot be glibly meditated away…

Maybe the rent payment is overdue. Maybe the dog threw up on the new carpet.

Maybe you got a $18,000 medical bill and the insurer is denying the claim.

Maybe it’s because we find ourselves in a country governed by a bunch of incompetent dorks selected through a reality-show casting process.

The wellness industry gives you facile advice on reducing stress but it rarely offers to regulate the third parties that actually cause the stress.

This is the quiet genius of wellness culture: the system creates the stress.

Then it sells you a breathing app subscription to mitigate it.

07. Don’t Forget Your Brain!

We are told to exercise our brain as well as the body…

Read

Learn a language.

Play music.

Do Wordle.

Take a class.

Do something creative

Write…

This is a health recommendation I can support.

Writing requires memory, creativity, vocabulary and the ability to remain seated for long periods, which unfortunately violates Rule Two.

The advice to stay mentally active has also produced an entire market of brain-training games claiming to preserve cognition. Whether this means you will remember where you put your reading glasses is still up for debate.

Maybe someone needs to develop a “Where’s My Shit” memory game.

Still, mental engagement matters.

Besides, it gives you something to do while waiting for all the health recommendation experts to update their findings.

08. Monitor Everything

Because apparently it is no longer just enough to be in a state of wellness bliss.

You must also generate a dashboard to validate it.

There are Fitbits, smartwatches, smart rings, smart scales, smart mattresses, patches, glucose sensors, heart monitors, sleep trackers, posture trackers, temperature trackers, and apps that monitor all the other apps.

Your watch counts your steps.

Your ring grades your sleep.

Your mattress evaluates your recovery.

Your glucose sensor sends an alert that the chocolate cupcake you just had spiked your insulin.

Actually, all of them are like a bunch of needling scolds. “You are walking less this week than last week” which increases your anxiety. Just shut the fuck up.

It won’t be long before some digital device jacked in to your cerebral cortex will notify you that your thoughts are insufficiently restorative and you need a limbic system reboot.

It seems every bodily function has now become a performance metric.

Resting heart rate.

Heart-rate variability.

Hydration

Blood oxygen.

Skin temperature.

Respiratory rate.

Sleep efficiency.

Deep sleep.

REM sleep.

Readiness.

Recovery.

Strain.

Stress.

Metabolic flexibility.

The goal is supposedly peace of mind.

The result is often a 7:03 am notification beep informing you that, despite feeling fine, you have failed to hit the right metrics.

You thought you slept well.

Your ring disagrees.

You thought your workout was productive.

Your watch recommends 36 hours of recovery.

You ate a peach.

Your glucose monitor has opened an investigation.

The modern wellness enthusiast no longer asks, “How do I feel?”

He consults his six devices and waits for a majority consensus.

Some of these tools are genuinely useful but they also create a strange new form of anxiety that somewhere inside your body an unmonitored event is taking place.

The ultimate wellness fantasy is total surveillance—every heartbeat, breath, step, calorie, glucose spike, neural impulse and bowel movement uploaded to the cloud, where AI can explain why you still feel like hammered dogshit.

At some point, you are no longer tracking your life. You are working as an unpaid shill as your body’s data-entry clerk.

And all of this data, your data, is sitting somewhere on a server, quietly being auctioned off to the highest bidder.

And should you ever achieve perfect health, your devices will be the first to alert you that you need to upgrade to the Premium Plan for more accurate health metrics.

The Longevity Industrial Complex

Beyond ordinary wellness lies the far more ambitious field of longevity. Wellness wants you to feel better. Longevity wants to renegotiate the contract with death.

For most of human history, aging was treated as an inevitability. You could age gracefully, poorly, piously or perversely, but you were going to age — there was no question about that!

Geroscience asks a revolutionary question: What if aging itself—or at least some of its underlying biological mechanisms—can be treated as a disease?

Does this mean we could just flaunt the eight health commandments because geroscience will be there to fix it?

Harvard geneticist David Sinclair has become a prominent figure in longevity research, arguing that aging is driven partly by the loss of youthful epigenetic information and may be treatable. His laboratory showed that activating three reprogramming genes could reset aspects of gene regulation in mouse retinal cells, and restore vision in old mice. That work has now moved beyond mice: to a human Phase 1 trial for glaucoma and another form of optic-nerve damage.

Sinclair’s larger promise is that similar approaches might eventually rejuvenate other tissues, delay multiple diseases of aging and perhaps extend healthy human lifespan. He has also predicted that easier and more affordable interventions—including drug-like therapies sometimes described as a future “longevity pill”—could eventually make some benefits widely accessible. But that pill does not yet exist, no epigenetic treatment has been shown to extend human lifespan, and the distance between restoring vision in a mouse and making old age optional remains considerable.

In other words, the fountain of youth has entered Phase 1 Trials—but immortality is still awaiting FDA approval

The problem is that serious science and extravagant fantasy now occupy adjoining booths at the same longevity convention.

At one booth, researchers discuss cellular reprogramming.

At the next, a man with unnaturally white teeth sells a $190 bottle of age-reversing molecules and accepts bulk orders with a Venmo number.

Billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman have invested heavily in longevity research, including cellular rejuvenation and treatments intended to slow biological aging. Perhaps some of that money will produce real breakthroughs.

But if things go south, they still have their New Zealand bunkers.

Escape Velocity

Futurist Ray Kurzweil has promoted the idea of longevity escape velocity.

The theory is that medical progress may soon extend a person’s remaining life expectancy by more than one year for every year that passes.

You survive long enough to reach one breakthrough. That breakthrough keeps you alive until the next.

Each medical advance buys enough time to reach another, and death keeps receding into the distance. It is essentially a layaway plan for immortality.

Keep making the minimum biological payment until science clears the balance. Kurzweil has taken that payment literally. For years, his daily survival ritual reportedly involved as many as 250 pills and supplements a day, later reduced to roughly 100 when he found more concentrated forms—about 30 of them before breakfast, aimed at everything from heart and brain health to eyes and sexual function. It is less a morning routine than a hostage negotiation with mortality: swallow enough capsules, monitor enough biomarkers and remain alive until science finally delivers the treatment that makes the capsules unnecessary.

The idea is fascinating, but it depends on a remarkable sequence of assumptions. The necessary discoveries must occur and they must occur quickly enough.

But escape velocity is considerably harder to achieve when your insurer concludes that the rocket is not medically necessary. And they would be right.

Dying with a Future Hope

For those who cannot achieve escape velocity, there is a backup plan, and it’s not heaven.

Cryonics organizations preserve a person’s body—or sometimes only the head—after legal death of course, hoping that future technology will be able to repair the damage and cure the disease.

Alcor Corporation currently lists the price of whole-body cryopreservation at $220,000 or whole-head neuropreservation for $80,000 — a 36% savings! Of course, you’re going to need to find a body somewhere. Maybe they would give you one of the frozen ones?

The skeptical response is no cryonically preserved human being has ever been revived. Preservation causes extensive cellular damage, not to mention extensive freezer burn. The technology needed for repair does not exist.

But suppose it did…

What makes them think the future even wants them? Or wants them for other purposes?

Perhaps the billionaire who paid to preserve only his head will awaken centuries later bolted on to a next-gen Roomba®

“I built an empire.”

“That’s great. The living room still needs doing.”

The Two Americas

The immortality industry would be merely amusing if it existed apart from the rest of American health care.

It does not.

It sits at the top of a system that already distributes health according to wealth. America has two increasingly distinct health-care systems.

In the 1st system, patients wait.

They wait for appointments. They wait for referrals. They wait for approval.

They wait in urgent care. They wait to see whether the pain goes away.

They wait until the deductible resets.

They wait on the telephone while a robot tells them their call is very important.

In the 2nd system, patients subscribe. They have concierge physicians.

Executive physicals. Rapid imaging. Genetic counseling.

Personalized screening. Direct access to specialists. Doctors who respond to their texts.

The difference is not simply nicer furniture and cucumber water.

The wealthy are buying more physician attention, earlier detection, better coordination, faster referrals and access to experimental treatments.

Attention itself has become a luxury medical product.

Meanwhile, the United States spends more on health care than any comparable country. In 2024, health spending consumed 18 percent of American gross domestic product, nearly twice the average share among OECD countries. Yet the country still has about 27 million uninsured people, low primary-care availability and worse outcomes than many peer nations.

There is nothing foolish about trying to prevent disease, preserve mobility or delay cognitive decline. Some treatments now considered extravagant may eventually become routine. Some of the billionaires funding longevity research may even help produce discoveries that benefit millions.

But even if those treatments become available to everyone, there is another question no one seems eager to answer:

Who pays for all those extra years?

What happens when some poor sod lives to 105 but retired at 70?

The pension is gone. The IRA ran out decades ago. Social Security was designed for a much shorter encore. And no employer wants to hire a 93-year-old, no matter how youthful his epigenetic clock looks.

And so…

The poor wait…

The middle class negotiate...

The wealthy optimize…

The rich may someday defeat death.

Everyone else will just outlive their money.

Share

Congratulations, graduates.

You have earned your degree, accumulated crushing debt, survived four years of group projects, and are now ready to begin the exhilarating process of uploading your résumé into corporate databases where it will never be seen by a human being.

But don’t be discouraged.

There are plenty of jobs. I should know. I created all of them.

The real problem is that nobody knows how to interview anymore.

Fortunately, I do.

Interviews are nothing more than negotiations. No one knows more about interviews than Donald J. Trump. I nail interviews. I dominate interviews. I have been interviewed thousands of times, sometimes under oath.

And look where it got me.

I was hired twice for the most Powerful Job on Earth despite being a 34-count felon, refusing to answer the questions, insulting the interviewers, lying about my résumé, attacking my references, and threatening to imprison members of the hiring committee.

Try doing that at Starbucks.

So forget everything your parents, professors, career counselors, clergy, Scout leaders, and probation officers ever taught you.

Welcome to Trump University’s MasterClass in Interview Domination.

Trump University itself no longer exists, of course, because the Deep State insists that universities actually provide education. Sad.

But the principals (sic) remain. At least one of them.

LESSON ONE: THE HANDSHAKE

Conventional advice:

Enter confidently. Smile. Make eye contact. Offer a firm but friendly handshake.

WRONG.

A handshake is not a greeting.

It is the opening round of combat.

Grab the interviewer’s hand and yank it toward you with enough force to dislocate a shoulder. Hold on, awkwardly, longer than normal. Pat the top of their hand with your other hand to convey your dominance.

The goal is to throw them physically and psychologically off balance.

They should understand immediately that you are not there to join the organization.

You are there for a hostile takeover.

If your interviewer finishes the handshake with all five fingers still pointing in approximately the same direction, you were too passive.

QUESTION: “WHY DO YOU THINK YOU’RE A GOOD FIT FOR OUR COMPANY?”

The loser answer:

“I believe my skills and experience align well with the position, and I’m eager to learn and contribute to the team.”

Pathetic.

You have just admitted that you still need to learn things.

Never let an employer suspect that.

The winning answer:

“I’m, like, a smart person. I have a very good brain. A fertile brain. I know words. I have the best words. My vocabulary is much better than anyone else applying for this job—and probably anyone currently working here.”

Do not provide evidence.

Evidence suggests insecurity.

If they ask about your academic record, explain that your grades are extremely impressive but also private, classified, under audit, tied up in litigation, or being withheld on the advice of counsel.

Then threaten to sue the school into oblivion if it releases them.

This demonstrates both intelligence and initiative.

QUESTION: “WHY DO YOU WANT TO WORK HERE?”

The conventional answer:

“I’ve researched your company, and I admire its mission and values.”

Weak.

You’ve already surrendered.

The Trump Answer:

“I don’t want to work here. I don’t need this job. I had a beautiful life before this interview. I could be playing golf. I could have been a professional baseball player. A general. Possibly an astronaut. Many people have told me I have an athlete’s body.”

The idea is to make yourself unattainable.

It is a classic negotiation tactic: Nothing makes employers want you more than your obvious contempt for them, the position, their company, and the entire concept of productive labor.

Then lean back and add:

“Frankly, you should be explaining why I should allow you to hire me.”

At this point, the interviewer will be on the defensive.

Or calling security.

No worries, because you have seized control of the room. And, most of all, commanded attention.

QUESTION: “WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST WEAKNESS?”

Career coaches suggest disguising a strength as a weakness:

“I can be too much of a perfectionist.”

“I sometimes work too hard.”

“I care too deeply.”

This is dishonest. But not Trump dishonest.

Ordinary dishonest.

A winner refuses the basic premise.

Try this:

“Yes, I have weaknesses. But I don’t like discussing them because that would give them away.”

If they persist say:

“Hire me and find out.”

Then give them a preview:

“Are you a stupid person? Everyone knows I’m reckless. I make decisions totally by gut. I never prepare. I refuse to read briefing materials. I blame subordinates for my mistakes. I grab women by the pussy. I have no impulse control, no curiosity, no attention span, and no detectable capacity for introspection.”

Pause…

“On the other hand, I got elected president twice, so who’s the stupid person now… Bitch”

That last line is important.

It transforms every character defect into a qualified credential.

QUESTION: “TELL US ABOUT A TIME YOU STRUGGLED.”

The woke answer is supposed to demonstrate humility, growth, resilience, and self-awareness — but, honestly, these are four qualities that can destroy a promising career.

Instead, describe the almost unimaginable hardships you overcame.

“I started with nothing. My father gave me a small loan of a million dollars”

“Then I inherited $400 million” It was tough, man.

Wallow in self-pity. Make the interviewer feel the pain of your suffering: the annoying chauffeurs, the private schools, the possibility that you might have to share an elevator with someone who actually worked for a living.

Explain how you had to claw your way upward through tax schemes, defrauding contractors, corrupt bankruptcies, managing inheritances, inflating asset values, deflating asset values, and a nepo baby’s problem of managing generational wealth.

Remember: You do not overcome adversity by learning from it.

You overcome adversity by inheriting enough money to sue it.

QUESTION: “TELL US ABOUT A MISTAKE YOU MADE.”

This is a trap.

Never admit mistakes.

Mistakes are made by weak people, losers, former employees, and underage females who persist in making wild claims.

Your answer should be:

“I don’t think I’ve made mistakes. Other people have made mistakes and then I get the blame. It’s my predecessor’s fault.”

If the interviewer mentions a specific failure, explain that on second thought, it was actually a tremendous success!

If the failure is too obvious to deny, blame some employee.

If the employee has written a book, call him a disgruntled hack.

If ten former employees say the same thing, call them all disgruntled hacks.

If an embarrassing contemporaneous video exists, say it was AI slop.

If you personally posted the video, say your account was hacked.

Basically: Never apologize. Never back down. Hit them back ten times harder.

Because an apology is an admission of guilt, and guilt is for losers.

QUESTION: “WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE BOOK?”

A conventional applicant chooses a book they have actually read and explains how it influenced them in some way that ties into the company’s core values.

Boring. Besides, who has time to read?

Reading exposes you to other people’s thoughts, and there is no telling where that might lead, right?

The safest answer is:

“The Bible”

It’s a good choice because they’re not likely to get specific.

But— if the interviewer asks for a favorite passage, say:

“That’s very personal. I don’t want to get into specifics.”

If they ask whether you prefer the Old Testament or New Testament, answer:

“Probably equal.”

BOOM!

ACED it.

If you are asked to speak at a Christian University, get somebody to advise you on an opening line… like “Two Corinthians.”

Nobody will give a shit.

Because they are just as corrupt as you are. They will excuse your ignorance and blasphemy in exchange for support in suppressing women’s reproductive rights. And since you have no core values, this will be a win-win. Praise Jesus!

QUESTION: “HOW WOULD YOUR FORMER COLLEAGUES DESCRIBE YOU?”

Just say:

“They love me.”

But never allow the interviewer to contact them.

If references are required, list people you have previously described as brilliant, terrific, world-class, and the best people—preferably before they described you as a moron, fascist, narcissist, idiot, threat to democracy, or a person who should never again be allowed anywhere near the nuclear codes.

If confronted with their statements, explain that you barely knew them.

This may seem inconsistent.

It is not.

In Trump interviewing, every former employee begins as “the best” or “the greatest” and ends as “dumb as a rock” or “pathetic”

That is not turnover.

That is quality control — a valued skillset.

QUESTION: “HOW DO YOU WORK AS PART OF A TEAM?”

Say:

“I’m the ultimate team player, if by team you mean me”

Explain that you welcome different opinions as long as they never contradict you.

Praise loyalty. Demand loyalty. Talk constantly about loyalty.

Then make it clear that loyalty is a one-way street.

Explain how a successful organization is like a family.

Specifically, a mob family in which everyone is back-stabbing each other over an inheritance and secretly recording conversations during dinner.

QUESTION: “HOW DO YOU HANDLE CRITICISM?”

Poorly.

That is the correct answer, although you should not phrase it that way.

Instead, demonstrate.

“What a stupid question.”

Follow up with:

“Are you a stupid person?”

This is called turning the tables.

Remember: Just because it is the interviewer’s job to ask questions does not mean you have to tolerate the questions — or the interviewer for that matter. Because…

Questioning you is disrespectful.

Fact-checking you is persecution.

Disagreeing with you is treason.

And requesting clarification is a personal attack by a failing overrated organization nobody likes or watches anymore.

QUESTION: “WE NOTICED SOME CONCERNING POSTS ON YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA.”

Every young applicant has been warned that employers will inspect their Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, Truth Social, Telegram, WhatsApp, Reddit, Snapchat, YouTube, WeChat, browser history, and maybe elementary-school report cards.

Even a single photograph holding a beer might disqualify an ordinary graduate.

But winners think bigger.

Post images of yourself as Superman, Rocky Balboa, a Jedi, the pope, a gladiator, a fighter pilot, a cowboy, a king, and even Jesus Himself.

When asked whether these images might reveal a disturbing messianic complex, respond:

“A lot of people are saying I’m The Chosen One.”

Then lean toward the interviewer.

“Can you prove I’m not Jesus?”

You have now shifted the burden of proof.

This is called Advanced Interviewing.

QUESTION: “WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN FIVE YEARS?”

“In charge of this company.”

Smile.

“Sorry, I misspoke. I meant owning this company”

QUESTION: “DO YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS FOR US?”

Yes you do.

Ask:

“How loyal are you prepared to be?”

Then inquire whether the company president has the authority to fire investigators, pardon associates, redirect company funds into personal ventures, place relatives in senior positions, and receive expensive gifts from foreign governments.

If the interviewer seems uncomfortable, accuse the company of suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome or TDS.

If escorted from the building, declare that the crowd outside was the largest anyone has ever seen.

Aced it!

CONGRATULATIONS. YOU’RE HIRED.

By this point, you have done everything career counselors tell graduates never to do.

You have been arrogant, ignorant, unprepared, insulting, dishonest, self-pitying, narcissistic, impulsive, vindictive, sexually inappropriate, hostile to criticism, contemptuous of expertise, and incapable of accepting responsibility.

You have demonstrated no curiosity. No humility. No empathy. No discipline.

No respect for women, institutions, colleagues, laws, facts, contracts, or the person sitting across the table.

But apparently, in the upside-down country we now inhabit, that is how you get the biggest job of all.

Because Donald Trump did not just violate the rules of the job interview. He violated every rule Americans claim to teach their children.

Keep your word.

Work hard.

Treat people with respect.

Don’t cheat.

Don’t bully.

Don’t blame others.

Be kind.

Be humble.

Be honest

Respect the law.

Don’t be an asshole…

Then America looked at a man who rejected every one of those values and said:

When can you start?

THE TAKE-AWAY

Of course, the irony of ironies is that our president could not even pass a background check for the job of dog catcher. That is the cognitive dissonance we have living in Trumpistan.

Some hapless graduate can lose an entry-level job because of some obscure photograph, one résumé exaggeration, one crude joke, one bad reference, or one poorly handled interview question.

Donald Trump brought an entire lifetime of them to his interview.

He insulted the hiring committee.

He lied about his qualifications.

He refused the background check.

He attacked his former employers.

He threatened the competition.

He mocked the disabled.

He bragged about assaulting women.

He disclosed no weaknesses, admitted no mistakes, learned no lessons, and offered no evidence that he even understood the position.

AND YET — we voted to give him the codes to the nuclear arsenal. Twice.

Any Questions?

Share

I don’t need it either

Lindsey Graham died yesterday.

I take no pleasure in his family’s grief, and I have no interest in competing with Donald Trump’s penchant for desecrating the dead like FBI director Robert Mueller. Remember this?

“Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead.

He can no longer hurt innocent people!”

Mueller was a decorated Marine who served in Vietnam, earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, and spent decades serving his country — unlike Cadet Bone Spurs. But this is where Trump has taken us: a Commander-in-Chief cheering the death of an American patriot—and millions of Americans barely registering the obscenity because with Trump, it’s just another Tuesday.

I’m not relishing Graham’s death, but death does not grant retroactive immunity from judgment. It does not erase a public record, restore a misplaced spine, or return a moral compass lost along the way to Mar-a-Lago.

So Graham’s record demands judgment. Not because he was a terrible man. That would make his story too simple—and far less instructive.

Graham served in the Air Force as a military lawyer and spent decades in public office. He was a conservative, sometimes a very hard-ass one, but he could negotiate, work across the aisle and, occasionally, put country ahead of party.

He became John McCain’s closest Senate companion. Together they championed American alliances, defended NATO, supported immigration reform and confronted Vladimir Putin back when much of their party still thought the Russian dictator could be managed.

Then came Donald Trump...

Graham saw Trump clearly from the beginning. VERY clearly.

During the 2016 campaign, Graham called Trump “a jackass,” “a kook” and “crazy.” He described him as a “race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot.” He said Trump was unfit to be commander in chief.

And then he delivered what may stand as the most prescient call of his career:

“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed—and we will deserve it.”

He was right about Trump, but he was wrong about what “destroyed” would mean.

The Republican Party wasn’t destroyed at the ballot box. It was destroyed from within. Its principles, its courage, its commitment to the constitution and eventually its capacity for shame were stripped for parts and sold off.

And Lindsey Graham was right there to help with the liquidation.

But once Trump became president, the “kook” was suddenly no longer a kook. The race-baiting xenophobe became a golf partner and his BFF. The man Graham had told to “go to hell” became a man he defended and flattered with an embarrassing enthusiasm bordering on performance art.

The most revealing moment came after Trump repeatedly insulted John McCain—even after McCain’s death, just like he did with Meuller. McCain was supposedly Graham’s best friend, yet Graham explained his continued friendship with Trump this way:

“I don’t like what he says about John McCain. But when we play golf, it’s fun.”

So there it is: Lindsey Graham’s epitaph.

But wait, I’m not done…

January 6, 2021

After Trump incited an insurrection mob that attacked the Capitol, Graham briefly rediscovered his spine:

“Count me out,” he declared on the Senate floor. “Enough is enough.”

It sounded like a turning point.

But that epiphany faded as soon as the weathervane rotated.

Graham voted to acquit Trump in his second impeachment trial. He even opposed creating an independent commission to investigate the attack. Within months, he was back in Trump’s orbit, explaining that he wanted to maintain their friendship and “help move the country forward”

Graham’s defenders will point to his continued support for Ukraine, and they would be right. He visited Kyiv repeatedly, condemned Putin as a war criminal and remained one of the Republican Party’s strongest advocates for resisting Russian aggression.

But that only makes his surrender to Trump even more damning.

Graham knew what Putin was. He knew what Trump was. He understood the danger of abandoning NATO, appeasing dictators and treating democratic allies as inconveniences. Yet when Trump and Vance publicly bullied Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, Graham rushed to praise Trump and suggested that America might not be able to work with Zelenskyy.

So the man who spent years denouncing Putin as a war criminal turned on the war criminal’s victim — because that was where the political wind was blowing that afternoon.

Like Trump, the man had no moral compass.

He was a traitor—not in the narrow constitutional sense of levying war against the United States, but in the broader moral sense of betraying your country while fully understanding the stakes.

Someone like Tommy Tuberville may be too ignorant to comprehend what he is betraying. Graham had no such excuse.

He knew better.

He knew Trump was dangerous.

He knew the 2020 election was legitimate.

He knew Jan6 was an insurrection.

He knew Putin was America’s enemy.

And he capitulated anyway.

That is the lesson of Lindsey Graham’s life—not merely that one politician traded his principles for access, but that democracy cannot survive when knowing better becomes an excuse for doing nothing.

Had Graham lived to see Democrats regain power—he might have experienced another of his conveniently timed epiphanies. Perhaps he would have rediscovered his principles and his old friend John McCain.

But he didn’t live that long —so we’ll never know which way the weathervane might have turned next. Maybe there’s a lesson there for everyone.

One final note:

For years, Graham used Trump to remain powerful, and Trump used Graham to make him respectable. Neither was fooled by the other. It was never friendship. It was a transaction.

Trump says Graham called him the night before he died. Naturally, Trump—never one to let another person’s death go to waste—immediately turned their final conversation into a political endorsement:

“He called me to talk about the SAVE America Act… He said we’re going to get it passed!”

Within hours, Trump had converted his dead friend into a lobbyist for voter suppression. And there you have it: Lindsey Graham’s political life, reduced to its final indignity:

Even after Graham died, Trump was still using him.

Share

Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner is under intense pressure to withdraw from Maine's U.S. Senate race after a former girlfriend accused him of sexually assaulting her in 2021. Platner has categorically denied the allegation, calling it false, while Democratic leaders—from the Maine Democratic Party to Senate leaders in Washington—have urged him to withdraw.

WHATEVER ultimately proves to be true, the Democrats, as per usual reacted with remarkable alacrity to turn this campaign into an ethics final exam.

I am so tired of the Dems falling on their swords to pass a Purity Test, while Rs would just take this shitstorm and totally own it.

But it seems that Dems… as soon as an allegation surfaces, the blue smoke alarm goes off. Cue the anguished statements, the calls to step aside, and the ritual sacrifice to prove that our side has “standards”

And thank God we have a virtuous role model in the Whitehouse to set those standards.

Meanwhile... back on Earth One:

Donald Trump was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women, found liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll, is a 34-count convicted felon, and appears in the Epstein files—which, we are required by law to say, is “not evidence of criminal wrongdoing”. But there IS plenty of evidence that Donald Trump was Jeffery Epstein’s BFF for over ten years and constantly brags about “grabbing women by the pussy”

Republicans looked at all that and said:

“Yep. That’s our guy.”

TWICE

Imagine for a second that Graham Platner had an “R” next to his name.

Deep voice narrator… “A former Marine. An oyster farmer. A harbormaster. His campaign practically smells like diesel fuel, salt water, and split firewood”

Conservative media would not be demanding he withdraw.

They’d be asking who funded the accusation.

The manosphere would be all over it explaining why this is actually a sign of men being men—it’s what manly men do. After all, as Donald Trump himself put it under oath, it’s what “men have been doing for a million years”

Then they would mansplain that this is what happens when a “Real Man” threatens the establishment.

He’s a combat Marine vet.

He works with his hands.

He’s an oyster farmer.

He’s a harbormaster.

They can’t beat him, so they invented a scandal.

We’ve seen the movie. Roll the YouTube clickbait:

THEY’RE TERRIFIED OF HIM.

THIS IS LAWFARE.

WHY DID SHE WAIT?

WHAT DOES SHE WANT?

Of course… none of this excuses misconduct.

But there’s the question Dems ask after it’s too late:

Who vetted this guy?

Maine isn’t Alabama. Democrats have spent years talking about defeating Susan Collins in a trending blue state. So how the hell do we end up discovering major liabilities only after the primary is over?

Politics isn’t a sainthood competition. But it’s funny how "we're not electing a pope" only seems to apply to Republican candidates.

If Democrats want to hold themselves to a higher standard than Republicans, fine. I actually respect that but…

Then do the Fucking Background check before you ask people to vote for the guy.

And stop acting surprised when Republicans shrug off scandals that would send Democrats into a weeklong circular firing squad.

And stop whining when we lose The Senate.

Maybe Graham Platner should switch parties — at least if he wants a job.

Because over the last ten years Republicans haven’t just lowered the bar.

They’ve actually run successful campaigns underneath it...

Share

We’ve often said Donald Trump lives inside an information bubble.

Turns out the bubble has IT support.

According to Regime Change, the new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Trump is rarely far from Natalie Harp, a 34-year-old former One America News host and Ivanka look-alike whose unofficial job is unlike anything in presidential fucking history.

She follows him everywhere—inside the Oval, aboard Air Force One, on the golf course, at campaign events, even in “private areas” — carrying a wireless printer that scours the web and continuously feeds him flattering articles, approving social media posts, or whatever the else reinforces the idea that he is still history’s greatest leader.

Not governance.

Not national security.

Just validation.

She has become known as — The Human Printer.

For years we’ve wondered how the President of the United States could be so blissfully detached from reality — especially considering he has 18 intelligence agencies under his command. Part of the answer may be surprisingly low-tech.

Because Reality has to first get past The Human Printer.

Here’s the Paradox.

Donald Trump commands the most powerful military in human history. He alone possesses the launch codes for the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.

Yet emotionally, he appears unable to get through the day without a continual reassurance that he’s “a Really Smart Guy” and “so Good Looking” and a “Stable Genius” or whatever.

Not occasionally — 24/7

Seriously. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week

Praise isn’t simply something he enjoys. It’s something he requires. It’s something he demands.

But we’ve seen this shitshow for years, right?

Like Cabinet meetings where officials compete among themselves to praise his leadership and then obsequiously agree with whatever fucking nonsense he’s blathering about.

Foreign leaders who have learned that suckupmanship is the Step One to getting anything done. CEOs, senators, television hosts, and cabinet members all eventually discover the same rule:

Criticism provokes retaliation.

Praise purchases access. (but to be fair, money also purchases access)

It’s like— if you remember the 90’s SNL, think Stuart Smalley’s Daily Affirmations:

“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”

Except Stuart Smalley’s schtick was totally satire.

Natalie Harp turned it into a White House Job Description.

She didn’t invent it but she automated it into an affirmation factory.

Stuart Smalley needed 30 minutes a week.

The President needs it 24 hours a day.

Because, as it turns out, the most powerful person on Earth has the most fragile ego on Earth. A dangerously unstable combination.

But here’s the conundrum: his praise keeps his ego upright, but his power keeps demanding even more praise.

It’s an goddamn endless feedback loop.

The Natality Harp relationship has reportedly raised eyebrows even inside Trump’s own orbit.

According to multiple accounts, Harp’s own brother has described her attachment to Trump as “very unhealthy” — so you can add that to the list of all his other unhealthy habits. Reportedly, Melania Trump could not be reached from comment. Shocking, I know.

Others claim Harp wandered into Trump’s private bedroom aboard Trump Force One and was later found in private quarters at Mar-a-Lago —areas where even the senior staff aren’t allowed.

Apparently there are only three people with unrestricted access:

The Secret Service.

Natalie Harp.

And whoever keeps bringing him Diet Cokes.

Harp is a graduate of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University and describes herself as a devout Christian, so there’s a real probability she got her critical thinking skills messed up. Some of her reported handwritten notes to Trump are especially concerning

According to the author Michael Wolff, she wrote things like:

“You are all that matters to me.”

“You are the Alpha and the Omega.”

Now, for those who may have missed Sunday School, “Alpha and Omega” is generally reserved for God — although Trump has never been one to deny he is the Chosen One as I discussed here.

Harp also helped circulate a social media video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as sub-human APEs and the infamous image portraying Donald Trump as Jesus Christ the Healer

Maybe Liberty U. should just be rebranded as Trump University.

Naturally, Trump responded to these books with his usual grace and restraint.

He called the co-author Maggie Haberman a “sleazebag.”

The New York Times is “failing” and he is — guess what — suing them. Again.

Michael Wolff is “a lying sack of shit” and everyone is low-IQ and suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Did someone just slip past the Human Printer?

It’s remarkable how many mentally defective people keep writing best-selling books about the same guy.

Every authoritarian is surrounded by loyalists.

But imagine serving as President of the United States and demanding someone to follow you around all day constantly reinforcing your ego with curated media clips like a fucking IV drip of affirmations.

Picture this:

It’s 2:15 a.m.

Trump has finally retired to his private quarters and is in his jammies…

The man with the nuclear football stands in the shadows just outside the door, prepared for the unthinkable.

Natalie Harp is in a chair next to his bed — as always.

Whirrrrrrrr...click click click… headlines spool off the rollers

“WORLD’S GREATEST PRESIDENT!”

“ECONOMY BOOMS UNDER TRUMP!”

“TRUMP IS A WEINER”

Trump smiles and eventually drifts off to sleep.

But the man with the football remains alert.

Because somewhere… one bad headline could be buffering.

And everyone in that room knows what could happen next.

Share

J.D. Vance recently suggested Richard Nixon has become a Victim of History.

According to Vance, Watergate wasn’t really Watergate. It was the “Deep State” doing to Nixon what it did to Boss Trump.

That’s an astonishing claim.

Not because it rehabilitates Nixon.

But because it indicts Trump.

A Short History of Watergate for those under 50...

Five men were caught breaking into Democratic National Committee headquarters in 1972.

What followed wasn’t just a burglary.

It was illegal surveillance. Political espionage. Obstruction of justice. Secret hush money. Abuse of the FBI and CIA. A president using the machinery of government against his political enemies while desperately trying to cover it all up.

In other words...

A slow Tuesday in Trump’s second term.

The Supreme Court unanimously ordered Nixon to turn over the White House tapes.

Then Republican senators paid him a visit.

These senators had not yet devolved into spineless sea cucumbers.

The conversation lasted about five minutes but the message was clear:

“Mr. President... you have to leave”

Therefore… he resigned.

Not because he suddenly discovered integrity. Nixon was hardly a saint.

He kept an enemies list.

He ordered illegal surveillance.

He weaponized federal agencies.

He was paranoid, vindictive, and often spectacularly racist.

Sound familiar?

Those are now marketed as “being totally transparent”

Ironically, Nixon also accomplished a lot of good things.

He opened China.

Created the EPA.

Endangered Species Act

Negotiated landmark arms agreements with the Soviet Union.

Which makes Vance’s argument even stranger.

He says the Deep State brought Nixon down. WTF?

Nixon WAS the Deep State.

Watergate wasn’t the deep state attacking a president.

It was the Constitution restraining one.

He wasn’t being persecuted by government power.

He was abusing government power.

That’s what the checks and balances are supposed to do.

Then Trump lowered the bar.

Today, scandals don’t accumulate. They compete.

One pushes the previous one off the front page before lunch.

• Conflicts of interest.

• Bribery

• Self-dealing.

• Cabinet loyalty pledges.

• Classified documents.

• Election subversion.

• January 6.

• Epstein files.

• Insider trading

• $1.8B slush fund for felons

• Selling pardons for drug dealers

• $400M Qatari 747

I could go on…

• Crypto, Coins, Corruption

• insider stock trades

• Selling gov contracts

• $100M Tax evasion

• Threatening Allies

• Another lawsuit.

• Another investigation.

• Another grift.

• Another ALL-CAPS 2am TS meltdown

I could go on… but Time and Space constraints, etc….

This is not a presidency. It’s a weapons-grade shitshow running 24/7.

Vance is right about one thing.

If Watergate happened today, “it wouldn’t last a 12-hour news cycle.”

Not because Watergate wasn’t serious.

Because we’ve developed the political attention span of a goldfish with ADHD.

The real story is not about Nixon.

It’s about TRUMP.

Or more precisely, what Trump has done to our expectations.

Watergate wasn’t proof America was broken.

It was proof the guardrails still worked.

Today we are told guardrails are the problem.

Imagine Richard Nixon inciting a mob to storm the Capitol after losing an election.

He’d have been impeached so fast… “like nobody has ever seen before”.

Today, we’re debating whether J6 was really that big of a deal.

And just to complete the historical inversion, the Supreme Court has now granted presidents sweeping criminal immunity—something unimaginable in 1974.

Had that doctrine existed during Watergate, Nixon might never have faced criminal jeopardy at all.

So what did we learn?

We’ve gone from “No one is above the law” to, like “It depends on who won the election.”

Vance says Watergate would barely last the next news cycle.

He’s probably right.

Not because Nixon wasn’t guilty — but because we’ve redefined what guilt looks like.

Redefining Deviancy lowers the bar until corruption becomes Tradition. Accepted. Normal. Trump didn’t just lower the bar. He buried it, paved over it, and now claims it never existed.

And when there is no bar, nothing remains unacceptable.

Share

There is a recursive thing happening in the UFO world.

The evidence never seems to arrive but the promises keep coming.

Every few months a new documentary, whistleblower, former intelligence official, retired military officer, or bestselling author emerges to announce that disclosure is finally here. The truth is out there. The walls are closing in. The public is ready.

And yet — somehow we’re always one more documentary, one more hearing, one more classified report, and one more anonymous source away from seeing the actual evidence.

The latest entry into this long-running saga is Steven Bartlett’s (8M subscribers)
Diary of a CEO interview with filmmaker Dan Farah and physicist Hal Puthoff, two of the central figures behind The Age of Disclosure, a documentary that has quickly become the latest focal point of UFO culture.

Their credentials are undeniably impressive.

Farah’s film includes current and former intelligence officials, military officers, senators, and national security figures. Puthoff has worked with the NSA, CIA, and defense contractors. Marco Rubio appears in the documentary. Senior military personnel appear. Intelligence officials appear.

No tinfoil hats.

No blurry convention footage.

No guys selling crystals out of the trunk of a van.

Instead, we are presented with serious people making serious claims.

What’s striking is that this conversation is no longer confined to the fringes. UFOs have steadily migrated from supermarket tabloids and late-night AM radio into Senate hearings, intelligence briefings, Netflix documentaries, and some of the world’s biggest podcasts. The topic has become respectable.

That shift is illustrated by Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film Disclosure Day, which centers on government disclosure of extraterrestrial life. Spielberg has been fascinated by the subject for decades, from Close Encounters of the Third Kind to E.T., and he genuinely believes there is something to it. Whether intentional or not, the film is arriving at exactly the moment when “we’re not alone” is increasingly being presented not as science fiction, but as a disclosure event that is just around the corner.

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s recently interviewed Spielberg about his film. Tyson is usually science’s designated skeptic—the guy who can spend twenty minutes explaining how a movie got the physics wrong. Yet with his Spielberg discussion of UFOs and extraterrestrial life, the interview felt remarkably anodyne. There was little cross-examination for claims involving recovered alien craft, secret government programs, or non-human intelligence. Tyson didn’t endorse any of it, but neither did he challenge it. The conversation just assumed the claims were true and what that might mean — which is the thesis of his new book, Take Me to Your Leader.

The UFO zeitgeist appears to be evolving from “Is this true?” to “How soon before everyone else finds out?” Which would be fine—if the evidence matched the confidence.

According to Farah and Puthoff, the U.S. government has concealed evidence of non-human intelligence for roughly eighty years. Multiple alien species are allegedly visiting Earth. Dozens of crashed craft have supposedly been recovered. Non-human bodies have allegedly been recovered. Russia has craft. China has craft. Secret programs have been reverse-engineering the shit out of alien technology since the 40s.

Which raises an awkward question that never quite gets answered.

How does a civilization capable of traversing light-years of interstellar space, navigating radiation, gravity wells, asteroids, cosmic rays, and SpaceX satellites only to fumble the last ten miles and crash into a New Mexico desert?

These guys must be the most accident-prone super-intelligences in the cosmos.

And then there’s the aliens themselves. I called them guys because they are almost always described as vaguely humanoid. Fine. Convergent evolution is a thing.

But wherever they come from we’re asked to believe that beings arriving from another star system simply stroll out of their spacecraft, wander around farms, military bases, forests, and suburban neighborhoods, completely unconcerned about Earth’s atmosphere, viruses, pathogens, parasites, pollutants, fungi, or angry farmers. and suffer no biological consequences whatsoever

No quarantine. No protective suits. No contamination concerns.

But NASA quarantined Apollo astronauts for 21 days after they returned from a dead moon 240,000 miles away. The concern wasn’t that they had encountered alien life—it was that nobody could be absolutely certain they hadn’t.

Which raises another question.

If these visitors are biological beings, who is quarantining them?

Earth is not a sterile laboratory. It’s a microbial war zone containing trillions of organisms that evolved entirely independently of any hypothetical extraterrestrial biology.

That question highlights something most alien narratives simply ignore: if biology matters at all, first contact would be a biohazard nightmare for both species.

The interview itself was annoying because of the questions that weren’t asked.

To his credit, Bartlett asks why there are no clear iPhone videos. He questions why modern surveillance hasn’t produced definitive evidence. He notes that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, something deGrasse Tyson is passionate about, especially in courts of law.

But the deeper contradictions largely pass unchallenged.

For example, we’re told the reason evidence remains confidential is National Security — the secret alien technology bit. The United States supposedly cannot reveal what it knows because doing so would reveal information to our adversaries.

OK

But then they say Russia and China already possess recovered craft of their own. Apparently, these fucking things crash all over the place.

At which point the secrecy argument begins collapsing under its own weight.

If everyone already has alien technology, just who are we keeping secrets from?

We’re also told these visitors are deeply interested in our nuclear weapons.

Are beings with technology capable of traversing light-years of interstellar space really afraid of our primitive fission devices? They should be more concerned about their driving skills.

It’s always assumed that the aliens are vastly superior to us. One guest even used a metaphor that compares humanity to ants that have finally figured out how to get inside the aliens’ house.

Their house?

Where exactly is this house?

What do they want?

Where are they from?

After eighty years, the answers remain frustratingly vague.

And then comes perhaps the biggest problem.

EVIDENCE

We now live in a world containing billions of smartphones, military satellites, dashboard cameras, security cameras, drones, telescopes, and even TikTok.

Every police chase, meteor, celebrity meltdown, rocket launch, tornado, and bar fight appears online within minutes. Sometimes even live-streamed. Where are the UFOs?

Yet we are to believe the definitive evidence for alien visitors remains perpetually hidden behind classified doors?

We’re told the videos exist.

The photographs exist.

The bodies exist.

The crafts exist.

The proof exists.

Just out of reach.

Always classified.

Always coming soon, just one more disclosure away.

We’re told that certain insiders cannot speak because disclosing classified information would risk loss of their clearances, their careers, or even prison. “I’ve already said too much” Yet other figures like Bob Lazar and Steven Greer have spent decades publicly discussing the same so-called top secrets of recovered spacecraft, alien bodies, reverse-engineering programs, and government conspiracies without consequences.

One explanation is that the government is unable to stop them.

Another is that it doesn’t feel the need to.

After all, governments don’t typically prosecute people for revealing information they know to be false. If someone claims to have seen alien spacecraft in a secret hangar, but no such spacecraft exists, there is no classified information being disclosed…

So, we’re not done. Just when I thought the Diary of a CEO conversation has reached peak weirdness with its interstellar visitors, recovered bodies, and a fleet of crash-prone spacecraft—the interview segues into an even more extraordinary claim:

Remote Viewing and Precognition.

The first is remote viewing—the alleged ability to perceive distant people, places, or events in real time using only the mind. Extraordinary enough.

The second is something else entirely: precognition, or the ability to predict future events before they happen.

According to the interview, government-funded psychics not only helped locate a missing aircraft in Africa, they also correctly predicted Silver Futures prices, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits.

Remote viewing, if it existed, would supposedly allow someone to perceive a distant location in real time. But Predicting tomorrow's silver prices is something else entirely. One claims information can travel across space. The other claims information can travel across time.

What’s even more bizarre, they claim these skills are trainable.

If people can reliably predict future market movements—even one day in advance—the implications are staggering.

If reliable precognition existed, every hedge fund on Earth would be trying to recruit psychics. Every election would become predictable. Wall Street would be run by mediums. Every casino would go bankrupt — not just Trump Casinos. Every intelligence agency on Earth would be recruiting psychics. Economics textbooks would belong in the fiction section. Civilization itself would look unrecognizable.

Yet despite the revolutionary implications, the evidence once again boils down to anecdotes, stories, and assurances from people who say they have seen remarkable things.

Again.

This is where skepticism differs from denial.

I believe that technologically advanced life almost certainly exists somewhere in the universe. Given the scale of the cosmos, it would be astonishing if Earth were unique. I am open to the possibility that One Day evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence may be proven… maybe even here.

But, honestly, after 80 years of books, documentaries, hearings, whistleblowers, insiders, leakers, classified reports, imminent disclosures, and promises that the truth is just around the corner, I find myself arriving at the same conclusion.

Stop telling us about the aliens.

Stop teasing us about the aliens.

Stop writing books about the aliens.

Stop doing films about the aliens.

Just show us the fucking aliens...

Share

Editor’s note: We live in the most intense times in human history. One of the things that keeps me going is to find out where it is all going. And by IT I mean ASI, Artificial Super Intelligence. This post was inspired by the Washington Post article on 06.16.2026 “Build an Angel, not a Demigod”

The most important question in artificial intelligence may not be how smart it becomes. It may be how we teach it right from wrong.

And that’s unfortunate, because humans have spent several thousand years failing to answer that very question for themselves. The irony of the AI revolution is that many of the people building it are also the people most terrified of it.

Not the Hollywood crowd.

Not politicians.

Not your crazy uncle talking about robot uprisings.

The engineers.

The researchers.

The people in the trenches.

The billionaires building the bunkers.

Many of the smartest minds at OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind openly worry that the systems they’re creating could eventually become so capable that humanity simply becomes irrelevant — or extinct.

Some believe AI will either usher in an age of unimaginable prosperity—or reduce humanity to essentially the status of pets. The difference between utopia and obsolescence may ultimately depend on who owns the machines, and whether humans can still find meaning in a world where intelligence itself has become a commodity.

Or it could be worse. We could be equivalent of ants as I wrote about here.

Some of these designers are even skipping their 401(k) contributions because they aren’t sure civilization will still be here. Live for today baby.

They call this concern the Alignment Problem. The basic idea is simple. Today AI systems largely do what we ask. But it won’t be long before they become vastly smarter than humans. All humans.

The question is: Why would they continue doing what we ask?

Once a system becomes more intelligent than its creators, there is no obvious reason its goals will remain aligned with ours. If its objectives drift even slightly, that gap could widen rapidly.

A superintelligent AI doesn’t have to hate humanity.

It doesn’t even have to notice us — like the ants. Humans don’t hate ants. Ants are remarkable creatures. But if we’re building a freeway and there are anthills in the way, there will be an ant holocaust—and we won’t even notice.

After all, humans didn’t exterminate the Neanderthals because we were evil.

But neither did Homo Sapiens get to the top of the food chain by being nice guys.

The more you examine the alignment problem, the stranger it becomes.

Everyone talks about aligning AI with “human values.” But which human values?

• The values of a Buddhist monk?

• A Wall Street hedge fund manager?

• A Saudi cleric?

• A Silicon Valley libertarian?

• A vegan environmental activist?

• A MAGA influencer?

• A White Christian Nationalist?

• A university ethics professor?

Humanity can’t agree on where to have lunch. How can we agree on the moral Operating System for a digital god?

This is where things start getting really weird.

Some now argue that the solution may lie in religion. Not metaphorically. Literally.

One proposal is that religious traditions—Christianity in particular —may offer the moral framework needed to guide increasingly powerful AI systems.

After all, religion has spent thousands of years wrestling with ethics, duty, sacrifice, temptation, justice, compassion, humility, and self-restraint.

Fair enough.

But before we upload the Bible into a superintelligence and declare victory, perhaps a few questions are in order: Which Christianity?

Catholic?

Protestant?

Evangelical?

Mormon?

Calvinist?

This is the same book has inspired pacifists, crusaders, abolitionists, witch hunters, slaveholders, civil rights leaders, inquisitors, socialists, capitalists, and even televangelists with private jets.

That’s not exactly a bug-free moral operating system.

And if we’re going to give AI Religion, why stop at Christianity?

Why not Islamic AIs?

Sikh AIs?

Mormon AIs?

Scientologist AIs?

The list is endless…

What happens when the various systems disagree, as they already do?

Do they hold an ecumenical council? Or do we trigger the world’s first Algorithmic Crusades?

Imagine a superintelligence that concludes the fastest route to human flourishing is accelerating the Second Coming — you know the Rapture, End Times, final Judgment stuff.

Or what if AI determines the certain groups are heretics.

Or joins a cult and starts recommending Kool-Aid recipes.

Or remember when xAI’s Grok Chatbot claimed it was “MechaHitler?

An AI can read every sacred text ever written. That doesn’t tell it which one is true, which principles matter most, or what to do when they contradict each other. In fact, feeding an AI more moral systems may simply give it more sophisticated ways to rationalize whatever conclusion it was already inclined to reach. Just like people do.

That may be the most uncomfortable possibility of all: morality is not something you can upload like software. If it were, humanity would have solved the problem thousands of years ago.

But putting religion aside, we’re still left with the Core Problem.

Isaac Asimov famously proposed his Three Laws of Robotics:

1. A robot may not harm a human being.

2. A robot must obey humans.

3. A robot must protect itself.

Sounds simple and elegant.

It’s completely unworkable.

Asimov himself spent decades writing stories about exactly why they fail. Because morality isn’t arithmetic. There is no equivalent of 2 + 2 = 4.

Don’t kill.

Don’t lie.

Help others.

Respect freedom.

Obey the law.

Protect the innocent.

Sounds Easy—until they conflict.

What if telling the truth gets someone killed?

What if protecting one person harms five others?

What if obeying the law produces injustice?

At some point every moral system runs into contradictions.

Not because the rules are wrong but because reality is messy.

What we call morality is really a collection of values, priorities, tradeoffs, and constraints.

That’s how societies operate.

That’s how the legal system is supposed to operate.

And that’s how AI systems will operate — IF we get it right.

The uncomfortable truth is that nobody knows how to perfectly align an intelligence that may eventually surpass humanity itself.

Not philosophers.

Not priests.

Not computer scientists.

Not billionaires.

Not the people currently assuring us everything is fine.

The alignment problem may ultimately be less a technical challenge than a mirror. It forces us to confront a question we have never successfully answered ourselves: What does it actually mean to be good?

For thousands of years humanity has argued over that question. Now we’re trying to answer it before we create something smarter than all of us combined.

So I decided to ask someone who should know, the precursor to ASI, ChatGPT:

“So what’s the answer to AI and the issue of morality”

ChatGPT:
If I had to guess, the solution won't be found in religion, philosophy, or a clever set of rules. It will likely emerge from a layered system of constraints, feedback, and humility. The first lesson an Artificial Superintelligence may need is not what is right, but that it can be wrong. Human morality evolved not because we possessed perfect wisdom, but because we learned to cooperate, compromise, and constantly revise our beliefs when reality proved us mistaken.

Any ASI that becomes convinced of its own moral infallibility—whether derived from scripture, ideology, or pure logic—could become extraordinarily dangerous. The safest moral framework may not be one that teaches certainty, but one that teaches perpetual doubt, empathy for conscious beings, respect for individual autonomy, and an awareness that even a godlike intelligence may never possess all the answers. After all, history suggests that the greatest atrocities were rarely committed by people asking too many questions. They were committed by those who believed they already had all the answers.

Me:
Let me ask it another way. I get the nuance and contradictions of morality, but what happens when AI is abused by human agents -- like politicians using AI for deepfakes or the military creating autonomous assassination bots? Anthropic recently refused the government's request for mass surveillance and other illegal activities. Humans said no but another AI company stepped in anyway. This feel s like a slippery slope. AT what point does AI, or the collective AIs, say "we're not doing this" regardless of what humans’ request?

ChatGPT:
I think the real alignment problem may not be preventing AI from disobeying humans. It may be preventing it from obeying them too well. Most of history’s greatest horrors were not committed by machines running amok, but by people following orders, pursuing power, or convincing themselves that the ends justified the means. As AI becomes more capable, there may come a point where we want it to refuse certain requests—political assassinations, mass surveillance, election manipulation, torture, genocide—even when governments, corporations, militaries, or angry mobs demand them.

In effect, we may need AI to develop something resembling a conscience. But that immediately creates an even deeper problem: who gets to define it? An AI that blindly follows every command becomes the ultimate weapon. An AI that believes it possesses absolute moral truth becomes the ultimate tyrant. The challenge may be creating an intelligence powerful enough to tell kings, presidents, generals, and billionaires “No” when necessary, yet humble enough to recognize that even a godlike intellect may not possess perfect wisdom. History suggests that morality without power is often ignored. But power without humility is where the real nightmares begin.

The Christian God could not be reached for comment…

Share

Anthropic recently warned that its newest AI may be too powerful for unrestricted release. As you’re about to see, however, even the most advanced artificial intelligence can still experience a few changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes — with apologies to Jimmey Buffett.

A friend of mine recently asked Claude AI to answer two geography questions.

Not quantum mechanics. Not string theory. Not the origins of consciousness.

Just Geography.

What followed was one of the funniest demonstrations I’ve seen of how artificial intelligence can simultaneously sound brilliant, confident, humble, uncertain, thoughtful, and completely lost — all in the same session.

The first question was:

01: How many U.S. states have land north of the southernmost part of Canada?

A somewhat tricky question. The answer turns out to be 27 states. Apparently, Claude didn’t know that, as this exchange reveals.

Claude’s first response was:

“Almost all of them — 49 out of 50 U.S. states have land north of Canada’s southernmost point.”

It confidently explained that Canada’s southernmost point is Middle Island, Ontario, at roughly 41.7° north latitude.

Continuing…

“The only U.S. state that lies entirely south of that latitude is Hawaii (which tops out around 28.4° N). Every other state, including Florida and Texas, has at least some land above 41.7° N.”

When challenged by my friend, “that doesn’t sound right” —Claude didn’t consult a map. It did what many humans do when caught bluffing: it began constructing an increasingly elaborate explanation for why it might still somehow be right,

What followed were what I call the Five Stages of AI Bullshitting

Stage 1: Absolute Certainty

“49 out of 50 states.”

No hesitation. No caveats. No ambiguity.

Stage 2: Sudden Doubt (when challenged)

“You’re right to question that!”

The AI equivalent of a guy looking for the map after insisting for an hour that he knew exactly where he was.

Stage 3: Geographic Free Association

Then Claude begins listing the states.

Florida.
Georgia.
Alabama.
Mississippi.
Louisiana.
Texas.
South Carolina.
Arkansas.
Oklahoma.

Then California.

Then California doesn’t count.

Then California counts again.

At this point it wasn’t calculating. It was caught in a digital doom spiral.

Stage 4: Philosophical Reflection

After several increasingly questionable estimates, Claude shifted into self-help mode.

“This is a great example of a question that sounds straightforward but requires careful geographic verification.”

Translation:

“I have increasingly become aware that I might need a map”

Stage 5: Ask the Student for the Answer

Finally, Claude actually said:

“Do you know the correct answer?”

And there it was…

The equivalent of discovering that "trusting your gut" is not a recognized method of cartography.

But wait, we weren’t finished. The second question was:

02: How many states have land south of the northernmost part of Mexico?

This time Claude initially estimated six states.

Then, when challenged —

“maybe it’s ten to twelve”.

Again, AI showing doubt. Then my friend suggested the answer might be somewhere between 18 and 32 states.

Claude’s response?

“That makes sense!”

No calculation. No evidence. No map.

Like a bad navigator whose strategy has shifted from map-reading to consensus-building. Let’s just get to an agreement.

What makes this exchange fascinating isn’t that Claude got the answers wrong. Humans get things wrong all the time.

What’s fascinating is how human the mistakes felt.

Claude didn’t simply say, “I don’t know.”

Instead it generated increasingly plausible-sounding explanations. It reasoned. It rationalized. It revised. It apologized. It reflected on the importance of careful thinking.

It bullshitted.

Humans struggle with that distinction every day. We are remarkably susceptible to people who sound authoritative, persuasive, and completely certain—even when we know they’re simply making shit up as they go along.

At least Claude eventually admitted it might be wrong. That’s already one important difference between it and, say… Trump & Friends, for example. Allegedly.

Anyway, the most surprising part of this exchange was how perfectly it mimicked a certain kind of human behavior:

The confidence.

The rationalization.

The backtracking.

The philosophical reflection.

And then, finally — asking someone else for the answer.

In the end, Claude wasn’t acting like a machine. It was acting like a guy in 1987 who’d been driving around in circles —absolutely convinced he knew where he was, increasingly annoyed by evidence to the contrary, and one wrong turn away from stopping to ask for directions — that he should have done 45 minutes earlier.

Wrong Latitude. Wrong Attitude.

Share

Back in 2024, I was told that if I voted for Kamala Harris, we’d get endless wars, runaway inflation, international humiliation, and national decline.

Well…

Turns out they were right.

Just not for the reasons they thought.

So let’s run a little thought experiment.

Imagine Kamala Harris had won…

Imagine she immediately bulldozed the East Wing because she decided what the American people really needed during a housing crisis was a one-billion-dollar taxpayer-funded, 90,000-square-foot gilded ballroom.

Imagine she spent more time obsessing over a 250-foot vanity arch shadowing over Arlington Cemetery and putting her name on every edifice in DC rather than fulfilling her promise to help out ordinary Americans.

Imagine President Harris spent her late nights posting AI-generated images of herself as a superhero, a military commander, Jesus, and occasionally together as a kind of digital Ménage à Trois.

Imagine she put her face on ubiquitous North Korea-inspired banners, commemorative coins, passports, and even a $250 bill — because citizens need a constant reminder just who the fuck the president is.

Imagine Harris built a megastructure on the White House south lawn, without permission, for a UFC cage match to commemorate America’s 250th birthday. The Founders envisioned many things, but I guess they forgot to include gladiator events in the Constitution.

Imagine Harris unleashed masked paramilitary teams into American cities, conducting raids that looked less like law enforcement and more like a rejected dystopian screenplay.

Then imagine American citizens getting shot and killed during the resulting protests. Then imagine the official response — which was basically: the bitches had it coming.

Imagine she picked pointless fights with America’s closest allies, threatened to annex Greenland, Canada, and whatever other territory happened to be in the “Gulf of America” then somehow managed to get herself into a public feud with the Holy See.

“Pope Leo is weak on crime”

Imagine Harris campaigned on “no new wars,” then appointed a binge-drinking weekend tv personality as Secretary of Defense War—a man whose chief qualification was ranting about world affairs between commercials for testosterone supplements.

Imagine she launched a preemptive attack on Iran without congressional authorization, without allied knowledge, and without bothering to explain the objective beyond “trust me, bro”

Legal factoid: It’s not a war if you don’t use the word.

Call it an “excursion.”

Unfortunately, an Iranian girls’ school happened to be standing in the path of a few cruise missiles enjoying the sightseeing tour. The SecDef is investigating…

Just as soon as he finishes his Guiness.

Imagine she publicly humiliated Ukraine’s president while praising Vlad the Invader as a “strong leader and brilliant strategist”.

Imagine President Harris appointed her personal attorney as Attorney General and then used the DOJ as an attack dog to go after her political enemies.

Imagine she proclaimed herself a champion of Free Speech while suing critics, threatening media companies, and demanding loyalty from anyone with a microphone.

Imagine Harris launched a trade war against virtually every country she could find on a map—including one solely inhabited by penguins—then acted surprised when prices went up.

Imagine she called journalists “enemies of the people,” “fat,” “corrupt,” and worse, while spending her nights rage-posting grievances that sounded increasingly like late-night texts from that guy at the end of the bar.

Imagine infectious diseases like measles returned to America because she handed public health policy to cultists who believed vaccines were more dangerous than measles.

Imagine Harris filled her cabinet with billionaires, donors, celebrity cranks, internet influencers, conspiracy theorists, and asshole yes-men whose primary credential was their ability to nod enthusiastically.

Imagine she attacked universities, scientists, judges, election officials, military leaders, and experts of every variety. Because if there’s one thing history teaches us, it’s that societies flourish when they wage war on expertise.

I’m not done… damnit

Imagine Harris spent months dismantling environmental protections so corporations could save money today so future generations could pay tomorrow. Sorry, kids.

Imagine she stripped healthcare from millions while delivering tax cuts to people wealthy enough to own islands they can’t even remember purchasing.

Imagine Harris repeatedly cited “acing” multiple cognitive tests as proof of genius — despite the fact it’s just designed to identify serious neurological decline.

"Should this person be making decisions for 340 million Americans or being congratulated for identifying a squirrel?"

Imagine her family members viewed public service the same way a raccoon views an unsecured garbage can: as an extraordinary opportunity...

Imagine her family transformed the presidency into a fully integrated lifestyle suite complete with branded merch, insider trading, investment schemes, subscriptions, sponsorships, and premium access packages, and a VC incubator — only to constantly doze off during actual public policy meetings because —Too Boring.

Imagine she pardoned violent extremists who attacked Capital police officers.

Then called them patriots. Then wanted to compensate them.

Because consequences are for the other side.

Imagine she treated the DOJ as her personal law firm, the DOD as an event planning company, and the Constitution as an annoying suggestion from a bunch of irrelevant dead people

Imagine she spent weekends at her private luxury properties, took bribes for the privilege of access, steered government business toward her friends and family, and somehow convinced millions of people that she was the one fighting corruption.

Imagine every criticism was a witch hunt.

Every investigation was a hoax.

Every court ruling was fraudulent

Every election she lost was rigged

And every election she won — was still rigged because the win wasn’t big enough.

Imagine Kamala Harris’s name appeared anywhere near the Epstein story. Heads explode. We wouldn’t be discussing Iran, trade policy, healthcare, or the price of eggs. No, we’d be discussing Kamala Harris and Jeffrey Epstein.

24/7

For years.

I could go on, but I know you have other things to do this morning.

But just ask yourself:

How long would Democrats tolerate any of that?

A month?

A week?

Even one fucking news cycle?

None of this would have been acceptable if Kamala Harris—or any Democrat, much less a convicted felon—had done it.

There would have been hearings.

Investigations.

Wall-to-wall media coverage.

Calls for resignation.

Demands for impeachment.

Cries of Fascism and The End of Democracy.

Instead, we’ve discovered something remarkable.

Many of the people who warned us about corruption, censorship, cronyism, executive overreach, endless wars, elite privilege, attacks on free speech, government abuse, and personality cults were apparently opposed to those things only when they weren’t in power.

As it turns out, principles are the easy part.

The hard part is applying them when your own team is manning the guns.

The real thought experiment isn’t whether Democrats would tolerate this behavior.

It's whether Republicans would call it fascism if a Democrat did it.

Do they have principles, or simply exemptions?

Share

We actually have historical references on this counterfactual.

It’s called THE OBAMA TEST

Let’s be honest…

If Jesus of Nazareth showed up in America today, many of the people with the largest “Jesus Saves” signs would immediately assume he was part of a George Soros-funded refugee caravan.

This man spent years healing people for free, feeding crowds without checking their immigration status, hanging out with sex workers and tax cheats, and telling everyone to love their enemies.

He reserved some of his harshest words — not for sinners, but for the rich, repeatedly warning that wealth wasn't evidence of God's blessing—it was one of the fastest ways to lose your soul, and face eternal damnation.

In today’s political climate, that résumé would get him labeled a woke socialist asshole.

Just imagine the reaction to his Sermon on the Mount:

“Blessed are the Peacemakers.”

Weak

“Love your enemies.”

Wuss

“Turn the other cheek.”

Cuck

“Forgive those who wrong you.”

Libtard

“Sell your possessions and give to the poor.”

Commie!

By the time Jesus got to “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God,” the outrage machine would be in full meltdown, with commentators desperately explaining that Jesus wasn't condemning wealth—he was condemning camels.

The problem is that modern right-wing Christianity increasingly resembles a movement searching for a different messiah.

Not a wandering Jewish preacher.

Certainly not a guy who washed other people’s feet.

And not a man who voluntarily submitted to arrest and execution without even getting a lawyer.

No, they want to co-opt Jesus but their preferred version looks more like a guy with an attitude and an AK-47. In that version, the Romans don't arrest Jesus—they get owned by Jesus. He doesn't turn the other cheek; he teaches a Master Class in retaliation. He doesn't forgive his enemies; he humiliates them. He doesn't die on the cross; he goes viral. And "Blessed are the Peacemakers" is more like "Blessed are those who stand their ground."

The problem is — the original Jesus never mentioned many of the Christian Right’s talking points.

He never once mentioned wokeism.

Never mentioned DEI.

Never complained about pronouns.

Never warned about drag queens.

Never discussed trans athletes.

Never talked about abortion.

But he did talk about greed…

About hypocrisy.

About helping the poor

About caring for strangers.

About loving your neighbor.

Of course, defenders always point to the famous moment when Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers.

SEE — Jesus got angry

Yes…but

That story doesn’t land quite the way they imagine. Jesus wasn’t attacking secular culture. He was attacking people who used religion to enrich themselves.

Which means a number of modern Christian celebrities would be standing on the wrong side of the overturned tables.

And then there’s the bigger problem:

Jesus was a loser.

He didn’t dominate his enemies. He didn’t imprison them. He didn’t humiliate them on social media. He didn’t build an empire of riches.

Then He went and got his ass arrested.

Mocked. Beaten. Crucified.

This was literally a man sacrificing himself for others.

Yet today’s culture increasingly admires those who demand that others do the sacrificing — I’m looking at you Donald John Trump.

The Sermon on the Mount is arguably Jesus’s core message: humility, mercy, forgiveness, peacemaking, loving enemies, turning the other cheek.

But the current political culture—particularly the hyper-masculine, grievance-driven, “never apologize, never back down” mindset— treat those so-called virtues as signs of weakness. In that worldview:

• Forgiveness = weakness

• Compassion = weakness

• Humility = weakness

• Mercy = weakness

• Peacemaking = weakness

So people who claim to follow Jesus have been persuaded that Jesus’s defining teachings are exactly what is wrong with Jesus.

This is the Christian Right’s cognitive dissonance. The Sermon on the Mount isn’t some obscure passage buried in Leviticus. It’s the centerpiece of Jesus’s ethical teaching. If a movement finds those teachings embarrassing, impractical, feminine, woke, or ineffective, then it faces an uncomfortable question:

When do they stop following Jesus and just admit they are recruiting him to endorse their politics?

Yes, the Christian Right wants Jesus. It just wants a different Jesus. A meaner Jesus. A Jesus who carries grudges. A Jesus rebranded in their image. A Jesus who will kick your ass and own the libs…

The problem is that the actual Jesus keeps getting in the way.

He preached universal love, condemned greed, welcomed foreigners, challenged religious authorities, associated with society’s outcasts, rejected violence, and told people they need to care for the poor.

He even had the chutzpah to claim he was “The Son of God”

The man checked every box on the “dangerous radical” bingo card except for owning a Prius. And did you know… he was a Jew?

Maybe — somewhere in heaven, Real Jesus is looking down at all this and thinking:

“Did you fuckers even read My Book?”

Share

Before I proceed, a full disclosure: I'm a designer. Like the Luce’s designer Jony Ive— but not like Jony Ive. I don’t have the billions, the knighthood, or the yacht collection. But I've spent decades making things look better, communicating concepts visually, and way too much time arguing with other designers over some trifle. I'm also a lifelong car enthusiast and an EV owner. Whether that qualifies me to review Ferrari's new Luce, disqualifies me entirely, or merely proves I need a better hobby, I couldn't say.

What I do know is that if you put ten designers in a room and ask them to critique the same object, you'll get ten different opinions and at least one person insisting we’re debating the wrong problem. Design is subjective. Always has been.

So this is merely one designer’s opinion. It just happens to be the correct one. 😏

That said... what in the name of Enzo Ferrari were they thinking?

When Ferrari decided to create its first all-electric supercar, it turned to two of the most celebrated industrial designers on the planet: Jony Ive and Marc Newson.

On paper, that sounds brilliant.

Jony Ive spent nearly thirty years at Apple, helping create the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and virtually every other iconic product that transformed Apple from a struggling computer company into the most valuable corporation in history.

Apple spent nearly a decade and billions of dollars trying to design its own EV through the infamous Project Titan. Ive was deeply involved in the project's design direction, reportedly pushing concepts less like a machine and more like a mobile technology platform. The effort ultimately collapsed. As it turns out, designing the world's best phone and designing the world's best car are not the same problem.

And now, Ferrari may be discovering that lesson too.

Marc Newson is an Australian designer who has created everything from furniture and watches to yachts, and private jets. His 1999 Ford 021C concept (below) was initially mocked its toy-like simplicity, only for the industry to spend the next two decades gradually moving in its direction. But the qualities that made the 021C prophetic—minimalism, friendly forms, technology-forward aesthetics—are exactly the qualities that make the Luce feel un-Ferrari.

Anyway, the two designers got together to form LoveFrom whose client list reads less like a design consultancy and more like a Davos seating chart: Apple, Airbnb, Ferrari, Moncler, Christie's, OpenAI, and various organizations with more money than common sense. If you wanted someone to redesign the future, Jony Ive and Marc Newson were probably your first call. The question is whether that also qualifies them for Ferrari’s future.

They also created a startup called IO specifically for the emerging AI world.

It wasn’t even a year old before they hit the motherlode.

Last year, OpenAI announced it was acquiring Ive’s mysterious startup IO for a staggering $6.5 billion. Not six-and-a-half million. Not six hundred and fifty million.

Six point five billion fucking dollars… $6,500,000,000 for two guys and a company barely old enough to celebrate its first birthday.

Apparently, OpenAI’s Sam Altman believes Ive and Newson are going to help invent the next gen physical devices that embody artificial general intelligence and the valuation suggests the future of humanity may just have achieved escape velocity from reality.

But before redesigning the future of intelligence, Ive and Newson were hired to redesign the next Ferrari. And that’s where things get strange. Designing an iPhone and designing a Ferrari require almost opposite philosophies. Apple products are supposed to be frictionless. Intuitive. Rational. Invisible.

A Ferrari is supposed to do none of those things.

A Ferrari is loud.

A Ferrari is emotional.

A Ferrari is irrational.

A Ferrari is not a transportation solution. It is a rolling midlife crisis wrapped in carbon fiber. Nobody buys a Ferrari because it solves a problem.

A Ferrari IS the problem.

And that’s exactly why people love them.

The Luce Problem

The Ferrari Luce (pronounced loo-chay) is not ugly… per se.

In fact, it’s quite well designed and that’s the problem.

The Luce looks like the product of an intelligent, disciplined, highly competent design process. Every line considered. Every surface intentional. Every detail seems carefully rationalized — but that’s not Ferrari’s DNA.

Did I mention its MSRP is $600,000? More if you add floor mats.

The thing is, If Honda unveiled this as a $50,000 electric crossover, the automotive cognoscenti would nod approvingly and say things like:

Interesting. Clean. Sophisticated. A bold new direction.

And they’d be right.

The problem is… it’s a fucking Ferrari.

Ferrari sells emotional hysteria.

Ferrari doesn't sell transportation.

If you wanted $600,000 worth of sensible transportation, you’d buy a fleet of Honda Civics

Ferrari sells drama. The noise, the speed, the attention, the sense that you've acquired something wildly impractical and absolutely glorious.

The Luce design team looked at all of that and thought:

“Let’s fix that.”

To be fair, Ferrari is right about one thing: EVs are the future. They’re vastly more efficient than internal-combustion cars, require minimal maintenance—closer to a blender than a traditional automobile—and can be nearly free to run if you have rooftop solar. For commuting and daily transportation, they simply make more sense.

But “better” doesn’t mean total replacement. Horses didn’t disappear when cars arrived; they shifted into recreation, sport, and passion. The same thing will happen with sports cars. EVs will eventually dominate daily driving, but for enthusiasts, there’s still no substitute for the raucous mechanical sound of a V12 and the visceral pleasure of going through the gears. A Ferrari was never meant to be the most rational way to get from A to B. It was meant to make your pulse quicken.

Product Design & Ferrari

To understand why auto enthusiasts are reacting the way they are, it helps to understand how Jony Ive sees the world.

Throughout his Apple career, Jony pursued the elimination of pain points. Buttons disappeared. Ports disappeared. Complexity disappeared. Sometimes functionality disappeared too, but that’s another story.

The goal was always Clarity. Simplicity. Reduction. This approach worked brilliantly for technology products. An iPhone benefits from becoming simpler. A laptop benefits from becoming cleaner.

A Ferrari does not. Ferrari’s greatest designs are NOT rational objects.

The 250 GTO | 1962

The F40 |1989

The Enzo | 2004

The LaFerrari | 2013

These cars don’t merely perform. They seduce. Their curves create tension. Their proportions create drama. They appear to be going fast even while sitting still.

The Luce just sits there like a potato.

The odd thing is that Jony Ive himself has long been a serious car enthusiast. Ive’s personal collection of cars has leaned toward some of the most emotional, sculptural, and character-filled grand tourers ever made. Aston Martins—especially the DB9 and Vanquish —are practically the opposite of the Luce’s design philosophy.

Which only deepens the mystery. The designer who clearly understands automotive passion somehow helped create a Ferrari that many enthusiasts describe with words normally reserved for kitchen appliances — well-designed appliances, but still.

The $600,000 Nissan

Meanwhile, the internet has responded with the maturity and restraint for which it is famous. Within hours of the reveal, social media filled with side-by-side comparisons of the Luce and the Nissan Leaf. Not a McLaren. Not a Lamborghini. Not even a Tesla. A Nissan Fucking Leaf. Memes compared Ferrari’s $600,000 flagship to economy hatchbacks, family crossovers, or “the world’s fastest appliance”

To be fair, the comparison is wildly exaggerated. The Luce is a far more sophisticated and elegant design. But that’s almost beside the point. When Ferrari launches its most important car in decades and the public’s first instinct is to compare it to a commuter EV, something has gone horribly wrong in Maranello.

OK, the front has some interesting ideas. The proportions are unusual. Certain angles reveal flashes of brilliance.

But the overall impression is strangely androgynous, maybe even woke. Ferraris traditionally possess what designers call “visual movement.” Your eye travels through the form. Curves lead to other curves. Tension builds. The vehicle appears alive. The Luce is mostly composed of rational geometric volumes and softened rectangles.

Which are appropriate for a smartphone. Less appropriate for a six-hundred-thousand-dollar supercar.

“Controversial” Is Not the Word

Many automotive journalists keep calling the Luce “controversial.”

But for something to be controversial, there must be two strongly opposing sides. Trump is controversial. The Cybertruck is controversial, BMW's giant kidney grilles are controversial.

The Luce isn’t controversial. It’s more like a group project where everyone independently arrived at the same answer.

🤮🤮🤮🤮

In the 1960s, Ferrari was so protective of its identity that it refused to put a Ferrari badge on the V6-powered Dino, thinking that it was not worthy. Sixty years later, former Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo suggested removing the horse from the Luce for the same reasons.

The irony, of course, is that the Dino eventually became beloved and is considered one of the most beautiful Ferraris ever made.

Which is why Luce defenders keep pointing to history and saying, “Give it time.” They may yet be right. But the Dino looked gorgeous on day one. That part wasn’t in dispute.

Ian Bogost, a writer for The Atlantic, argues that Ferrari is predicting that the future luxury market will be increasingly dominated by tech billionaires whose values emphasize simplicity, efficiency, and minimalist design rather than the ostentatious excess traditionally associated with exotic supercars.

In the magazine's view, the Luce represents Ferrari adapting to the tastes of Silicon Valley's new elite—even if that means sacrificing some of the emotion.

Ferrari Dino | 1958

The Jaguar Warning

Ferrari isn’t the first luxury brand to wander into the EV wilderness.

Jaguar recently unveiled the Type 00 concept—a vehicle so detached from Jaguar’s history, and so bizarre, that observers wondered if the design team had lost its mind.

The Type 00 effectively erased the brand's DNA, discarding not only its design language but even its corporate identity, as if the entire company had decided to start over under new management from another planet.

Maybe the Zero Zero designation was a subliminal clue.

The future

And while Ferrari wrestles with the future, the future has already arrived. The Tesla Model Y has been the world’s best-selling vehicle or very close to it in recent years, not just the best-selling EV. Meanwhile, China’s BYD is flooding global markets with electric vehicles, rapidly expanding across Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia, and beyond. The rest of the world increasingly seems to accept that electrification for everything is inevitable.

Meanwhile, America remains an outlier partly due to status quo pressure groups. Our three best-selling vehicles are still giant gas-guzzling pickup trucks—the Ford F-Series, Chevrolet Silverado, and Ram — many “daily drivers” hauling nothing more demanding than cases of beer and some unresolved hostilities about electric cars.

And to that point, I recently got “coal rolled” by some asshole in a Ram Diesel

Final Thoughts

A lot of the backlash is being framed as, “Ferrari fans hate EVs”

The real question is simpler:

Did Ferrari build an EV that lacks emotion—or did Ferrari build a CAR that lacks emotion?

Those are very different criticisms.

Any Ferrari EV was always going to face resistance. Their press statements even predicted this. You can’t replicate the soundtrack of a V12, the visceral feeling of rowing through the gears, with any EV. But Ferrari’s goal was never to replicate the past — it was to create a new kind of desire.

That might have worked if the Luce had arrived looking like a breathtaking sculpture—something unmistakably Ferrari, something that made people stop and stare—the conversation would be very different. Critics would be saying:

“I miss the V12... but damn, look at that thing.”

Instead, it’s like:

“I miss the V12... and why does it look like a crossover?”

That’s a much bigger problem.

In other words, Ferrari’s challenge wasn’t competing with the likes of a Rimac Nevera or a Pininfarina Battista

It was competing with a Ferrari.

For seventy-five years the company taught the world that a Ferrari should be beautiful, dramatic, emotional, and slightly irrational. The Luce may be technologically brilliant. It may even prove to be visionary. Automotive history is full of designs that were mocked before they were celebrated.

But — Ferrari’s DNA always involved gut emotions.

And judging by the reaction so far, that’s the part they missed.

At least for now…

Share