IT is not happy.

Last week at my company we hired a new IT manager. Davina’s been helping us upgrade our security, which was, um,  “business casual”? For instance, we don’t get a lot of visitors, and they are always escorted, so many people never locked their computers when they pop off for a break or a meeting. Reasonably, IT requested people now lock their stations anytime they walk away from their desk, no matter how short a time they plan to be gone. 

This was not unreasonable and I complied. Many have not. Davina responded. Anytime she or a team member sees a unlocked station without a person, they jump on that person’s Teams and send a random person in the company a message from that station, saying what a great job IT is doing. That playful but targeted approach has helped improve our security and created a fun game of cat and mouse. Good security doesn’t have to create a bad experience, but plenty of security people are either not good at security or not good with people.

This week we’re getting a new computer software system, or at least starting the transition to the new system. It’s not a security upgrade. It’s just that the old system was clunky to use. It was also costly, didn’t have any free training or support, and was managed by an EU firm that spoke primarily French. Our company decided they’d rather deal with (bilingual Fr/Eng) Canadians and Canadian software I’ll call “Goliath.” We negotiated a good deal, from what I understand, so there will be savings. The new software has features that might be more helpful long term. But there are downsides.

Have an analog day.

One downside? No one at our company has ever used Goliath before, so we’re all starting from scratch. There’s going to be a steep learning curve, which could slow down everything we do. Another potential downside? If this doesn’t work out, we have to go back to the other software. And a final downside? Failure means person who pushed for this transition might get that axe. Success might mean others get the axe. I’m a neutral party in all this. I learned to use what I’ll call “Clunky” last year, so I’ll learn to use Goliath too. I use the software every day, so it’s not optional to learn. I’m also part of the integration team. I’ve had a meeting with the new company, and followed up with a question-laden email. 

Other companies use Goliath. I only know of one company that made the switch and then switched back to Clunky. I think my major concern is “bird v birdseed.” A 3rd party company rep, “Solo,” sat in on the meeting last week, which I found weird. And when we asked if Goliath could create a certain feature. Solo man said, “Yes, we could provide that as an extra feature” Which I took to mean “You will pay Solo for that.” And my reaction to that was, “So, Goliath lied to us about its capabilities and is literally giving our data to Solo?” I mentioned it to my boss but that didn’t seem to be an issue, so I’m “letting it go.”

My other big concern is that they don’t seem to know what they’re doing and don’t seem transparent. I’m okay with answers like I don’t know, or I never thought about that, or we don’t have that capability right now. I’m not okay with “we are customer centered and can meet any challenges.” Really? Tell me about one of those challenges you met? And put me in touch with a customer who had one of those challenges. Prove it to me. Prove you know your product and come prepared to back up every one of your claims. I don’t think that’s too much to ask. But it seems like lately people are way more into sales and selling than understanding their product or putting thought into that product or what a customer needs from their product. It’s a “change (manipulate) the customer, not change the product” mentality.

Mirror Lake, Yosemite.

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email about a Buddhist retreat on the theme of Digital Fatigue. My reaction was, “Just turn off your phone.” However, I was intrigued by the promise of “a transformative weekend retreat and reset your relationship with technology.” Then I read the following sentences: “This course includes four live online teachings with guided practice and Q&A with [I’ve redacted out of respect] on Saturday, May 17, and Sunday, May 18. Plus, join the online community for reflection and breakout groups at the end of each day.” How is this a digital retreat and reset if it’s all literally happening online, digitally? It’s this kind of sales approach that makes me lose respect for a company and a product.

Needless to say, I did not attend. However, we did decide to turn off computers and phones for the entire weekend. We’re doing that a lot more now. Locking and walking away. The digital world is simply uninteresting and, frankly, way too annoying. It’s heavily algorithm-ed, AI-influenced to be the world’s neediest salesman, or worse, the world neediest drug pusher. It needs you to need whatever “it” tells you that you need to be h”app-y”. Social media is basically a fake, dead world telling lies to itself. It tries to sell you ideas or things that will actively harm you or tries to get you to harm others. Walking away is the best option.

I’m not against technology or science, but good science and tech is not what I see from the people creating things like AI. In essence, AI is a few men are spending billions of dollars (tax dollars) and tons of planetary resources – land, water, etc (that belong to everyone) – to create what is essentially a largely defective, lying version of a white, male, antiquated worldview (because of the historical information AI was trained on, is from a white male culture that didn’t allow women and minorities to contribute for thousands of years) brain stuffed with generally stolen information. Think about it, wouldn’t all that money and all those resources be better spent/used improving ALL actually living human brains, with human education, human healthcare, on a human-tended greener and thriving human-sustainable planet? 

I can’t have a school teacher, books or lunch because billionaires need my parent’s tax money.

Many decades ago Republicans used the phrase “death panels” to instill fear in the hearts of American voters over the US having perfectly normal universal healthcare that other modern western democracies had. The pitch was “vote GOP or your healthcare would be decided not by you and your doctor but by a death panel” composed of humans who only cared about the bottomline. I’m going to lay aside the human-run red state govts that have become GOP-death panels for women seeking ob/gyn care, and point out that now, universally, US healthcare approvals are decided by AI. 

Theoretically these AIs are overseen by humans, but realistically, they aren’t. So, Americans have as standard AI-run death panels within commercial healthcare companies. AI which the new GOP bloated budget busting bill says shouldn’t even be regulated for 10 years. And Americans tend to forget that AI isn’t tasked with pro-social tasks such as “What is the best way to make John well?” Or “What is the best way to care for someone in this condition, that will lead to full recovery?” because America doesn’t have a care-based system.

American AI is programmed for “efficiency”, ie, to figure out how to spend the minimum X$ on Y’s care, to keep Y alive, so that maximum X$$$ can be extracted from Y. You are not even a person in this scenario, you’re a billable account. So if X$$ has to be spent to keep Y alive, but only X$ is the ROI, it’s inefficient to keep Y enrolled – or alive. AI is a reflection of the people who create it and program it, and a reflection of the people who let them into their data systems. If those people are unethical, greedy, racist, whatever, that’s what their AI looks like and acts like.  

Mirror, Mirror on the wall, … seriously, break the mirror, get some friends, and grow the heck up.

I’m not sure how other countries or cultures program their AI. But I’d assume that AI in pro-social Denmark or China is probably significantly different than pro-profit US-created AI. I’d certainly like to learn more about their AI. US AI is more like DAI – Depraved AI. AI for the good of humanity is the sales pitch, but that’s not the product Americans are getting. Kind of the way bitcoins makes corruption and crime (inc. now crypto kidnappings) easier even though they are marketed to people as 100% traceable and therefore more honest.

In the US, it’s best to ask about a technology, “Does it make America a safer, more peaceful, more stable, more sustainable, more just or equitable place or does it just give certain men in America more money and power?” That’s a fact-based genuine question. AI is a reflection of its creators. You have creators that want to “dominate” the world, that have written this world off and want to go to Mars. You have creators who are into fascism, eugenics, drugs, pronatalism, racism, etc. American AI is built on theft, it lies 20%-100% of the time, and it regularly tries to incite people to self-harm, hatred and violence. If AI were a human, it would be in jail or a mental institution already. At a minimum, it should be regulated and its use restricted.

AI can do some helpful things, in limited applications, when ethically and humanly directed. But AI is not the answer to every question, or even 99% of questions. It doesn’t automate tasks, that’s a misconception. It dehumanizes them. If you have to choose between a cup of water to sustain yourself, or to sustain AI. You would choose yourself. AI would not. AI is like a miracle pill. It’s that thing you want to believe will work, so you don’t have to change anything and can continue to live exactly as you do. The truth is, humanity has to change the way it lives. But no one likes to hear that. People who pitch AI as a solution know people don’t want to change, that people are willing to self-delude and throw money at them rather than change. It’s what people do about climate change. They pledge more money. They don’t change. The climate continues to degrade but they feel better (self-righteous), like they did something.

Republicans used to ask during presidential elections, “Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?” I suppose if this question were posed to AI the answer would be “Things are much better.” Because the GOP is pro-unrestrained and overfunding AI with tax dollars. But the people who vote and pay taxes see the answer quite differently. Americans ask, “Am I better off than I was 4 months ago?” And the answer is no, and I sympathize with them.

You can’t trust that the air or water is clean in the US. You can’t eat the food, which isn’t inspected for salmonella or listeria. You can’t drink the milk, which isn’t inspected. My guess is no one is going to inspect slaughter houses, so all the meat in the US? I wouldn’t suggest you eat that even if you cook it well done. If you get sick, good luck getting the treatment you need which is likely banned, AI-denied, or just unavailable in your area.

You can’t fly safely in the US. You can’t travel safely to or within the US without fear you’ll end up renditioned to torture center in some other country. Good bye tourism. FIFA 2026 plans? Book for Canada and Mexico games. You can’t study in the US as basic human rights, Constitutional rights, academic freedom and scientific facts are under threat. I hear Taiwan has empty university campuses, maybe US higher education and its teachers could off-shore Taiwan. Taiwan has good research facilities too, so maybe academic science can move as well.

I guess it’s one way to get people to pray before eating.

You have no NOAA weather science team tracking storms to warn you to save your life. You have no FEMA to help you when disaster strikes. You have no way to know about outbreaks of disease as CDC no longer tracks or reports. You couldn’t get vaccinated against them even if you knew. Education, the Arts and Scientific research are all being destroyed, even though they are all major drivers of innovation and the economy.

You have an openly corrupt leader illegally accepting all kinds of bribes paired with leadership and courts of “justice” that are actively setting up a dual state and destroying the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. And this doesn’t even scratch the surface of job loss, economic dumpster fires caused by tariffs, or loss of geopolitical influence due to petulant demands for instant deals or the destruction of the deep bench of US state department professionals and humanitarian programs and agencies that worked for positive change.  

Not only are Americans way worse off in just 4 months but thanks to the GOP’s leadership and governance, Americans are well on their way to becoming the  “dirty, disease-ridden, low IQ, dangerous criminals” that the GOP railed about keeping out of the US. Irony much? The only silver lining is that many other countries have now seen the vast danger of far-right nationalism to a democracy, and voted not to take that road to ruin. So in a way, the US has still saved some democracies for millions of people in the world, even as the new administration has illegally cut off Congressionally approved aid, such as USAID, leading to the death of 300,000 people so far. 

It’s Fruit of the poisonous tree? 

And speaking of roads to ruin. I’ve recently heard a lot about Joe Biden and Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book: Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. Often by the authors on their booktours. My reaction to everything they say is, “Are Americans better off than they were 4 months ago, under Biden’s administration?” You can’t seriously look me in the eyes and say yes. 

Biden surrounded himself with incredible, dedicated professionals and top of class scientists, leaders, and thinkers. He chose ethical people, qualified people of integrity to run the departments and institutions that made the US world renown, resilient and innovative. The US economy and its recovery was the envy of the world. And that’s what great leaders do, surround themselves with great people. Because the government isn’t one person, the president, it’s all of the people working for and on behalf of the people.

This stands in stark contrast to the current party in office, who believes in centralized power built around a single person who watches “Escape from Alcatraz” one evening and decides to reopen Alcatraz by tweet the next morning (true story). I won’t even bother to comment on the uniquely unqualified individuals that make up the “leadership” at this point or who they work on behalf of. As for guardrails? Biden’s administration had multiple layers of them. The current administration has none and rips down anything that even looks like a guardrail no matter the cost to the American people or the country’s peace and security.

I respect the authors, but you’ve missed the point of American government and how it should operate if you think Biden’s decline while in office was the big-picture problem here. As for the cover up? We all have eyes. If you were shocked by the debate, you weren’t paying attention for the four years before it. As for “his disastrous choice to run again”? Even had Biden stepped down and Harris stepped up to be president in the last year before the election, many Americans were pretty far down the misinformation rabbit hole (Ukraine, immigration, DEI) and things that were a problem policy wise (Israel, health care) and in the economy with large blocks of voters, that addressing might have helped, Harris actively avoided addressing or dismissed as trivial.

And speaking of things people aren’t willing to address, the tragic murder of the young interfaith-international couple in DC who worked at the Israeli embassy comes to mind. I’m going to be honest here, in cases such as this, my first thought is never, “this is antisemitism.” It’s always, “The US has a large number of young men who fall down ideological rabbit holes, and this coupled with a ‘pro gun, shooting people solves problems’ culture, leads to the murder of innocent people with frightening regularity.” 

Consider the 27-yr-old Jewish American man who in 2023 shot a Jewish Israeli man and his son in Miami Beach, Florida because the Jewish American man thought the Jewish Israeli man and his son were Palestinians. And being an American young man, shooting a man and his son – that he didn’t know, and who was doing nothing wrong – because he thought they were a faith or group he personally hated, was clearly felt to be culturally appropriate for young men with guns in America. 

Holes are for rabbits only, please.

I think a person named Rodriguez is likely to be Roman Catholic, not Muslim or Palestinian. And, like so many men between the ages of 15 – 55, he fell down an ideological rabbit hole, and decided – as an American – that buying a gun and killing people was the answer. That Rodriguez’s rabbit hole was “killing Jewish people solves this problem” isn’t really surprising given the algorithms and AI have no security measures and are designed to keep people (young men) engaged by continually moving them toward the worst possible, most violent, most anti-social (anti-Jewish, anti-women, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-…..) rhetoric. 

Some people might call the DC shooting outcome antisemitism or political violence. That’s fine. To me it was typical garden-variety single young American male with untreated mental illness, and unlimited social media and gun access.There should have been a discussion by the news media about rampant US gun violence by white young males. There typically is, but not this time. There should have been a discussion about better security on the use of these tools and platforms, but not this time. There should have been a discussion about lack of robust mental health care as a backstop, but not this time.

 All 3, the murder victims and their killer, wanted to help people in conflict in the middle east. Two people were dedicating their lives to that. Single young white American male, bought a gun and killed them. But the media just whiffed the story. “Too bad, so sad” young white male Christian American killed a Christian man and an American woman. None of the usual weeks of coverage of every aspect. Is it because so much is going on in the world, it doesn’t rate? Because the mentally ill, single, white, young, male shooter is an accepted role model in America now? Because AI decided this story shouldn’t top the newspaper headlines and should disappear? I dunno. 

This was evangelical Christianity only 15 yrs ago.

I think the SO has the right idea. His phone is off. And his laptop stowed away in his office. He is reading a book (actually printed on paper), having a nice cup of tea, and periodically looking out the window at the rainy day we’re having. The pets are lolling around, having had their walks and outings, but always hopeful of treats or ball tosses or lap time or string chases. 

I think I shall shut down for now. I have Clunky to think about and Goliath. You may not hear from me for many moons. Fingers crossed, with Davina’s help my Goliath week turns out more like Davey’s than David’s. But if not, rest assured I have the faith to face it, armed not with stones and slings, but with wisdom and compassion. And we shall overcome. Some day.