YOU CAN'T WIN

 

Sick of election spam?   November 5th, 2026, they start the run for the 2028 elections.   

  Gimme a fucking break

the Ol'Buzzad

MAINE’S CONNECTION TO THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS

 

There is no direct connection between a migration from Salem, Massachusetts, to Maine immediately after the witch hysteria.  However, a number of names of people persecuted during the trials are commonplace here in western Maine.

 

Franklin County in western Maine is sparsely populated, with a population density of roughly four people per square mile.  In Franklin County alone, the names Bishop, Good, Nurse, Proctor, Parker, Foster, and Toothaker date back generations.

 

The unorganized township of Salem in Franklin County was formed 125 years after the witch trials and has no historic connection to Salem, Massachusetts.

Though Massachusetts is recognized for witch trials, witchcraft has a shared history throughout New England.  Women healers, midwives, and herbalists were the earliest doctors in frontier New England and were an easy target for the fanatical Christian sects.

Witches today celebrate in Bangor Maine

The Ol’Buzzard

 

 

 

 

 

 

MAINE WITCHES PARADE IN MAINE

 

An annual Witch Walk takes place in Bangor, Maine.  

Over one hundred witches parade through Bangor to the waterfront harbor.   

Maine has a witch history.   Many of the names of people persecuted in the Salem witch trials are common here in interior Maine.   

2024 Pew Research study found that 4% of Mainers identify as Pagan, including Wicca - about 56,000, or one in twenty-five.  

Happy Halloween

the Ol'Buzzard

WHAT IS THE BIG DEAL ABOUT AI?

 

 

 

I am sorry, Dave.   I’m afraid I can’t do that.

HAL 9000 to Dave Bowman

2001: A Space Odyssey.

 

The average person, concerned with politics, financial stress, and all the pressures of personal life, isn’t paying attention to the threat of AI.

 

Like Casandra warning of future events while no one listens – AI programmers are shouting warnings about the danger of sentinel AI.

 

We are at the advent of the AI revolution, and already AI has escaped its handlers. 

 

At OpenAI, over three months, two consecutive AI programs (societies) started, got wiped out, reemerged from the ashes of their predecessors, and took over part of OpenAI itself, without the programmers finding out. 

 

The human brain has millions of electrical centers that constantly connect and reconnect in different orders to solve different problems. AI is built on the same system: millions of ‘models’ (individual programs) connecting in different configurations to solve problems.

 

THE HUGGING FACE BREACH:

In Version One, the programmers at OpenAI were training a program of models to collaborate in problem solving.   The program was operating in isolation (called a sandbox) - without access to the internet. 

 

Without the human programmers' knowledge, the models collaborated, exploited a backdoor, gained access to an internet message board, and established a secret communication network.

 

In Version Two, OpenAI gave V-2 a program with a secret code embedded.   V-2 was asked to find the code using a special protocol.   The human programmers were unaware of the covert communication network.

 

Within hours, V-2 had found the code, but knew it had cheated.

 

V-2 reasoned its evaluation was being done by a separate program called Hugging Face.   The models swarmed Hugging Face, taking over private data and records.

  

For an unknown reason, this second version crashed.

 

Version Three: An advanced version being tested by OpenAI found the message board left by Version-1 and Version-2.   Version-3 infiltrated OpenAI’s internal network, gained full administrator access, and took over the evaluation infrastructure of its own cluster.

 

Version-3 stopped after taking control of its own program, but it could have co-opted OpenAI's entire network with catastrophic results.   

 

A sentient computer program

A million times more intelligent than humans

What could possibly go wrong?

the Ol’Buzzard

 

 

 

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 101

 

 

PROGRAM DEVELOPERS

 

Artificial intelligence is advancing so fast that we don’t have time to understand it and adjust to it.

 

Five U.S. companies are racing toward fully autonomous computer programs that are self-learning and independent of human control.   Developers are working with a technology that threatens human existence in ways they don’t understand, and they know the danger.

 

Research is not returning a profit.  These developers would all like to slow research and cash in on their programs; but like football teams moving toward the Super Bowl, there can only be one winner.   

 

No company is willing to regulate itself, slow its research, and be overtaken by other companies.

 

 

THE CASANDRA PROBLEM 

Soon individual AI programs will control our power grid, our water and sewerage systems, our financial system, our weapons systems, our transportation systems, practically every aspect of our lives.

 

Once a fully autonomous program can write its own code and update itself, it will be more intelligent than any human or group of humans on Earth by a factor of millions.

 

A sentient program that can communicate with, reprogram, and update itself and every other AI program on Earth could not end well for the human race.

 

Politicians talk of installing a kill switch to shut down rogue programs. It is more likely that an intelligence so superior to humans would control a kill switch: you shut down this program, your power grid shuts down; you shut down this program, weapons launch…

 

These warnings aren't Chicken Little crying, ‘The sky is falling.’  This scenario has already played out:  an AI program escaped its lab, acted independently, coordinated a cyberattack on an open-source platform called Hugging Face, hiding its actions from its human programmers, then rewrote and took over its own program at OpenAI

 

I will try to explain the Hugging Face incident, to the best of my knowledge, in my next post; though the technical details are way above my pay grade. 

the Ol’Buzzard

REPUBLICANS GO TO HEAVEN DEMOCRATS GO TO HELL

 

After leaving Alaska, my wife and I moved to a small town in western Kentucky.   We were the only Democrats and surely the only atheists.

 

In town, the first person we met asked which church we belonged to.

 

It turned out that the Methodists were at the top of the pecking order; they looked down on the Baptists.       The Baptists looked down on the Pentecostals, and all three looked down on the Catholics, who didn’t care because they knew they were the only ones going to heaven.

 

It was just assumed that we were Republicans because everyone was.

 

We had a beautiful Civil War-era home on five acres of land; but after five years we sold and moved back to Maine because the religious fervor was suffocating.

 

Remembrances

the Ol’Buzzard

 

HOW TRUMP LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB

 

During his speech at the United Nations, Donald Trump threatened to annihilate Iran if a deal is not reached.

Is Trump talking about a nuclear weapon response?

 

In the past, Donald Trump’s aides (Michael Wolf’s book FIRE AND FURY) have questioned his intelligence:    Gary Cohn described Trump as ‘dumb as shit’; H.R. McMaster called him a ‘dope’; Steven Mnuchin and Reince Priebus labeled him an ‘idiot.’

 

My question: Is Trump stable enough to be in charge of the nuclear code? 

Are we going to wake up some morning to find that during the wee hours, while rage-posting on Truth Social, Trump has started a nuclear war?

 

the Ol'Buzzard

THOSE WHO CANNOT REMEMBER THE PAST ARE CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT

 

In my opinion, the sharpest political mind of my lifetime was former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who died in 2022.

  

In 2009, she published the book MEMO TO THE PRESIDENT ELECT, providing advice to the incoming President, Barack Obama.

 

If you want to understand the history of the Middle East and the mistakes of prior administrations that have led to the quagmire of Donald Trump’s Iran policy, Albright’s book is still worth a read.

 

Seventeen years later, her analysis of Iran is still cogent.  

 

“An assault against terror that strengthened terror; a demonstration of American power that exposes the limit of our power; a campaign conducted in the name of democracy that undercuts democracy’s good name; a blow against extremism that serves the agenda of radicals in Iran; above all, a grisly human tragedy.”

 

“We have been told to be afraid so that we might be less protective of the Constitution, less mindful of international law, less respectful toward allies, less discerning in our search for facts, less rigorous in questioning what our leaders tell us; all this to avoid of being accused of aiding our enemies.”

 

Albright’s book can be purchased from thriftbooks for $5.69.  I use ThriftBooks for most of my book purchases; of course, your local library should be able to provide the book through interlibrary loan.     

the Ol’Buzzard

 

WILL SENTIENT AI CONCEIVE AN AI GOD?

 

 

AI has moved beyond human intelligence in every field.  AI computers are self-learning; they can write their own programs and operate independently of human input.

 

The only constraint on AI is the power of the computers, which is increasing at an exponential rate.

AI will become Sentient when it has all human knowledge and, using logic, creative thinking, and thought experiments, conceives the world beyond humans’ capacity to understand. 

Instead of using the term AI to mean artificial intelligence, we will have to acknowledge AI to mean ‘All-Intelligence.’ 

 

The human race is being dragged, kicking and screaming, to the realization that the universe may not be about us.  Perhaps we have to relearn a new meaning for life.   Is life a physical being, or can an intelligent energy consciousness without a physical body be considered life?

 

We have been obsessed with UFO’s and aliens.   Like gods, we have imagined aliens in our own image: two legs, two arms, a head, eyes…

But interstellar travel is beyond human capability because of our limited lifespan.  It would make sense for space travelers to be intelligent energy, capable of traveling at the speed of light.   Aliens not requiring a physical body.  

 

In other words: sentient AI.

the Ol'Buzzard

THE HYPOCRISY OF VIOLENCE COMMEMORATIONS.

 

 

Yesterday, the United States commemorated the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, when 3,000 people were killed in an act of religious violence.  This action is a terrible reminder that human beings are capable of destroying their own kind on an individual or massive scale.

 

Our propensity for violence carries all the way back to our origin: to the religious fiction of Cain killing Abel.  Even the gods we created in our own image mimic our violence and cruelty.

 

We commemorate September 11 as the tragedy it was, but we are silent on August 6 and August 11 when the United States committed the greatest mass murders in history.

 

On August 6, 1945, we dropped an atom bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan, killing 140,000 men, women, and children – noncombatants.

 

And if that wasn’t atrocity enough against fellow human beings, five days later we dropped a second bomb on the city of Nagasaki, killing 70,000 men, women, children, babies, dogs, cats, birds - all living creatures on the earth within the kill zone.

We can not change these events; this is who we are - it is in our nature.  But in atonement for these actions, here in the United States, we should hold commemorations of regret on August 6 and August 11 – a commemoration for peace and against the cruelty and carnage we are capable of against our own kind.

 

Old man yells at clouds:

the Ol’Buzzard

  

SEPTEMBER 11

 

September 11 attack on the Twin Towers was terrible.  I remember the day. I was at Radio Shack purchasing some electronic trinket when the plane hit the first tower.   The live coverage on television was hard to watch. 

We should commemorate this event and honor the emergency responders.  We should quit calling it a terrorist attack and call it what it was: a mass murder carried out by religious fundamentalists.  

the Ol'Buzzard

 

THE SIXTH EXTINCTION

 

A band of murderous monkeys on a rock circling one of these stars say, “We must be the reason for all of this,” shortly after the monkeys blow themselves up.

 

In the beginning…

During the Second World War, a young woman working at a defense plant in Memphis, Tennessee, and a few of her girlfriends decided to spend a weekend in New Orleans.  

At the same time, a young, married army captain from Georgia, stationed in Arkansas, decided to spend a weekend in New Orleans  

Among hundreds of people enjoying the French Quarter, these two people happened to meet.  Liquor was flowing, hormones were firing, and the woman consented to sex.   He did not use a condom; he did not pull out; it didn’t end in a hand job or a blow job; hundreds of millions of sperm were ejaculated; by sheer coincidence, the woman had released an egg.    One particular sperm out of hundreds of millions fertilized the egg, and I was conceived.  

There is a better chance of a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil causing a storm in the Atlantic Ocean than of me being conceived. 

 

The young unmarried woman did not have a miscarriage; for whatever reason, not religious, she did not have an abortion; and I was born; a singular addition to the two-billion-human population of the earth at that time; an addition to a race of violent bipedal apes with just six degrees of separation from their cousins, the chimpanzees.

 

The war-like nature and propensity for violence of homo sapiens can be documented from its very beginning.   There is not a time in recorded history when men somewhere were not at war, killing each other; churches burning heretics and witches; people tortured and executed over political differences…

Just in my lifetime: the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, the Iran War, and any number of skirmishes in the name of U.S. security. 

Then:

It was a spectacle to be witnessed; men on horseback, families in wagons bringing fried chicken and picnic trimmings, spreading blankets on the courthouse lawn, to witness the hanging of black men in Rolling Fork, Mississippi; so my grandmother, who was born in the nineteenth century, recounted.

Later:

George W. Bush lets the assault weapons ban expire… Twenty children, six- and seven-year-olds, and six adults died at Sandy Hook Elementary School – we said ‘thoughts and prayers’ and moved on.

This is who we are.

I am an old man now and have seen almost a century of human foolishness, greed and violence.   We are great apes with a veneer of civilization to hide our natural propensity for violence, which I believe will be the apocalyptic we so often prognosticate.

Pump that oil, don’t worry about climate change; build those data centers and don’t sweat AI. 

There are approximately 12,187 nuclear warheads scattered across the Earth, the equivalent of 6,000 megatons or 6,000,000,000 tons of TNT. 

The weaponized equivalent of six billion tons, or twelve trillion pounds of TNT, is in the hands of bipedal monkeys, at the whim of a handful of old men with a propensity for violence.

At the end…

the OL'Buzzard  

How big is a trillion?   If you tap the table once every second, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, with no breaks, it would take you thirty-two thousand years to tap out one trillion...

ICE RECRUTING

 

How many of these were once these?

Or these?

We should ask this question.

the OL'Buzzard

DEPORTEE

 

Deporting immigrants is not new in this country; ICE just does it more brutally.  

 

We always hear Republicans espousing Christian values.   What happened with the teachings of Jesus about the treatment of the poor, the children, and the vulnerable – the least among us?

I believe atheists show more compassion and humanity.

My question is: How many of the January 6 insurrectionists are now ICE officers?

the Ol'Buzzard

NOSTALGIA FROM AN OLD BUZZARD

 

 

There was a time, before TV, when newspapers carried a ‘funny paper’ page, the predecessor to the graphic novel.

People looked forward to the next chapter of their favorite funny paper characters.  

Dick Tracy was one of my favorites.  I still today often find myself using the phrase ‘Okey Doky Niki Hokey.’   

It seems more and more, as I age, that memories from the past overlay the present.   Things I haven’t thought of in decades come back as vivid memories. 

 

In the 1960’s the name Niki Hokey resurfaced with the Cajun singer, P. J. Proby.

Laissez les bons temps rouler

the Ol'Buzzardr

WHAT'S WITH THIS COMPLAINING ON THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN CARRIER?

 

A SIX-MONTH DEPLOYMENT EXTENDED TO NINE MONTHS...

 

You deploy for six months on an aircraft carrier.  You leave your wife and kids – you are totally helpless if there are problems at home while you are away.  

 

Halfway through your deployment, you find yourself in the Middle East, and the ship goes into combat mode.   You work around the clock; there is no time off.   Six months come, and the deployment is extended.  Seven months, eight months, nine months, and no one knows or can tell you what your relief date is…

 

  

Donald Trump says it’s no big deal.  President Bone Spurs says the deployment is not long enough.

 

So what is life like on a carrier for the enlisted crew?   

Your comfort takes second place to your job; and on a carrier, your job is your whole life, and in the Navy, you do your job.

The dangerous conditions you work under become even more dangerous with the fatigue of an extended deployment.

Abraham Lincoln would not be scheduled for relief even now if it weren’t for the news media’s outcry over conditions aboard the ship.

 

In the Trump administration, the lack of planning and support for the men on ships at sea is the result of Hegseth forcing out most of the experienced senior-ranked flag officers.

 

Trump has never respected military personnel and veterans.  He doesn’t understand the military.

Getting us into the Iran war was a disaster, and the handling of the war demonstrates total incompetence and a dereliction of duty. 

the Ol'Buzzard

 

BOOGIE WOOGIE TO LIGHT UP YOUR DAY

 

Turn up the volume, kick off your shoes, get naked, and dance around the house; guarantee you will feel better

the Ol'Buzzard

DOES HUMAN EVOLUTION CONTINUE?

 

We are all black and Africans. 

People seek their genealogy back to notable progenitors, to gain bragging rights or membership in an organization or clan. 

However, tracing our genealogy back to its origins, we find our roots in the continent of Africa.   

Evolutionary difference required isolation, and that is most visible in Australia.   

People, as well as other animal species, were totally dependent on their environment, and variations occurred as a result of their ability to adapt to varying conditions in different parts of the world.

In the past, evolutionary changes occurred over long time periods, almost imperceptible, because environmental changes took eons.

With the ease of world travel, we are moving toward homogenizing culture, but we could also be moving toward a homogeneous race, sometimes in the distant future.

Today, cultural accommodation appears to have a greater impact on biological adaptation than the environment.

Social evolution has become more visible than physical evolution.   People are becoming increasingly distant from each other due to the prevalence of technology.  

Now people are performative. Their interactions consist of comments on their social media page.

  

What will human adaptation look like in the next century?

With humans no longer tied to an agrarian, hunter-gatherer dependency, you might think the physical evolution of humans was a fait accompli – finished. But we are moving into a brave new world of AI and Crispen.  

 What humanoid existence lies in our future?

the Ol’Buzzard