* This is an archive of my own blog and online notes, with weekly entries collected by month. The last week in stand-alone format is available here. Feel free to CONTACT ME if so inclined.
DAYLOG MON 29 DEC 25 / TRUMP CAN'T STOP RENEWABLES: As discussed in article from EURONEWS ("Trump's rollbacks made 2025 a turbulent year for clean energy. So why are experts optimistic?" by Jennifer McDermott, 14 dec 25), US President Trump is hostile to renewable energy and does all he can to keep it down. That's had an effect. Solar builder and operator Jorge Vargas -- of Aspen Power in New York City -- said it has been "a very tough year for clean energy", and that there had been a "cooldown effect", but added: "Having said that, we are a resilient industry."
The Biden Administration had pushed renewable energy. According to Tom Harper, partner at global consultant Baringa, at the start of 2025 the US government was subsidizing clean energy technologies. Companies had emerged to drive the technology, and there was substantial demand from states and corporations.
Incoming President Trump then called wind and solar power "the scam of the century", saying he would not approve new installations. The Federal government canceled grants for hundreds of projects, while the GOP-controlled Congress cut clean energy programs. US offshore wind power projects, a particular target for Trump, have stalled. According to Jason Grumet, CEO of the American Clean Power Association -- uncertainty about Federal energy policy has hobbled companies in making investments. The rate of fade in carbon emissions has slowed.
However, renewables are not dead in the USA; there is still funding from the states and corporations. Solar and battery storage are booming, accounting for 85% of new grid power in the first nine months of the Trump Regime. Mike Hall, CEO of Anza Renewables in Oakland CA, says economics for solar and storage remain strong, demand is high, and the technologies can be deployed quickly. America needs more power, and renewables are the most cost-effective means of getting it. Nobody's bringing back coal.
Democratic US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse says: "Trump's effort to manipulate government regulation to harm clean energy just isn't enough to offset the natural advantages that clean energy has. The direction is still all good."
Sean Finnerty, CEO of BlueWave Energy in Boston MA, believes that demand for more, preferably clean, energy will encourage US states to streamline permitting and the process of connecting to the grid, as well as reducing costs of things like permits and fees. Curiously, the Trump Regime appears bullish on geothermal energy, it seems because it hasn't drawn fire from the Right. Less surprisingly, the regime favors nuclear energy; its backers are excited -- but nuclear power has not proven all that cost-effective in the past.
DAYLOG TUE 30 DEC 25 / ZELENSKYY AT MAR-A-LAGO: On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his people came to President Trump's resort at Mar-a-Lago in Florida to discuss peace plans. A photo showed Zelenskyy and his entourage on one side of the table with Trump and his stooges on the other side, including shifty figures such as Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner. That rogue's gallery inspired no confidence in the peace talks, which haven't gone anywhere in a year.
The dubious nature of the Sunday talks was underlined when Zelenskyy and Trump spoke together to the media afterwards, with Trump saying: "Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed." Zelenskyy was unable to keep a straight face. Nonetheless, as law blogger Jay Kuo pointed out, this talk went better than some of those in the past: Trump did not set deadlines, and did not browbeat Zelenskyy to cave in. Trump said: "I don't have deadlines." It seems Zelenskyy is getting through to Trump.
Presumably, Zelenskyy's first goal in the talks is to keep the USA on board with the war; Trump has cut support, but Ukraine needs vital US space intelligence. Zelenskyy's obvious second goal is to convince the Ukrainian people, and everyone else, that he's doing all he can to end the war. Finally, he may be setting up an "exit ramp" for Putin to take if he decides to discontinue his war in Ukraine -- at the very least, to make it clear to Putin that Russia's maximalist demands are unrealistic.
There's no sign at all that Putin is looking for an exit ramp yet. Trump spoke to Putin before the meeting; afterwards, Putin told Trump Ukraine had performed an air attack on his private residence, which got Trump agitated. Ukraine denied they had done so.
I have to admire how Zelenskyy has maintained control over the conversation with Trump and his people. It certainly must help that Zelenskyy is much smarter than the dim-witted Trump. I'm guessing, however, that the Ukrainians laughed a lot on the flight back to Kyiv.
MYSTERY SINKING: In a little mystery of the Ukraine War, a year ago the Russian cargo ship URSA MAJOR was steaming in the Mediterranean off the coast of Spain, when it suffered three explosions and sank, two of the 16 crew being lost.
It turned out the URSA MAJOR was carrying two empty reactor hulls for North Korea. Not long after the sinking, a Russian Navy intelligence collection ship, the YANTAR, went to the sinking site, possibly to retrieve or destroy sensitive equipment. The URSA MAJOR had been apparently holed by a torpedo. Nobody claimed responsibility. Ukraine is the prime suspect -- but even assuming they were responsible, it's not clear how the attack was carried out.
DAYLOG WED 31 DEC 25 / ATAK & HIMERA: The Ukraine War battlespace includes a major electronic component, with not much data available on it. An article in MILITARNYI ("Ukrainian Himera Radios Integrated into ATAK Situational Awareness System" by Vladislav V, 28 dec 25) gave a glimpse into tech being used, including the ATAK smartphone / tablet app, and the associated Ukrainian-made Himera G1 tactical hand-held radio.
ATAK stands for "Android Tactical Awareness Kit" -- it's also available for Apple iOS as "iTAK" -- and can be thought of as "Google Maps" for the troops, allowing them to interact with digital maps to mark targets, perform reconnaissance, navigate, and exchange data between users. It can use a range of different map file formats, and supports transmission of real-time images and video on the map. It was developed by the US Air Force Research Lab. ATAK uses a "plugin" to adapt it to different users, with a "CIVTAK" version available for civilian applications such as disaster relief.
Of course, Android smartphones and tablets aren't suitable for a battlefield on their own, since the civil phone network may not be available -- and would be dangerously insecure for tactical communications if it were, with anyone using a smartphone quickly targeted by enemy artillery.
That's where the Himera G1 radio comes in -- it was discussed here before, last March. It looks like a classic military "walkie-talkie"; it avoids being targeted using "Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS)" technology, in which the frequency of the communications signal "hops" around in a pseudo-random pattern, never staying on one frequency long enough to be picked up by eavesdroppers who don't know the hopping "key" sequence.
Even if the enemy does learn the pattern, the Himera G1 uses 256-bit AES encryption to make sure the signal can't be read. The HIMERA G1 uses a mesh network AKA "Mobile Ad-Hoc Network (MANET)", with all the radio nodes relaying signals on to each other. The Himera G1 uses Bluetooth to hook up with a smartphone / tablet; Bluetooth can only be detected at short range. The smartphone / tablet is also used to configure the radio.
Incidentally, the use of FHSS and AES implies a "key distribution" problem to update the radio MANET with new keys. Obviously, they're sent over the MANET, but what if the enemy captures one of the radios? They would get the updates, too. I should guess that every user would have a personal password, with a radio only updating if the password is punched in. Once a radio is known to be lost, it can be "bricked" anyway and rendered useless.
DAYLOG THU 01 JAN 26 / BIDENOMICS REVIEWED: The Trump Regime keeps proclaiming that America's economy is booming, and any problems were Joe Biden's fault. Everybody with sense knows that's a lie, but it's still useful to check the receipts.
UC Berkeley economist Brad DeLong examined the receipts, writing an essay on 6 November 2025 for his SUBSTACK account, GRASPING REALITY, with the title providing a summary: "Bidenomics -- Truly Transitory Inflation, Remarkably Successful on Employment & Growth -- But Unable to Break Through the Media Misinformation Machine."
Leading off, DeLong writes: "On the economic prosperity ledger, Joe Biden fiscal policy and Jay Powell monetary policy in the aftermath of the COVID plague depression were close to perfect." He elaborated:
QUOTE [EXCERPTS]:
The rapid Biden-Powell-era reattainment of full employment was a tremendous policy victory. It was generated by an unusually forceful policy mix -- vaccination scale-up, income support, and a deliberately generous fiscal stance -- interacting with roughly $3 trillion in household excess savings to jump-start demand as health risks ebbed.
The inflationary friction that followed was characteristic of a fast merge back onto the growth 'highway', the 'leaving rubber-on-the-road' when you want to get up to speed quickly. Unfortunate, yes. But necessary if you are not to get rear-ended. Priorities were near-lexicographic: get unemployment down quickly first, then address side effects second.
Biden also began reindustrialization policy, in an act of Congress-management wizardry that still leaves me awestruck ... but the scale remains mismatched to the challenge of decades-long deindustrialization and a geopolitics reshaping supply chains.
The cost of all this success was a short, transitory burst of moderate inflation ... 7.6% CPI inflation from January 2021 to January 2022. And then the burst of moderate inflation stopped cold. It was over after the middle of 2022.
END_QUOTE
DeLong faults the Biden Administration for not pushing vaccination more energetically, and for not taking a global approach, distributing vaccines all over the world. However, overall Bidenomics was a great success. Unfortunately, not enough people noticed: "The voters judged Bidenomics, and judged it as substantially unsuccessful." -- meaning the Right-driven misinformation system was only too successful. Now, in the face of Trump's misgovernance, the voters are having second thoughts.
DAYLOG FRI 02 JAN 26 / UNITARY EXECUTIVE THEORY: The Supreme Court's conservative justices have shown an inclination to let President Trump get his own way, notably allowing him to dismiss with little or no cause appointees to supposedly independent government agencies.
That's contrary to established judicial opinion, with the conservative justices relying on what is called "unitary executive theory (UET)". Legal scholar Simon Lazarus, writing in THE NEW REPUBLIC ("The Right-Wing Justices Know Their Favorite Legal Theory Is Bunk", 02 jan 26), observes that UET isn't well-grounded in the law, and its advocates tend to argue as to its meaning and justification.
UET was originally put forward by Ed Meese, Ronald Reagan's second-term Attorney General, and succinctly phrased by the late SCOTUS Justice Antonin Scalia. Article 2 of the US Constitution declares: "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States." According to Scalia, that meant all the "executive Power", not just some of it.
UET advocates also point to the "Take Care" clause of Article 2 -- which says that the president "shall take care that the Laws be faithfully executed" -- and the "Federalist Paper #70", written by Alexander Hamilton -- which called for an energetic executive.
The problem with these three statements is that they are broadly stated; did they honestly argue against legal constraints on the president? A wider reading of the Constitution leads to Article 1, which states that Congress can "make all Laws" defining how the enumerated powers of the executive are carried out -- as well as all other powers that haven't been enumerated. The Framers were very big on "separation of powers" and on the legal supremacy of Congress -- and even from the beginning, there were independent agencies.
The conservative SCOTUS justices, finding their readings of the Constitution weak, chose another approach in saying that unconstrained power should not be vested in unelected officials. The first problem with that argument is that for, say, inspector general positions, they should be unelected officials that are hard to remove -- they should be above partisan politics.
Possibly more importantly, none of these officials are "above the law": they can be and are often called to account by Congress, and treating Congress with contempt would certainly be legitimate grounds for removal. In the worst case, they could be impeached. Presidents also have means to prod officials, even if it's hard to fire them. Unelected officials do not, in short, wield anything resembling absolute power.
Other arguments, involving a good deal of wild hand-waving, have been invoked to support UET, but they're more comical than persuasive. UET, in any case, has a fundamental flaw: the conservative justices seem incapable of seeing the irony in vesting unprecedented authority in a president who is corrupt and incompetent beyond precedent. Lazarus describes UET as a "kooky theory", and suggests that the colorless term "unitary executive theory" needs to be traded in for something less misleading -- "presidential despotism" might do the trick.
BACK_TO_TOPDAYLOG MON 05 JAN 26 / VENEZUELAN OIL: On Saturday, the US set off a wild frenzy with a military raid on Venezuela that captured El Presidente Nicolas Maduro -- as well as Cilia Flores, his wife. The pretext for the raid was a 2020 indictment on drug-trafficking charges.
There has been public uproar over this lawless act, which has been inflamed by incoherent comments from various Trump Regime officials about America's "plan" for Venezuela -- for example, Trump himself saying that the US had been ripped off by Venezuela and needed payback from Venezuela's oil. It's often not clear what to make of the things Trump says, with an article from NPR ("Trump wants U.S. oil companies in Venezuela. Here's what to know" by Julia Simon, 04 jan 26) making Trump's claim murky.
At present there is a global oil glut, with oil prices below $60 USD a barrel -- and there is a slow but persistent shift towards electric vehicles that suggests oil will get less valuable in the future. Oil majors are unlikely to want to invest big sums in Venezuela.
As it stands now, although Venezuela has among the biggest known oil reserves on the planet, it's not a leading player in the global oil market. Venezuela was a founder of OPEC, and a few decades ago was producing more than 3 million barrels per day (MBPD) of oil. Today, Venezuela produces about 1 MBPD, meaning it has about a 1% share of the market. The US, in contrast, produces 13 MBPD. Worse, Venezuelan crude oil is dense and dirty, demanding special refining. The US used to refine Venezuelan oil, but now China does it.
Heavy Venezuelan crude is, all factors considered, worse for carbon emissions than most other crudes, making it unattractive. International oil companies were in Venezuela for a long time, but about two decades ago Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez forcefully renegotiated contracts with the internationals, with players like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips leaving the country. In 2007, those two oil firms sued Venezuela in international courts, winning awards of billions of dollars. To no surprise, they haven't been paid much of what they are owed.
Chevron has stayed in Venezuela and currently drills about a quarter of the oil produced there -- but in any case, the oil majors don't have a happy history with Venezuela. Changed circumstances may make them swallow their misgivings, but it should be noted that neighboring Guyana has both lighter crude and a friendlier government, making it more attractive than Venezuela.
In any case, it's seeming that the raid to capture Maduro was theatrics for public consumption -- it appears to distract public attention from the uproar over the "Trumpstein files", though there's been little public enthusiasm for the raid. Trump's "make money on oil" sounds like a justification after the fact. I commented in an email: "Everything I'm seeing right now tells me there was no plan, beyond snatching Maduro. We have a government of squabbling middle-schoolers, led by a kindergartner."
PS: A day later, it turns out that the oil majors are so disinterested in investing in Venezuela ... that Trump is talking about subsidizing them to do so. That tends to support the idea that Trump's Venezuela raid was 100% about distracting the USA from the Trumpstein files.
DAYLOG TUE 06 JAN 26 / WEALTH TAX? There's been a lot of talk over the past number of years about a "wealth tax", meaning a tax on billionaires on the basis of their assets, not on their income. California is currently flirting with the idea.
As discussed in an essay by Timothy Noah of THE NEW REPUBLIC ("A Wealth Tax Is Not How You Soak the Rich", 05 jan 26), in an age where billionaires control an obscene proportion of America's wealth and express varying degrees of sympathy with fascism, a wealth tax seems like a good idea. However, Noah -- and California Governor Gavin Newsom -- don't think the "2026 California Billionaire Tax Act" is a good idea, Noah writing:
QUOTE [EDITED]:
I'm against it because I don't believe much expropriation would result after billionaires got done shifting their assets around to avoid the tax. It's hard enough just to tax income! Before this country starts messing around with major wealth taxes (which have a miserable track record in other countries), we ought to tax high incomes -- not just billionaires -- at a much higher rate, and increase capital gains and corporate tax rates as well. All such taxes are now at historically low rates.
Nearly every OECD country that's tried to impose a broad-based wealth tax ended up repealing it. When these wealth taxes didn't chase rich people out, they raised a pittance in revenue; in some instances, they managed to do both at the same time. France, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Iceland, and Luxembourg all discarded their wealth taxes.
Today only four OECD countries still have wealth taxes: Colombia, Norway, Switzerland, and Spain. In Norway and Spain, wealth taxes bring in revenues equal to 1.5% and 0.57%, respectively, of total tax revenue. In Switzerland, the haul is a more impressive 4.3%, mainly because the wealth tax has never been high enough to drive wealthy Swiss out of the country.
END_QUOTE
Noah suggests that if European social democrat governments can't make a go of wealth taxes, the cowboy USA is unlikely to do so, either. To be sure, maybe there's some revised scheme for wealth taxes that might work better? And maybe the USA could bring back inheritance taxes in a bigger way? In any case, America has to get rid of budget deficits -- weaponized by the GOP to hobble "Liberals", but ending up all but wrecking the USA.
DAYLOG WED 07 JAN 26 / UKRAINE'S F-16S: Ukraine has been able to sustain its four-year war against Russian invaders, thanks to supply of advanced weapons. Ukraine can't get enough of it all fast enough, with some weapons in particular demand.
One was the US Lockheed-Martin F-16 Viper. It took time to deliver F-16s to Ukraine, and not all that much has been said about them. An article from THE WAR ZONE ("Ukrainian F-16 Pilot's Account Of The Challenges Of The Air War" by Thomas Newdick, 06 jan 25) told the story of the F-16's Ukraine service to date. Ukraine has been pledged 87 F-16s being retired by four European nations: 24 from the Netherlands, 30 from Belgium, 19 from Denmark, and 14 from Norway. They are being replaced by the Lockheed-Martin F-35.
These are early-model F-16A (single-seat) and F-16B (two-seat) machines, but they were given a "mid-life update (MLU)", bringing them up to modern spec. The US gave Ukraine some mothballed F-16A/Bs as spares hulks, but had no updated F-16A/Bs to pass on, having obtained the improved F-16C/D instead.
The anonymous Ukrainian F-16 pilot -- call him "Dmytro" -- that TWZ interviewed said that Ukrainian pilots had a steep learning curve to learn to fly the F-16, and also the French Mirage 2000. Big problem was that they had to get up to speed on their English since they were to be trained in that language, and they had to study English between exhausting combat missions.
The F-16 is complex and the training was difficult -- and wasn't all that well-tuned to the war in Ukraine. When the pilots got back home, they had to devise tactics appropriate to Ukraine. Initially they were focused on air defense, against killer drones and cruise missiles. They got up to speed, Dmytro saying that by the end of 2025, F-16s had destroyed over a thousand aerial targets. Dmytro says one pilot destroyed six cruise missiles and seven k-drones in a single sortie, the drones presumably destroyed with the F-16's Gatling cannon.
Missions have to be conducted at low level, since Russian long-range anti-air missiles are a constant threat. On the ground, the F-16s and their support systems have to be moved around on a regular basis -- possibly sometimes using highways as airstrips -- lest they be hit by air attacks.
F-16 pilots eventually began to provide air strikes to support the troops, Dmytro saying that their F-16s had performed "more than 1,600 strikes" on ground targets to date -- using SDB or JDAM glide bombs, or possibly APKWS laser-guided missiles, presumably directed by a drone or other remote platform.
Overall, Dmytro says the F-16 is "highly effective", and could be more so if upgraded with the latest radar and other gear. He believes that well more can be made of the F-16 in Ukraine's war against the Russians.
DAYLOG THU 08 JAN 26 / RENEE GOOD KILLING: Wednesday morning got started off slow, but quickly descended into a crisis, with an ICE agent in Minneapolis shooting and killing a local woman, 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good.
ICE has gunned down people before -- but this time was different, since it was documented by at least four videos, as well as multiple eyewitness reports, and flooded across social media within hours. To no surprise, the Right immediately went into denial, with DHS Secretary Kristy Noem claiming Good had tried to run down the ICE agent, who killed Good in self-defense. That was gaslighting, the videos showed the agent was under no threat.
Noem didn't care about the facts, she was just giving the big middle finger to the world. Later, not incidentally, Vice President JD Vance put out the same lame song-&-dance. Astute observers suggested that showed the Trump White House was on the defensive -- since otherwise Trump himself would have made a statement. It's somewhat traditional for vice presidents to be assigned the dirty work a president doesn't want to do, though Vance seems to like it.
Anyway, there was a push among Minnesota authorities to prosecute the ICE shooter, but that quickly ran into a snag. At first, the FBI said they would cooperate with Minnesota authorities, but also to no surprise they soon reversed themselves. That made things difficult, since the ICE shooter was masked and had no identifying marks on his uniform. Although the video evidence was damning, without a positive ID it was hard to get an indictment. Obviously, DHS knows who he is, but it wouldn't be a good bet to think DHS will come clean -- then again, they're so clueless they might give his name and insist that he's innocent.
News reports identified the shooter as one Jonathan Ross, but what if DHS denies the report? In any case, unless Minnesota gets lucky, it seems the first order of business for Minnesota may be to subpoena DHS for the shooter's ID.
There's been some outrage in the US Congress over the shooting, but it seems hard to believe Congress has much leverage in the matter -- so the issue's in Minnesota's lap. Governor Tim Walz has been furious, and seems determined to act.
All this got started from a childcare fraud case from Minnesota a few years back that involved Somali immigrants. A Youtube troll used that to fabricate a video claiming widespread childcare fraud -- with the Trump Regime then cutting childcare funds to Blue states, and sending thousands of DHS people to Minnesota to make trouble. It is noted that the Trump Regime likes to treat Blue states as conquered provinces, to be kept in line by occupation forces. The only good thing is that it doesn't seem like a workable idea.
The killing of Renee Good is obviously a huge deal, but it's hard to say where it goes. It's not hard to say it's going to take years to work out. It will end up in the background most of the time, but that's not the same as saying it will be forgotten.
PS: As I found out later, Kristy Noem gave away the name of the agent -- by saying he had been dragged by a vehicle in June and suffered injuries. I asked Google Gemini about it, and it immediately identified Jonathan Ross. Minnesota did get lucky. Yes, these people really are clueless.
DAYLOG FRI 09 JAN 26 / IRAN IN CHAOS: While the USA is in struggling with its troubles, for over a week now Iran has been in a state of ongoing, increasingly violent, collapse. To provide background, EURONEWS spoke with Ahmad Naghibzadeh, a retired professor of political science at Tehran University, the article being titled "'A big storm is coming' triggering major upheaval, Iranian analyst tells Euronews" (08 jan 26).
Naghibzadeh believes that the Islamic Republic is unlikely to survive, even though Iranians know its collapse that will not mean any improvement in the near term; they just don't have any alternative. In the aftermath, things could get worse if the opposition groups start fighting among themselves.
The key change in Iran's trajectory was in 2005, when hardline President Mahmoud Amadinejad was elected; he then proceeded to crush the pro-Democracy Green Movement, with the leadership feeling triumphant. In reality, the ruling class was headed towards a dead end. All free expression was shut down, with the leadership taking almost complete control over the economy -- operating through rent-seeking and monopolies, from cigarettes to milk, in control of everything. Economic mismanagement has resulted in hyper-inflation -- which is the immediate cause of the crisis, but by no means the only one. The government has no credibility, for example proclaiming "total victory" in the "12-Day War" with Israel last June. All Iranians know it was a stinging defeat. The Russians have a malign foothold in Iran.
Power resides in Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who is very elderly and won't be around much longer. He is all that holds the system together, and it will fall apart once he goes. The military is controlled and has no leadership to move into the vacuum.
New leadership will have to come from the fragmented opposition. Likely the most prominent among them is Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late Shah, who promises a parliamentary democracy, and a good relationship with Western nations. Being the son of the old Shah is not exactly a great character reference, and he is backed by the Israelis -- but none of the other opposition leaders are even that credible.
What about the outside world? Nakhibzadeh believes that Israel is likely to strike again, with other outside power centers possibly helping to crush Iran. A new government will need international assistance, but it's hard to have much hope for it.
BACK_TO_TOPDAYLOG MON 12 JAN 26 / EVIL GROK: Elon Musk's "Grok" chatbot for Xitter has been discussed here in the past, not in a flattering way. Right now, there's a furor over Grok being used to generate floods of AI imagery, in which subjects are disrobed and sexually abused, sometimes violently. The subjects include celebrities and other public figures, or anonymous people discovered in imagery on the internet -- and often include minors.
Grok's "Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM)" has provoked by far the most outrage. An article by Samantha Cole of 404 MEDIA ("Grok's AI Sexual Abuse Didn't Come Out of Nowhere", 08 jan 26) points out that Xitter has long been infested by sleaze and porn.
The sleaze has been around from the previous decade and is now widely spread over the internet. Even before Elon Musk bought up Twitter and turned it into X(itter), it was common there, often used for misogynistic harassment and blackmail. Sleaze has now become one of Xitter's main selling points -- and, since Grok's not tied to Xitter, it infests other platforms, particularly Telegram. Elon completely owns Grok, and likes the fact that it doesn't follow the rules. Cole says: "X has become the Everything App that Elon always wanted, if 'everything' means all the tools you need to f### up someone's life, in one place."
The "National Center for Missing & Exploited Children", which monitors CSAM online, had tens of thousands of reports in 2019, before the AI era, which steadily grew to hundreds of thousands in 2024. NCMEC simply takes reports, which suggests that the CSAM incidents, boosted by Grok, are in the millions now.
Cole writes that Grok was "made by a man who regularly boosts white supremacist thought to create images of a woman slaughtered by an ICE agent in front of the whole world less than 24 hours [previously] to 'put her in a bikini'." Outrage is growing, as is the prospect of a backlash "in the form of recently-enacted federal laws like the Take It Down Act and more than two dozen piecemeal age verification bills in the U.S. and more abroad" that try to impose rules on content.
There's talk elsewhere of banning Xitter. Brazil did, temporarily, but it's not easy to permanently ban a social media system. What would seem much easier to accomplish is for governments to stop using Xitter.
DAYLOG TUE 13 JAN 26 / SCOTT ADAMS RIP: Yesterday, this series spoke of how Elon Musk's "Grok" chatbot took the negative road. Today, we are presented with a similar negative road -- taken by cartoonist Scott Adams, who has just died of prostate cancer.
Adams made a big splash in the 1990s with his DILBERT comic strip, which lampooned "corporate cubicle" life, and proved very popular in the decade. However, it gradually became apparent that Adams was, to put it simply, a Right-wing troll.
There was a bit of Right-wing trolling in the DILBERT strip from early on, but it took like two decades for it to become vividly apparent. It started with a DILBERT blog established in 2011, notably with a posting on "Men's Rights". Adams said, in response to feminism men needed to stop complaining and "get over it." That was okay as far as it went, but then he stepped in it: "The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently. It's just easier this way for everyone."
That got him a lot of bad press -- but Adams doubled down, saying he was just playing devil's advocate, and complained about being misunderstood. He did not understand that, having made a false step, he needed to back up instead of trying to push forward. In 2016, with Hillary Clinton running for president against Donald Trump, Adams accused Hillary of "fear mongering", writing:
QUOTE:
Trump took her so-called "woman card" and turned it into a liability. So Clinton wisely pivoted. Her new scare tactics are solid-gold persuasion.
END_QUOTE
Again, Adams complained about being misunderstood, still not understanding that he needed to back up from a false step.
He got into far more trouble in 2023, when the Rasmussen polling group asked the silly question: "Do you agree or disagree with this statement: 'It's OK to be white?'" 72% of the respondents agreed, including 53% who were black; 26% of black respondents disagreed, and 21% said they were "not sure." The poll also found that 79% of the respondents agreed that: "Black people can be racist too." Adams took the poll to heart, saying:
QUOTE:
I'm going to back off from being helpful to black America because it doesn't seem like it pays off. I get called a racist. That's the only outcome. It makes no sense to help black Americans if you're white. It's over. Don't even think it's worth trying.
END_QUOTE
Again, Adams was too willing to embrace controversy, and the DILBERT strip was dropped from a number of outlets, though the strip stayed in syndication. Cartoonist Darrin Bell, who writes he CANDORVILLE strip that has a more liberal and multi-ethnic focus, ran a parody FILBERT strip that may have exaggerated Adams' views, but not by much. Adams just did not realize that the controversies he jumped into were not all that interesting or relevant, and were likely to cause him trouble. Now he's gone -- and DILBERT will be forgotten.
PS: In a conversation on BlueSky over the death of Scott Adams, I had to comment that I wasn't going to celebrate -- but I couldn't say I felt unhappy about it, either.
DAYLOG WED 14 JAN 26 / THE LIBERTARIAN CONCEIT: I ran across a posting by the NEW YORK TIMES PITCHBOT on libertarian political affiliations and voting patterns that suggested, as I've long suspected, libertarians lean strongly Right.
Libertarians are fond of vague grand principles, but it's not easy to figure out how they apply in practice; getting a little good data is a big help. I replied:
QUOTE:
Anyone who has had a good look at libertarians would not think to challenge that claim: A libertarian is a Republican on recreational drugs. While they seem perceptive at times, in practice libertarianism is more often incoherent and self-serving. Libertarians seem to take the high road, but the reality is less inspiring. Libertarianism is described as the "opposite pole" of authoritarianism, but in practice they can seem compatible, libertarianism sometimes being hard to tell from fascism.
END_QUOTE
One Dave Fecak agreed with the NYTPB posting: "Sure sounds right. Libertarian is basically saying *f### you* to everyone, so it tracks."
ME: "Libertarians never return the shopping cart."
FECAK: "Oooh, that's a solid dig!" I added:
QUOTE:
I go for a walk in the mornings from my home to the local supermarket mall. In the outlying parking lots, I often see abandoned shopping carts -- sometimes just tossed into the shrubbery. Obviously, whoever does it Just. Does. Not. Care.
END_QUOTE
One Hazen Hammel asked:
QUOTE:
They're trying to provide mobility aids for the unhoused? Or are they just self-centered little s###s like Stephen Miller who famously argued (in high school) that he could litter and not pick it up because we have janitors for that? The world may never know.
END_QUOTE
I replied on a bit of a tangent:
QUOTE:
Related to my walks: every now and then I see a glass bottle smashed on the sidewalk. I have a hard time thinking it was accidental. The other strange litter is the little shot-glass-size plastic bottles of booze. I've been picking them up for years, and they tend to be the same brands. There seems to be one or more people in my neighborhood who buy them at the store, drink them on the way home, then toss them.
END_QUOTE
One Barbara McCarren asked: "FIREBALL, am I right?" That's a popular cheap cinnamon-flavored whiskey liqueur. That didn't seem common, but: "I do notice peppermint liqueur and high-proof vodka." MCCARREN: "Schnapps? Sounds like a cold-weather fix." Yeah, maybe, but it seems a year-round thing.
Anyway, I had to conclude: "I've heard libertarians compared to housecats: believing they are totally independent, when their well-being is completely dependent on their owners."
DAYLOG THU 15 JAN 26 / ELECTION THREAT REVISITED: I discussed, and downplayed, Trump's threats to cancel the midterm elections here last month. Now, Trump has revived the scare by saying in an interview that he had accomplished so much that "when you think of it, we shouldn't even have an election."
There was a predictable fuss about that remark, but commenter Jamelle Bouie called for sanity, writing (edited-down here):
QUOTE:
How does he get the VA state board of elections to cancel the midterms? How does he get the Georgia board of elections to do it? How does he convince Republican House members to quit their jobs and give up their paychecks? [How does he cancel parallel state elections?]
ICE can't even deal with irate middle-aged Midwesterners. How does he occupy hundreds, if not thousands, of polling sites and precincts? TRUMP V ILLINOIS clarified that he has no legal authority to unilaterally commandeer National Guards.
Here's what happens after house elections in states and localities:
Notice who isn't involved here? The president or the current Speaker or the Senate.
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Members of Congress cannot be locked out by anything but an application of force. Yes, of course Trump is full of voter suppression tricks, but as JB points out, such tricks only work "at the margins." There is the fear that he could pull off another 6JAN21 across the USA, but as JB says:
QUOTE:
January 6th was a mob of people attacking a single, lightly defended location in order to stop a centralized process of vote counting. For a midterm election, the comparable thing would be about 150,000 January 6ths across the entire USA. [UPDATE: It failed anyway.]
Let's say Trump wants to suppress the vote in Detroit. Assuming a conventional "20 soldiers for every 1000 civilians" occupation ratio, he would need more than 12,000 ICE agents -- over twice as many as he has -- to occupy Detroit, and only Detroit.
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Right now, city & state officials are challenging Trump's Minneapolis ICE deployment in Federal court; we'll see what happens, but he's not guaranteed a win. As I commented in another thread, Trump is definitely scary -- but less as a fearsome monster than as a nasty bug that people want to step on. The Trump Regime can make endless trouble, but they're too dimwitted and incompetent to carry out elaborate plans. It seems in the same interview with Trump, he has resigned himself to losing the midterms, and is just whining.
PS: Comments elsewhere pointed out that the Insurrection Act allows Trump to send the troops, but not suspend the laws; and that mass deployment of troops across the USA would be a huge job that could not be done quickly or secretly, even with more competent leadership.
DAYLOG FRI 16 JAN 26 / ICE FUNDING: The Trump Regime's ICE force has become an affliction to the USA, with its menace enhanced by massive funding increases in Trump's budget. However, as law blogger Jay Kuo explains in an essay ("Democrats Can Stop Or Slow Down ICE", 15 jan 26), the massive budget increases for ICE are somewhat illusionary.
Yes, Trump managed to push through the budget using a process known as "reconciliation", which only needs a bare Senate majority (51 votes) to pass. However, that budget is effectively a framework, with the monies it promises still having to be allocated by Congress through a set of "appropriations" bills -- which need 60 votes, and Democratic support, to get through the Senate.
Such appropriations bills are now readily being passed to keep government functions going. The Trump Regime is not completely happy with that, since many of the appropriations bills are restoring funds that the Trump budget slashed or zeroed out for foreign aid, global health programs, scientific research, and the arts.
These revised appropriations bills are generally being passed with plenty of GOP support. The Trump Regime is even less happy that the bills still leave DHS uncovered. That is, of course, no accident, with Democrats in Congress trying to use DHS appropriations to leash in ICE. The beauty of using appropriations in such a way is that it doesn't result in a government shutdown, which is an unfocused kamikaze approach that doesn't work out well for anyone. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) is the top Democrat on the DHS Appropriations committee, and he says:
QUOTE:
It's obviously natural that Democrats would want to make sure that any money we spend in DHS is being spent lawfully, and right now that department is full of unlawful activity.
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Options include diverting DHS funding to healthcare subsidies; freezing DHS funding at 2024 levels; and placing major restrictions on ICE activities. Things are going to happen, it's just not clear exactly what. We may not get everything we want, but we can get some of it.
DERAILED: On my home front, from last week I got myself into a state of increasing disorganization that led to the collapse of my normal daily routine on Tuesday. There may have been a physical reason for the unusual level of disorder -- but maybe it was that my interests had been shifting, I was doing things that weren't relevant any more, and needed a big rethink.
The trouble, incidentally, showed up the breakdown of my passwords security system; I had to spend most of Tuesday tinkering with 7-Zip encryption to get working again. I managed to recover because the VIM text editor kept trace backups of the password file, and I scouted them out of the Windows recycle bin. That being an obvious security risk, I hunted down all the trace backup files and deleted them, and now use Notepad to read or edit the password file -- it doesn't keep trace backup files.
ED: On later consideration, I decided the breakdown in my schedule was due the growing lunacy of the Trump Regime. I've been going about my business, but things have got so crazy that they've become personally disruptive. I was thinking the second year of "Trump 2.0" was going to be easier than the first year, but not so: Trump is crazier than he was and getting worse. Things will get better, just not in the near term.
BACK_TO_TOPDAYLOG MON 19 JAN 26 / STUMBLING ALONG: In reaction to the growing lunacy of the Trump Regime, one Ian Boudreau commented on BlueSky that there didn't seem to be a real plan to anything Trump is doing:
QUOTE:
Smarter people than me are obviously going through the details on all of this stuff, but I genuinely don't see how any of the multiple insane things Trump is doing right now ever actually work out.
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I replied: "I wish I'd said that." -- and added: "Trump is good at wrecking things, but he can't get anything done. He's not even GOOD at being BAD. It's just a question of how much damage he does before it collapses in a heap." Boudreau then suggested that Trump might be able to succeed if he tried things one at a time, but:
QUOTE:
How are you going to win an unpopular standoff with NATO when you're also engaging in a deeply unpopular siege on one of your own cities? None of this stuff works together as any kind of a "grand plan".
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Boudreau finds the ICE invasion of Minneapolis frightening, but suggests: "There is no conceivable way that DHS, even with National Guard backup, can do this in multiple large cities at once over a prolonged period."
How about Trump's legal persecution of political opponents? "Launch investigations of political opponents. Okay, then what? What happens when a judge inevitably tosses the case because it's stupid? Doesn't matter, deal with that later."
And lest we forget: "Demolish the White House East Wing for the ballroom. But the plans aren't finished, we don't have permits, ETC ETC -- so it's just going to be dumb catastrophes until, well, whatever happens."
I commented: "I'm reading hints that Trump's stooges like Bondi and Hegseth know their efforts to legally persecute his critics are going nowhere -- but Trump is demanding that they do so anyway." Again, we will get through this, but with how much damage in the meantime?
DAYLOG TUE 20 JAN 26 / ANDROID ILLUSION: The idea of building an android, a "mechanical man", goes back centuries, with famous "clockwork androids" that could perform a few tasks, like play a tune on a harpsichord. Since the 1960s, high tech has been applied to android design -- most notably Disney's robot attractions.
As of late, with the artificial intelligence revolution, there's been work, particularly in China, on androids that can perform martial arts or dance moves, with many sophisticated androids showing up at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. An article by Victor Tangermann from FUTURISM suggested even flashy modern androids leave much to be desired: "Robots Have a Small Problem: They Completely Suck" (17 jan 26).
Techlords are promising that androids will be able to leverage the powers of modern AI tech to help us out with household tasks or taking care of the elderly. In January 2025, NVidia CEO Jensen Huang said: "The ChatGPT moment for general robotics is just around the corner." Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicts demand for his company's Optimus robot will be "insatiable".
Alas, the robots demonstrated at the CES show were generally unimpressive. Yes, they could do dance or martial arts moves, but a robot meant to fold a stack of towels failed miserably, and a kitchen robot simply acted confused. Since the androids don't always know what they are doing, they pose major safety and liability problems. Add to that the difficulties of keeping them charged up, and of course the cost. They just can't do what we want them to do, and are too expensive.
Going back to Isaac Asimov's robot stories of the last century, people have long been fascinated with androids, wanting machines that could do anything humans can do. The big problem is that it's hard to make a machine with such open-ended capabilities. It's not so hard to design a robot vacuum cleaner; a robot car poses much greater challenges, but seems doable over the longer run. Building an android that could deal with an open-ended range of ordinary household tasks, however, would be a monster job with an appropriate monster price.
Really, do modern dancing robots make more sense than classic Disney robots? They all amount to amusing toys, but not useful tools. We're still in the midst of an AI/automation revolution, but androids are not playing a serious role in it. The modern AI revolution seems to be trying to channel the personal-computing revolution of decades past, but even though AI is highly capable, consumers are suspicious that AI is totally oversold. Whether Musk likes it or not, household androids are not around the corner.
DAYLOG WED 21 JAN 26 / TRUMP'S ELECTION CHEATING: Fears that Trump will overturn future elections has been discussed here in the past. Many people worry about Trump "declaring martial law" and "canceling national elections", but law blogger Jay Kuo, writing in SUBSTACK / THE BIG PICTURE, points out there are a lot of things Trump can do to undermine elections, but he has no dictatorial ability to simply call them off. The states run elections, and any Federal effort to directly interfere with the vote would require massive effort, and have unforeseen consequences.
Trump is, in practice, focusing on three vote-suppression activities: gerrymandering efforts; executive orders (XO) around voting procedures; and DOJ efforts to interfere with state elections, particularly by demanding voter data.
Trump has put a lot of effort into mid-decade redistricting efforts to gerrymander states, but it hasn't proven very productive for him. In the first place, the states working on redistricting are already gerrymandered, so redistricting can't buy much. Yes, Texas did redistrict to gain five more Red seats, but California then redistricted to gain five Blue seats. Redistricting in other Red states has tended to go off the rails, notably with Indiana telling Trump: Won't happen. In the case of Texas, the Trump Regime's "ethnic cleansing" crackdown has alienated Hispanic voters, suggesting the redistricting there won't yield any results. Redistricting overall will obtain few, maybe no wins.
Trump's XOs have focused on "proof-of-citizenship requirements" for voters and a "received by election day" rule for mail-in ballots, with the Trump Regime threatening election funding for states that don't comply. Red states have complied, but Blue states have challenged the requirements in Federal court, with the courts so far judging against the Trump Regime.
The DOJ's demands for states to turn over voter files loaded with sensitive voter data have met the same fate, with only Red states complying, since the files would be used to undermine voting rights or to retaliate against Blue voters -- the request being basically unlawful. Arizona's Secretary of State, Adrian Fontes, simply replied: "Pound sand."
Of course, beyond that the Trump Regime clearly intends to challenge election results in court with claims of fraud -- but they did that in 2020, and got nowhere. Obviously, election officials will need to be diligent to make sure the claims don't go anywhere in the future.
DAYLOG THU 22 JAN 26 / A BIPOLAR WORLD: One Toby Buckle, writing on LIBERAL CURRENTS, stated: "Liberalism Did Not Fail, Conservatism Did" (20 jan 26) -- neatly summarizing that which is apparent to anyone with at least half a brain these days.
TB begins by posing the question: "Why has liberalism failed?" -- to then point out it's a bogus question. Traditional liberals have not been defecting to vote for Trump, and in fact they are apparently becoming more radical, embracing the anti-Trump "resistance". He writes: "It is not mainline liberalism that has lost adherents; it's everyone else."
We've had "Never Trump" GOP defect to the Democrats, but they're a tiny minority, with conservatives much more typically shifting Right. In France and Britain, far Right parties have swollen, taking members away from center Right parties. In the USA, libertarians -- whose rhetoric sometimes seem to suggest "ultra-liberals" -- have ended up sounding more like fascists.
TB: "For all the premature obituaries, liberalism is probably stronger now than it was a decade ago -- in terms of both raw numbers of believers, and the strength of their belief." They just haven't benefited much from the shift to the far Right.
As the Right has consolidated, so has the Left. In the USA, the hard Left still often denounces Democrats to the Right of them, but it doesn't carry much weight as all the Left moves in "an egalitarian, pro-LBGT, pro-environment direction". Zohran Mamdani understood this, winning election as NYC mayor by choosing his battles carefully, willing to take on Andrew Cuomo, but otherwise not picking fights with moderate Democrats -- Mamdani clearly understanding that moderates weren't unhappy with his agenda, indeed found it attractive.
Those ideologically focused on specific issues have been forced to pick a side. Feminists are effectively Democrats: anti-vaxxers, who once included the far Right and the hard Left, are now Trump voters. The end result is two big voting blocs of comparable size.
The puzzle in this scheme of things is what TB calls "reactionary centrism" -- meaning a push towards compromise positions on the basis that the shift Right has been driven by the excesses of the Left. Britain's Labour Party is the prime example, but only has proven self-defeating, losing voters, mostly to the Left, because of dominance by an illusion. Labour has tried to tapdance around the rights of transfolk, as a big example, not understanding that the tapdancing gains them nothing and loses them a lot.
As TB concludes, the reality is simple: "We must unite our own coalition and oppose the enemy one. ... There is no point trying to find a middle ground with fascism; rather we should aim for positions that are broadly acceptable to everyone in the liberal team."
DAYLOG FRI 23 JAN 26 / BOT ARMIES: It's obvious there's a lot of trolling on BlueSky, often engaging in organized campaigns to tear down Democratic politicians. They pretend to be on the Left, but only appear to be trying to divide the Left.
An article from EURONEWS ("Cheap online fake accounts make misinformation a 'thriving underground market', study finds" by Roselyne Min, 12 dec 25) cites a Cambridge University study that lends weight to this perception. In early December, the university set up a website titled the "Cambridge Online Trust and Safety Index (COTSI)", which tracks the cost of verifying fake accounts across more than 500 platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, Amazon, Spotify and Uber.
Building the index implied an understanding of the nature of fake accounts -- which are often used to built "bot armies" to run scams or spread disinformation. Jon Roozenbeek, a senior author of the study and a computational social psychologist at the Cambridge, writes: "We find a thriving underground market through which inauthentic content, artificial popularity, and political influence campaigns are readily and openly for sale."
The bots simulate "grassroots support", or promote controversy to harvest clicks and game exposure algorithms. Roozenbeek adds: "Generative AI means that bots can now adapt messages to appear more human and even tailor them to relate to other accounts. Bot armies are getting more persuasive and harder to spot."
Vendors providing the bots may have banks of thousands of SIM chips -- which control smartphone accounts -- and can generate fake accounts for pennies each. Sellers may provide customer support, bulk deals, and special services. The vendors often use Russian and Chinese payment systems, with grammar on many vendor sites suggesting Russian authorship.
The Cambridge researchers believe that tighter SIM rules and enforcing ID checks would curb the bot market by raising verification costs. Earlier in 2026, the UK became the first country in Europe to outlaw SIM farms, and the Cambridge team says COTSI will help determine the impact of that policy. Websites that provide account location data can help identify bots -- though that isn't foolproof.
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