Jim Douglas 🇨🇦

Wow, what was the natural disaster, hurricane, tornado, blizzard? Nope, the government just chose to stop working.

As Alanis might say, isn’t it ironic that Trump calls everyone he doesn't like a communist as he sits in the White House plotting to seize the means of production.

Weizenbaum’s nightmares: how the inventor of the first chatbot turned against AI Computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum was there at the dawn of artificial intelligence – but he was also adamant that we must never confuse computers with humans

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

ELIZA effect - Wikipedia

It doesn’t even take anything that we would call intelligence. In 1966, one of the first primitive chatbots was Eliza, and people frequently thought it showed deep human insight when it was basically a very stupid parrot.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_e...

“Totally unrelated, but the confusion is understandable.”

Watching those guys whose job is to unclog streams after they’ve been filled in by beavers, I’m imagining some extremely frustrated beavers coming home every day wondering who keeps destroying their handiwork.

“For my friends everything, for my enemies the law.”

They don't even try to hide the corruption; they're convinced they're invulnerable. In fairness, SCOTUS has given Trump pretty good reasons to assume he's invulnerable.

As Krugman notes, even if Trump loses this particular case in the Supreme Court, he'll immediately pick another pretext for his tariffs.

www.cbc.ca/news/world/u...

Yup, Canada published detailed rounding rules ahead of the transition…details that would never occur to Trump.

www.budget.canada.ca/2012/themes/...

The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats A memo for my fellow filthy rich who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won’t last.

www.politico.com/magazine/sto...

YouTube video by Remember When Schoolhouse Rock! (1973): 15 Weird Facts You Didn't Know

This is how gen x Canadian kids learned about American government every Saturday morning.

youtu.be/d6ORS8z9L8I?...

Adam and Eve under an apple tree with a snake sort of peering down at them

Did Women Ruin The Workplace

Right. Canada phased out the penny in 2012, but not abruptly based on a whim. There was a plan and schedule and it was handled smoothly.

www.mint.ca/en/blog/2022...

Why Canada is seeing an influx of U.S. doctors After Donald Trump was sworn in as U.S. president, this Michigan-based doctor said it was a wake-up call and decided to move to Canada.

There are a few niche cases, with other rich democracies explicitly recruiting American researchers and healthcare workers. But in general, it’s not easy to move to a rich democracy; you have to have specific skills or wealth.

www.ctvnews.ca/health/artic...

I always liked the way Heinlein put this: “Man isn’t a rational animal, he’s a rationalizing animal.” It's a concise description of motivated reasoning, decades before the concept was mainstream.

Yes, J.D., that's how co-equal branches works; maybe you need to go back and watch Schoolhouse Rock?

For a guy who calls everyone he doesn't like a communist, he spends a lot of time seizing the means of production.

In the U.S. in 2025, the occupant of a major government building does the dynamiting himself.

In all seriousness, I'm convinced that he's literally a sociopath. There's no indication that he understands that other humans are fully human; his only concern is always about himself.

incredible photo that's definitely worth at least 1,000 words from Andrew Harnik of Getty

Internal Server Error

Intermittent:

Because they can't afford to buy groceries, I'm assuming.

Quinn wearing a Portland Frog hat, asymmetrical glasses, and a maroon sweater

For real, if you can knit, whip up a Portland Frog hat or similar. I wore this it out this morning and the looks of joy on the way, especially from one of the construction workers. It's a small thing to say someone's paying attention to what's going on. #DHmakes swatch.ravelry.com/patterns/lib...

I'm going to a birthday party In a few weeks for my cousin's daughter's daughter, who calls me Uncle Jim. I was surprised to learn that this makes me ineligible for elective office.

Setting aside his chronic innumeracy, I really wish somebody would ask the guy who's currently focused on personally seizing the means of production if he can define communism.

When you’re constantly pulling numbers out of your ass, they all start to look the same.

Also an excellent visualization of Bannon promising that they’ve found a clever hack to keep Trump in office past 2029. They all treat rule of law as if there’s always a word game they can play to do whatever they feel like doing.

Seems like an unorthodox pitch to the Nobel committee.