Trump’s EPA now says greenhouse gases don’t endanger people, per NPR….

_______________

NEW BOOK

I’ve been reading Douglas Rushkoff’s new book, Survival of the Richest, about what he calls the Mindset of the wealthiest, and read today that “we” now have 902 billionaires in the USA, as reported by Forbes. It is difficult to assess how many are wed to AI, but Rushkoff suggests that the leading edge are both enamored and encouraging of it [and perhaps already profiting from it?].

He quotes Gabe Newell, billionaire founder of the game platform Valve in Wired, the human body is a mere “meat peripheral” that is resistant to upgrades or repair and “not at all reflective of consumer preference.” Virtual reality will give users more “choice” over their perception and experience of the world. “The real world will seem flat, colorless, blurry compared to the experience you’ll be able to create in people’s brains.”

Oculus Rift Chief Technologist Officer John Cormack explained on the Joe Rogan podcast, “VR [virtual reality] is the new solution to climate change–or maybe the ultimate surrender to its inevitability. As resources vanish and economic conditions worsen, technological simulations can fill in where real wealth has disappeared [from you?] The author says, “After all, it’s called an iPad, not an usPad.”

This is not to say that all the 902 USA billionaires want great things from AI.* They do appear to plan to reject (and use) those with lower intelligence than them. (But it’s money that anoints them, not an IQ test?). Musk explained in a Vanity Fair article that one of his reasons for colonizing Mars is to have a “bolt hole” if AI goes rogue. [How many people of less wealth and intelligence will be included in the bolt hole?]

Could the new regime be getting even with God? Who else? …And in my book the destruction of baled, ready to go food in the face of human starvation is not a ticket to whatever pleasant afterlife there might be. Bearing false witness, murder, adultery, theft…. In his final chapter, Rushkoff writes that there’s “no escape, and there is no later. If we’re not doing it at the moment, we’re not doing it at all.”

*With very few exceptions

______________

SHAMED BY MEXICAN LARGESSE

Check out Google for descriptions of many recent instances of Mexican firefighters aiding their U.S. neighbors, and apparently continuing to do so.

______________

POEMETTE

Look Upward

Each dances to its own beat

separately: grape vine leaves

in the sky, kissed by wind–

oh my!

No, not in pairs; all alone

together, sparkling the day

as the air shuffles through.

Cha cha cha

Nan