The solidarity of American communities in the face of catastrophe, whether natural or manmade, is an aspect of our national character that most of us cherish. We never tire of stories about our fellow citizens upholding one another at the worst of times. We venerate the firefighters, emergency service workers, law enforcement officers and ordinary neighbors whose endurance and sacrifice hold communities together against cruel circumstance — without regard to race, creed, color, gender or partisan affiliation.

Or at least we did during much of our history. Yet as huge swaths of Los Angeles are consumed by wildfire, it is striking to see those traditional American values torched by a self-serving coterie of right-wing billionaires, whose loyalty to any principle beyond self-aggrandizement is nil: Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk and of course their political avatar Donald Trump, the president-elect.

While the LA blaze rages on, all three of these men have used their gigantic public platforms to stoke a different but exceptionally destructive conflagration. Rather than encourage patriotic bonding and mutual aid, they broadcast messages of division, hatred and suspicion, served up in a poisonous stew of blatant lies, conspiracy theories and wretched nonsense.

Even as the Los Angeles Fire Department's undaunted officers and leaders work around the clock, confronting danger and tragedy in every moment, loudmouths like Musk have the temerity to attack them, prattling on about "DEI," the effort to mitigate decades of discrimination. Neither the Tesla mogul nor Murdoch's blithering minions on the Fox News Channel — who are shocked that the LA fire chief is a lesbian — have produced a shred of evidence to show that diversity hinders firefighting. They never will. For the purposes of right-wing Republican propaganda, facts and logic are irrelevant and annoying.

The AI bubble is the new crypto bubble: you can tell because the same people are behind it, and they're doing the same thing with AI as they did with crypto – trying desperately to find a use case to cram it into, despite the yawning indifference and outright hostility of the users:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

This week on the excellent Trashfuture podcast, the regulars – joined by 404 Media's Jason Koebler – have a hilarious – as in, I was wheezing with laughter! – riff on this year's CES, where companies are demoing home appliances with LLMs built in:

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-hgi6c-179b908

Why would you need a chatbot in your dishwasher? As it turns out, there's a credulous, Poe's-law-grade Forbes article that lays out the (incredibly stupid) case for this (incredibly stupid) idea:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2024/03/29/generative-ai-is-coming-to-your-home-appliances/

As the Trashfuturians mapped out this new apex of the AI hype cycle, I found myself thinking of a short story I wrote 15 years ago, satirizing the "Internet of Things" hype we were mired in. It's called "The Brave Little Toaster", and it was published in MIT Tech Review's TRSF anthology in 2011:

http://bestsf.net/trsf-the-best-new-science-fiction-technology-review-2011/

On Tuesday, Santa Ana winds swept seaward through Southern California, scattering embers and then fanning flames of a growing wildfire. By nighttime, residents received urgent text alerts warning of potential 100 mph gusts—a terrifying escalation that transformed a precarious situation into a full-blown crisis. As the winds howled, more embers took flight, sparking new fires in dry, brittle brushlands that hadn’t seen significant rain in over eight months.

Los Angeles County, primed by drought-like conditions, was a tinderbox waiting for a spark. Firefighters faced an uphill battle against windsso severe that airplanes used to drop water and flame retardants were grounded. Officials warned in a Wednesday morning press release that “all residents of Los Angeles county are in danger.” Evacuation orders have since displaced tens of thousands of residents, with thousands more awaiting updates. By Wednesday evening, three major fires had consumed over 13,000 acres with containment efforts lagging: the Palisades Fire in Pacific Palisades and Malibu, Hurst Fire in Sylmar, and Eaton Fire near Pasadena have showed no signs of slowing down, are at the time of writing 0 percent contained, and have already become the most destructive in Californian history.

The fires turned catastrophic so quickly because of unusually dry and windy conditions: “Any little spark, whether from a lightning strike or a person or a campfire is going to quickly, quickly escalate,” says Jennifer Marlon, research scientist and lecturer at the Yale School of the Environment and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. “Once a fire starts in these conditions, it’s very, very hard to get under control,” adds Kaitlyn Trudeau, senior research associate of climate science at the nonprofit news organization Climate Central.

Santa Ana winds events aren’t uncommon. “We see it every single year at this time,” says Jason Moreland, senior meteorologist at emergency communications platform AlertMedia. These downhill winds, which originate inland, are caused by a dry high-pressure system coming from the northwest, and a low, humid pressure system from the south. “It’s like if you have a hose and you fold it in half to cut off the water. If you prick a hole in the side, you have a lot of pressure to get out,” explains Trudeau. “That’s basically what’s happening with the air.”

WASHINGTON, Jan 8 (Reuters) - The number of untraceable privately-made "ghost guns" recovered at crime scenes surged nearly 1,600% between 2017 and 2023, according to the results of a new federal gun trafficking study released on Wednesday.

The study's results, announced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), come after President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland in April 2021 directed the agency to oversee a new research initiative to better understand how criminals in the United States obtain their guns.

The study found between 2017 and 2023, 92,702 suspected privately made firearms or "ghost guns," which can be obtained without background checks and do not contain serial numbers, were recovered and reported to law enforcement.
During that same time frame, the number of ghost guns recovered in crimes grew from 1,629 to 27,490, the ATF said. About 1,700 of them have been tied to homicides, while another 4,000 have been linked to a number of other violent crimes.

The recoveries of illicit machine gun conversion devices, which are used to convert semi-automatic weapons into machine guns, also increased 784%, from 658 in 2019 to 5,816 in 2023, the ATF found.

When Whitney Martin, of Fort Worth, Texas, suddenly lost her job near the end of 2023, she made the difficult decision to move back in with her mom. One thing the recently divorced mother of one knew she wanted when she did so was for the move to be temporary.

“My budget was very, very tight, but my mom’s apartment wasn’t large and I knew I needed a place to store everything until I got back on my feet, so I vowed to make it work,” she says. For $45 a month, Martin signed a rental agreement for a 10-by-10 storage unit to hold furniture, home decor, toys, clothing, and boxes of work and personal documents. After renting a truck and asking her mom and a friend to spend an afternoon getting everything into the unit, she had peace of mind knowing her belongings were safe and sound.

Two months later, that tranquil feeling was shot as the monthly bill for the unit suddenly jumped to $75. Martin reluctantly paid the higher amount, mainly because she couldn’t spare the time and money to find another storage company and move everything and because she continued to believe she wouldn’t be living with her mom much longer. “No one had told me the $45 would be an introductory offer or anything like that,” Martin says, “and when I called them to complain, they just told me the agreement I signed said the rates were subject to change.” She thought such contractual language was standard, but never expected her rate to almost double in 60 days.

Then her monthly rate increased again. And again. “In less than a year, my $45 fee had jumped to $220 a month, and there appeared to be no end in sight,” she explains. “I would have paid $495 for the 11 months I used at the rate I was originally promised. Instead, I ended up paying close to $2,000.” She finally moved all her belongings out.

You're not fooling me, Jimmy Carter. You did that on purpose! Dying when you did, I mean.

You chose last month to grab the global political spotlight once more to make a statement with the only Earthly move you had left: checking out. What better way to make people ponder the state of political integrity in America than to reflect on how the Trump Kakistocracy is moving its arrogant billionaires, corporate grifters and ideological tyrants into our White House.

Sure enough, media coverage of Carter's death highlighted his modest life in Plains, Georgia, plus the personal values of fairness and honesty that led him to a lifetime of roll-up-your-sleeves humanitarian efforts. What a damning contrast to the tawdry greedfest on display at Mar-a-Lago, with supposedly respectable corporate executives flocking to "get theirs" in Donald Trump's sell-off of government favors and public offices.

And how amazed Carter must have been to see the gilded Trumpers flagrantly rejecting any pretense that theirs is to be a government of and for The People. He even saw Elon Musk — the prancing prince of plutocratic pomposity — practically move into Trump's Florida mansion to shape the new government. To put a gloss of legitimacy on Musk's self-serving role, Trump grandly named him head of an imaginary federal office he calls the "Department of Government Efficiency." This DOGE should be pronounced "dodgy," for it doesn't actually exist and has no authority. But Musk is nonetheless flitting about officiously announcing that he will eliminate major programs that benefit people, while increasing government funding for — surprise! — corporations like his.

I made a few New Year's resolutions this week — not for me, but as self-improvement ideas for some of the people running our country. No need for them to thank me — happy to help.

I drafted one for the GOP's whole ultra-rightist gaggle of lawmakers who keep blocking passage of health coverage for poor people. "Resolved: We will forgo the gold-plated socialized health care we now take from taxpayers, because it's only right that we be in the same leaky boat as our constituents."

Then there are America's 735 narcissistic billionaires who obviously need to find a moral compass. They're so self-absorbed they keep wasting their money and "genius" on phantasmagoric plutocratic schemes to separate their fortunes from the well-being of the rest of us. Then they wonder why they are not beloved. So, rich ones, let me help. Resolve in 2024 to demonstrate a little less hubris/a little more humanity, less strut/more sharing. Practice in front of a mirror — try seeing beyond you to the Common Good. It's a beautiful and deeply rewarding place, if you can find it.

And I didn't overlook you Washington operatives and Big Money donors of the Democratic Party. Please resolve to camp out in grassroots America this year — where everyday little-d democrats want and need your attention and support. Not just in safe blue districts but especially in rural, purple and even in red areas. You've abandoned them in recent years, but they still yearn to build a progressive governing majority for America's future.
Of course, the problem with New Year's resolutions is keeping them, and my honorees can't be counted on. So, we have to keep pushing them to do what's right.

The internet is a dangerous place. There are websites that will happily deliver you malware, or display violent or sexual imagery after your child unsuspectingly clicks on a link. While there are lots of ways to protect yourself when browsing online, there’s one quick way to protect everyone who uses your home’s internet network at once, by using something called an alternative Domain Name System resolver.

Every time you tap a link or enter a URL into a browser, that link gets translated (or “resolved”) from the letters you typed in (e.g., Slate.com) to an IP address (e.g., 151.101.130.133). The phonebook of sorts that makes this happen is called the Domain Name System, or DNS. The DNS runs on servers all over the world, known as DNS resolvers. You probably use the DNS resolver run by your internet service provider, if you got the router from them and never changed the settings. (Imagine a guy at Verizon sitting in a room looking up the letters you typed and converting them to an IP address, and then sending you on your way—it’s like that, but a computer instead of a guy.)

The trouble with these default lookup systems is that, often, they are not very discerning: If your second grader types in Pornhub.com, that DNS resolver will go right ahead and resolve that to its IP address, and send your kid out into an area of the internet they shouldn’t yet know about. If you look up a site that will deliver malware to your computer, the DNS resolver may just be like: Yes, go right ahead.

The other thing is: Those internet service providers are seeing everything you look up. If you find this a little disturbing from a privacy perspective, you’re not alone! Comcast is one of the good guys in the space (I was surprised, too). They address DNS directly in their privacy policy, noting, “Comcast does not use Comcast DNS data for marketing, advertising, or sales purposes, and does not sell this data to third parties for any purpose.” Verizon, on the other hand, explicitly states that they do use your DNS lookups to “predict your interests, preferences and other insights we use in the program.” That “other insights” covers, uh, a lot of potential uses.

In the waning days of 2024, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his company Meta took on 91 senators, a bipartisan group of representatives, President-elect Donald Trump’s son, Trump ally Elon Musk, and a coalition of parents who thought this would be the year Congress passed legislation to protect kids online.

Zuckerberg and Meta won.

Congress left Washington without passing the Kids Online Safety Act after coming closer than ever to imposing rules on social media to prevent the addiction and mental health harms the sites are widely agreed to cause. Zuckerberg can thank House Speaker Mike Johnson for closing the door on it this Congress. Once reviled by Republicans for kicking Trump off Facebook, the outcome shows how well Zuckerberg and Meta have restored a rapport.

“At the end of the day, we see the influence of these platforms is really powerful and they want to stop this legislation and any other tech legislation by any means necessary,” said Alix Fraser, vice president of technology reform at Issue One, an advocacy group that supports the Kids Online Safety Act.

Zuckerberg’s company Meta, the parent of Facebook and the photo-sharing site Instagram, led the way in opposing it. A team of 14 lobbyists employed directly by Meta, as well as outside firms, worked the issue, federal lobbying disclosure forms show. The advocates included past aides to House Republicans, including Greg Maurer, a former staffer to then-House GOP Leader John Boehner; Christopher Herndon, who worked for Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.); and Elizabeth Carroll, who was on the staff of former Rep. Scott Taylor (R-Va.).

This holiday season got me to thinking about America's spirit of giving, and I don't mean this overdone business of Christmas, Hanukkah and other holiday gifts. I mean our true spirit of giving — giving of ourselves.

Yes, we are a country of rugged individualists, yet there's also a deep, community-minded streak in each of us. We're a people who believe in the notion that we're all in this together, that we can make our individual lives better by contributing to the common good.

The establishment media pay little attention to grassroots generosity, focusing instead on the occasional showy donation by what it calls "philanthropists" — big tycoons who give a little piece of their billions to some university or museum in exchange for getting a building named after them. But in my mind, the real philanthropists are the millions of you ordinary folks who have precious little money to give, but consistently give of themselves, and do it without demanding that their name be engraved on a granite wall.

My own Daddy, rest his soul, was a fine example of this. With half a dozen other guys in Denison, Texas, he started the Little League baseball program volunteering to build the park, sponsor and coach the teams, run the squawking PA system, etc. Even after I graduated from Little League, Daddy stayed working at it, because his involvement was not merely for his kids ... but for all. He felt the same way about being taxed to build a public library in town. I don't recall him ever going in that building, much less checking out a book, but he wanted it to be there for the community and he was happy to pay his part. Not that he was a do-good liberal, for God's sake — indeed, he called himself a conservative.

My Daddy didn't even know he had a political philosophy, but he did, and it's the best I've ever heard. He would often say to me, "Everybody does better when everybody does better." If only our leaders in Washington and on Wall Street would begin practicing this true American philosophy.