July 16, 17, 18

 Good Morning all.

Some early morning reading:

From CNN a bit of history and remembrance.

The summer heat is setting records all over. This is Italy. And Ekathimerini.com posted this heat map for Greece. Al Jazeera covers the summer conditions around the world: floods, heat, rivers drying up.

Heather Cox Richardson provides an article on the Draft Riots in New York City one hundred years ago. It is a perfect example of "the more things change, the more they stay the same." Though we don't have the draft any more the economic and racial/social problems remain along with politicians who seek to gain advantage by fanning the flames.

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The weather people expect that temperatures in Death Valley will challenge the records. The news last night featured idiots who are visiting Death Valley to "see what it feels like." Perhaps they would like to visit Pennsylvania and see what it feels like to drown.

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It might be sunny today. Hard to tell this early especially since the winds are moving the smoke from Canada down here. I don't know how much I will get read or how much I can comment on because our internet company is working on their system. It keeps going in and out and in again.

Heather Cox Richardson posted an essay this morning that goes along with what I have been hearing on the news. All of the discussion comes on heels of The Former (and I hope not Future) Guy declaring what he plans for his next stint in the White House. As Mom and I talked about it this morning I made the observation that the only people who actually remember a time that such plans came into being are now her age (in her 90s). There is a term for what The Florida Retiree wants to build: fascism. However, there is a factor not often mentioned and it showed in the poll I linked to a couple of days ago which shows a deep feeling in the country that democracy isn't working--especially that the democratic system isn't addressing their needs. Ideas have a life cycle. They don't die but the do become old and go dormant until conditions allow them to be resuscitated.

Maya Bodnick decided to test how well ChatGPT-4 would score on essay questions professors and teaching assistants might assign for take home tests. Result: very well indeed. The question is how will AI impact education?

Andrew Cockburn has an intriguing subtitle on his article this morning: The military industrial complex is not actually designed to fight wars. He makes a pretty good case and adds to my skepticism that Pentagon really needs a budget closing in on $1trillion.