Author: A.T.

Two Astonishing Things (One Of Them, TOTALLY Astonishing)

DID YOU LIKE SEINFELD?  VEEP? 

If you missed Monday’s Zoom with Nebraska Senate candidate Dan Osborn, consider signing up for this one with Julia Louis-Dreyfus — Sunday 7pm EDT.  As before, you can “buy” a free ticket and decide whether and how much to give once you hear the pitch.  I, for one, was impressed.

But this is not one of the astonishing things.

DO YOU LIKE TAYLOR SWIFT?  THE 76-ERS?  CRUISING TO COZUMEL?

Andy Cohen?  Stephen Colbert?  Shakira?  P!nk?

Sign up — or get your kids or grandkids to signup — to earn free raffle tickets at FanOut.Vote.

That is not one of the astonishing things, either.

The first astonishing thing is Jack Smith’s 165-page brief outlining in damning detail how defendant Trump acted to cling to power after losing the 2020 election.  No Trump supporters will read it, just as none read the Mueller Report. (Known to movie lovers as, the “I’m not listening!” approach to knowledge acquisition).  But choosing not to know something doesn’t make it any less true.

Not being a Trump supporter, maybe you’ll breeze through it this weekend.  (They are double-spaced pages.)

The second — TOTALLY — astonishing thing is this 14-minute audio clip.

Two experts talking colloquially about artificial intelligence.

What makes it astonishing is that the two experts are not human. 

It is a conversation about AI between two AI’s.

As veteran computer scientist Gregory Miller — who co-founded the OSET Institute and TrustTheVote and has his own, real, podcast — explained it for me:

This clip is from a podcast that explains a new audio AI technology that greatly enhances the emerging conversational capabilities of AI agents.

There is just one completely wild twist: the podcast participants engaged in this conversation about how this new level of conversational AI tech works… are both AI agents themselves.

They’re not real; they don’t exist; they’re figments of two machines’ creation.

Both were fed a blog post from computer scientist Simon Willison and subsequently autonomically generated a real-time, on-the-fly conversation with one another.

What makes it so ridiculously authentic is the integration of disfluencies. . . language elements such as changes in tone, pauses, “ums” and “ahs” . . . because, well, no one can listen to a pair of robots with mechanical-audio voices talk with one another.

It boldly illustrates the deep and disturbing depth of AI deep-fake potential.

Sure, AI may cure cancer and Parkinsons and solve the climate crisis.  That’s nice.  But as it races along, where will actual humans fit in?  And what if someone decides to use it for ill?

“I fear it is unstoppable and uncontrollable,” I wrote Miller.

“Unstoppable, yes,” he agreed, “but not uncontrollable.  We need responsive and responsible regulation.  And on this point, I cannot overemphasize how urgent it is to have the right technologists at the tables of policy formulation.”

My sense is that he should be one of them.

BONUS – Humor from Our Neighbor to the North

America: Have You Lost Your Mind?

 

40 Trillion Gallons Of Water / CNF / SQNS

John Kitsteiner’s Note to Friends Outside of the South:

We live in Greene County, East Tennessee. Our county’s southern border is the Tennessee-North Carolina state line that runs along the heights of the Appalachian Mountains. We are within the hardest hit region of the U.S.

The questions I have been hearing a lot is why was this so bad, and why weren’t people prepared. I’ll try to answer those questions in the following post.

Hurricane Helene was the strongest hurricane (in recorded history) to hit Florida’s big bend region (on the eastern edge of the panhandle). It is the deadliest hurricane to hit the United States since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The death toll is over 160 so far. We are still finding bodies, and there are still many, many people missing as I write this today six days after the hurricane hit land.

I work in the emergency department at Greeneville Community Hospital. The hospital itself has been evacuated because we have no water in the majority of the county. We are still running our emergency department as a critical access site for our community. Fortunately, I have a well and didn’t lose electricity for long. I was able to haul water in a 300 gallon tote in the back of my truck to the hospital for the first few days so we could flush toilets and wash hands. It took a few days, but we now have porta-potties and water tanks on trucks to keep the emergency department running.

Under an hour from our hospital to the east, Unicoi County Hospital was flooded requiring patients and providers to be rescued from the roof via helicopter.

Under an hour from our hospital to the south, over the mountains, Asheville, NC has been hit particularly hard.

But why was this region hit so hard?

First, we had a lot of rain before Hurricane Helene even showed up. Depending on the area, we had 7-11 inches of rain in the week before the first storm clouds of the hurricane arrived. This rain saturated the ground and filled ponds and streams.

Then the hurricane arrived. She barreled her way up through the panhandle of Florida, quickly shot through Georgia, and then slowed down and stalled over North Carolina and East Tennessee. And that’s right where we live.

The reason she stalled involves atmospheric pressure conditions that I don’t fully understand, but the result was that this hurricane dropped 20 inches to over 30 inches of rain in some areas… that’s an estimated 40 trillion gallons of rain.

How much is 40 trillion gallons of water?

40 trillion gallons of water is enough to cover the entire state of North Carolina with 3.5 FEET of water.

40 trillion gallons of water is enough to fill 60 MILLION Olympic-sized swimming pools.

40 trillion gallons of water is 619 DAYS of water flowing over Niagara Falls.

So this is an unprecedented amount of rain already falling on an area that had just received ground-saturated rain.

But it wasn’t just the amount of rain, it was the geography of where that rain fell.

The southeastern slopes (of western North Carolina) and the northwestern slopes (of East Tennessee) acted as funnels or rain catchments that directed all this water downhill and concentrated it into streams and rivers running into the valleys. It overflowed these streams and rivers causing massive flooding.

How much flooding?

The French Broad River usually crests at 1.5 feet… but it reached 24.6 feet during the storm.

The Nolichuckey River rose to almost 22 feet. The Nolichuckey River Dam in Greene County, during the peak of the flooding, took on 1.2 MILLION gallons of water per SECOND. Compare that to Niagara Falls which peaks at 700,000 gallons per second. Fortunately, this dam held… but barely, with damage.

Consequences.

The flooding, and all the things the flooding carried with it (large trees, vehicles, buildings, etc.) caused widespread damage. It destroyed homes and businesses. It destroyed roads and bridges. It knocked out power.

This isolated many places for days and days from normal rescue efforts and evacuation plans.

Here in Greene County, the flooding destroyed the intake pump for the county’s primary water supply. We hope they will be able to bring in a temporary pump to bypass the damaged system, but that still may take a couple weeks. In the meantime, most people in the county have no clean water for drinking, washing hands, or bathing, and no water for sanitation.

I have taken care of people in the emergency department who had their homes literally washed away. Everything they own, other than the clothes on their back, has been lost. Many friends have had their homes almost destroyed by flooding and their houses are filled with mud and debris.

And this is just in my immediate area. Other places around us have unfortunately been hit harder.

Why weren’t people prepared?

No one in the mountains of North Carolina or East Tennessee prepares for a hurricane.

It’s kind of like asking why someone in Iowa doesn’t prepare for a tidal wave or why someone in Florida doesn’t prepare for a blizzard. It’s not what happens, like ever.

This was a combination of already rain-saturated ground before the hurricane hit, the hurricane/storm stalling over this region dumping unprecedented amounts of rainfall in a small area, and the geography of mountains channeling and concentrating all this water into the valleys below that created a perfect storm, so to speak, of conditions that caused this disaster.

It couldn’t have been prevented or prepared for.

Please feel free to share this. Hopefully it answers some questions and provides a better understanding of what has happened and why it is so devastating.

Pride goeth before the fall, so I don’t want to shout this too loudly . . . but of the 15 stocks I commented on six weeks ago, only one is down much (OPRT, from $3.13 to $2.82, making it, I hope, an even better moonshot) . . . most are up 10% or 20% (vs. 3% for the market as a whole) . . . and three have done really nicely:

> PRKR — up 150%.  I haven’t sold.

> CNF — also up 150% — in just the last couple of days, no less, on enormous volume, I don’t know why.  Yesterday, I sold some for a tax loss, holding all those in which I have a profit.

> SQNS — up 100%.  That $200 million they were supposed to get . . . they got.  So with something like $1 a share in cash net of debt, and a profitable business, I’m betting on its going higher.

 

NOT TO BE MISSED

This first clip starts with the guy who founded your local Walgreens and financed some pro-Hitler stuff . . . introduces you to Elizabeth Dilling, “the female Führer” . . . and leads to J.D. Vance following in at least a few of her footsteps — calling for the end of the American Republic.

This second picks up with Vance saying that most of American culture should be “ripped out like a tumor” and citing the ideas of Curtis Yarvin, who says “Americans are going to have to get over their dictator phobia.”

Putin and Trump feel exactly the same way!

They’ve been working on this for eight years now and are getting really close to a breakthrough.

(See, too: Tucker Carlson and the Right’s Love Affair with Dictators.)

In related news, it turns out there may be more going on with the Longshoremen’s strike — and it’s timing right before the election — than just a call for a 60% wage hike and a ban on increased productivity.

No, it turns out that the head of the union has close ties to Trump — and that they both have ties to the mob.

(Daggett was never convicted, though it should be noted that one of his co-defendants failed to show; his body was eventually found decomposing in the trunk of a car outside a New Jersey diner.)

“Read all about it” in this colorful tweet or (for example) in this more traditional report: Harold Daggett: How union leader who fought mob tie allegations is holding the US economy to ransom.

We need to win this election.

The whole free world is counting on it.

Pitch In!

Here’s how to volunteer locally.

 

Now I Just Have To Go Read The Other Four

5 Investment Books That Taught Me More Than an MBA (says a guy with 573,000 Instagram followers).

And in other news . . .

I spent an hour yesterday texting with a billionaire who holds Harvard Law and Harvard Business degrees and is an idiot.  (I say this with a mix of affection and frustration, as we’ve been friends for more than half a century.)

He calls Trump, with whom he used to golf, “dishonest” and a “monster,” so he’s not going to vote for him.

But he’s not going to vote for Kamala either.

He’s “sitting this one out.”

What???   

“You want socialism?” he asks.

Well, we already have socialism, I tell him, and have had it all his life.  Public schools, public roads, the social safety net.  So it’s not as though extending $35 insulin to all who need it, not just seniors . . . and providing first-time-buyer assistance to promote private homeownership and $50,000 tax incentives to promote small-business start-ups . . . would suddenly push us over the cliff from capitalism to socialism.

“You want open borders and 13,000 convicted murderers RELEASED into the USA?” he asks.

Leave aside that it is Trump who killed the bipartisan bill that would finally have resolved the border crisis . . . so it is solely Trump who is responsible for it now.

Here’s the real story on those 13,000 murderers she has allowed to roam our streets:

> First, “the vast majority” (to quote ICE) arrived in the decades before Harris was Vice President — some of them when Trump was President.

> Second, most of them are not roaming the streets — they’re in prison.  See the difference?

(These two  stories provide the facts.)

But like all those Haitians terrorizing Springfield as they feast on dogs and cats, Trump cultists — and even idiots like my friend — don’t care.  They spread this stuff anyway.

He absolutely does not want Trump re-elected (and could easily afford to throw five or ten million dollars at the problem); yet won’t do the one most minimal thing he could do to help prevent it.  Vote.

Which makes our work that much harder.

Here’s how to volunteer locally.
 

Nasrallah Is Dead

Jonathan Elkhoury:

As a Lebanese, this is one of the happiest days in Lebanon’s history.

As a Middle Easterner, this is one of the most transformative days for the Middle East.

As a human being who holds peace before my eyes, this is the most important day for our region.

Nasrallah and Hezbollah have terrorized the Lebanese people since the 1980s. He is responsible for the continuous downfall of Lebanon’s economy and sovereignty. He bears responsibility for countless assassinations of fine Lebanese men and women, solely for opposing his grip on our precious country.

Nasrallah is also responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Syrian children, women, and men, as well as for other atrocities across the Middle East.

Every Lebanese and every decent human being should feel joy at the downfall of one of the greatest evils of our time.

Now, we have a real chance to look forward, ensuring Hezbollah’s weapons are handed over to the Lebanese authorities, and sitting down with Israelis and the West for genuine negotiations on normalization and peace between our countries—Israel and Lebanon.

Jared Kushner Says America Should Tell Israel To Finish The Job.

Not someone I would normally expect to link to; but read it and let me know what you think.

. . . today, with the confirmed killing of Nasrallah and at least 16 top commanders eliminated in just nine days, was the first day I started thinking about a Middle East without Iran’s fully loaded arsenal aimed at Israel. So many more positive outcomes are possible. . . .

No one knows the Middle East like Dennis Ross.  He and Prof. Sonnenfeld also see reason for hope:

Death of Hezbollah’s Nasrallah Brings New Chance for Peace

. . . Just when the prospect of peace in the Middle East seemed further away than ever, the dramatic death of longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah significantly alters the balance of power and offers a renewed opportunity for peace.  . . .

BONUS

Kathy M: “Perhaps, Eric Adams could pay his debt to society by sharing his culinary skills with KP duty in prison?!  And given the tragic deaths caused by Hurricane Helene, hats off to NOAA for saving us from an even worse outcome.  Yet, NOAA is on the Project 2025 hit list.”

I’m co-hosting this zoom TONIGHT at 6pm Eastern time.  Consider “buying” a free ticket — and ponying up if you like what you hear.

 

The Word From An Extraterrestrial Entity

Tough words for Steve Schwarzman (60 seconds).

I asked my classmate and friend of more than half a century (who abandoned Trump at one point but now is fully back on board) for his point of view, but, as of press time: no response.

JD Vance, meanwhile, in 2020 text messages, said Trump “thoroughly failed to deliver” — yet now (having also called him “America’s Hitler”) is fully on board.

Trump’s last VP — “hang Mike Pence” — has quite famously declared Trump should never be president again.

So, too, Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban.

Even Bashar, the “extraterrestrial entity from a parallel reality in the future” channeled by Darryl Anka, of whom I had not heard until today but who has millions of followers — and who until now has never dabbled in politics — even Bashar seems to have adopted an urgently pro-Kamala point of view! 

Embrace the joy!  Pitch in!  Volunteer!

 

Discredit Where Discredit Is Due

Trump gets compared with history’s greatest villain because his rhetoric is really that bad:

. . . At a rally this past weekend in North Carolina, Trump declared that “a vote for Kamala Harris means 40 or 50 million more illegal aliens will invade across our borders, stealing your money, stealing your jobs, stealing your life.” Chillingly, he added that migrants were already “attacking villages and cities all throughout the Midwest.”

This followed earlier remarks in Arizona, in which he alleged that “young American girls” are “being raped and sodomized and murdered by savage criminal aliens.”

Vance has likewise baselessly accused Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, of not only butchering and eating people’s pets, but also of killing people. “Murders are up by 81 percent because of what Kamala Harris has allowed to happen in this small community,” Vance said on CNN.

The Clark County, Ohio, district attorney, a Republican, unequivocally refuted Vance’s claim, noting that local murder rates were higher under Trump. What’s more, across his 21 years in the prosecutor’s office, Daniel Driscoll said, “we have not had ANY murders involving the Haitian community — as either the victims or as the perpetrators of those murders.”

. . . I’m not saying [Vance] and Trump actually WANT to start a modern-day pogrom, but if they did, I’m not sure what they’d be doing differently.

This piece is so worth reading in full.

And perhaps sharing with any good people you know who’ve fallen under Trump’s spell, as so many good Germans were once entranced by similar rhetoric.

BONUS RACES:

> We need just three red-to-blue flips to break the Republican super-majority in the 120-seat Florida House.  The Sun Sentinel endorses my friend Jim Brenner to be one of them.  Chip in a few bucks?

> Running as an Independent, Dan Osborn aims to turn a red Senate seat purple — in Nebraska.  I’m co-hosting this zoom Monday at 6pm Eastern time.  Consider “buying” a free ticket — and ponying up only if you like what you hear.

 

Tom Lehrer Should Write Another Song

I’ll tell you why, but first . . .

The Anti-Semitic Revolution on the American Right

. . . the more conspiratorial thinking becomes commonplace on the right, the more inevitable that its partisans will land on one of the oldest conspiracies of them all . . .

Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk are not inconsequential voices.  Neither is Trump, who dines with Holocaust deniers.

. . . Trump has made foundational what was once marginal. Beginning with birtherism and culminating in election denialism, he turned anti-establishment conspiracism into a litmus test for attaining political power, compelling Republicans to either sign on to his claims of 2020 fraud or be exiled to irrelevance.

The fundamental fault line in the conservative coalition became whether someone was willing to buy into ever more elaborate fantasies. The result was to elevate those with flexible approaches to facts, such as Carlson and Owens, who were predisposed to say and do anything — no matter how hypocritical or absurd — to obtain influence. Once opened, this conspiratorial box could not be closed. After all, a movement that legitimizes crackpot schemes about rigged voting machines and microchipped vaccines cannot simply turn around and draw the line at the Jews.

For mercenary opportunists like Carlson, this moment holds incredible promise. But for Republicans with principles — those who know who won the 2020 election, or who was the bad guy in World War II, and can’t bring themselves to say otherwise — it’s a time of profound peril. And for Jews, the targets of one of the world’s deadliest conspiracy theories, such developments are even more foreboding. . . .

If you’re Jewish, or have Jewish friends, or think America was on the right side in World War II, this piece is worth reading in full.

It made me think of Tom Lehrer‘s, “National Brotherhood Week” (“oh the black folks, hate the white folks, and the white folks hate the black folks, and the rich folks hate the poor folks . . . and everybody hates the Jews”).  He should write another song.  Except he won’t because (a) he once said, “Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize” and (b) this has passed the point of being funny.

 

It’s Not Just Taylor Swift!

You’ve likely seen this by now?

More than 700 current and former national security leaders, as well as former military officials, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in a letter released on Sunday . . .

The letter is too powerful and important not to share in full:

We are former public servants who swore an oath to the Constitution. Many of us risked our lives for it. We are retired generals, admirals, senior noncommissioned officers, ambassadors, and senior civilian national security leaders. We are Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. We are loyal to the ideals of our nation—like freedom, democracy, and the rule of law—not to any one individual or party.

We do not agree on everything, but we all adhere to two fundamental principles. First, we believe America’s national security requires a serious and capable Commander-in-Chief. Second, we believe American democracy is invaluable. Each generation has a responsibility to defend it. That is why we, the undersigned, proudly endorse Kamala Harris to be the next President of the United States.

This election is a choice between serious leadership and vengeful impulsiveness. It is a choice between democracy and authoritarianism. Vice President Harris defends America’s democratic ideals, while former President Donald Trump endangers them.

We do not make such an assessment lightly. We are trained to make sober, rational decisions. That is how we know Vice President Harris would make an excellent Commander-in-Chief, while Mr. Trump has proven he is not up to the job. As leaders, we know effective leadership requires in-depth knowledge, careful deliberation, understanding of your adversaries, and empathy for those you lead. It requires listening to those with expertise and not firing them when they disagree with you.

Vice President Harris has proven she is an effective leader able to advance American national security interests. Her relentless diplomacy with allies around the globe preserved a united front in support of Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression. She grasps the reality of American military deterrence, promising to preserve the American military’s status as the most “lethal” force in the world.

The contrast with Mr. Trump is clear: where Vice President Harris is prepared and strategic, he is impulsive and ill-informed. He has heaped praise on adversarial dictators like China’s Xi Jinping, North Korea’s Kim Jung Un, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, as well as the terrorist leaders of Hezbollah. Conversely, he has publicly and privately excoriated the leaders of our most steadfast allies, including the United Kingdom, Israel, Australia, Canada, and Germany. He abandoned our Kurdish allies while ceding influence in the Middle East to Russia, Iran, and China.

Further, Mr. Trump denigrates our great country and does not believe in the American ideal that our leaders should reflect the will of the people. While Vice President Harris follows the democratic norms we expect of any political leader—including promising to abide by the outcome of the pending election and respecting the rule of law—Mr. Trump is the first president in American history to actively undermine the peaceful transfer of power, the bedrock of American democracy.

Mr. Trump threatens our democratic system; he has said so himself. He has called for the “termination” of parts of the Constitution. He said he wants to be a “dictator,” and his clarification that he would only be a dictator for a day is not reassuring. He has undermined faith in our elections by repeating lies, without evidence, of “millions” of fraudulent votes.

He has shown no remorse for trying to overturn the 2020 election on January 6th, promises to pardon the convicted perpetrators, and has made clear he will not respect the results of the 2024 election should he lose again.

That alone proves Mr. Trump is unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.

We believe, as President Ronald Reagan said, that “America is a shining city on a hill.” Yet in this election, one of President Reagan’s more ominous warnings is equally relevant. “Freedom,” he said, “is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

Our endorsement of Vice President Harris is an endorsement of freedom and an act of patriotism. It is an endorsement of democratic ideals, of competence, and of relentless optimism in America’s future. We hope you will join us in voting for her.

Sincerely,

[more than 700 signatories]

I forwarded that to Carl, who responded with something about Hunter Biden and Nancy Pelosi being corrupt.  He is impenetrable.

Yesterday afternoon (in case you missed it), I posted a link to FROM RUSSIA WITH LEV — a must-watch documentary — along with a way to profit from DJT’s likely worthless stock.

Terry has since shared this postscript:

It may not be too late for gains with DJT.  If you believe that it is destined to move even lower than $14 over the next two weeks (I do, because of the short window between now and the election when the two big insiders will likely be dumping their shares like crazy), you could sell the DJT Oct 4 14 calls and simultaneously buy the DJT Oct4 19 calls for a credit of $132 which would result in a risk of $368 per contract.  In order for you to lose the entire $368, the stock would have to close above $19 on October 4 (highly unlikely, in my view).  Under $14 (most likely), you would make $132 per contract, or 35% in 2 weeks.  The breakeven is $15.32 with this spread.

In after-hours trading, DJT is trading about 30 cents above the closing price, so the options spread might be greater than $1.32 shortly after Monday’s open.  I suspect that the insiders are pushing the price up in after-hours trading which they can easily do by placing a market order to buy a few shares.  That makes the MAGA patsies think it’s possible that it might indeed move up instead of down.  They did the same thing in after-hours trading on Thursday, but it quickly fell back down when the market opened.

→ Obviously, this is not for everybody; and only for money you can truly afford to lose.