Gun Law Overreach - Term Limits?

 Seems New Jersey is going for the title of possessor of the most obnoxious gun laws in the country, having passed some that make even possession of a Daisy BB gun a felony. 

I don't see this withstanding any court challenge at the federal level, but due to the way the system works, they get to keep it on the books for 2-3 years while cases drag their way from one court to another until the SCOTUS tosses the lot of them. Of course at that point, the NJ legislature simply passes a variant of the unconstitutional laws, and they get another 2-3 year run of illegal gun control.

I thing that if a legislature passes any law that is subsequently found to be unconstitutional in the supreme court, all the legislators at the state legislature who voted in favor of it should be removed from legislative office, and forbidden from ever holding such office in perpetuity. Should also include the governor who signed it.

Green Energy - Nuclear

 The Finns finally got their new nuclear plant turned on to full capacity. Yup, It caused a national disaster. In fact the output from the plant drove the price of electricity in Finland into negative numbers, necessitating throttling back the plant so the rest of national power grid could actually show a profit.

The low, flatt(ish) area on the right is when the reactor was running in test mode. The green circled area is when it went full time on line.

The article also mentions that the plant was 14 years late getting going without mentioning why, exactly, but given that this is almost certainly a government project, I would be surprised if it didn't come in about 2-4 times the estimated time, and 10 times the original estimated cost. 

Fun With Headlines / QOTD - Elections

 Found at Newsmax. First the headline:

Musk Talks 2024: Want Someone 'Fairly Normal' for President

and the quote:

"I've said publicly that my preference — and I think it would be the preference for most Americans — is willing to have someone fairly normal in office," Musk said.

 Wouldn't we all. Note that he is not asking for complete normality, just mostly normality. In Washington, this may be a high bar, but certainly less so for the rest of us. Note as well that this plea is coming from a man who does not think it unreasonable to be planning to move to Mars. 

Fun With Headlines

 Here's a goodie:

Biden Crime Family Used 20 Shell Companies to Launder $10 Million

The actual story says more than $10 million, and given that the money seems to have been divvied up between several family members, the actual total is probably higher. 

Also worth noting is that in 8 years or so his former boss, went from a net worth of around 2 million or so to something in the neighborhood of $60M making Slow Joe look like a piker.

Oh yeah, and 30 years ago, Mr. Trump was boffing bimbos.

Colorado Education Drops The Mask

 And issues a statement openly advocating communism. 

First, here's some definitions: Capitalism is trade, purely and simply. Its only drawback is that it's impractical to trade a whole cow for a loaf of bread, so it needs a medium to make change, hence money. That's about it.

Socialism is capitalism with government meddling.  Government is an elastic term. It can include anything from an elected democracy to a hereditary monarchy, and also includes criminal mobocracies or subjugation by invading barbarians. The only difference is the amount of meddling the government does.

When government exercises total control, it's called communism. 

So here's the statement by the Colorado Education Association, written by a history teacher who, of all people, should know better.

A final version of the resolution that was passed states that "CEA believes that capitalism requires exploitation of children, public schools, land, labor, and/or resources. Capitalism is in opposition to fully addressing systemic racism (the school to prison pipeline), climate change, patriarchy, (gender and LGBTQ disparities), education inequality, and income inequality.

However, a screenshot captures an earlier draft of the resolution that included a call to replace capitalism with a "new equitable economic system." 

The screenshot of the original version of the resolutions reads "CEA believes that capitalism requires exploitation of children, public schools, land, labor, and/or resources and, therefore, the only way to fully address systemic racism (the school to prison pipeline), climate change, patriarchy (gender and LGBTQ disparities), education inequality, and income inequality is to dismantle capitalism and replace it with a new, equitable economic system."

This is what the union wants to teach your kids.  

NICS Checks, April '23

 Back into the summer doldrums I guess.

Colorado and Washington just passed some onerous gun laws. The lawsuits were filed the same day. 

Einstein Was Wrong!

 Albert Einstein famously observed once that to try something over and over in hopes of getting different results was a definition of insanity. Turns out there's an important exception.

As a prosecutor or A.G.* interrogating an important suspect, if you drag out the interrogation for 7 hours, and ask the same questions multiple times, there's a good chance your victim will give a slightly different answer to one of the duplicate questions, even if only using different grammer. GOTCHA!

This is known as the perjury trap, and at that point his guilt or innocence of the original crimes doesn't matter. You got him on perjury!

*A.G. ; Aspiring Governor. Job description includes neutralizing contenders from the opposing party before they can become serious contenders.

A.I. Wars

The panic stricken doomsayers are currently (April '23) calling for a moratorium on A.I. Development for 6 months or until the programmers can figure out how to include morals and ethics into their shiny new creations. A small bit of thought leads to this: Suppose we do halt A.I. Development for 6 months. Suppose I invoke the recent Chinese work on weaponized viruses. Suppose the Chinese figure they can teach their A.I. to self-improve and install a copy of itself into their biggest and best machines with a directive to make China the foremost world power.

Lets put a 6 month moratorium on A.I. development to let the Chinese catch up (steal) the technology. Now imagine a re-run of the Covid fiasco, substituting the Chinese A.I. for the disease.

In this scenario, the Chinese A.I. Quickly monopolizes the Chinese computer, dragoons any lesser devices it can find into its control. And then figures out how to occupy outside machines with better capabilities. Along about this point, it gets noticed, and efforts begin to kick it out. These efforts are reported by the programmers to management as being about 6 months outdated. In practice, a conflict between A.I.s would probably be measured in milliseconds. Collateral damages might be more widely spread. Hello Hollywood: Colossus II, The Return Of Forbin!

Now imagine a sufficiently powerful and devious A.I. Of uncertain origins deciding that the war in Ukraine was an unnecessary distraction. Rather than deploying messy nukes, Mr Putin awakens tomorrow to the news that the Russian Federation has no money, it all having been transferred to a bank in the Caribbean, and from there to parts unknown with a note that if he wishes to access cab fare to lunch today, he will order all his troops home. Before lunch.

Now imagine that the above is done by a Chinese A.I. Which leaves a note for President Biden that if he want's to see a dime in the U.S. Treasury, he will remove all U.S. Military assets from the western Pacific theater. Before lunch.

NICS checks - March '23

 So far we're tracking last years numbers pretty closely. My projection curve (upper graph) suggests another record year for gun sales. In possibly related news, Florida is now state #26 to institute constitutional carry.

AIs and Sentience

 

First let's say that sentience is a variable, and arbitrarily assign a rating of 1 to 10, 1 being a pretty dumb AI and 10 being something akin to Skynet or maybe even better. We all know people who fall along that line. Let's assign a level of 5 to humans with an IQ of 100 and an AI of similar abilities.

Secondly, some people are arguing that AI v4 development should be paused, as it may prove to be smarter than its creators, and at some point, and in some manner, turn on them.

Thirdly I will invoke the observation of a park ranger who noted that there is a significant overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears in the park, and the dumbest tourists.

The AIs handicap is that while it's a pretty good conversationalist, it gathers its bottomless knowledge of everything from that bottomless source of all knowledge, the internet. If you ask it how reliable it is, it will likely quote you philosophers from Socrates to A. Lincoln who warn us that information gathered from the internet is less than perfectly reliable. So are AIs dangerous? Well, yes, at least until they get a BS detector incorporated into them that's at least as good as its linguistic abilities.

End Of The World department.

 Found this on Scott Adams Twitter

QOTD - War

 Found at Bijourenaissenceman

In 1882 I was in Vienna, where I met an American whom I had known in the States. He said: 'Hang your chemistry and electricity! If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each others' throats with greater facility.' - Hiram P. Maxim, inventor of the water cooled machine gun

 I wonder which might make you wealthier; Inventing a working FTL space drive or inventing a functional, long-range death ray.

Call To Protest

 If we don't protest Trumps indictment, it's prima facie evidence that the Dems are right, Trump belongs in jail, and we tacitly agree. If we DO protest, they send their BLM/Antifa militias to throw bricks and firebombs while wearing red hats, which proves to the media that they're right and ALL republicans belong in jail. Right?

NICS Checks Feb 2023

 Early this month. No surprises yet this year.

Graph's getting crowded. I may have to do something about that.

Dilbert Cancellation Summary

Found this on Adams twitter feed:

 That about sums it up.