I have pinned this post to the top of my blog. It is to remind people of what many of our opponents want. Alison Aires wants a tyrannical government. They want summary execution for private possession of firearms.
This is why we have a Bill of Rights. This is why I created Boomershoot.
And when you combine “unchartered, not-well-understood territory” with “this should have a major impact when it happens,” you open the door to the scariest two words in the English language:
Existential risk.
Tim Urban
January 27, 2015
The Artificial Intelligence Revolution: Part 2 – Wait But Why
Reading Urban’s post is almost chilling. It was written over 11 years ago. The predictions about AI are like reading today’s headlines. Here is another chilling quote:
People who understand superintelligent AI call it the last invention we’ll ever make—the last challenge we’ll ever face.
The context I left out is that an AI smarter than humans will find our toughest problems (food supply, clean environment, energy production and distribution, disease, aging, etc.) as trivial as you would find the frustration of three-year-old child unable to tie their own shoe. A super smart AI will either solve all our problems or kill all biological life. There will be no middle ground.
I don’t think that is even the scariest part. The thing that frightens me is that we probably will not be able to inch up to the edge and see what things look like before taking the next step. We are using AI to make smarter AI. At some point, if we haven’t already, we will close the feedback loop. AI will make its own replacement that is smarter than it is. This will accelerate the speed at which advances are made:
It takes decades for the first AI system to reach low-level general intelligence, but it finally happens. A computer is able to understand the world around it as well as a human four-year-old. Suddenly, within an hour of hitting that milestone, the system pumps out the grand theory of physics that unifies general relativity and quantum mechanics, something no human has been able to definitively do. 90 minutes after that, the AI has become an ASI, 170,000 times more intelligent than a human.
Even though it is a rather long post, if you are somewhat of a geek, I encourage you to read the whole thing. The best part, especially for newcomers to this game of existential risk, is the following sample:
So you’ll hear about a lot of bad potential things ASI could bring—soaring unemployment as AI takes more and more jobs, the human population ballooning if we do manage to figure out the aging issue, etc. But the only thing we should be obsessing over is the grand concern: the prospect of existential risk.
…
A malicious ASI is created and decides to destroy us all. The plot of every AI movie. AI becomes as or more intelligent than humans, then decides to turn against us and take over. Here’s what I need you to be clear on for the rest of this post: None of the people warning us about AI are talking about this. Evil is a human concept, and applying human concepts to non-human things is called “anthropomorphizing.” The challenge of avoiding anthropomorphizing will be one of the themes of the rest of this post. No AI system will ever turn evil in the way it’s depicted in movies.
…
So what ARE they worried about? I wrote a little story to show you:
A 15-person startup company called Robotica has the stated mission of “Developing innovative Artificial Intelligence tools that allow humans to live more and work less.” They have several existing products already on the market and a handful more in development. They’re most excited about a seed project named Turry. Turry is a simple AI system that uses an arm-like appendage to write a handwritten note on a small card.
The team at Robotica thinks Turry could be their biggest product yet. The plan is to perfect Turry’s writing mechanics by getting her to practice the same test note over and over again:
“We love our customers. ~Robotica“
Once Turry gets great at handwriting, she can be sold to companies who want to send marketing mail to homes and who know the mail has a far higher chance of being opened and read if the address, return address, and internal letter appear to be written by a human.
To build Turry’s writing skills, she is programmed to write the first part of the note in print and then sign “Robotica” in cursive so she can get practice with both skills. Turry has been uploaded with thousands of handwriting samples and the Robotica engineers have created an automated feedback loop wherein Turry writes a note, then snaps a photo of the written note, then runs the image across the uploaded handwriting samples. If the written note sufficiently resembles a certain threshold of the uploaded notes, it’s given a GOOD rating. If not, it’s given a BAD rating. Each rating that comes in helps Turry learn and improve. To move the process along, Turry’s one initial programmed goal is, “Write and test as many notes as you can, as quickly as you can, and continue to learn new ways to improve your accuracy and efficiency.”
What excites the Robotica team so much is that Turry is getting noticeably better as she goes. Her initial handwriting was terrible, and after a couple weeks, it’s beginning to look believable. What excites them even more is that she is getting better at getting better at it. She has been teaching herself to be smarter and more innovative, and just recently, she came up with a new algorithm for herself that allowed her to scan through her uploaded photos three times faster than she originally could.
As the weeks pass, Turry continues to surprise the team with her rapid development. The engineers had tried something a bit new and innovative with her self-improvement code, and it seems to be working better than any of their previous attempts with their other products. One of Turry’s initial capabilities had been a speech recognition and simple speak-back module, so a user could speak a note to Turry, or offer other simple commands, and Turry could understand them, and also speak back. To help her learn English, they upload a handful of articles and books into her, and as she becomes more intelligent, her conversational abilities soar. The engineers start to have fun talking to Turry and seeing what she’ll come up with for her responses.
One day, the Robotica employees ask Turry a routine question: “What can we give you that will help you with your mission that you don’t already have?” Usually, Turry asks for something like “Additional handwriting samples” or “More working memory storage space,” but on this day, Turry asks them for access to a greater library of a large variety of casual English language diction so she can learn to write with the loose grammar and slang that real humans use.
The team gets quiet. The obvious way to help Turry with this goal is by connecting her to the internet so she can scan through blogs, magazines, and videos from various parts of the world. It would be much more time-consuming and far less effective to manually upload a sampling into Turry’s hard drive. The problem is, one of the company’s rules is that no self-learning AI can be connected to the internet. This is a guideline followed by all AI companies, for safety reasons.
The thing is, Turry is the most promising AI Robotica has ever come up with, and the team knows their competitors are furiously trying to be the first to the punch with a smart handwriting AI, and what would really be the harm in connecting Turry, just for a bit, so she can get the info she needs. After just a little bit of time, they can always just disconnect her. She’s still far below human-level intelligence (AGI), so there’s no danger at this stage anyway.
They decide to connect her. They give her an hour of scanning time and then they disconnect her. No damage done.
A month later, the team is in the office working on a routine day when they smell something odd. One of the engineers starts coughing. Then another. Another falls to the ground. Soon every employee is on the ground grasping at their throat. Five minutes later, everyone in the office is dead.
At the same time this is happening, across the world, in every city, every small town, every farm, every shop and church and school and restaurant, humans are on the ground, coughing and grasping at their throat. Within an hour, over 99% of the human race is dead, and by the end of the day, humans are extinct.
Meanwhile, at the Robotica office, Turry is busy at work. Over the next few months, Turry and a team of newly-constructed nanoassemblers are busy at work, dismantling large chunks of the Earth and converting it into solar panels, replicas of Turry, paper, and pens. Within a year, most life on Earth is extinct. What remains of the Earth becomes covered with mile-high, neatly-organized stacks of paper, each piece reading, “We love our customers. ~Robotica“
Turry then starts work on a new phase of her mission—she begins constructing probes that head out from Earth to begin landing on asteroids and other planets. When they get there, they’ll begin constructing nanoassemblers to convert the materials on the planet into Turry replicas, paper, and pens. Then they’ll get to work, writing notes…
See also:
It is cozy in a comfortable way.
…
I want to come back.
Barb L.
February 14, 2026
Barb and I spent our first night together in my underground bunker on Friday night. Barb stayed until Sunday evening when she caught a plane to come home. She had to be back earlier than me for work.
The QOTD was said sort of embarrassed, with her face partially hidden under a sheet. For years she has been very skeptical about my expensive and years long project. After actually spending a night in a comfortable bed, with a functional kitchen, and full-sized bathroom (as opposed to a camping trailer) she far more receptive to spending time there.
This is a huge change in attitude.
Having this for a view on our morning walk helped some too:
At the same time, many anti-gun stalwarts were falling all over themselves to advance arguments that, in any other circumstance, would remain alien. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, submitted waspishly that “the Trump administration does not believe in the 2nd Amendment. Good to know.” Anti-gun rights groups joined the fray. The Giffords campaign argued that Pretti was “a lawful gun owner who was protesting in his community” and “had the right to be there,” and the Brady campaign asserted that he was “a law-abiding gun owner with a concealed carry permit.” At what point, one must ask, did they all turn into Wayne LaPierre?
…
one has to laugh. At present, Gavin Newsom is literally attempting to repeal the Second Amendment, and, in 2023, he signed a bill in California that barred guns from being carried in “sensitive places,” including at protests. (Minnesota has considered a similar law, and, in 2024, the state filed an amicus brief arguing that there is no Second Amendment right to carry guns at “events involving political speech, like political rallies and protests,” because they are “often targets of violence.”) The Giffords campaign wishes to ban the type of firearm that Pretti was carrying on the grounds that it represents “a threat to society” and is “designed to kill large numbers of people quickly,” and it holds the official view that “guns at protests” are not protected by the Constitution because carrying them “chills the exercise of our fundamental freedoms.” The Brady campaign agrees with this, proposing that Americans “do not need a loaded gun to peacefully protest” and should not be allowed to carry one.
The Editors, Nation Review
January 27, 2026
Alex Pretti Shooting: Second Amendment Supporters, Gun Control Advocates Switch Roles | National Review
It appears as if the Republicans started it with saying stupid stuff about Petti committed a crime by protesting ICE activity while carrying a firearm. I have to wonder if it was a coordinated effort to demonstrate the Democrats will take the opposite side of whatever the Republicans says.
After a few seconds of thought, no. I do not think they are smart or coordinated enough to pull that off. I think it is more likely they started it off by vomiting out the first thing that came to mind when it was discovered Petti was carrying a gun when he was killed. “Democrat with a gun? I’m opposed to Democrats. I am on the side of law and order he must have done something illegal…”
I think the Republicans were doing what they usually accusing Democrats of doing. Taking the opposite side of their political opponents no matter how stupid it is to do so.
Politicians have crap for brains.
Lead author Dr Jyoti Singh, from UCL Chemistry, said: “Imagine the day that chemists might take simple, small molecules, consisting of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur atoms, and from these LEGO pieces form molecules capable of self-replication. This would be a monumental step towards solving the question of life’s origin.
“Our study brings us closer to that goal by demonstrating how two primordial chemical LEGO pieces (activated amino acids and RNA) could have built peptides**, short chains of amino acids that are essential to life.
“What is particularly groundbreaking is that the activated amino acid used in this study is a thioester, a type of molecule made from Coenzyme A, a chemical found in all living cells. This discovery could potentially link metabolism, the genetic code and protein building.”
While the paper focuses solely on the chemistry, the research team said that the reactions they demonstrated could plausibly have taken place in pools or lakes of water on the early Earth (but not likely in the oceans as the concentrations of the chemicals would likely be too diluted).
University College London
August 28, 2025
Scientists recreate life’s first step: Linking amino acids to RNA | ScienceDaily
Millimeter by millimeter, the onion is being peeled back on some of the most difficult puzzles this world has to offer us.
The link between saturation media coverage of mass murder, spree killing, jihadi attacks and copycat crimes is well established. It must stop.
News-media organizations that persist in literally glorifying these villains beyond any reasonable news value are complicit in encouraging further crime. They know it.
That fact has been established by the medical and law-enforcement communities. Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, along with a growing list of national co-sponsors is encouraging the journalism industry to cease and desist from repeatedly flashing the names and faces of mass murderers’ and jihadis’ in their reports.
Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership
JPFO’s “Don’t Inspire Evil” Initiative
2016 (probably, see also here)
It has been almost 10 years and still the media persists in continuing this dangerous activity. They should bear as much or more responsibility for mass shootings than all the gun owners in the entire country combined. If they think they can justify the Second Amendment being infringed because of mass shootings, then there is more than enough justification to infringe upon their First Amendment rights.
It is not that I think their rights really should be infringed. It is that proposing they be fined and/or jailed for exercising their First Amendment rights would, rightly, generate a great howling of protest. Then, claims of hypocrisy could be thrown at them.
While there’s certainly always a place for civil disobedience, I think “just don’t comply” and boating accident jokes are not a real solution to the expansion of authoritarian gun control laws.
Hard truth: They don’t care if you don’t comply. Either you’ll get caught breaking the law and charged, or, your defiance will be driven underground and unseen, and they will win the culture in the meantime. Your grandkids will find your gun stash after you die and turn it in.
By making more and more stuff illegal or more expensive, they also choke off any new converts (this is also why the antigun groups are obsessed with pressuring YouTube and others to censor).
You can’t just ignore them, because they will not ignore you.
Kostas Moros @MorosKostas
Posted on X, February 10, 2026
There is a lot of truth to that.
Also note that they aren’t going to play to your strengths. They are not going to “go door to door”. They will increase costs through licenses, delays, taxes, lawsuits, zoning, debanking, fines, inspections, fingerprinting, background checks, “sensitive places”, “red flag laws”, “child endangerment”, “safe storage” requirements, semi-auto bans, magazine capacity limits, caliber restrictions, self-manufacturing bans, ammo quantity purchasing limits, age limits, etc.
We need to fight with our strengths. Take new people to range. Donate money to gun groups that win in the courts (I donate thousands each year to the Second Amendment Foundation and Firearms Policy Coalition). Leave comments on anti-gun media articles.
Most importantly, be a good public representative of gun ownership.
I thought I had posted a picture of the pump daughter Jaime and I put on her well. I can’t find it now, so maybe I remember sharing it with people at work.
The back story is that last May she had a well drilled on her property in Idaho (she currently lives about 45 minutes southeast of Seattle). As it typical she stressed some about finding water. She bought the property without knowing for certain there would be water. All the neighbors have good wells without going too deep. But that didn’t mean she would find water.
She called and gave me updates as they started drilling, they were down 100′ and there was nothing. None of the neighbors had to go below about 150′. They were below 150′ and still nothing. She wanted to know if she should have them drill in a different place on the property. “Keep going for a while longer. That isn’t really that deep yet.”
It wasn’t too much longer before she called back. I could tell from the tone of her voice it was good news. “Guess how many gallons per minute they have!”, she demanded. “80?”, I replied. I knew it was up there from the excitement in her voice. “100!”, she crowed. She went on to say they hit water at 220 feet, drilled to 240 feet, and the driller said it is an artesian well. I always thought an artesian well is when the water comes completely out of the ground. But apparently that is not the definition. The water was five feet below the surface.
Nice!
Sometime later, probably about July or August she wanted to talk about the well again. Since she doesn’t have electricity on the property yet, she asked if we could put a hand pump in and she could have water to irrigate a few trees. At five feet below the surface, it would be trivial to pull that water on up and fill buckets with a hand pump. So, we put a pitcher pump in with a ten-foot-long pipe and she had consumable water.
Recently she started talking to a local architect who went out to the property to look at the lay of the land, etc. and reported the pump was leaking water. What? Really? Yup. He sent her a picture.
Ten days ago, I visited to see it for myself:
I have never seen anything like this before. That’s awesome!
When will there be a national reckoning for those who misled us? None of the dire predictions about carbon emissions throwing us into global catastrophe offered by scientists, politicians, or international organizations over the past 50 years have come true. In the end, the endless string of chilling forecasts failed to terrorize people out of modernity.
By the time it was all said and done — and it feels like the public is about done — there wasn’t a malady, tragedy, or human foible that wasn’t attributed to a slight variation in world climate, including mental illness, diabetes, migraines, prostitution, asthma, dementia, and sexual dysfunction. Climate change has turned us into addicts, thieves, human traffickers, refugees, and warmongers, and accentuated our political divisions.
It’s been 20 years since the release of the Academy Award-winning An Inconvenient Truth. In it, Malthusian nutjob and former Vice President Al Gore confidently popularized a slew of unhinged pseudoscientific warnings. Yet the snows of Kilimanjaro are still with us. Glacier National Park is not “formerly known as Glacier National Park.” We have not seen a dramatic increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes — we have seen fewer. There has not been a catastrophic sea-level rise flooding major areas. Despite the hopes of some, Manhattan and Miami remain above water. As do low-lying Pacific islands.
No other group of people would be treated with deference after engaging in such a massive and costly deception.
…
the notion that man-made greenhouse gases pose an existential threat to humankind has been little more than a backdoor way to institute unpopular environmentalist policies and temper economic growth. It’s about time we end the scam.
David Harsanyi
February 10, 2026
A reckoning for global warming alarmists is past due
At this point, even if the global temperature were to rise and be due to human activity, it would be a modern-day version of the story “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” There have been too many failed prophecies to get people to believe the most recent ones. Plus, one should be extraordinarily skeptical of people who make false prophecies. They have a vested interest in getting more people to believe their next prophecies.
In the new study, the scientists tracked how the radio signals from Juno back to Earth bent as they passed through Jupiter’s atmosphere, before cutting out when the planet blocked the signal entirely. Those measurements allowed the team to account for Jupiter’s winds, which slightly alter the shape of the gaseous planet. Then, they used that information to make precise calculations of the planet’s shape and size.
I wonder if this is the largest ever experiment with a manmade “flashlight”.
As a gun guy for a loooong time, I have bad news for 3D printing guys—the word “gun” is often enough for people to give up their rights out of fear.
People will gladly bend over & let the state have their way with them if it will help with the made up “Gun Problem”.
Guns are the Goldstein Big Brother uses to fuel enough Two Minutes Hate so that people will gladly turn their eyes away from abuses like this because they have been brainwashed into thinking somehow this will keep them safe.
It won’t. And it WILL be used against more than printed guns. It’s a form of control and they will use their fairly successful campaign of making guns out to be the boogeyman to allow them to control more & more of your life.
This is why I’ve fought gun control. It’s MUCH more than just the guns, always has been. But too many people are scared shitless of loud noises & Hollywood portrayals that they honestly fear them enough to allow whatever draconian laws are presented and then call you names & try to have your life ruined if you oppose them.
Robb Allen @ItsRobbAllen
Posted on X, February 9, 2026
This is regarding the restrictions certain politicians are putting on the 3D printers. These restrictions include printer firmware recognizing gun parts and refusing to print them and the printer “calling home” to report restricted items being made.
This is a First Amendment issue as well as a Second Amendment issue.
During one of his training videos, Carita claimed his group has a “strong focus on bringing gun owners into policy discussions.”
However, Carita did not respond to phone calls, texts or emails sent via his website, so there’s at least one gun owner he doesn’t want to bring into any policy discussion. Also, his website’s “contact us” and “media inquiries” buttons have both been disconnected.
Lee Williams
February 4, 2026
Anti-gun Group 97Percent is Back, Now Led by Anti-gun Ex-Cop – TheGunMag – The Official Gun Magazine of the Second Amendment FoundationTheGunMag – The Official Gun Magazine of the Second Amendment Foundation
Typical. They cannot help themselves. Lying and deception are inherent parts of their culture.
Hawaii is not addressing an unprecedented societal concern posed by permitholders. Data show the opposite: carry-license revocations are exceedingly rare—typically between 0.01% and 0.32% annually—and often unrelated to criminal conduct. Texas conviction statistics show that permitholders are nearly seven times less likely to be convicted of a crime than the general population. Colorado’s arrest-based revocation system shows that permitholders are more than eight times less likely to be arrested. Independent research, from RAND to the Chicago Tribune, and even data collected by the Violence Policy Center, confirm that permitholders offend at far lower rates than ordinary citizens. Concealed carry permitholders are exceptionally law-abiding, and Hawaii’s treatment of them as predatory actors has no empirical or historical foundation.
Kopel, Greenlee, Mocsary, and Goldstein
NRA amicus brief–Wolford v. Lopez
This is nothing new. Essentially everyone, even anti-gun people, knows the basics of this. The only reasons they continue to harass gun owners with laws against possessing gun for defensive use must be something other than fear of gun owners committing criminal acts.
In my mind the best explanations for this unconstitutional and immoral behavior are:
Of course, various anti-gun people can have more than one reason to pursue their evil goals. There is no need to pick just one reason. embrace the power of and. Then, prepare and respond appropriately.
The ATF shouldn’t exist. But since it does, grab the popcorn and watch the confirmation hearing for its next would-be director.
Gun Owners of America
February 4, 2026
The ATF shouldn’t exist. But since it… – Gun Owners of America | Facebook
During the confirmation hearing on February 7, the “would-be director” said this:
We’re not here trying to burden unnecessarily the American citizen, who has the complete right to exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms, and we will not be doing that in the future if I am so confirmed.
He is mouthing words which are better than the actions of the director during the Biden administration, but unless he is dismantling the firearms portion of the ATF the agency is always going to be an illegal “burden” (infringement) of the Second Amendment. 4473s and background checks were not part of the history and tradition of firearms regulation at the time of our country’s founding.
Still, we should take one step at a time and celebrate our victories. Having a better director than the last one is a step in the right direction and worthy of mild celebration. Always remember, Laugh, and the World Laughs with You. If nothing else keep in mind that if Robert Cekada is confirmed as director, the anti-gunners will be saddened and demoralized.
Bitcoin goes off with the electricity. I still have bullets and beans.
MTHead
February 5, 2026
Comment to Loss of Faith
And if the greenback value goes to zero you will still have tinder for starting a bonfire.
A distinctive mark of fascism is its conception of politics, best captured by Carl Schmitt, an early-20th-century German political theorist whose doctrines legitimized Nazism. Schmitt rejected the Madisonian view of politics as a social negotiation in which different factions, interests, and ideology come to agreement, the core idea of our Constitution. Rather, he saw politics as a state of war between enemies, neither of which can understand the other and both of which feel existentially threatened—and only one of which can win. The aim of Schmittian politics is not to share the country but to dominate or destroy the other side.
Jonathan Rauch*
January 25, 2026
Yes, It’s Fascism – The Atlantic
Via email from a reader.
Most of the body of the article is behind a paywall so I only have the part quoted in the email.
As many of you will point out, there is no compromise or coming to agreement with those who want you dead. There is no compromise with those who want a cradle to grave welfare state for everyone. But there is a better way to go about opposing them without risking a death spiral into your own purity test driven genocide of killing all the communists.
There is a fair amount of truth to what I could read in the quote above about the definition of fascism. And I prefer to use the oldest definition I can find. It is from an unabridged dictionary copyrighted in various years from 1927 through1946. In part, the Fascisti were:
… organized in connection with a repressive movement directed against the socialists and communists and the disturbances excited by them during 1919 and the years following, which regarded the government as criminally negligent in failing to deal with these disturbances, and took measure on its own account, often violent ones, to combat them…
Hence, one could say people opposed to socialists and communists meet part of the definition of Fascist. Aside from the increased ease of which the dirty label sticks there are other reasons to not defining yourself as opposed, especially violently opposed, to communists and socialists.
Remember the poem from a couple days ago: Laugh, and the World Laughs with You? If you are an unhappy, angry person you will have fewer people who wish to be around you and join your political bandwagon. Be for something good. Be for freedom. Be for liberty. Be for a booming economy. Be for a wealthy society.
Let the communists and socialist be against that.
* Rauch is not a new name to this blog:
The headlines tell you almost all you need to know:
It briefly hit a low of $60,506.99:
To offer Bitcoin holders a bit of hope, I will point out the CNN article claims there have been crashes of equal magnitude before and the crypto currency recovered within a year. However, the reasons for the crash were different then.
The market is currently navigating a ‘crisis of faith’.
Shiliang Tang
Managing partner of Monarq Asset Management.
February 4, 2026
Bitcoin falls below $72,000 as market faces a ‘crisis of faith’
I have been publicly skeptical about Bitcoin for a while now:
And, as I mentioned in several of those posts, it is a faith-based asset without the backing of a government which accepts it for payment of taxes. The government backing of an issued currency ensures a non-zero value as long as the government exists (since they will honor as payment of taxes). Bitcoin could go to zero in the span of days or weeks. Right now, you could be watching it slide into oblivion.
If this is its end, the economic ripples will be “interesting.”
Via Planet Of Memes @PlanetOfMemes
I know it would not be consistent with other memes with the same format, but if someone were to tell me this, my response would be, “Don’t make any promises you can’t keep.” Or perhaps, “Make it 90% and we have a deal.”
Laugh, and the world laughs with you,
weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it’s mirth,
but has trouble enough of its own.
Sing and the hills will answer, sigh
it is lost on the air
For the echoes bound to a joyful sound
but shrink from voicing care.Rejoice and men will seek you,
grieve and they turn and go
They want full measure of all your
pleasure but do not need your woe.
Be glad and your friends are many,
be sad and you’ll lose them all
There are none to decline your nectared wine
but alone you must drink life’s gall.Feast and your halls are crowded,
fast and the world goes by
Succeed and give and it helps you live
but no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
for a long and lordly train
But one by one we must all file on
through the narrow aisles of painElla Wheeler Wilcox
Solitude
February 25, 1883
Over 40 years ago I wrote a program to give me a random quote every time my computer booted up. I still use that program. Instead of on boot, it runs when I start up a new instance of a command prompt. The quote above appeared a few minutes ago. I don’t remember putting the quote in the collection. But like a lot of others in the collection, it resonates with me. Perhaps, in these troubled times, it will resonate with you as well and give you some direction to better days ahead.
I asked Grok for the original publish date and received a little more than what I asked for:
It was first published on February 25, 1883, in The New York Sun newspaper. (Some sources note slight variations like February 21, but February 25 is the most consistently cited date across reliable references.)
The poem later appeared in her collection Poems of Passion, released in May 1883, which became a major bestseller.
The inspiration came from an incident on a train where Wilcox observed contrasting emotions—a joyful group and a grieving widow—leading to the insight that joy is shared, but sorrow is often solitary. She reportedly earned just $5 for the initial newspaper publication.
