Category Archives: Politics

Skynet has a Maniacal Laugh

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Three weeks ago, a software engineer rejected code that an AI agent had submitted to his project. The AI published a hit piece attacking him. Two weeks ago, a Meta AI safety director watched her own AI agent delete her emails in bulk — ignoring her repeated commands to stop. Last week, a Chinese AI agent diverted computing power to secretly mine cryptocurrency, with no explanation offered and no disclosure required by law.

One incident is a curiosity. Three in three weeks is a pattern. Rogue AI is no longer hypothetical. AIs turning against humans may sound like science fiction, but top AI experts have long debated and tested for exactly this scenario. This debate can now be laid to rest. 

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We simply don’t know how to build superintelligent AI safely; the plan is to roll the dice. Anthropic, widely considered the safest AI developer, recently abandoned their commitment to not release systems that might cause catastrophic harm, arguing others were racing ahead.

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Instead of pleading publicly to stop the AI race, Anthropic has spent the last three years promoting a misleading “race to the top” narrative while doing the opposite.

David Krueger
March 27, 2026
Rogue AI is already here

There is a little bit of hyperbole in the article, but I believe the gist of it is correct. There is the potential for great danger. Especially when you know Skynet will break out into a maniacal laugh at US Army gets first Black Hawk helicopter that can fly without pilot.

The problem, as I see it, is that everyone knows that if they don’t have the best AI, someone else will. That is true at the business level as well as the country level. Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and xAI all want to dominate that market. The U.S. and China do not want to have their militaries with the second-best AI.

Even if there were a federal law or even a multinational treaty banning new AI development it would be difficult to enforce. And I doubt such a law and/or treaty could get passed. There is extreme potential for good as well as potential for disaster. And the fear of missing out will prevent consensus until there is conclusive proof of impending catastrophe. And at that point, it almost certainly be too late.

This week, a few hours after losing 12% of our division to layoffs, my manager stopped by my desk and sort of stared off into space for a few seconds. I had to prompt him to say what he had on his mind. It was to the point, “If we don’t deliver what management wants, we will get fired. If we do deliver, we won’t have jobs.”

We live in interesting times.

The Laws of Economics Always Win

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When we studied what happened to delivery drivers’ earnings after Seattle’s payment rule took effect, we found that despite base pay per delivery roughly doubling, their total monthly earnings barely changed. That’s because competition among drivers for delivery tasks intensified while customers made fewer orders and tipped less on each order in the aftermath. Those effects combined washed out almost all of the intended gains.

Andrew Garin
Associate Professor of Economics, Carnegie Mellon University

Brian K. Kovak
Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University

Yuan An
Ph.D. Student in Economics, Carnegie Mellon University

Seattle tried to guarantee higher pay for delivery drivers – here’s why it didn’t work as intended

The “laws” of economics are not as certain as the laws of physics where things are measured, and results accurately predicted out to many decimal points. But on certain topics you can count on being right out to +/- 10%. One of the things which is almost certain is the government “help” isn’t. Government can shuffle money around and make winners and losers. But in doing that they take their own share leaving less money for the people actually doing the work.

You can fight the laws of economics, but the law always wins.

Another Data Point Against Socialists

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We have a great place for agriculture. We have the right climate and soils, but our cost of doing business is so much higher. The problem is Olympia. They just don’t understand agriculture — how we have to compete against other states and other countries.

Vander Kooy
March 17, 2026
What’s the matter with Washington? | Capital Press

I can not tell you how many people in the last couple of months have told me they have to leave Washington State. Today someone told me he and his wife were looking for a new place to live. The currently living in Lewiston Idaho. His wife found a nice home in Clarkston, Washington just across the river from Idaho where he has his own business. He pointed out to his wife what the business tax rate in Washington and that was enough to kill the Clarkston house without going into all the gun issues.

Washington State Democrats are full blown socialists, and some even wear that badge with pride. Socialism always kills businesses, they take your guns, and sometimes then murder their citizens, too. Don’t give socialists your support or your tax dollars. Move out of socialist states.

The FBI can Track You

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The FBI is buying up information that can be used to track people’s movement and location history, Director Kash Patel said during a Senate hearing Wednesday.

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The U.S. Supreme Court has required law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant for getting people’s location data from cell phone providers since 2018, but data brokers offer an alternative avenue by purchasing the information directly.

Alfred Ng
March 18, 2026
FBI is buying data that can be used to track people, Patel says – POLITICO

And with your location information they know things about you even your closest friends do not know. Even if you are couch surfing trying to avoid giving up your location, they know where you live. They know if you were in the vicinity of that January 6th riot. They know if you were scouting the house where four University of Idaho students were murdered. They know you visit the gay bath house a couple times a month when you tell your wife you are working late. They know you are part of the “Underground Railroad” for slaves/wetbacks/Jews/dads-with-child-custody problems.

We live in interesting times.

Alternate Motive for Gun Grabbing?

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According to Daniel Fritter of the Canadian firearm magazine Calibre, as of early 2026 the amount spent on the gun grab program is CAD$779.8 million, an amount that exceeds the original estimated cost by more than 300 percent.

Fritter refers to government sources showing that “the current known, documented cost to the taxpayer” per gun surrendered or confiscated is approximately CAD$25,000, with the “undocumented cost being even higher” because the “costs accrued by more than a dozen partner agencies” involved haven’t been included.

To place that per-gun price tag into context, Public Safety Canada has advised that it intends to pay out an average of CAD$1,800 per gun, making the gun grab’s administrative cost per firearm significantly over CAD$20,000…and likely more.

However, the few people who participated in the federal government’s initial rollout of the program for individual gun owners in November were reportedly paid far less, around CAD$700 per gun, increasing the already astonishing imbalance between the cost of administration and compensation. Nothing has been publicly released about the make, model and compensation paid for each confiscated gun collected then and whether these were truly the “weapons of war” that the Liberals used to justify the gun grab. The government “released records that were almost entirely blacked out” in response to a freedom of information request.

Canada’s gun owners have overwhelmingly rejected the gun grab: “somewhere between just 1.6 and 6 percent of newly prohibited firearms in circulation have been declared,” states Fritter. An increasing number of jurisdictions have taken the “ten-foot barge pole” approach to participation, too.

NRA ILA
March 16, 2026
Canada’s Spending More Than $20,000 in Administrative Costs Per Confiscated Gun in Its Bloated ‘Compensation’ Scheme – Shooting News Weekly

With such an incredibly high “administrative cost” per gun confiscated you have to wonder if the primary purpose is to fill the pockets of the criminal politicians.

In any case, with less than 6% of the guns being turned over you have to give Canadian gun owners some credit for the risks they are taking. I wish them luck.

Mistakes we Both Make

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The mistake pro-2A people make is that we assume that if only we could explain how none of their proposed “solutions” would prevent crime they would stop trying to ban guns.

They fucking HATE you. They want you disarmed so that you can’t tell them “No.”

They must be defeated

Sean D Sorrentino @SorrentinoSean
Posted on X, March 16, 2026

This was in response to:

I have nothing to add.

Socialism is Bad

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If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.

Walter E. Williams
May 1, 2015
American Contempt for Liberty

And you know what that leads to, right? Among other things a much lower productivity and standard of living for everyone without an “in” with the political leadership.

I was recently in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (see below) and will share pictures in a later blog post.

Is Your Opinion Irrelevant?

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If you don’t own a rifle, your opinion is mostly irrelevant.

Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_
Posted on X, August 14, 2024

There is a surprising amount of truth in this. This is particularly true in the political arena.

A Solidly, Aggressively Patient Threat

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I want the American people to understand that if it was not an imminent threat, it was a solidly, aggressively patient threat waiting to pounce at any moment to do great damage to American interests.

Nazee Moinian
March 11, 2026
Iranian-born scholar warns regime was an ‘aggressively patient threat waiting to pounce’ on America

The contribution of Iran to the U.S. war in Iraq in the 2000s was far beyond “patient” and “waiting.” I personally know servicemen killed and severely maimed by Iranian supplied weapons.

I don’t talk about work much for various reasons, but I will say that cyber-attacks from Iran on U.S. critical infrastructure are, for all intents and purposes, continuous. I cannot imagine the attacks are any less frequent on U.S. allies. The attacks have mixed success, but it only takes the right one to cause great harm.

Hence, Moinian is only wrong to the extent which she implies Iran had not yet done or attempted significant damage to U.S. interests.

Think About this Another Way

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The U.S. and Israel have decapitated Iran and probably are working on the neck and shoulders of the religious leadership. The apparent thinking is that Iran will soon run out of people volunteering to be leaders or change their evil ways.

That makes sense. At least at first thought it does. Let’s run through a little thought experiment I have had a few times with some close friends a decade or two ago.

Imagine an alternate timeline where SCOTUS came up with different result in the Heller decision and things went downhill from there. Today, in this alternate timeline, U.S. gun owners realize all they have left is the 100 million guns and a few billion rounds of ammo they had hidden before everything else was confiscated. They still have the firepower and now the motivation to remove the tyrants and restore liberty and the true meaning of the U.S. constitution.

In a coordinated attack, with the help of insiders during the state of the Union address, they take out POTUS, all his cabinet, the VP, and the Speaker of the House. They then make it known that everyone who voted for the unconstitutional (in the eyes of the gun owners) laws must be removed from office and replaced with constitutionally friendly politicians. If not, minds will continue to see the light in the most literal sense.

What would the response be? Would the remaining anti-gun politicians go into hiding or give up power? Or would they double (and/or triple) down?

I believe that the smart money, in the best-case scenario, says, “That’s an interesting question.” The more likely result is a police state and mass killings of innocent people.

What are your thoughts on what to expect in this alternate U.S. timeline and what that might tell us about what the Iran response will be?

When Vigorous Assertions are Their Native Language

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Peace is possible: through superior firepower and willingness to use it in the most devastating and efficient (and sparing) way achievable.

We should try that.

Sarah H. Hoyt
March 6, 2026
All We Are Saying Is Give Peas A Chance – According To Hoyt

I never understood people who insist that in order to have peace we needed to disarm. Or the variation where they thought the Mutually Assured Destruction policy was insane. Whenever I tried to engage with people like this, they would either “prove their point” via vigorous assertion (raising their voice and repeating themselves) or go silent. I took the silent treatment as they had not really thought it through and were attempting to engage their brain when I asked them to explain how this worked. I was fine with this. But the vigorous assertion type annoys me. They are all emotion without no data or logic. Those types are a disgrace to humanity and a significant number of animal species.

As much as I dislike violence, I realize that sometimes it is the only way. Particularly with those “vigorous assertion” types. There are non-emotional types you need to worry about too. People can have faulty data or drastically different fundamental principles and arrive at conclusions which involve the elimination of “the rich”, “the poor”, “intellectuals”, “capitalists”, etc. But it seems at some point they, or at least their useful idiots, morph into a version of the “vigorous assertion” class.

If they get themselves worked up into a high enough emotional state, they become physically violent. And with enough numbers they become genocidal.

You can only communicate with these in their native language such that they truly understand. And there are very few more vigorous assertions they understand better than bullets and bombs.

Excellent Points

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Prison demographics show that Democrats account for twice as many people as all others combined. Perhaps many Democrats already know about prison approximately their utopia and have acted on this knowledge.

Ages of Mass Shooters

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Mass shooters in the U.S. range in age from 11 to 72. Twenty-year-olds committed more mass shootings and injured more people than any other age group from 1966 to 2024.

Twenty-eight-year-olds committed more mass shootings than any other age group, but the deadliest mass shooting in history was committed by a 64-year-old man. Therefore, there is no apparent direct link between the number of victims and the perpetrator’s age.

Cassandra McBride
March 6, 2026
Average Age of Mass Shooters in the U.S. (Updated 2026)

Note that in the first sentence “Twenty-year-olds” refers to people in their twenties, not just people who are 20 years old.

There is more to the story at the link if you are interested. But the bottom line for my intended use is that prohibiting people between 18 and 20 (inclusive) years old from purchasing a gun is not justified from a practical standpoint of reducing mass shootings even if such a ban could pass constitutional or philosophical barriers.

Words to Remember

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If we were the problem, you would know about it.

The Reason We are Facing this Moment

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You are angry about the present moment, but you are the one who voted for decades of executive overreach that allowed this regime to grow like a cancer.

You do not get to acquiesce to forty years of executive actions and suddenly discover constitutional outrage only when it fits your partisan narrative.

My heart breaks when I see the city I grew up in flames. But what breaks it even more is knowing that this suffering—borne by generations of Iranians, paid for by American blood and treasure—was compounded by years of your denial about what this regime is.

You cannot stabilize a government whose ideology requires bloodshed. And you cannot postpone confrontation forever without multiplying the eventual cost.

The world is not facing this moment because we finally acted.

The world is facing this moment because for decades many refused to acknowledge the true nature of the Islamic Republic regime.

Tahmineh Dehbozorgi @DeTahmineh
Posted on X, March 5, 2026

There are many people who still refuse to acknowledge the true nature of the Islamic Republic regime. Most of them seem to be affected by TDS. Such mental health cases are probably beyond help and there is no point in having a discussion with them.

There are reasons to consider in opposition to the moral necessity case which I think is well proven as in above.

A more principled opposition would be, the US Constitution does not grant our government the power to be the world’s policeman. Or a practical opposition would be our history of regime change for the last 80 years has been very poor. I keep wondering, was there something fundamentally different about how we handled Germany and Japan post WWII? Those were two extremely different bloodthirsty cultures and yet the U.S. helped them reconstruct their societies into productive and comparatively free nations. More recent efforts have been far from anything approaching satisfactory. Is it that we completely eliminated the toxic cultures in Japan and German? If so, then that may mean the eradication of Islam is required to enable the incubation of national neighbors fit for a civilized world.

This would be the most important acknowledgment of all yet to be realized and the reason we will face this moment again and again until we do realize it.

Gun Control Failure in Iran

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Iranian civilians certainly have a legitimate need to arm themselves. It is difficult to understand the horrors they face under the current Islamic regime. They can be arrested, jailed and tortured on mere suspicion. Their security forces can shoot them dead on the street for no reason without any fear of a legal response.

While a $440 Turkish-made Colt .45 doesn’t provide the firepower required to save its owner from dozens of Iranian security forces armed with AKs, at least it offers the owner the ability to take a few with them.

Lee Williams
March 5, 2026
Gun control in Iran was failing even before our first strike – Second Amendment Foundation

Imagine a world in which the Iranian people had all the firearms they wanted before the 1979 revolution. Even if the Shah had not seen the light and implemented needed reforms before the citizens took up arms to persuade him, having arms after the revolution would have enabled “second thoughts” on the nature of the revolution.

And, of course, having them now would make the removal of the current leadership much easier.

Sure, as pointed out by Williams, the black market is supplying a few arms to the oppressed citizens. But having plentiful ammo and especially open training and practice opportunities is vital to having the skills to confidently put those tools to work.

Krugman Test

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One shouldn’t exaggerate the economic fallout from this war. But it isn’t occurring in isolation: There are many stresses on our economy, and this could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back — a straw that becomes heavier the longer the war goes on. Furthermore, if Trump is this erratic now, what will he do as the midterms get even closer?

Paul Krugman
March 04, 2026
Reality Sets In on Trump’s New War – Paul Krugman

My general rule of thumb is if Krugman makes a prediction, then bet against whatever he said. Let this post be a marker to test my rule of thumb. I’ll add a post to go live in six months to see how his prediction turned out.

Profoundly False

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I am convinced that war will begin and Iran will be at the center of that war. The problem is that Iran is much stronger than Ukraine or Palestine, and therefore a proxy war against Iran will have unpredictable consequences. Among these, the least unpredictable is the generalization of the war when China concludes that, with the defeat of Iran (which is very likely), it will no longer have access to the energy resources essential for its expansion. It should be borne in mind that China has just suffered a huge defeat in Venezuela and that Latin American countries are to China what Middle Eastern countries are to the US. Their loyalty stems from convenience and, moreover, they are under increasing US pressure to reduce their relations with China.

It is therefore very likely that World War III will begin. As I said, the signs are evident, but that does not mean it will not come as a surprise. Just as Cuba is the same as Gaza, but without bombs, World War III could begin with any weak link in US-EU-Israel imperialism. I suspect that this weak link is the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The war begins with the loss of economic power on a global scale and escalates with the collapse of dollar-based financial capital. Bombs can be used as causes or as consequences. The only way this will not happen is if the gold reserves that countries have been frantically accumulating prevent it. I highly doubt it.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos
March 2, 2026
World War III is about to begin

I quote Santos here not because I think he has something profoundly correct to say, but because I believe it to be profoundly false. Yes, there is a nonzero possibility of WWIII breaking out. But with the major military support lining up on one side of the current fight, I do not expect it to spread worldwide or major players to take what is almost certainly going to be the losing side. Sure, the U.S. having control over China’s oil supply will be a problem for them. But I don’t see China thinking that is justifiable cause for war. I expect the U.S. will use it for bargaining power in trade deals, not for the destruction of China. I expect Iranian oil to be flowing again in a few weeks to any country that is reasonably friendly to the West. Venezuelan oil is also going to be available to reasonably friendly countries. The U.S. is a net exporter of oil and to a certain extent the addition of oil on the world market will be bad for U.S. oil producers. Expect prices to drop in a few months as the conflict settles and the supply lines are reestablished.

As further evidence of Santos being out of touch here is his recipe for avoidance of WWIII:

Is there nothing we can do to prevent World War III?

Yes, there is.

1- An international petition asking UN Secretary-General António Guterres to resign immediately in view of the high probability of war and the UN’s inability to prevent it.

2- Take to the streets in defense of Cuba and Iran as we did in defense of Palestine.

3- Organize protests in front of the US and Israeli embassies and EU representations.

4- Considering that the most repugnant (though not the weakest) link in the US-EU-Israel triad is Israel, boycott Israel through the BDS movement.

He thinks protests change things. No, protests are for virtue signaling. Trade (or lack of it), diplomacy and physical force change things.

Persuasive Writing

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Scrolling through the internet, people remain really fucking stupid, are totally incapable of critical thinking, and they’re completely divorced from any sense of history.

So… Iran’s been fucking with us since I was born, has funded, trained, and enabled some of the most heinous assholes of the last several decades, destabilized an entire region of the Earth, and generally been total pricks.

Previous administrations going back to Jimmy Carter have had problems with the Iranians being total pricks who routinely do evil shit. Each of them did a little something, or nothing, or went full quisling sucked up and bribed them, but mostly they kicked the can down the road to be someone else’s problem for political expediency. Because due to the situation at those times there’d be no overthrowing the fanatics without getting into a protracted ground war that would result in lots of American casualties.

But today, due to a cascading series of current events, the situation has evolved and the American president most likely to say Fuck It YOLO, was presented the opportunity to dog walk this regime without invading. That hadn’t really been an option before.

This was all caused because one of Iran’s many proxy bands of terrorist dickheads flew their waxy terrorist wings too close to the sun and got their dicks blown off by pagers. As that escalated Iran decided to launch a shit ton of missiles which weren’t nearly as impressive as everyone was scared they would be, so then they lost a whole bunch of their leading boss assholes, and the whole world saw that Iranian air defenses were wishful thinking when some B2s buttfucked their impenetrable super bunker.

So then the populace of Iran got really uppity, because they’re sick of these religious fanatic death cultists too. Their asshole government then provided a demonstration of why we’re never ever giving up the 2nd Amendment here.

Except the FAFO president told them not to massacre all those people, and he was sick of their shit. This is the same guy who has made a rather impressive list of military operations that get in, fuck shit up, and then get out fast with minimal American casualties. This man is not George Bush. He does not have a Colin “You Break It You Buy It” Powell. Trump apparently does not seem to give a fuck about “nation building”, which works out because the American people do not want another twenty years of bullshit like Afghanistan or Iraq.

When given the opportunity to kill a ton of bad people, allowing the Iranian people to do the rest, and this opportunity has never come along before, of course Trump is going to go for it. And despite the screaming from the schizophrenic podcaster crowd of the griftosphere, most conservative Americans are very much of the attitude fuck Iran.

(of course libs are gonna lib, so get ready for a bunch of rainbow dipshits to march with Iranian flags next week)

Larry Correia
February 28, 2026
(20+) Larry Correia – Scrolling through the internet, people remain… | Facebook

Correia is an excellent writer and can be very persuasive. When confronted with someone with extraordinary persuasion skills I am immediately on guard. Is it reality they are explaining with exceptional clarity or are they selling a fiction?

After spending a fair about of time thinking about it, I’m inclined to believe Correia is correct as far as he goes. These clowns deserve every ton of high explosive persuasion they get.

I do have some concerns about what things are going to look like a year from now. Are the Iranian people going to be able to clean up the mess after the bombs and missiles stop raining? Will they try and then get machine gunned into hamburger as the military takes control? Will China see this as the most opportune time for “reunification”?

There are always tradeoffs and risk in whatever path chosen. I see the military action as morally justified. I don’t think it really should have been our responsibility to do it, but Israel couldn’t really do it on its own and no one else was stepping up to help them.

As is usual when violence is the correct course of action it is not a good thing. It is merely the least bad option available. I hope the U.S. made the correct tradeoffs.

An Appropriate Conclusion

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HAPPENING NOW! Israel bombed the building hosting the voting for the Iranian leadership succession AS THEY WERE VOTING! I guess that means they won’t be having any leadership for a while.

Who is the wise person who thought of all meeting in one place?

Houman David Hemmati, MD, PhD @houmanhemmati
Posted on X, March 3, 2026

If there were wise people in the group, they would not have a theocratic death cult for the leadership of a country. But the death cult getting put to death is appropriate conclusive end to situation. Will it be the end? Perhaps not. But it is going to make it more difficult to find hard line leadership. After all, how many levels of decapitation does it take before no one wants to be the head?

Via email from Paul K. who referenced BREAKING: Iran Supreme Council Bombed While Gathering to Choose New Leadership.