Bad Poetry: Noise

This piece of Bad Poetry was produced by thinking about three things at one time: (1) the Poets & Storytellers United prompt, and (2) "The Noble Stinky Sestina" by Roland Caton, Scop Shop, 1984, and (3) the primary topic of noise in the news these days.

Let's consider the prospect of mind-numbing noise

coming out of the "data centers" the rich boys

would like to inflict on us all. It annoys

those who like to think, or want to sleep, that these joys

may be sacrificed merely to power the toys

that they don't even play with. The marketing ploys 

engender resistance. "We CAN'T stop it?" Ploys

that serve their causes worse than unbroken white noise

are the efforts the rich make to market these toys.

If the rich boys can't stop it, we can, you rich boys!

What made you think that we'd give up all the joys

of quietness, coolness, and green? It annoys

us to be told we can't just say no. It annoys

us to be told we can't think, write, count, vote. Such ploys

are what cost Silicon Valley's party the joys

of Election Day. And will again. Useless noise

and the idea that we'll pay for what the rich boys

want to peddle, when we still have plenty of toys

of our own, if we want to waste time with mere toys.

Microsoft's marketing itself with what annoys

those who've not bought the latest junk that the rich boys

try to sell us. "Pay more for MORE wait time"? Such ploys

only could be conceived in a brain full of noise,

a mind that has never known quietness' joys.

People need space. Need sunlight. Need starlight. The joys

of the natural world aren't replaced by the toys

that spin, pop, beep, flash, and break down. All the noise

that the flatphones can offer still merely annoys

those who see right through silly and insolent ploys

that occur to the minds of the lazy rich boys.

They believe they are gods. They forget they are boys.

I look at them and picture them pleading for joys

they get by giving up, taking breaks. Frantic ploys

to extend every buzz are what inspire their toys.

They'd live longer by calming down. So it annoys

those who live longer to hear their furious noise.

I reject all the ploys that the stupid rich boys

make to market their noise while destroying our joys.

I reject all their toys. Don't care how that annoys!

Have you mailed any flatphones in your home back to the store, yet, Gentle Readers?

A Thing I Couldn't Live Without

This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt was "a thing I couldn't live without." We've had that one before. I almost didn't do it, but then I thought I might as well...

Water.

You can't live without water.

I can't live without water.

Huge corporations can't build those "data centers" to store, and abuse, all the information foolish people put into "the cloud" without very large amounts of water. And electricity. And air conditioning.

Likely, to keep their computers going, they'll use up enough water and electricity that there won't be enough for the rest of us to go on living our lives. And so on.

Why even speculate about the bad consequences? Let's just accept that "data centers" are intended to provide jobs and an economic boost for one year, two at most, and then decrease the number of job openings and depress the economy after that. I know of no American neighborhood that needs that effect. We need to stop racing with China toward an economic cliff, and instead, step aside and plan to help China recover from its fall.

How do we do that?

Very simple. We don't need to listen to the partisan political bickering about how this allegedly necessary evil is to be regulated, in which way will do us, personally, more damage. We need to make the evil unnecessary.

Don't put any more information into "the cloud."

Use a simple phone that doesn't try to be a computer, or none. Don't use flatphones. Try to avoid touching them--they can be used to gank images of your fingerprints for nefarious purposes. 

Use a computer with physical data storage, or none. Don't put data in "the cloud."

Demand printed bills, and pay bills with cash. Don't give people with whom you do business an excuse to put data, especially not your financial data, in "the cloud."

I believe (I could be wrong) that if a critical mass of Americans are religious about these three things, we may be able to save the Internet and our personal, Net-free home computers that are still running Windows 95. 

Tablets, flatphones, Windows 11, QR codes as a pretext for discriminatory pricing, Handmaid's Tale nightmares of mass confiscation of funds and deletion of accounts for individuals or groups--out they all go. Simplify your electronics. If it was rolled out after 2016, it's probably "cloud-based." Tell the company to stick it up their nose. 

Don't buy new electronics unless and until the manufacturers get back to cloud-free equipment that's built to last. Nobody really wants to store data on tape for pity's sake, or even on floppy disks, but if it doesn't have a hard drive and a port for stick drives, leave it in the store.

Too bad if this disappoints Donald Trump, but he's from the generation that's never really understood or appreciated computers anyway, and his decision to cling to notions about "the cloud" performing the economic miracle our system of checks and balances won't let him use tariffs to perform...well, it came from desperation and from ignorance. Empathy is appropriate. Empathy, but not indulgence. 

Pet Peeve

It's too late to add this post to the Long & Short Reviews link-up, but the prompt for Wednesday's post was pet peeves.

Long ago I read an otherwise forgettable young adult novel set in an invented world, written (iirc) as a cautionary tale for girls who thought venting anger was "liberated." In the fantasy world characters activated their magical powers by getting so angry they developed hypertensive headaches. They had names based on names from our world plus the suffix "-mad." The main character, Harimad, was a girl travelling alone on some sort of quest. Along the way she met an animal called a peeve, which was indigenous to this invented planet; built like a fat cat, it was about the size of a pig and talked a bit the way a pig might talk, if it could. The peeve was not her pet but when she stopped in towns people saw the animal and, after she'd identified herself, announced her to others as "Harimad and her pet peeve."  

None of the peeves in that novel sounded as much fun to know as the pet cat who owned me at the time, but the idea of a cute, if surly, furry pet peeve has stayed with me ever since. Even after Piers Anthony wrote a novel called Pet Peeve, where the peeve is a sort of parrotlike bird who joins a party of human and humanoid Xanthians on a quest and is always spouting middle school type insults. The cat-pig-peeve animal sounded like a real animal that might have existed, saying things like "feed me." The parrot-peeve sounded more like a computer.programmed to try to annoy people.

In our real world, of course, a pet peeve is something people find annoying enough to grumble about though not annoying enough to do much else about. 

Mine is the way Microsoft's annoyance-ware regularly tells me that the computer or a program running on it "is not responding." Durrrrr..of course it's not "responding." How could it ever "respond" to anything? If anyone lived through the 1980s without being told that machines react and only living creatures can respond, why was that person allowed to write the script for the computers of people who do remember the 1980s?

That's only a peeve, because I seriously want Microsoft brought to heel and forced to stop interfering with other people's computers. Once it's recognized as theft to send to anyone else's computer anything that delays that computer's following its owner's commands, the only situations in which computers will be not processing input will be mechanical failures of magnitudes great enough to distract even word-nerds from caring if the error message is "Yo'puter's dade." Computers can't die because they've never been alive, but we'll be too worried about how much theye're going to cost to care. But as we'll be working offline most of the time, saving data on physicaL storage drives, and not receiving daily annoyances from Microsoft, we'll not be seeing any messages of that kind in most years. 

Hot Enough for You? What You Can Do

As mentioned in the heated debate below, when you use a flatphone or tablet or anything "cloud-based," you're not necessarily using a huge "data center"--but you're using a "data center" and feeding the alleged demand for bigger ones where more evil data mining will be done, assuming anyone survives  the damage they do to the land and the environment. Especially the warming. Do you really want all your future summers to be hotter than this one? I don't. It's not been a terribly hot summer; it's not even ninety degrees this afternoon, anywhere but downtown, but it's been quite hot enough for me. 

The thinking is that existing "data centers," which are already using too much water and electricity and space, generating too much warming, and probably costing more jobs than they generate after the building stage, won't be enough to handle all the data Microsoft wants people to store in "the cloud," so either we turn the fertile fields of Ohio into deserts of toxic waste or we hand all our data to China. 

An alternative is being intentionally ignored here. We can...just...correct a misstep, and move briskly forward, without putting any data into "the cloud." We can demand private, personal data storage on our own computers, out of reach from any other point in cyberspace, or no computers at all. That is not what Microsoft wants, nor is it what Microsoft investor Donald Trump thinks he wants, because instead of selling new computers it will revive a demand to keep on using older computers at least until the corporations roll out new ones that meet the older standards. But if we think more than five years ahead--which may be difficult at Trump's age, but should be easier for his heirs--it's a total win-win. Less waste, more functional computers, we get to keep the Internet, and if China wants to let its ruling party destroy resources it badly needs to solidify its tyrannical control over its people, we let China find out for itself that that's a bad plan...and may even be able to help China pick up the pieces after its crash.

For a start we can stop feeding the monster in our attempts to fight it...using flatphones or tablets to go online, using plagiarism programs like ChatGPT to generate memes about climate  change...

https://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2026/08/28/byop-i-just-coined-that/

Meanwhile,  over at dVerse, David Ben Alexander achieved a seadna in English. 

https://skepticskaddish.com/2026/08/13/gone-with-the-breeze-or-words-like-these/

A seadna (presumably pronounced "SHAH-dna") is one of those old Celtic verse forms that aren't usually attempted in English. It has lots of rules:  For each stanza, lines have to alternate between 8 and 7 syllables, no exceptions. (Doable.) Lines 1 and 3 must rhyme with each other, as must lines 2 and 4. (Right.) The last word of lne 3 must also rhyme with an "important" word somewhere in line 4. The last syllable of line 1 must alliterate with the first stressed syllable in line 2. The last word of line 4 must alliterate with an "important" word just before it, and the more "internal rhyme" within and between lines 3 and 4, the better. (I am now officially lost.) So far, all seadnas written in English have expressed primarily the thought "Look, I solved this puzzle!", but in theory someday someone may write a really good one.

Here is a bit of Bad Poetry inspired by the seadna form. As you may observe, although it's almost impossible to force English words into the correct form, if you just relax and use as much internal rhyme and alliteration as possible attempts at seadnas in English can be sort of fun...and if you ban all things "cloud-based" from your life, you can take away the basis for the claim that we need to follow China down into Tech Inferno.

Future summers' weather hotter,

Heavier than this summer's was,

Thirst amidst a waste of water:

First thing those flatphones can cause.

China thinks "need data chewer"?

China thought they needed Mao.

China thinks change can secure

Pure data? Who knows how?

China's junk is sinking, flaming!

Typhoon on the China Sea!

We see rich men (no names naming)

Claim the whole world's bound to be

Chained to China in pollution,

Wasting all our good green Earth;

Cry for fission, fracking, fusion,

"For pollution boosts wealth's worth."

Friends don't let friends use the flatphone!

Microsoft? Just bar the door!

Of China's bad ideas that one's

Outshone all that failed before.

There will be no cloud-based Internet for me. If you call yourself Green, there shouldn't be for you, either. Take that flatphone back to the store. See if they'll give you a refund.

Can We at Least Look Forward to Re-Entry?

"Don'it always seem to go, you don't know what you have till it's gone?" Today's main post was a real downer for me to write. I don't know that this needs to be a downer season, though. While we can use the Internet without feeding the monsters we want to starve, let's enjoy it. Most of my online time will be spent downloading content I want to save (mine and other people's) but there's no reason not to share and enjoy all the digital content we've really "liked" for all these years. I may be linking to posts from the 1980s; no apologies. Some people were posting good stuff back then, and deserve credit.

After all...we'll still have our skills. We can reenter the Internet if and when we get...this is my list, I encourage you to post yours:

* Privacy protected by federal law, with heavy penalties for anyone storing in one place enough information to be able to identify any person in the real world. (The federal government has its own special networks that do not connect to the regular Internet. As long as that disconnection is absolute, I'm not opposed to that.)

* Requirement that all "data centers" generate ALL of their own electricity (from sustainable, non-nuclear sources), recycle ALL of their own water (such that they're cut off from public supplies after drawing 50 gallons for workers to drink and wash their hands in), shut down instantly if monitors show them raising the air temperature 50 feet away, pay all content producers for all data they collect or use, are continually monitored and shut down permanently if they prey on data from unpaid sources, are unable to connect with computers that are in use, and generally are such a liability that nobody wants to build one anyway.

* Requirement that any company that uses content produced by any individual must compensate that individual within a week and before using, selling, or publishing the said content.

* Criminal penalties for any use of camera, microphone, or any unpublished content on another person's computer in the absence of either a specific contract signed before the transfer of each individual data file, or a legitimate search warrant for the prosecution of a crime. YouTube may not try to "see" even the silhouette of a human before playing a video. The fact that Microsoft has reacted recognizably to being shouted at, in the past year, must cost Microsoft mucho dinero. (The cats probably think I'm losing my marbles, with all the yelling at this computer they've heard. It's all been a scientific experiment. Yes, the microphone app has been turned off, and yes, Microsoft has still reacted as if it were turned on.)

* Redesign of the Internet to limit electronic payment, criminalizing any attempt to connect directly to any individual's bank or utility account. (Connections among businesses may be allowed at the businesses' own risk and expense, provided that the businesses receive regular and realistic warnings about how foolish this is.) 

* Requirement that any company that delays payment for more than a week, without specific authorization from the person(s) to be paid, will jollywell pay the debt owed AS IT STOOD ON EACH AND EVERY DAY THAT IT WAS OWED. If a content site that owed you $10 in 2011 has not paid that debt by 2027, it can be held responsible, and its owners' assets sold, to pay you $10 for each day since the failure to pay in 2011. Yes, Paypal and many other e-businesses will be hurting, and they'll deserve it. No, companies can't withhold transfers of payment on transactions of which they disapprove. Yes, customers can refuse to pay for content because they don't like what the online worker produced or because they can't afford to complete the project or just because they want to dissolve their companies and get drunk, but they have to do that before a contract is signed, work is done, and the final copy of the content is delivered. 

* Redesign of the Internet to allow NO third party to interrupt the use of a privately owned computer, except for law enforcement agencies with a search warrant for prosecution of a crime. "Updates" and "cookies" and spyware LOCKED OUT of computers for at least one hour after the last keystroke, and preferably, when the infrastructure is in place, for the time it takes the FCC to review a request to meddle with another person's computer and deny permission to companies that aren't making a positive contribution to the computer owner's experience. (Spyware might, following Yougov's example, be allowed to run after a contract has been signed paying the computer owner, say, $10 a month plus complete access to whatever the client company has been allowed to spy on.) Meanwhile, if, say, a Microsoft update causes your computer not to obey a keyboard command INSTANTLY, if you have time to repeat a keystroke because it's not obvious that the first command "went through," you would activate a red button on your screen (or on new computers' keyboards) that would require Microsoft or any other company interfering with your use of your computer to pay you a substantial fine.

* Redesign of Microsoft into HUMBLEsoft, the company that has been put in its place and will never again presume to try to "force" its Lords and Masters the Most Honorable Customers to buy or do anything. Its new slogan must be "One computer per person per lifetime." It can continue to provide an outlet for creative ingenuity...keeping the ever-evolving Internet accessible to every computer, to every software package that pleases its owner.

* Criminal penalties for the unpaid, unauthorized use of any likeness of any living person. Any image of a person who is not fully clothed, or who appears to be touching any part of another person's body other than hand to hand, may be considered unauthorized. Porn lovers now have Craiyon and can watch three-eared porn stars doing whatever occurs to the porn lovers' filthy little minds, but they should not be allowed to drag you or me into it.

* Since plagiarism bots are driving the demand that people use those ugly, hard-to-read sans serif fonts, recognition of the font "Calibri" as identifying data that has been made available for mining and is likely to be plagiarized, while other sites and systems use decent-looking serif fonts that print out looking like the print in real books--familiar and easy to read!

* Well publicized ban of any country whose government wants censorship from the new Internet, which is for responsible adults and does not pamper those whose feelings are hurt by new ideas. Foreign users logging in to the Internet should see a message along the lines of, "You are attempting to connect to the Internet, a service designed by and for a country that has freedom of the press. Successful prosecution of a crime under United States law is necessary to restrict access or 'reach' to any content. If your national government has a problem with this, then the Internet is off limits to you. Work on upgrading your national government. We regret the inconvenience."

* Requirement that electronic devices that cost the owner more than $100 be classified as COMPUTERS and come with physical data storage, solid opaque keys including pointer and clicker keys, and a reliable heavy-duty printer, while devices that store data "in the cloud" and lack these features are classified as ACCESSORIES and may not be sold for more than $99.

Yes, we should have demanded all of these things a whole lot sooner. No doubt, if we'd imagined how fast the garbage features could be cranked out and built into a dysfunctional system, we would have demanded them. Now we must demand them as conditions for re-entry into the Internet. No connection from Windows 10, or Windows 7, or Windows 92? Soooo long, it's been good to know ya...

Bill Busting 108: Cheap Computing

The final installment planned for this frugal series is not happening any more.

With Microsoft threatening to feed all online writers, artists, and data analysts into food for its plagiarism ("artificial intelligence") monsters, I don't know whether there's going to be any valid reason for any frugal person to own a computer, or have one at home, after October.

If there is such a reason, it'll be an old one that no longer links to the Internet but processes words and numbers even better now. 

I'd planned to make this a much more informative and entertaining post that would be worth somebody's $5, but times have changed...so I'm glad nobody paid for the post I intended to write.

I think, instead of planning home computer centers, we should be planning our post-computer lives.

Book Review: Catching the Wave

Title: Catching the Wave

Author: Emily Selby

Date: 2022

Quote: "[T]hat girl had a strange power bill."

Amelia, the Internet security consultant at the Book by the Sea bookstore, is a real computer geek. She doesn't even recognize how bizarre and rude the phone call with the people yelling about the "strange power bill" is. She investigates, though, and finds herself doing real detective work, tracing the owner of the cryptocurrency "mining" operation and the resulting Bitcoins that are raising the bill. 

This cozy mystery introduces readers to the basics of cryptocurrency. Danger and gross-out levels are low. When not panicked by the inflated bill, even the landlords are reasonably polite. Solving the mystery depends on your ability to apply logic to the information about cryptocurrency Amelia provides to the other characters and you. 

This mini-book is a sort of trailer for a trilogy of detective stories, featuring Amelia, set in New Zealand. 

Ten Favorite Web Sites, Podcasts, and Blogs

A few years ago I said I was going to post some things to replace the missing 95% of my blog roll (on your right). I've not made the time, and meanwhile Long & Short Reviews is asking reviewers to post short tributes to favorite web sites we follow.  

I follow over 200 blogs, podcasts, Substacks, etc. Some of the best ones have died, or at least become very irregular. (To name five: Drudge Report, Ozarque, Making Light, Pamela Dean, Vince Staten...I still like and usually link to Vince Staten's posts, but he's retired and his posts are irregular.) Some are right-wing, some are left-wing, some have no political identity. Some are writers' blogs that consist mainly of book and sale announcements, and musicians' blogs that consist mainly of music, and booksellers' and book reviewers' blogs that consist mainly or entirely of book promotions.

Here are ten that post something I actually read at least weekly. L&SR blogs are excluded from consideration on this list, because the idea is to introduce our other favorites to one another, and the weekly blog challenge has already introduced us to one another.

1. Barb Taub: Our generation's answer to Erma Bombeck blogs from Arran Island, often about travel to other places. She doesn't go to Florida in winter; she goes to India. This blog is always funny, though sometimes it's that odd, perhaps heartwarming, perhaps irritating, laughter through tears in what's actually a sad story that eupeptic people do.

2. David B. Clear: Cartoons that are fresh and funny, insights into the writing process, and some bloggy wails about the lives of a young couple trying to generate a steady income from rental property. They're not American, though DBC's English sounds as if it might be, and don't do politics. People who don't enjoy this Substack are seriously humor-challenged. I usually laugh out loud at least once a week, and there's a nice mix of rude jokes, as favored by the young, with "dad jokes," as told by my generation to the young. (Among ourselves many of us used to like dirty jokes too.)

3. How to Meow in Yiddish: When the blogger known as MOTUS (Mirror of the United States, main writer of the Michelle's Mirror blog) was in treatment for cancer, some forum participants split off and formed smaller blog/forum sites. I thought that might happen here. (Did I think reviews of old books were going to attract a mob? Hey, if catty comments about someone else's clothes...Every good blog has a niche, often a small niche from which a really good blog expands into anything-and-everything.) It happened, instead, at what readers of the Mirror now know as the Meow, which is a very nice, friendly blog often featuring whimsical speculative short fiction. Some of that fiction has been compiled by now into In the Tenth Year of the Pandemonium (post-apocalyptic alien invasion) and The Book of Ralph (a story about a very nice Sasquatch family). All kinds of things get posted in the comments, including lots of classic rock music...this blog is especially recommended to anyone who wants a nice mix of beats to exercise to.

4. Messy Mimi's Meanderings: Lots of fun stuff, but the core of this blog is a daily list of the many different "holidays" observed on any given day of the year and some historical events that could be celebrated on that day. It's like a day-by-day online almanac. Also photos, tales of volunteer work, verse, jokes, mini-stories, and shelter cats. 

5. Michelle's Mirror: Started out as political snark with a silly premise: the blog was written by a mirror that had the unenviable job of making it possible for the First Lady to believe she looked decent, which in the case of Michelle Obama, etc. etc. har har. Since I think Mrs. Obama did look decent, most of the time, even if the styles she favored were (I wonder why) styles for large, dark-complexioned women that wouldn't suit most of us, I thought this was a lightweight conservative or even "neocon" blog for the first few years. It was visited and dissed by Michelle Malkin--well it's not her mirror. But it never was only about fashion and it never was only ragging on Mrs. O. It became a news blog and grew its own forum, which some followers used as their own blog host site. They post everything--pet photos, music, one blogger's regular posts about the history of pop music, prayer requests, news videos from around the world, sermons, vintage movies....This blog has survived a lot, including the main writer's brain tumor and surgery.

6. Notes from the UK: Ellen Hawley's blog about what she's learned since moving to the UK. Out-loud laughter is guaranteed.

7. Poets & Storytellers United: There is a small, loosely knit online community of poets who've linked up at a few different sites over the years: Dverse, Whirligig, and P&SU, currently. P&SU is hosted by Blogspot so it has the most congenial format and is the one where  I post poems, if I do. There's a delicious mix of abilities in this community generally. Some people are obviously learning English as a second language, and some are writing the poems that are going to be in future generations' schoolbooks.

8. Real Coffee with Scott Adams: Used to be a proper blog called the Dilbert Blog. Then Adams went to "vlogging" or "podcasting." I ignored the videos, mostly, until they were censored. It is a duty to read and listen to material that's being censored. In SA's case, the videos are nothing much to look at, but his whimsical comments on news items are worth listening to. They're posted on You Tube (linked) and on Rumble. I get them in the e-mail from Rumble.

(But please don't anyone who is currently under age 70 take this endorsement of a "vlog" as a suggestion that I'd be willing to listen to you just talking to your computer every day. I think I'd better post a rule. If you want me to listen to your "vlog" you must be (1) over 70, (2) the author of a blog I followed for years, (3) having lost nothing but the ability to type, or a critical mass of your core audience's ability to read/see. If you and your audience have the ability to read and type, please use it.)

(And, do I believe Scott Adams really had the option of identifying as Black? Well why not...it'd be like Ishmael Reed being active in the Irish-American League. I think SA would have about as much credibility as a Black American as IR had as an Irish-American, but your ancestors don't go away merely because you don't look like them. Anyway, he was censored for saying something about some Black American writing that in no way expressed ill will toward Black Americans generally, but those who hate moderate politics screamed hysterically that it did. I believe in flouting the kind of people who hate Scott Adams.)

9. String Geekery: Naomi Parkhurst's irregular blog about knitting and designing knitwear. Home of the stitch patterns based on encoded words.

10. Wendy Welch: I'm not sure why people think you can't make a small investment in a small town, sell a mad mix of used and new books, combine it with handcrafts, music, rescue animals, community service, and your own writing, and make it pay for itself. Wendy Welch did it. In retirement she's doing more of her own writing--as in books, more academic ones these days than popular charmers like The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap, which was her memoir of the bookstore.

Microsoft Needs Brakes

Rant cut from the link log, since it doesn't contain a link...

I noticed something interesting about this computer. Sponsors are paying for full connectivity, 24/7 if I could work 24/7, but the connection is usually feeble these days. The company has noticed this all over its service area; people have come out in trucks, pruned trees, tinkered with lines. The faltering connections continue. Sometimes the computer blames the router, sometimes the server. Sometimes rain really is affecting wireless connections. Then again, sometimes, like today, there's not a cloud in the sky and  not a leaf on a tree to affect wireless connections. So I checked my hardware in the "settings" window. Seems the computer is currently within range of four connections. The one the company still owns is Ethernet, the cord that plugs into the router box inside the house. I don't use that. The two that are supposed to maintain connectivity belong to Microsoft. Microsoft gives no reason why they've been consistently "non-operational" at least since January, when I started checking this. The connection has worked sporadically because it's a Realtek emergency connection that is "built" to last 24 hours at a time. Seriously.

I think Microsoft has a very bad case of hubris. Just as a guess, the Microsoft connections for which everyone who's put in a private connection has been paying are "older software," maybe three or four whole months old, that Microsoft wants the local company to replace with "updated" ones that cost more. I think we need a federal law about this. Microsoft needs to accept that the Waste Age is over, even if it has to be forced by law to stop trying to push "change" (meaning waste) and just maintain and repair existing devices for the next hundred years. I did not see computer centers with eight or ten computers for a neighborhood actually being crowded--the Gates Foundation had told people to limit visitors' access to computers so that more people would see unused computers, want to fiddle with them, and get sucked into Internet "games" and "chat"--but, if a felt need for privately owned computers really has been created, then ONE DEVICE PER PERSON PER LIFETIME needs to be the standard. Ten computers could easily meet the needs of a thousand people. One per person is more toxic waste than we should, ethically, tolerate.

Actually I bought two computers in my lifetime. The Amstrad didn't count; it was a piece of garbage that was on sale at a notoriously untrustworthy store in notoriously untrustworthy Rockville, Maryland. It was returned to the store within the week, and was their problem. Then I bought a decent little box from Radio Shack and enjoyed it for seven or eight years. That was the computer I intend to buy in this lifetime. The company went out of business, and the kind of floppy disks it relied on weren't being made any more, but it was still functional when a grateful client gave me the Brother "smart typewriter." Again the company went out of business and the floppy disks went off the market while the device was still functional. I still have both of those devices; don't know how corroded they are, but when last used they still worked. 

Anyway I worked for other grateful clients who gave me other last-year's-model computers that belonged to the current "generation" of computers--they could be connected to the Internet and used some form of Windows. The one I sold. The Perfect Toshiba Satellite, which I regretfully turned in for recycling, last summer, because its plastic case kept cracking and exposing working parts, making it unsafe to use. The Dell laptop named "The Sickly Snail" from its very best operating speed...I used it mostly offline, but now I wonder whether Microsoft had something to do with its feebleness. The two lovely desktop computers with Windows ME, both currently in the repair shop. The shiny new HP laptop, top of the line in 2010, still good for offline use today. The Piece Of Garbage. The mini-desktop with Windows 7 that's good for transferring information from disks and cards, and that's about all. The Unsatisfactory Toshiba Satellite I'm using now. If we charitably call what the POG did working, all but the Perfect Toshiba (and I don't know about the one I sold) are still capable of working today. Now Microsoft is sending me push-to-buy messages saying it won't "support" this one after some time next summer, ooga-booga, buy a new laptop today...

Seriously? My town's shown no signs of recovering from the COVID panic's effect on the local economy. Most of the "jobs" listed at the hack writing sites are scams. So are most of the "jobs" listed in the local newspaper. One store claims to have hired dozens of teenagers--because it's adopted policies that amount to hiring them on a probationary basis and firing them in a week or two! Why the bleeping blip should I, or my town, make Microsoft any richer? I buy no more laptops. I have three laptops, two of them excellent name-brand machines. Microsoft needs to be required to keep those laptops working better than ever. On this round world we can't afford any more toxic waste. No more "buy a whole new device." It can be "buy a new chip every five or ten years," or it can be "no more computers, no more Internet, back to the real world where there were entry-level jobs that paid students' way through college." I think we need a federal law, this year, forcing Microsoft to choose one or the other. 

Sooner or later someone will, undoubtedly, give me another last-year's-model laptop. I rescue computers the way I do cats, just because I like to hear them purr. They have a home here until they find another one. But I think Microsoft needs to be required to upgrade itself, or get out of the way of some rising-star company that will, to the point where the only computer I ever really need will be my Radio Shack model from 1988. About all it was ever built to do is integrate the functions of a clock, a typewriter, and a calculator, and guess what? Apart from taking a floppy disk into town and uploading content now and then, that's all I need, or want, a computer to do in my home. Microsoft can roll their shiny new apps into a very small ball and stuff them in their ears.

Microsoft can pay, too, for all the garbage they're running on computers they did not buy, in buildings they did not buy or lease, on electricity and phone lines for which they're not paying. Look at your "Task Manager." How many programs are running, and how many of them did you open? As many as half of them are probably spyware, and more than you're using are the ones Microsoft is using to slow down your computer with endless "updates" to things you didn't even ask to have taking up space on your computer. Microsoft needs to be forced to pay individuals and local companies for any of those little "push to install" thingies that cause wait time. What they should "install" is a button that automatically, even if you choose not to click on it, notifies the FCC of WAIT TIME and sends you a message, "MICROSOFT OWES YOU (AMOUNT OF MONEY) FOR STEALING TIME ON YOUR COMPUTER." That will teach them to run the "security updates" only one hour after the last keystroke on any computer, ever. Spyware, likewise, can wait until the end of our work days. And if Microsoft sabotages entire local companies, Microsoft should pay everyone's bills for the months during which the sabotage affected customer satisfaction, too. 

And somebody Out There ought to be building new cases for the Perfect Toshiba Satellite laptops, most of which are probably still functional if the companies were forced to allow them to connect to the Internet--or for people who don't actually want them to connect to the Internet. It is possible for computers to last long enough to be more than toxic waste. It just hasn't been the predominant practice in the industry.

Morgan Griffith on Trump's Tech Dreams

From US Representative Morgan Griffith (D-VA-9):

"

As I have discussed in a previous column, my Congressional calendar is going to be filled with new assignments.

I still serve on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, but I was recently appointed as chair of the Committee’s Subcommittee on Environment.

The Trump Administration will be pursuing a number of environmental reforms to unleash American energy dominance and lower the costs of energy consumption.

One of Trump’s first Executive Orders declared a national energy emergency to facilitate domestic energy production.

Another Order rescinded President Biden’s executive actions that restricted Alaskan energy development.

Alaska will now be free of regulations that hindered its ability to explore and develop liquified natural gas in the region.

A key asset to carrying out Trump’s environmental agenda is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The agency is now headed by my former colleague in the U.S. House, Administrator Lee Zeldin.

After Zeldin’s confirmation in January, he went right to work.

Zeldin visited disaster-impacted communities in North Carolina, Los Angeles and East Palestine.

As it pertains to the wildfire recovery efforts in Los Angeles, the EPA is engaged in the agency’s largest wildfire cleanup ever.

These visits come on the heels of Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Southwest Virginia, where he met with Governor Youngkin in Damascus to update the region on Hurricane Helene recovery efforts.

The Trump Administration has signaled its commitment to helping these communities respond, rebuild and recover.

Further, Zeldin is heading a new initiative at the EPA.

“Powering the Great American Comeback” consists of five pillars to promote environmental stewardship without restricting economic growth.

Pillar One is entitled “Clean Air, Land and Water for Every American.”

President Trump was committed in his first term to conservation efforts, cleanup of hazardous waste sites and reduction of emissions in the air while fostering economic growth. Pillar One reaffirms those practices.

Pillar Two is “Restore American Energy Dominance.”

During President Biden’s Administration, domestic energy production was hampered by “green new deal” policies.

Biden imposed a pause on approving terminal applications for exporting liquified natural gas.

Biden’s actions also shut down the Keystone XL Pipeline, which could have helped the United States prevent draining our Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

And the Keystone XL Pipeline would have kept gas prices lower.

By unleashing American energy, Trump will bolster American energy security and over time help lower the fuel costs we saw rise sharply under Biden.

Pillar Three focuses on permitting reform.

In line with the above, too many burdensome regulations undercut our ability to attract investments from able and innovative companies.

Zeldin makes it a goal of his EPA to work with state and federal authorities to ensure projects are not unreasonably harassed by radical left environmentalist policies, but instead welcomed with appropriate environmental oversight.

By streamlining this process, companies can invest millions in our nation and promote job growth.

Pillar Four sets a goal of making the United States the world’s artificial intelligence (AI) capital.

AI data centers take a lot of energy in order to operate. We need energy at a cost that is competitive, or we will lose the race to lead on AI.

Recently, Vice President Vance visited France for the global AI Action Summit.

Needless to say, AI is an emerging phenomenon with implications for economic growth, security and governance. It is critical for the U.S. to not fall behind, and I am glad that Zeldin recognizes this.

The fifth and final pillar emphasizes American manufacturing of cars and vehicles.

The auto industry faced considerable concerns under the Biden Administration. Biden’s “green new deal” policies promoted the use of electric vehicles and discouraged consumers from purchasing American-made gas-powered cars.

In many parts of the United States, including large segments of the Ninth District, electric vehicles are just not practical at this time.

Further, such policies threaten American auto manufacturing jobs and an industry that so many American families rely upon.

Protecting and bringing back these auto jobs to the U.S. is a step in the right direction for the EPA.

These five pillars will take into careful account environmental stewardship while inheriting the energy demands of the country.

As chair of the Environment Subcommittee, I will explore ways to support Administrator Zeldin in Powering the Great American Comeback.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office.  You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives.

" 

What I Think of Artificial Intelligence (III)

Right. Let's add a few words to the other reviewers' supply. I don't think humans are intelligent enough that we need to try building "artificial intelligence." We'd do better to practice using what's given to us. 

There are some people who don't like other humans at all and would like to imagine that, having replaced  the factory laborers with computers, replaced the secretaries with computers, replaced their wives with sex robots and their dogs with computer games, they can replace the complementary intelligence of a team of co-workers with computers too. The whole idea is sick. It should need no refutation. Wanting to believe that a computer is intelligent is a sickness. 

Obviously I like computers, for what they're worth. They process numbers and letters with mechanical efficiency. Can computers be programmed to use numbers and words to think? They can be programmed to simulate thought, but only by plagiarizing real thought. 

"Artificial intelligence" does not draw pictures or write articles. It mashes up bits of existing pictures and articles. If this is recognized as a bit of mechanical spin on plagiarism, no harm is done. If people mistake the results for pictures or articles, they are stealing creative work from human beings. 

Something That Has Improved Since I Was a Kid

This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt has a short answer. I don't need a lot of words to describe it.

The answer is: computers. Computers are purely a luxury. Neither individuals nor societies need them, and the case could be made that we're better off without them. Ah, but for some of us they're so much fun.

The number of people for whom computers were fun was much smaller when I was a kid, when about all computers could do was simple calculations using very large numbers. "Small" computers were the size of refrigerators; they had to be all but sealed into their own offices, away from potential contaminants like loose hairs or stray hairpins, or the certain death of computers exposed to natural changes in temperature and humidity. Most people didn't expect we'd ever see a computer in real life.

I was a teenager when microchips were invented. Suddenly, instead of getting their information from big clunky punched cards and storing it on disks the size of two-hour movie reels, computers could get their information from little chips of silicon and store it on floppy disks the size of greeting cards. There was room for one in your house, your office, even your dorm room. In a few years computer "languages" were efficient enough that people who didn't have the math gene were learning them. Children's magazines offered simple programs (a few very rich children of indulgent parents) could type into the family computer to get it to display a message like "Happy Mothers Day" or draw a simple image of a desktop computer with strings of X's. Children I knew personally were locked out of the office rooms where their parents' computers were kept, as were their baby-sitters,

By this time I was old enough to be expected to write programs that would do something useful. To stay on the Dean's List I programmed a school computer to drill freshmen on Spanish verbs, with instructions for tweaking the program to sdd other languages. On a job I helped, mostly by typing in zipcode parameters, to get a computer to look up zipcodes, because older subscribers were still forgetting to add them to their addresses when they wanted to subscribe to magazines. Then I bought a computer that came pre-programmed to do very simple word processing, and that was all I, personally, needed. I coded no more. 

It was cool, though, to be able to work on computers. Before 1979 my brittle, continually shedding hair would have been a valid excuse to ban me from the computer lab. The 1980s were awesome because now even girls with brittle hair could play with computers too.

And, perhaps foolishly, we thought that all humans had enough human feelings for our fellow humans that the ability to build robots with "artificial intelligence" wouldn't lead directly to the slaughter of humans deemed not intelligent enough to be fun to know...or too intelligent to support dictatorship. 

So everybody and their dog and cat, sometimes literally, wanted computers of their own. I vowed I'd never spend money on one after the long-gone word processor from Radio Shack; I was in control, I could stop with one.. I've acquired quite a collection from grateful clients. I sold Arnie's desktop computer, with the version of Word that was hustled off the market because it could be copied and added to any desktop computer via floppy disks, and Mark's word processor, which was really just a typewriter with floppy disk storage that allowed quiet typing and editing-before-prnting, long ago. The one we always called Joan's (Zahara Heckscher's original given name was Joan), the Original or Practically Perfect Toshiba, was a classic but eventually its plastic outer shell started crumbling at a touch; I discarded it only this year. The desktop computer Earle built, in the free Saturday afternoon class for seniors at the community college, has been in the repair shop a few times but is still working, almost perfectly, and still plugged in today; it has Windows ME, the practically perfect program for practically everything I want to do on a computer, except connect to the Internet. 

That brings us to the current century. I still have most of the floppy disks I used and reused with the computers I may always love best, Earle's and Joan's, which also became memorials to two very dear friends who died too young, both from cancer. It became more practical, however, to keep the New Desktop Computer, which can transfer documents from floppy disks to more functional thumb drives, and the Sickly Snail, a puny Dell laptop that never had enough memory to work very well but \did allow me to compose documents offline and upload them right into blogs and hackw riting sites. Then came the sleek HP laptop Grandma Bonnie Peters seldom used for a few years and then handed down to me, another precious gift from another departed friend; by now it's consuidered an antique rather than "top of the line," but I paid to have its memory resurrected because it's still a treasure. When it ran out of memory and died, yet another dear friend, who also has died from cancer by now, gave me the Piece Of Garbage; it was not his fault, he just went into a store and grabbed the one secondhand laptop computer they had that met my specifications, and nobody told him it reduced electricity consumption by crashing every time the battery came close to a full charge to force its owner to use that battery. I was glad to replace it with the Unsatisfactory Toshiba I'm using now, which may be physically worthy of the same brand as the Practically Perfect Toshiba, but is infested with Windows 10. 

Finally there's the one I rescued from the landfill this summer, currently in the shop having its passwords reset and being scanned for porn and virus. Most men are reported to be unable to own a computer without using it to look at porn, but women are at least frugal enough to remember that porn attracts bad things to computers, so I want it all scraped out of mine before I log into any web sites. It took me three months to find a way just to get that thing into the shop and I'm still not sure when I'll be able to get it out. But I will. Before I ever owned anything electronic I knew that my Green conscience won't let me send them to the landfill, even if they are the POG, programmed to make any user want to pitch them into the nearest lake. I didn't scrap the POG. I traded the POG. I would have had trouble sleeping at night if I had thrown it into a lake, despite its incredible Lake Magnetism. 

I still have all the useless shells of cell phones I've ever owned, too, and the camera that uses the cards no other device seems to be able to read any more. I don't like to send them to the landfill either. 

I think the state of computer technology has, for most people who want to use it, actually gone down during my lifetime. Windows ME did just about everything a private person or small business could want; the only "app" I ever wanted to add was one for setting up sheet music in PDF documents, and you can download those for free on anything that connects to the Internet now. Windows 10, Windows 11, now Windows 365, may offer more spyware for the corporations but offer no additional benefit, and actually offer reduced functionality, for people who want to type term papers or work with spreadsheets or check e-mail. But I was not exactly a kid when ME came out and, relative to the skewed population in cyberspace, I was "old" when Windows 10 came out--so I can still say that computers have improved since I was a kid.

Book Review: Revised Rodeo Star

Revised schedule, due to server issues earlier in the day. This book review was supposed to have gone live at 10 a.m. but, since youall had plenty to read already, you may not mind its appearing now.

Title: Revised Rodeo Star

Author: Emily Spring

Date: 2023

Quote: "My savior was none other than Daniel, the rodeo's star bull rider."

"Revised" is also what this book manuscript should have been a few more times before it was published. It's told in that completely artless, yet verbose, style that screams "The computer did this all by itself." A real writer would never trust a computer to do anything all by itself. What ChatGPT spits up at us are writing prompts. It is up to the writer to go in and remove every trace of ChatGPT's mash-up of words plagiarized, probably, from the sites Google refuses to display in search results.

Since it was done by ChatGPT, there's nothing believable about the novel. Romance readers know that a romance is by definition an unlikely story. The word "romance" originally referred to speculative or fantasy adventure plots more than it did to the couple who live happily ever after at the end, and there was an intermediate stage where it often referred to stories where the couple met, felt that they were "in love," and then were separated never to meet again in this life. Still, there's a touch of reality in a properly written romance. The plot may involve someone's being the long-lost monarch of a place that never existed, but it's supposed to include hints of the writer's real experience, at least in the relationship advice. That's why romance writers linger over every detail of the nonverbal communication between the couple's exquisite bodies when the couple quarrel and make up. That's the real element. Romance writers are not always women, as they're almost required to pretend to be these days, but at some pint in their lives they all have had intimate relationships and they're supposed to be telling us how they resolved quarrels within those relationships.

That's what ChatGPT can't do. So in this alleged romance Daniel and Amanda don't quarrel and make up; they're troubled by an anonymous letter making vague accusations about Daniel's past, and they resolve their feelings by flitting off to live on El Rancho Perfecto where we never see either of them doing a lick of work. It's one cliche after another without a human conversation. 

Writers who crank out Book Funnel books in this way may be satisfying the algorithm based on what's worked for people who had written a lot of manuscripts before they started publishing online. They may be cranking along at the furious pace the system tells them is most effective. But they're cheating their readers, they're cheating Book Funnel, and worst of all they're cheating themselves if they ever want to sell books they have actually written.