From Pine View Farm

The Fee Hand of the Market 0

It’s bubblelicious.

Woman to man sitting at computer:  So these internet companies are making billions selling stocks?  Man:  Yep.  Woman:  Even though they've never shown a profit and aare deeply in debt?  Man:  That doesn't matter in the speculation market.  Woman:  So this booming stock market is based on?  Man:  Nothing.  Woman, holding hand behind her ear:  Hark.  Is that a crash I hear looming on the horizon?  Man:  This is no time for rational thought, dear.

Click for the original image.

Share

Facebook Frolics 0

Hate-full frolics.

Share

Jingo Jangles 0

At the Psychology Today website, Dominic Packer and Jay Van Bavel wonder at what point national pride morphs into a form of what they refer to a national narcissism. Methinks it a timely and worthwhile read in these Trumpled times. Here’s a tiny bit:

In one study, researchers asked people whether they would be willing to conspire against fellow citizens if they held power, for example, by wiretapping them or spreading false information. At first, strong national identification seemed linked to greater willingness to conspire against in-group members?—?which is a bit of a shocking behavior for people who say they truly care about the group.

But here’s the twist: Once the researchers disentangled the healthy form of national identification from the narcissistic one (by putting them both in the same analyses), they found that people who felt a genuine bond with their nation were actually less willing to conspire against fellow citizens. National narcissists, on the other hand, were the ones willing to wiretap and lie. In short, these types of social identity predicted the exact opposite pattern of results.

Share

QOTD 0

Alexander Woollcott:

I’m tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t work. We are supposed to work it.

Share

A Tune for the Times 0

Share

“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

They found politeness in a parking lot.

Share

The Crypto Con 0

PoliticalProf.

Share

Tool Time 0

David discusses J. D. Vance’s (somewhat poorly received) attempt to use America’s military as props for his propaganda. (Warning: Very short promo about halfway through.)

Afterthought:

That the pforces did not seem to pfall for his pfiffel gives me a straw at which to grasp

Share

Misdirection Play 0

Click for the original image.

Share

Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0

Capable of kidnapping your data? El Reg reports that (s)mooth AI criminal drives ‘first’ end-to-end agentic ransomware attack. (To put that another way, once it got the prompt, an AI bot ran a rensomeware scam from start to finish all on its ownsome.)

AI doesn’t stand for “ariticial intelligence.” It stands “amoral instrumentation.”

Share

A Divider, Not a Uniter 0

In the Las Vegas Sun, Tom Harper points out that that has been the long-standing strategy of today’s Republican Party.

Share

QOTD 0

James A. Michener:

An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.

Share

A Tune for the Times 0

Share

“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Another child . . . .

Share

Republican Family Values 0

Three girls standing on a pedestal labeled

Click for the original image.

Share

American Stasi 0

Starting with a video of an American WWII veteran, who says that he fought against concentration camps 80 years ago only to see them being established now in his own country, Rick Strom reviews a litany of abuses by the Trump maladministration’s hooded KKK secretive police.

Share

Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

As my old professor of the early fedeeral period was fond of pointing out, “History is irony.”

Share

Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0

Impartial? Only as impartial as the data they scrape train on.

At the Psychology Today website, Phil Reed reminds that “AI mirrors human cognitive biases, not just factual knowledge.” Follow the link for the evidence.

Share

Republican Family Values . . . 0

. . . meet a notion of immigrants.

Share

QOTD 0

Hypatia:

In fact men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth – often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.

Share
From Pine View Farm
Privacy Policy

This website does not track you.

It contains no private information. It does not drop persistent cookies, does not collect data other than incoming ip addresses and page views (the internet is a public place), and certainly does not collect and sell your information to others.

Some sites that I link to may try to track you, but that's between you and them, not you and me.

I do collect statistics, but I use a simple stand-alone Wordpress plugin, not third-party services such as Google Analitics over which I have no control.

Finally, this is website is a hobby. It's a hobby in which I am deeply invested, about which I care deeply, and which has enabled me to learn a lot about computers and computing, but it is still ultimately an avocation, not a vocation; it is certainly not a money-making enterprise (unless you click the "Donate" button--go ahead, you can be the first!).

I appreciate your visiting this site, and I desire not to violate your trust.