The real question about "AI"

I know the tech press has spent the last three years writing AI think pieces, asking whether it will destroy all jobs, or if it will trigger the robot apocalypse, but at this point I think the big question is: What will be left of the technology after the AI bubble pops?

Aside from not really being "AI", the post-collapse future of the tech is the real question. Because what AI boosters envisions requires more electricity than our society produces and because both that imagined AI future and what we have now costs many times more money than any AI company can ever hope to recoup in profits, it is clearly unsustainable and will collapse at some point. Maybe even really soon. So what large language model tech will still be around when the massive data centers start to fold and the firehose of money runs out? You can't put a genie back in the bottle. The technology exists. But what viable version of it will be left standing after all the non-viable stuff crashes and burns?

Cautiously optimistic but wondering why no one else is cautious in their optimism

It is great that the hostages are free and the ceasefire seems to be holding. But it is really interesting that people seem to be assuming that the war in Gaza is over. I hope it is, don't get me wrong. I think this is the fourth ceasefire with a hostage release deal there has been since October 7. Because all of the remaining hostages, and corpses of hostages, are being released with this one it will obviously be the last.

But the hard questions: will Israeli forces leave Gaza and what will happen to Hamas are still unresolved. Just like they were in prior ceasefire + hostage release deals. And all three of those prior ceasefires fell apart shortly after the hostage release part ended.

And yes, the plan/ultimatum given to Hamas last week by Trump essentially required Hamas to disarm. But Hamas has not completely agreed to that part, nor has Israel agreed to much about the future of Gaza. The two sides have only agreed to "phase one," the hostage release part that has happened today. But what happens next? Hamas seems to want Israel to withdraw from Gaza, and Israel wants Hamas to disarm and disband. Neither of those terms have been clearly accepted by the other side.

It looks to me like Hamas thinks Israel should withdraw from Gaza. They might agree to some token surrender of weapons without giving up their whole arsenal. And there's no way to measure if the group is "disbanded." They could just rebrand (maybe they could figure out an Arabic acronym that would work for "شدة"). In other words, Hamas might think that this agreement is essentially what it offered Israel in January 2024--releasing all hostages in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal and a permanent ceasefire. Netanyahu rejected that offer back then, so I think Israel expects to remain in at least part of Gaza, replace Hamas with some governing body run by foreigners that Israel has effective authority over, and that it is allowed to continue to take ad hoc military action in the territory, like it does in the West Bank.

Those two positions are mutually incompatible. So there is plenty of reason to expect this to fall apart. The prior ceasefires all did.

And yet, there is one big difference between this time and the other times: The world now expects the war to end. I think that might include majorities of the population in both Israel and Gaza. The Trump Administration definitely expects it to be over. Both sides have a lot to lose if they piss on Trump's victory lap. Those facts are where most of my optimism about the future lies. I do think there's more momentum in world opinion towards a complete end than there has been since the October 7 attacks.

For what?

If we had a functioning press corps in this country, after Trump calls for the governor of Illinois and the mayor of Chicago to be jailed, every reporter in the country should be asking the President, "jailed for what?" Make him name the crime that he thinks Pritzker and Johnson committed.

I realize this is a radical idea, but people are supposed to only go to prison if they commit a crime, not just because they say something that pisses off our toddler-in-chief. It's astounding to me that no one asks Trump the most basic follow-up question. If we are going to pretend that Trump's rants are not the incoherent ramblings of a person slipping deeper into dementia, then try to get him to clarify the seemingly insane things he says. If he still has a functioning mind, he should be able to handle a simple question.

ADDING THE BELOW VIDEO: Putting aside the fact that people should be asking the President about what he said, not a sniveling Congressional "leader" whose only act of leadership has been to completely surrender all independent powers of Congress, that is not the right question! Don't ask "should they be in prison." Ask why they should be in prison. For what crime?

Q: Do you agree that the mayor of Chicago and governor of Illinois should be in prison? MIKE JOHNSON: Should they be in prison? I'm not the attorney general. I'm not following the day to day on that

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) October 8, 2025 at 10:29 AM

Everything is Awful

It is not just awful in the Middle East. But because of the date for a lot of people, that is where the focus is. And Robert Farley convincingly (to me at least) argues that the Hamas attack set stuff in motion that made our current awful situation even worse:

And so for two years the worst people in the world have played out the script that was written on October 7, and everything is worse for the Palestinians. Everything is worse for the Iranians, and everything is worse for Americans, too; one need not invest too deeply in the factional conflicts around “Genocide Joe” or the continuing debates on swing-state polling to recognize that the Democratic coalition was badly fractured by October 7 in ways that were difficult to redress by November 2024. And today horrible people are in charge in Jerusalem, deep in the tunnels under Gaza, and in Washington DC.

I looked at my archives to see what I wrote about the attack two years ago. The first post I wrote after it was this one, which ended with this:

I don't know how this new war (or new iteration of an old war) is going to play out, but I do know there is no plausible scenario where it isn't awful.

This is less about my prognostications than the fact that "this will lead nowhere good" was obvious two years ago. And yet, the world marched right into nowhere good without much hesitation.

What Jimmy Kimmel said to get himself pulled off the air

I really don't give a shit about Kimmel or any celebrity, but it is utter madness that his show would be pulled off the air "indefinitely" for that.

Emoluments

It's weird how the word "emoluments" has completely disappeared from the discourse even as the President is openly courting corrupt deals to enrich himself.

The New York Times story behind that link (about how Trump is giving the UAE our country's cutting edge chip technology in return for the country paying off Trump for her personal enrichment) is very detailed. You'd just think that the fact that the Constitution specifically forbids the President from doing this would be fit to print.

Don Trump Quixote

We should all take a moment to marvel at the fact that all of us* are going to pay higher electric bills just because our demented President has an irrational hatred of windmills.

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* Well, by "us" I mean United Statesians, or at least most United Statesians. Mrs. Noz and I just got solar panels installed on our house so I'm hoping we mostly escape the energy-price-apocalypse.