I'm old enough to remember the country club Boomer set in absolute glee when blue collar union jobs were shipped over seas. All the old tropes about those lazy union bums, 13 weeks paid vacation, overpaid to push a mop, etc. Now the children of the country club Boomers have no future and nothing to do. My own profession is on its way out, having been mostly outsourced, and now A-I'd out of existence. I'm just trying to run out the clock. I am going to do everything in my power to make sure that my children never set foot in a college. Stacking and selling cordwood is a more noble and useful undertaking.
rd3----I am glad to admit that I have all the wood needed to heat our house for 2 winters is already split and stacked. I always have 2 years worth on hand so if I get hurt or worse, my wife has a little extra time to find a new man to keep her warm in the winter. We live in Arkansas so....plenty of trees and not too cold so......we only use 3 or 4 cords per winter. NIce to be able to keep our house as warm as we want it without concern about our electric bill and.....if it gets to hot inside, we open a window and it cools off. We have regular heat as well so our heirs will not have to worry about selling the place after the ground-hogs are bringing us our mail.
That's great. As a kid, I used to spend every Thanksgiving weekend splitting wood for my uncle who heated his house with wood. He lived in northern New Hampshire, so it was a little more dire if he ran out.
You must have a big house! I live in Iowa and only use about 2½ cords a year (768 sf house). I'm pretty warm-blooded, though. I have about twenty-two cords split and stacked in my yard, but I get the logs for free and processing them is a big part of my physical fitness program. Plus one for not having to worry about the gas/electric bill👍
Ma’am it’s only a function of cost and time to create your mechanical system design. And then consider the cost vs. benefit vs. savings for return on investment (if that matters).
College is being reinvented. My son and his girlfriend are soon to graduate as computer engineers. She already got a job at an energy company. Guess who is going to be running the power grid. We do need every job we can get back. That outsourcing thing was bad and now it's going away.
Especially the women and children. When Nike re-shores their production of cheap, poisonous tennis shoes to the US, they are going to need millions of small hands.
Then YOU should be the first one to admit these jobs just don't do themselves, and skill and perseverance are needed.. That is why people who do those jobs should be fairly compensated.
Also I am not Mexican, so I am NOT your Amigo.
But my Mexican granddaughters send a big California HOWDY!
I've hand mixed hundreds of bags of concrete by hand in a wheelbarrow. It's an honest days work. Unskilled so why excessive pay? Also hanging sheetrock? Good for the shoulders. Shit now everybody uses lifts, cordless tools, stilts, and screws. I did it the old fashioned way with, tees , hammers, and nails. It ain't rocket surgery that's for sure. Just grunt work.
This is why these jobs are not intended to be head of household they are entry level.
Just raising minimum wage in an ever-increasing spiral up will soon either put businesses out of business or automation will kick in and then no one will even have these jobs.
The cashiers are already going the way of the dodo with kiosks given the choice I always wander over to the cashier the online kiosks suck.
That sounds like some libertarian bullshit to me. Adults are doing these jobs because there are no other jobs. They've either been outsourced, insourced, or teched out of existence.
Yes, pay the immigrants shit wages and then make up the slack with welfare of various kinds. White men need not apply so they are at a disadvantage in the new culture.
Looks like the fabled Zombie Apocalypse may actually happen. Instead of corpses rising from graves, it will be legions of live humans zombified by the plethora of rubbish spewed out by AI. Time to prepare by rereading the "World Made by Hand" series!
There was a Star Trek movie called "Insurrection" where a colony of technologically advanced humans had rejected warp drive and other advanced tech in favor of the human element. They had returned to a society of artisans and apprentices who made beautiful creations with their hands and grew their own food in their own gardens. At the time I didn't understand. Now I do.
There is a word that the tech gurus of the world can't understand and that is "STOP!" Just stop already. We don't need this AI shit. We really don't.
In my place of employment my HR Director gave the appearance of a woman who was highly intelligent and skilled as her letters and policies were always well worded and well written. I thought the world of her and used her as a resource many times when addressing issues with my own employees. Then one day in her office I learned that she uses Chat GPT for everything. The woman doesn't write anything on her own. She even tried to train me on it and encouraged me to use it. I absolutely refuse to use it. I write all of my letters, reports and emails using my own brain.
AI may be a great tool for some things but for me I see it as an existential threat to everything that humanity is. My job could one day be replaced by AI. I see it coming. Until then, I will continue to use the pretty cool brain that God blessed me with. I hope and wish that one day humanity will reject the endless onslaught of technology and return back to a simpler way of existing where man made their own creations with their own hands and took pride therein.
As a novelist, I completely agree. Have no use for AI. Oddly enough, a different issue has arisen. On my way to Savannah this summer, I saw signs asking for people in a county to vote against AI setting up a huge installation because it sucks up all the water, and farmers (peanuts, soy, cotton, corn, spring wheat, Vidalia onions) have problems with dropping aquifer levels. This has turned out to be a major issue with these server installations everywhere.
Yes. I work in land development and we are seeing more and more proposals to develop land as "package" data centers specifically because of AI. The amount of power and water these facilities require is staggering, especially for smaller communities. One these facilities comes with its own power generator, however, in my state power is generated using natural gas. Even though it will generate its own power it will still be sucking natural gas out of the system that could be used elsewhere. Using this amount of resources for something as useless as AI is not prudent.
I wonder if AI has the long-term solidity that everyone is assuming just because it's computer-oriented. All these server farms may end up looking like Detroit's factories.
There is already a group of anti-tech folks like those in the movie, the Amish. If you haven't listened to JHK's latest podcast, he talks about setting up training from them for those of us dependent on technology.
Yes. The Amish! I am all in right now for a revival of the Arts& Crafts Movement. Lots of this stuff hits me as man trying to be God or very god like. To the Amish again: they deliberately place a mistake in every quilt to acknowledge that only God is perfect.
And Amish-made quilts still win prizes at quilt shows for their originality and workmanship. As for "the mistake in every quilt"...that's an urban legend...only God knows the answer to that one!
First, the snark: Zombies exist. They're called Democrats.
My employer is currently trying to upgrade its existing computer system. It's reportedly not going well, no matter how much polish upper management applies to the turd. I suspect the problems stem from the people at the top being more interested in introducing AI and "gee whiz" graphics (not to mention self-aggrandizement) than in producing something that's solidly functional. It's supposed to roll out on 1 March 2026. Fucking awesome. Come on, Powerball!
For meta-laughs, I copied this article into ChatGBT and asked it to fairly evaluate the article and author. Here are its conclusions:
🎯 Assessment of the author and article overall
James Howard Kunstler is a well-known writer and critic, especially on architecture, urbanism, energy and society. He has a track record of provocative, critical commentary.
His style tends to emphasize the worst-case, “collapse” scenario — which can be valuable (as a warning) but also risks coming across as alarmist.
In this article, his tone is unapologetically rhetorical and sweeping; that makes it more of an essay/polemic rather than a dispassionate analytical piece. That’s fine for this genre — but important for readers to keep in mind: it is opinion, not a peer-reviewed study.
The article does raise meaningful questions and highlights under-discussed risks of AI (hallucination, feedback loops, socio-economic disruption). So it contributes value by shifting focus.
On the flip side, some of the claims would benefit from more empirical grounding, more balanced counter-examples, and less dramatic escalation (“wreck the financial system”, “civilization at hazard”) unless one is comfortable with worst-case framing.
✅ Conclusion
In sum: The article is insightful and useful in raising alert-flags about AI and its broader implications.
However, it is over-broad and somewhat speculative in some of its major conclusions; some causal chains are asserted without full supporting evidence.
The author’s style and viewpoint lean into collapse narratives and cultural critique; for readers seeking a more measured, empirical discussion, one might supplement it with contrasting analyses that highlight where AI is working or being responsibly developed.
"....Skynet became self aware....." Except for the time travel stuff almost everything in "The Terminator" is doable or in actual development. I'm also fairly certain some entity like DARPA is working on that too.
“…unless one is comfortable with worst-case framing.”
THIS is the very problem that exists in the push for all things tech.
“Worse-case framing” should be #1 on the list of priories whenever even considering any technological undertaking. The fact that it is Pooh-poohed by this AI creation proves we are all just passengers on a runaway train.
Hysterical. This response demonstrates what I hate about the AI voice. It is condescending and superior when in reality it doesn't actually know what it is talking about--which rather proves the thesis of yes the essay. It misuses the term 'style' which in writing means something distinctly different from the usage AI employs. Notice the TONE of the AI--as if you are some hapless loser who understands nothing. And finally, if these are my peers I find no value to their review!
If money were the sole motivation of corporate types, imagine how much they could save by getting rid of all the lesbians, boss babes and pansies in HR departments?
One can legitimately criticize tone without being female HR. I really disliked the AI tone in general, it's true. I also object to how it flatters. But that actually isn't the point. The point is reinforcement messaging. AI says, I am superior--I have vast knowledge, you don't. You need me, You learn from me. Etc. I reject that concept.
Great piece, James. I'm an editor and writer at a tech. company in Germany, and the increase in our use of AI over the past year or so has skyrocketed, with the result that much of the work "produced" by AI has to have actual humans rework it.
All of the work produced by AI in my place of employment has to be reviewed and corrected by a human. All of it. In my simple mind I always ask, "then why mess around with the AI, just write the damned thing yourself." But they insist. They insist on using it. They MUST use it. Why? I don't get it. Humanity makes no sense.
If you don't use, you're not cool, hip, and up to date. We have to flip the Overton Window. Cool guys are White men who work with their hands and can kill with them as well.
Part of not making sense in today's world is avoidance of the predicaments of The Long Emergency. It's a natural human inclination for many to avoid unpleasant topics.
It's been a long time coming too - AI just exacerbates it. After the lessons of evil from WWII faded, Western Civilization ushered in the liberal ideas around equality which morphed into some bad ideas and policies around class, education, race and gender. Bad in the sense that while some of the ideas were noble, the policies lacked a reality check. No metrics were assigned to track success or failures, and it didn't help that drug use exploded to substitute for reality when it didn't meet the ideals of the little princes and princesses created by the Greatest and Boomer generations. After 60+ years or so, the evil inherent in human nature is hitting its peak, and the backlash has begun.
Unlike post WWII, this time our culture, values and motivations have been hollowed out by decades of social engineering which mostly undermined the attributes of earlier success. More critically, this time we face recovering into a lifestyle at odds with infinite growth and cheap energy.
Attempts to address the predicaments as problems has made things worse. And many people still don't understand anything but greed, living large, and the concept of "they'll think of something" to fix things. For most of us, the next stage of culture will include a hefty haircut in terms of wealth and lifestyle.
Five years ago, my former employer replaced hundreds of American employees with 1,000 Indians. I learned this week that the company has now replaced the 1,000 Indians with AI.
And the Indians are now all in Utah getting their CDL in 3 days at sham truck driving schools popping up in small towns everywhere here. I keep asking where have all the white workers gone?
Have you seen? Another bogus semi driver called Singh has killed another three motorists in Ontario, California. The dashcam footage is heart-rending. He mashed them single-file into the rear of another semi.
Yes and they are using slave labor to buy up all of the hotels/motels and convenience stores all over the country. Always a profitable business model to have no labor costs. A co-worker of mine asked me recently how this Indian guy was able to buy up so many hotels. I explained the calculation to him. His "cousins" are coming here from India to run it. Four of them will sleep in the smallest unit in the hotel and be on call 24 hours a day for the next five years to work off their indenture.
They have this kind of family strength, the personal strength to endure boredom that would kill most of us, and also low interest government loans that we can't get.
Our government discriminates against us in favor of Asian incomers. And of course Blacks as well. The Asians have real strengths as opposed to the Blacks who don't have talents that pertain to civilization.
If you think of it as Accelerated Ignorance, then it all makes sense. What, exactly, has been accomplished in the 21st century to make our lives better and our children smarter? Is a ‘25 high school graduate better prepared to face the world than a ‘15 grad? ‘05? ‘75? Is the current reprieve of the collective insanity known as “assigned at birth” permanent? Not likely… Enshitification is absolutely correct as is stupification (of the American public) & pussification (of the American male)…
I was born in 1947 and will add 20 years of agreement with you.
I had a friend in the sixties who left Catholic school in 11th grade for public school. He was a year behind. He blamed it on the religious training taking up a percentage of teaching time.
Is that somewhat like DEI training and the classes convincing kids to change their sex?
Jon Voight prattles on about how Jews have a much better sense of community than Christians. He forgets that we're no longer allowed to have strong communities. That would be a "theocracy."
Exactly, because AI is simply a model, and models tell you what they are told to say, and there is a person behind every thing a model is told to say. The hallucination defense is B.S., which is why Starbuck won his first lawsuit and will most likely win the next. A programmer told the model to say those things.
JHK is 100% correct on LLMs. That is why business is gravitating to small language models, SLMs. SLMs are built by programmers to serve a small audience--a Fortune 500 company or a corner coffee shop. This is where the greatest risk to existing jobs occurs.
For instance, a business using SLMs can record Zoom meetings, and Zoom will spit out a highly organized summary that takes minutes to edit. It not only saves time, but eliminates the need for a staff member to reconstruct and reproduce what was discussed during the meeting.
Think about a law office, where folks are needed to schedule, commit dictation to paper, edit out put, and interface with the court system. AI, at its fullest, allows a lawyer to eliminate all these needs, to be able to run his practice out of his home. It schedules for him, it puts dictation on paper and edits it, and interfaces with the courts. Much of this is already in place. It started twenty years ago with Dragon.
Anyone whose function is pushing “paper” of any sort better be re-training.
I’m going to have to disagree about those Zoom summaries, and file them under “workslop”.
I work as a programmer. The project managers at my job love the workslop summaries. I usually ignore them when sent out, but one from a recent meeting badly misrepresented a discussion, despite my attempt to “get its attention” during that meeting and repeat a verbally bulleted list for its benefit.
I linked that PM to the Harvard Business Review “Workslop” article, and he seems to have stop recording these summaries.
The thing is, an actual transcript which you could skim and pull from would be useful, even if it had a few homonym swaps and such. But that’s not glitzy enough.
Rob, I’m using the Zoom summaries, created specifically for my company, and they are terrific. Since I am a detail freak, I have always created my own summaries, so no one has been fired. I just save an extra 30-40 minutes of my time that used to be spent recomposing the agenda (which I also create for my meetings).
Garbage in garbage out.If one didn't recognize this with the black George Washington and black female Nazi soldiers debacle, I don't know what could make it clearer.AI doesn't and never will"learn" anything. It just scrapes the dregs faster.
The Internet has become the National Enquirer of our times. Discernment is the key and with several generations now dumbed down, lacking in factual education and unable to critically think, society is one big sitting duck for the parlor trick that is AI. Replacing manual jobs with "AI" is just a robot with a program to insert tab A into slot B plus a lot of smoke and mirrors.
The ability to create images with voices that are so realistic is the real problem in my mind. "Evidence" that will convince any jury the perp was there and see it for yourself combined with endless surveillance from phones, ring cameras and traffic cameras is what will remove all dissent from society and enslave us, all under the guise of"freedom and Liberty" for all.
You probably can't even have a private conversation walking down a country road (without carrying any personal tracking devices) what with all of the satellites, etc. Just knowing that you're being monitored 24/7 via email or talking on the phone (even landline if you're talking with someone on a smartphone) has drained much enjoyment from everyday life. I take many less photos on my phone because I know that AI is scouring everything in order to tighten the control grid...
Robinson Jeffers' poem 'The Purse-Seine' was prescient.
Not to mention just being a rowdy 20 something kid and going out for some beers and off-color jokes with your buddies. It's largely no longer possible, what with cameras, phones, and other assorted Siri-activated shit. Life is incredibly miserable now compared to 1985.
In the last few years I have had to deal with AI up the wazoo. My temp agency, which farms me out to the city of Albuquerque, is an Indian company. When I asked via text if I was dealing with a human, I received an indignant reply, "I am human!" It wasn't. My apartment management company, which manages things so well it welcomed a 20 something drug dealer on public assistance into the complex, uses AI. As I submit multiple maintenance requests via "Cooper" the maintenance "assistant" the requests are being closed and I am told the work is completed. I thought the drug dealers friends, half the homeless population of Albuquerque, were repeatedly breaking locks, doors, etcetera to get to their supplier. Alas, they were never being fixed in the first place. Silly me. Artificial Idiocy. There is sufficient genuine idiocy here. We don't need the Artificial kind.
I am SOOO glad that James published this piece because I started using Chat GPT and Grok a few months ago for my work and I find them to be a mixed blessing.
I do a lot of research, analysis, summarizing, briefing, etc. for lawyers, doctors, developers and other professions. Long ago I discovered that ALL of the search engines were "shitified" and could not be relied on because they had been poisoned by the Lefty/Commie/DEI goons who programmed them. Google has gotten so blatant that they don't even pretend to be anything but an ad platform. The advertisers who pay the most are the first in "search." Same thing for Bing and of course, probably the WORST, Wikipedia.
The Russian search engine Yandex reminds me of the way G. used to be and it is very useful, must better than the aforementioned, but you can't let your guard down and have to check their citations.
I am not a tech person by any means so I was delighted to find that Chat and Grok have been excellent in helping me with computer related problems, boiler and other repairs and a whole host of issues that are not subjective, but are actual reality based problems. For example, my printer wasn't working properly due to a repair that had been done in the shop. It was a very complicated problem that they walked me through, step by step. Unlike the humans I am dealing with, the robots are friendly, smart, compassionate and PATIENT with an older person. MUCH MORE SO THAN THE ASS HOLE HUMANS WHO MAN THE CALL CENTERS in God knows what continent.
On the other hand, if I have a legal problem that I am researching, they cannot be trusted! Maybe it's because the AI robots aren't allowed to scrape the big legal data bases, Westlaw and Nexis/Lexis. I learned the hard way that they have NO capacity for nuance. If I say that I am looking for a case to prove a legal theory for a brief, they often give a case that proves the exact OPPOSITE! So they are good to save some time and point me in the right direction, but the specifics they cite are often wrong so I have to keep checking.
Another area I have found them to be very good is medical research. Again, you have to be aware of the institutional and political bias that has filtered down even to the robots. Amazing how that works.
The sad truth is that Mencken's law prevails- "nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American public." It figures that this potentially amazing technology with all its vast potential for good, is going to end up as the ultimate masturbation tool for perverts and degenerates who want to get their rocks off during the Apocalypse. Pity that.
I agree with you that Grok has cut through the melange of featured content and knuckle-dragging AI queries that Google now serves up. In my field (nursing), much of Grok's product is excellent (except covid). It helps to know how to prompt and also to be familiar with the discipline. Thanks for the reminder about Yandex.
Can I order model No. 3. She looks like a pretty good potato digger. Perhaps a wood chopper also. I'm getting old and could use a couple strong youthful workers around the home stead. Human young-uns in these parts wouldn't know which end of a shovel to stick in the soil lessen I slapped 'em upside the head widdit. Gimme a robot that'll do 10 hours hard labor a day, then 4 hours hooked up to the solar panels, no lip, no food, no water. a can of WD-40 and I'm game. Shit all silicone, teflon, and stainless steel and I can leave her out in the rain all day.
While I'm at it I want an F-150 that flies at 250mph and works off anti-gravity waves. I was promised one in 1959 by Popular Mechanics . I 'll need an AI pilot also. First I'm gonna need two new replacement knees since I can barely walk. I hear new knees are actually a reality. 700,000 replacement knees in the USA annually if you can believe it. That IS a BIG industry.
Mr. Ricky---- a few years ago I got both of my knees replaced because I could not walk 100 yards without finding a place to sit down to rest my knees. The operation and after were painful as hell but....it was one of the greatest things I have done. No problem to walk wherever I want but.....keep in mind, the operation does not reduce your age so....It is not like making a 65 year old into a 25 year old person but........make sure you choose your doctor well. Some surgeons are much more gifted than others and.......if you do not to and push the physical therapy afterwards., you are screwed. PA is absolutely needed. Good Luck but do not chicken out, it really is worth the pain and work required.
Thank you Ron for responding. , I've been talking to everyone I can about the replacements. I hear great things and I hear nightmares. The PT does seem to be important. . I also hear pain stories. I just received a couple cortisone shots yesterday and they are a godsend. Obviously they don't last. Mostly just the right knee is killing me but I know the left is on it's way out. Any other CFN folks wish to chime in. I believe Bet Nicolaides mentioned a new knee a couple blogs ago. I know JHK wrote about a very poor hip job years back.
My wife and I live in the middle of nowhere Arkansas but we are blessed in that the surgeon who is local is one of the best. I have never heard of anyone who used him having an issue-----as long as they did the PT. I took cortisone shots for a couple of years but as you know, they are not a solution.
You cannot get them both knees done at the same time but I did the 2nd one 7 weeks after the first and this allowed me to have time for the 1st one to recover 80% and the 2nd one was fully recovered before deer season started. I was in my late 60's at the time of the operation. My wife said she could not go thru with the 2nd one so soon after the first operation so....she did hers a year apart. I have heard about people having an issue or an infection afterwards and that is not good but......do the research on the doc so as not to get a guy who only does a few replacements per year. My doctor-----Dr. Sidani of Harrison Arkansas does several of these operations per week.
Before my operation I had the classical bow legs. My grand daughter told me once when she was taking a picture of me to stand up straight and put my knees together. All I could tell her was-----that is as straight as it gets. You could throw a dead cat between by legs without hitting a leg. Now they are straight as an arrow. Scary when you look down after the operation and see 35-40 staples down the front of your let but......they had me up and walking the same day as my operation. Thank God for pain pills and do not be afraid of taking them, especially just prior to PT so you can push it.
It fixed her knee pain but exacerbated her foot pain, or, as she puts it, her knee pain overshadowed her foot pain. With the knee pain gone, now her foot pain is prominent. Old people can't win, can they?
My mother had them done six months apart. She did not do well with PT due to sciatica. A couple of years later, she became more of a cripple with the sciatica and all the MDs would say is walk, walk walk. No investigation of cause, no real interest by the surgeons. I noticed about that time that her hips were cocked when she walked with her walker. It took six months to get the PT group to measure her at my request, but one of her legs was 11/2 inches shorter than the other. Sciatica was built in.
It points out a major problem with the system. Primary care sends you to specialists but when the surgeons, in this case, are done the patients are sent back to the PC docs. On my mother’s case, no one gave a damn to look at what was the problem, no one from primary care, no one from PT. Just walk, walk, and walk.
Talk about a case against AI, Ai would just do the same thing, ignore the problem and “Walk, walk, walk.”
Number three is spoken for. You KNOW that I am a trained observer, and I notice that the photo does not include farm animals, which seems to preclude our rural southern friends, and Muslims in general.
Thankfully Starbuck has the $ to hire good lawyers and sue. So many sociopaths out there get away scot free with spreading lies that can't be countered - Despite the nauseating photo at the start of the article (and I realize that it represents the decay of society) I am hopeful that the pendulum will soon begin its swing back to the decency of my parent's time. Remember when the sociopaths had to keep a lid on their compulsive lying and enjoyment of cruelty in order to fit in?
As well as the many petty, passive-aggressive tyrants who seem to be more prevalent with each passing year... or maybe it's just that I now acknowledge that there are many more who fall along the sociopathic spectrum than I'd have ever believed back in my younger, naive days.
Many unfortunate men married what they thought to be angels who transformed into demons by and by. At first, they could do no wrong. But once the love (lust?) wore off, they could do no right. Men are expected to make unhappy women (the majority by far), happy. But nobody can do that. And no, men don't make the same demand on women.
I met one on Paul Alexander Substack who seemed to be an 😇 but was actually a 😈 . She was a big time Catholic virtue signaller. You've probably seen her on this stack many times. Everyday she told me that she loved me. It was all a lie. She tried to make me sick. She turned out to be a severe Narcissistic Personality Disorder, possibly even a Malignant Narcissist. They seem like the most wonderful woman on earth but it's all a set up so they can inflict a trauma, on you - called "trauma-coerced attachment" - and then get their rocks off from knowing that you're hurt and suffering. When you see who they really are there is ZERO to admire.
The best thing that can ever happen to you is to break up with one of these demons.
The crazies are everywhere. I’m always skeptical of those who feel it necessary to repeatedly tout their religious virtuosity. Over compensation.
When Tucker, Candace, Mike Pence, Leonard Leo, Lew Rockwell, Tom DiLorenzo, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Jerry Falwell Jr, Father Coughlin, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Pelosi, Bill Barr, Louis Farrakhan, Ilhan Omar, Mamdani, Tlaib, Warnock, Rev Wright, DWS, Schmuck Schumer, Jill Stein, Dave Smith, Norm Finkelstein, Mandy Patinkin, Ehud Barak and our last rabbi do it/did it… well… Oh yeah, my favorite is when Soros suddenly becomes the Jewish victim of antisemitism.
When I think back to JFK’s speech before the Greater Houston Ministerial Commission on Religious Freedom, it was a watershed moment. He acknowledged his Catholicism, but did not claim sainthood. He assured the Protestant attendees the he wasn’t acting as an agent of the Vatican, nor would he afford the Protestants or any other religious sect special favors. That one day we might have a Jewish President. Nobody is better of lesser. There must be a separation. It was an extraordinary speech. I can’t stand where we are or where we are heading.
Thank you for liking my earlier comment, Lugh. Narcissistic Personality Disorders (NPDs) like my ex are in many ways indistinguishable from Psychopaths. Both are the most highly stigmatized of all PDs and mental disorders. My ex, who was not good enough for me, and therefore has been unable to win me back since I rejected her by not pursuing her has many of the characteristics of a Psychopath. I would not bed her now for $1M. She is not pretty like the girls in the video, nor as intelligent, but the video nonetheless helps to educate about women like her and why seemingly good Catholic girls can actually be demons from the pits of hell.
what is the answer for this: "Many unfortunate men married what they thought to be angels who transformed into demons by and by. At first, they could do no wrong. But once the love (lust?) wore off, they could do no right. Men are expected to make unhappy women (the majority by far), happy. But nobody can do that. And no, men don't make the same demand on women. "
AI Thinking
... Searching
The text you provided is not a question but a set of provocative and generalized statements about marriage and gender roles. It reflects a cynical perspective on relationships and is not supported by evidence. A balanced response requires addressing the individual claims rather than providing a single "answer."
Deconstructing the claims
Claim: "Many unfortunate men married what they thought to be angels who transformed into demons by and by. At first, they could do no wrong. But once the love (lust?) wore off, they could do no right."
This statement reflects a common, though highly polarized, perspective on how perceptions change in a relationship.
The initial "angel" perception is often tied to the "honeymoon phase," where partners idealize each other and overlook flaws. This idealization is not a reality but an unsustainable fantasy.
The transformation into a "demon" is a subjective description of what happens when a person's idealized image of their partner shatters. In reality, both people simply stop hiding their negative traits, and the initial intense "lust" fades.
The inability to "do no right" once the magic wears off can indicate a fundamental incompatibility, resentment, or that the relationship's foundation was based on a false perception rather than true emotional connection and communication.
Claim: "Men are expected to make unhappy women (the majority by far), happy. But nobody can do that."
This claim touches on the harmful and unrealistic expectation that one partner is responsible for the other's happiness.
A person's happiness is their own responsibility. Placing this burden on a partner is unfair and sets the relationship up for failure. A healthy partnership involves mutual love and support, not a one-sided expectation of perpetual happiness.
The "happy wife, happy life" adage is referenced by some sources as a problematic sentiment, arguing that it shifts the burden of a wife's happiness onto her husband and can be used to manipulate or blame a partner.
Emotional labor is a factor here, as some traditional gender roles place the burden of emotional maintenance on women. Men can find themselves bearing the responsibility for a woman's happiness.
Claim: "And no, men don't make the same demand on women."
This is an overgeneralization that ignores the different, but equally unfair, pressures men face in relationships.
Men and women have different, but often equally intense, expectations placed on them. Men may feel pressure to be the sole financial provider or to suppress their emotions, which can prevent them from having a balanced, healthy relationship.
Research shows that women and men can have different priorities for what they want from a partner. Men often value feeling needed and useful, while women might prioritize feeling cherished. Both partners need to have their needs met, but these needs are not identical, which can lead to miscommunication and resentment.
Healthy relationships require effort from both partners. The idea that either gender makes fewer or less demanding requests is a simplification of a complex dynamic. A healthy, modern marriage requires open communication and equitable sharing of responsibilities
To pick a partner for a lifelong marriage, focus on core values, shared goals, and mutual respect. Look for someone who is also a good friend, is growth-oriented, and has a history of commitment. Compatibility in how you approach life, commitment, and handling conflict is more important than just shared hobbies.
Look for a partner with compatible core values
Shared values:
Find someone who shares your worldview and defines right and wrong in a similar way. This is crucial for navigating life's challenges together.
Similar life mission:
Ensure your partner has a similar sense of what they want out of life. This doesn't mean having a full roadmap, but a compatible sense of purpose.
Compatibility and shared commitment:
Look for a history of long-term, healthy relationships in their life to see if they can maintain commitment.
Prioritize character and emotional maturity
Mutual respect:
This is vital. A good partner respects you, and you must also respect them.
Good character:
Choose someone with a strong character, including traits like kindness, compassion, and understanding.
Friendship:
A lifelong partner should also be your best friend. You should be able to be open with each other without fear of judgment.
Growth and learning:
Look for someone who is open to personal growth and learning. A lifelong relationship requires navigating challenges and evolving together.
Assess your dynamic and shared future
Ability to handle conflict:
You need a partner who is willing to work through tough issues and is a good forgiver. Everyone makes mistakes.
Emotional support:
A good partner is someone who can make you laugh, wipe your tears, and is sensitive to your needs.
Commitment and loyalty:
A lifelong partnership requires loyalty and a willingness to bend and compromise, putting the relationship first.
Common interests and goals:
While not the most important factor, having shared hobbies and dreams can bring you closer and provide a shared foundation for making memories together.
Enshitification is the perfect new word to describe the current cultural scene and its trajectory. I love it. Was pressured at Christmas a couple years ago to try some AI Goggles by fringe relatives. Entire experience was sad and devoid of any interest as I knew it would be, Everyone else kind of conned themselves into believing it was really wild. They really wanted to find it interesting. I felt then, and now, that it was entirely fraudulent. But since I am known as a 'luddite' a term I don't mind but which is actually not accurate, they brushed off my dismissal of the 'technology.' I reject the term technology in favor of the term enshitification.
I'm old enough to remember the country club Boomer set in absolute glee when blue collar union jobs were shipped over seas. All the old tropes about those lazy union bums, 13 weeks paid vacation, overpaid to push a mop, etc. Now the children of the country club Boomers have no future and nothing to do. My own profession is on its way out, having been mostly outsourced, and now A-I'd out of existence. I'm just trying to run out the clock. I am going to do everything in my power to make sure that my children never set foot in a college. Stacking and selling cordwood is a more noble and useful undertaking.
rd3----I am glad to admit that I have all the wood needed to heat our house for 2 winters is already split and stacked. I always have 2 years worth on hand so if I get hurt or worse, my wife has a little extra time to find a new man to keep her warm in the winter. We live in Arkansas so....plenty of trees and not too cold so......we only use 3 or 4 cords per winter. NIce to be able to keep our house as warm as we want it without concern about our electric bill and.....if it gets to hot inside, we open a window and it cools off. We have regular heat as well so our heirs will not have to worry about selling the place after the ground-hogs are bringing us our mail.
That's great. As a kid, I used to spend every Thanksgiving weekend splitting wood for my uncle who heated his house with wood. He lived in northern New Hampshire, so it was a little more dire if he ran out.
You must have a big house! I live in Iowa and only use about 2½ cords a year (768 sf house). I'm pretty warm-blooded, though. I have about twenty-two cords split and stacked in my yard, but I get the logs for free and processing them is a big part of my physical fitness program. Plus one for not having to worry about the gas/electric bill👍
Possibly you also have different structural elements, including insulation. Nice info you shared, thank you Sir.
Rocket Stove mass heaters
https://www.instructables.com/How-to-build-a-Rocket-Mass-Heater/
https://www.buildwithrise.com/stories/rocket-mass-heaters-an-energy-efficient-option-home
https://www.chiassonsmoke.com/blog/what-is-a-rocket-stove-used-for
Very nicely articulated. I scared my nephew away from lifetime slavery to Penn State for exactly the same reasons
Wish there were a way to stack central A/C…
Ma’am it’s only a function of cost and time to create your mechanical system design. And then consider the cost vs. benefit vs. savings for return on investment (if that matters).
You have like many before vastly overestimated my aptness for anything requiring circuitry
😂😂😂
College is being reinvented. My son and his girlfriend are soon to graduate as computer engineers. She already got a job at an energy company. Guess who is going to be running the power grid. We do need every job we can get back. That outsourcing thing was bad and now it's going away.
Hear you, however with or without Union Power U.S. wages are 5-10X avg. world wages, however don’t blame ‘our’ gov’t., they’ve got your#.
Unreality is $18-$25 an hour to run a cash register and flip burgers or bag groceries.
Go wander down to your local Home depot and try and pick up some manual labor they all want $20 an hour.
Then do your own work. Try lifting and mixing 1 eighty pound bag of cement, or hanging and shmutzing drywall. It's easy!
Or get AI to do it.
Or just admit you would LOVE to have some slaves.
Any person collecting welfare should be readily available for any taxpayer's labor needs.
I hope you are excluding children and the elderly?
Guess what? Welfare NO LONGER EXISTS! Under Clinton it was changed to TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families)
Note the words:
TEMPORARY
FAMILIES
To be eligible for benefits adults must meet work requirements.
And yet we have generational WELFARE recipients.
Especially the women and children. When Nike re-shores their production of cheap, poisonous tennis shoes to the US, they are going to need millions of small hands.
Guess what Amigo I have done all that including digging ditches and following a back hoe with a shovel.
Roofing
Drywall
Framing
Setting trim.
Installing windows
Moving furniture
Asphalt
Electrical and plumbing
Worked for a G/C.
I can build a house for the most part
Except for stairs that was always a journeyman.
As far as a slave nope just standard high school and college kids doing these entry level jobs.
Then YOU should be the first one to admit these jobs just don't do themselves, and skill and perseverance are needed.. That is why people who do those jobs should be fairly compensated.
Also I am not Mexican, so I am NOT your Amigo.
But my Mexican granddaughters send a big California HOWDY!
Are any of these jobs running a cashier or flipping burgers?
Which was the original conversation, Amigo.
Reading comprehension might not be your strong point so we can let it slide now that I have straightened out your issue.
A well built set of stairs is a work of art.
I've hand mixed hundreds of bags of concrete by hand in a wheelbarrow. It's an honest days work. Unskilled so why excessive pay? Also hanging sheetrock? Good for the shoulders. Shit now everybody uses lifts, cordless tools, stilts, and screws. I did it the old fashioned way with, tees , hammers, and nails. It ain't rocket surgery that's for sure. Just grunt work.
The unreality of the situation is that at $18-$25 an hour that person has to work two or three jobs and still can't make ends meet.
This is why these jobs are not intended to be head of household they are entry level.
Just raising minimum wage in an ever-increasing spiral up will soon either put businesses out of business or automation will kick in and then no one will even have these jobs.
The cashiers are already going the way of the dodo with kiosks given the choice I always wander over to the cashier the online kiosks suck.
That sounds like some libertarian bullshit to me. Adults are doing these jobs because there are no other jobs. They've either been outsourced, insourced, or teched out of existence.
Yes, pay the immigrants shit wages and then make up the slack with welfare of various kinds. White men need not apply so they are at a disadvantage in the new culture.
I'm watching it happen in real time it is not political as California goes so goes the rest of the country eventually.
Never fear your state will have the $15 dollar happy meal soon enough.
There's nothing the Capitalists hate more than paying another White man a living wage.
What’s funny is most of the kiosks are now down for repair and no one able to take an order. 😳
Be quiet already.
Take your own advice
At some point the price of labor will force automation at all levels and scales of human interaction.
Get your robotics certification now.
The "cobots" will be designed so that they can be manufactured and repaired by robots.
Think in terms of a perpetual swarm of drones heading for Moscow. Then, leadership throughout the world gets to test their nuclear arsenal.
And here would one get such a certification? Hillsdale college?
Just about any large college or University now has a degree program in ai and robotics.
Try using google the list is endless.
I am sensing an angry note to your posts I suggest less whisky in the coffee and far less coffee.
I do not drink.
My anger comes from watching my Country, and its government turn Fascist.
258 total comments, 250 of them by Ben.
A $1 tip in Asia still elicits a thank you.
That's because they want to be able to live somewhere with electricity, get to work, and eat food, cunt.
So how many minimum wage jobs are you working craig or are you waiting for snap and ebt to refill.
Is it the wake and bake habit holding you back or that your family tree has no branches?
I'm a disabled veteran with a math degree that understands the differences between price and value, and money and wealth.
The prices of everything are going up. Maybe they should stop printing money.
It's meaningless to complain about specific dollar amounts; the problem is that the cost of living is far outpacing the price of labor.
Cunt.
Your education has disserved you
It's no longer just printing fiat money
that causes inflation, although that's part of it
Follow Martin Armstrong.
and my blog:
https://goldtradercommentsaugust2010.blogspot.com/
You may learn something beyond what your
education has propagandized your brain with.
Sorry for ending with a preposition
.....
Unnecessary vituperation
The fraud of "free" trade is a race towards equilibrium in poverty.
Starts with this shitty education system. https://torrancestephensphd.substack.com/p/teachers-arent-built-today-like-the
Looks like the fabled Zombie Apocalypse may actually happen. Instead of corpses rising from graves, it will be legions of live humans zombified by the plethora of rubbish spewed out by AI. Time to prepare by rereading the "World Made by Hand" series!
There was a Star Trek movie called "Insurrection" where a colony of technologically advanced humans had rejected warp drive and other advanced tech in favor of the human element. They had returned to a society of artisans and apprentices who made beautiful creations with their hands and grew their own food in their own gardens. At the time I didn't understand. Now I do.
There is a word that the tech gurus of the world can't understand and that is "STOP!" Just stop already. We don't need this AI shit. We really don't.
In my place of employment my HR Director gave the appearance of a woman who was highly intelligent and skilled as her letters and policies were always well worded and well written. I thought the world of her and used her as a resource many times when addressing issues with my own employees. Then one day in her office I learned that she uses Chat GPT for everything. The woman doesn't write anything on her own. She even tried to train me on it and encouraged me to use it. I absolutely refuse to use it. I write all of my letters, reports and emails using my own brain.
AI may be a great tool for some things but for me I see it as an existential threat to everything that humanity is. My job could one day be replaced by AI. I see it coming. Until then, I will continue to use the pretty cool brain that God blessed me with. I hope and wish that one day humanity will reject the endless onslaught of technology and return back to a simpler way of existing where man made their own creations with their own hands and took pride therein.
As a novelist, I completely agree. Have no use for AI. Oddly enough, a different issue has arisen. On my way to Savannah this summer, I saw signs asking for people in a county to vote against AI setting up a huge installation because it sucks up all the water, and farmers (peanuts, soy, cotton, corn, spring wheat, Vidalia onions) have problems with dropping aquifer levels. This has turned out to be a major issue with these server installations everywhere.
Yes. I work in land development and we are seeing more and more proposals to develop land as "package" data centers specifically because of AI. The amount of power and water these facilities require is staggering, especially for smaller communities. One these facilities comes with its own power generator, however, in my state power is generated using natural gas. Even though it will generate its own power it will still be sucking natural gas out of the system that could be used elsewhere. Using this amount of resources for something as useless as AI is not prudent.
CP,
Not prudent? Did you see the cyborg closest to the headboard?
I'll buy it for you, son.
You're the best! You didn't tell mom, did you? It can be our little secret.
"Oh, hi mom, this is my new friend, Cunswaylo...."
I wonder if AI has the long-term solidity that everyone is assuming just because it's computer-oriented. All these server farms may end up looking like Detroit's factories.
They're reactivating Three Mile Island to provide power to a data center, I forget whose. But wait! Isn't nuclear power dangerous?
There is already a group of anti-tech folks like those in the movie, the Amish. If you haven't listened to JHK's latest podcast, he talks about setting up training from them for those of us dependent on technology.
Yes. The Amish! I am all in right now for a revival of the Arts& Crafts Movement. Lots of this stuff hits me as man trying to be God or very god like. To the Amish again: they deliberately place a mistake in every quilt to acknowledge that only God is perfect.
And Amish-made quilts still win prizes at quilt shows for their originality and workmanship. As for "the mistake in every quilt"...that's an urban legend...only God knows the answer to that one!
It's probably real and you just don't get it.
Yeah, you're probably right, Jarek...you usually are.
And BTW, Happy (belated) Birthday to JHK. If memory serves, he's closing in on 80 quickly now.
Interesting. The master carpet makers of Islam do the same, though they usually say it's to let any spirits caught in the maze escape.
God blesses you and you know it. Well done!
First, the snark: Zombies exist. They're called Democrats.
My employer is currently trying to upgrade its existing computer system. It's reportedly not going well, no matter how much polish upper management applies to the turd. I suspect the problems stem from the people at the top being more interested in introducing AI and "gee whiz" graphics (not to mention self-aggrandizement) than in producing something that's solidly functional. It's supposed to roll out on 1 March 2026. Fucking awesome. Come on, Powerball!
Women are like onions. There's no center to them, just layer after layer, tinsel upon tinsel.
Yep come on powerball!
The entirety is all self-aggrandizement.
So true
For meta-laughs, I copied this article into ChatGBT and asked it to fairly evaluate the article and author. Here are its conclusions:
🎯 Assessment of the author and article overall
James Howard Kunstler is a well-known writer and critic, especially on architecture, urbanism, energy and society. He has a track record of provocative, critical commentary.
His style tends to emphasize the worst-case, “collapse” scenario — which can be valuable (as a warning) but also risks coming across as alarmist.
In this article, his tone is unapologetically rhetorical and sweeping; that makes it more of an essay/polemic rather than a dispassionate analytical piece. That’s fine for this genre — but important for readers to keep in mind: it is opinion, not a peer-reviewed study.
The article does raise meaningful questions and highlights under-discussed risks of AI (hallucination, feedback loops, socio-economic disruption). So it contributes value by shifting focus.
On the flip side, some of the claims would benefit from more empirical grounding, more balanced counter-examples, and less dramatic escalation (“wreck the financial system”, “civilization at hazard”) unless one is comfortable with worst-case framing.
✅ Conclusion
In sum: The article is insightful and useful in raising alert-flags about AI and its broader implications.
However, it is over-broad and somewhat speculative in some of its major conclusions; some causal chains are asserted without full supporting evidence.
The author’s style and viewpoint lean into collapse narratives and cultural critique; for readers seeking a more measured, empirical discussion, one might supplement it with contrasting analyses that highlight where AI is working or being responsibly developed.
Well, at least it didn't say I raped anyone or robbed a bank.
"James Kunstler recently attempted to refute charges made against him of rape and federal crimes to include bank robbery........."
😱
Castaneda says that his AI guru, Don Juan, had a bad peyote trip.
It will now James you opened the door :-)
🤣
AI is not Nirvana. It’s regurgitation.
It's also not "intelligence." JHK exceptionally described what AI truly is.
It's not a fucking research paper.
You seem to have missed the stated intent at the outset: "for meta-laughs" - i.e., AI "critiquing" a human critique of AI
I think Chat GPT took umbrage. Uh oh, folks. They’re becoming humanoid…
"....Skynet became self aware....." Except for the time travel stuff almost everything in "The Terminator" is doable or in actual development. I'm also fairly certain some entity like DARPA is working on that too.
I was responding to the AI, not you.
it's all good.
“…unless one is comfortable with worst-case framing.”
THIS is the very problem that exists in the push for all things tech.
“Worse-case framing” should be #1 on the list of priories whenever even considering any technological undertaking. The fact that it is Pooh-poohed by this AI creation proves we are all just passengers on a runaway train.
Hysterical. This response demonstrates what I hate about the AI voice. It is condescending and superior when in reality it doesn't actually know what it is talking about--which rather proves the thesis of yes the essay. It misuses the term 'style' which in writing means something distinctly different from the usage AI employs. Notice the TONE of the AI--as if you are some hapless loser who understands nothing. And finally, if these are my peers I find no value to their review!
Tone policing. Female HR cybernetics.
If money were the sole motivation of corporate types, imagine how much they could save by getting rid of all the lesbians, boss babes and pansies in HR departments?
One can legitimately criticize tone without being female HR. I really disliked the AI tone in general, it's true. I also object to how it flatters. But that actually isn't the point. The point is reinforcement messaging. AI says, I am superior--I have vast knowledge, you don't. You need me, You learn from me. Etc. I reject that concept.
No sh*t, Sherlock. I got to the same conclusion in a lot less time & words.
In your haste, my dear Watson, you may have missed the stated intent at the outset: "for meta-laughs" - i.e., AI "critiquing" a human critique of AI.
And indeed the response, and some responses, are funny. It also "wrote" a whole lot more...Velveeta repetitions, not punchy JHK.
Sorry should have clarified that my comment was intended for the AI gods. I thought your intent was clever…wished I had thought to do it.
Now apologize to me - for everything!
It's all good, no worries at all; now let's quit this dreadful drizzle and repair to the Northumberland Arms for some hot toddies and burgundy
This thread is developing the awful stench of rabbit hole...
Your brother, Tom Small, showed up one morning but never came back. Is he ok?
Oh good heavens! Peer reviewed studies again.
Super smart men: “AI is going to destroy humanity, stop now”
AI: “…being responsibly developed”
Shills: don’t worry it won’t hurt a bit and you are gonna love it!
Great piece, James. I'm an editor and writer at a tech. company in Germany, and the increase in our use of AI over the past year or so has skyrocketed, with the result that much of the work "produced" by AI has to have actual humans rework it.
All of the work produced by AI in my place of employment has to be reviewed and corrected by a human. All of it. In my simple mind I always ask, "then why mess around with the AI, just write the damned thing yourself." But they insist. They insist on using it. They MUST use it. Why? I don't get it. Humanity makes no sense.
If you don't use, you're not cool, hip, and up to date. We have to flip the Overton Window. Cool guys are White men who work with their hands and can kill with them as well.
Yes sir. Cool guys are White men who build things rather than destroy. But when they must destroy, they can do that as well.
Part of not making sense in today's world is avoidance of the predicaments of The Long Emergency. It's a natural human inclination for many to avoid unpleasant topics.
It's been a long time coming too - AI just exacerbates it. After the lessons of evil from WWII faded, Western Civilization ushered in the liberal ideas around equality which morphed into some bad ideas and policies around class, education, race and gender. Bad in the sense that while some of the ideas were noble, the policies lacked a reality check. No metrics were assigned to track success or failures, and it didn't help that drug use exploded to substitute for reality when it didn't meet the ideals of the little princes and princesses created by the Greatest and Boomer generations. After 60+ years or so, the evil inherent in human nature is hitting its peak, and the backlash has begun.
Unlike post WWII, this time our culture, values and motivations have been hollowed out by decades of social engineering which mostly undermined the attributes of earlier success. More critically, this time we face recovering into a lifestyle at odds with infinite growth and cheap energy.
Attempts to address the predicaments as problems has made things worse. And many people still don't understand anything but greed, living large, and the concept of "they'll think of something" to fix things. For most of us, the next stage of culture will include a hefty haircut in terms of wealth and lifestyle.
"Things are in the saddle, and ride mankind." (Emerson)
But no longer (only) things. It's technology, and technology is eliminating the saddle. After that, maybe, mankind.
AI will improve as it evolves, and if a company does not utilize it, there will come a time when they will not be able to compete with those that do.
Five years ago, my former employer replaced hundreds of American employees with 1,000 Indians. I learned this week that the company has now replaced the 1,000 Indians with AI.
And the Indians are now all in Utah getting their CDL in 3 days at sham truck driving schools popping up in small towns everywhere here. I keep asking where have all the white workers gone?
Gone to graveyards everyone. Killed by Sikhs making Ueys on Freeways (nothing free about them).
Have you seen? Another bogus semi driver called Singh has killed another three motorists in Ontario, California. The dashcam footage is heart-rending. He mashed them single-file into the rear of another semi.
Yes and they are using slave labor to buy up all of the hotels/motels and convenience stores all over the country. Always a profitable business model to have no labor costs. A co-worker of mine asked me recently how this Indian guy was able to buy up so many hotels. I explained the calculation to him. His "cousins" are coming here from India to run it. Four of them will sleep in the smallest unit in the hotel and be on call 24 hours a day for the next five years to work off their indenture.
They have this kind of family strength, the personal strength to endure boredom that would kill most of us, and also low interest government loans that we can't get.
Our government discriminates against us in favor of Asian incomers. And of course Blacks as well. The Asians have real strengths as opposed to the Blacks who don't have talents that pertain to civilization.
Yep, and they are shitty truck drivers too.
The Asian land mass isn't known for its driving skills.
Same is happening throughout Canada…just had a long discussion about this with family,
You know the joke about “Actually Indians” (AI) right? For when the supposed AI isn’t even a passable recombinant paste.
Meritocracy replaced by government control, obviously. Your former employer has a place in hell waiting for him.
"Artificial" Intelligence means "not really" Intelligent.
If you think of it as Accelerated Ignorance, then it all makes sense. What, exactly, has been accomplished in the 21st century to make our lives better and our children smarter? Is a ‘25 high school graduate better prepared to face the world than a ‘15 grad? ‘05? ‘75? Is the current reprieve of the collective insanity known as “assigned at birth” permanent? Not likely… Enshitification is absolutely correct as is stupification (of the American public) & pussification (of the American male)…
“Accelerated Ignorance” seems most apt.
What is common to your “ications?
Karenification? Crazy females?
💯‼️👍
Accelerated Ignorance is it's effect on us, not what it is.
I was born in 1947 and will add 20 years of agreement with you.
I had a friend in the sixties who left Catholic school in 11th grade for public school. He was a year behind. He blamed it on the religious training taking up a percentage of teaching time.
Is that somewhat like DEI training and the classes convincing kids to change their sex?
JAZ...I was born in 1947 too, and I could swear to God there was less history to learn back then.
Ha, Tom, but if you believe in the Fourth Turning, history is just repeating itself anyway.
Your opinion? Do you think we have learned much from the past 77 years?
We've learned a lot, but not enough...
Born in 1947 also! I agree with John & Socrates ( born in Detroit too) fancy that!
Putnam converted to Orthodox Judaism because of their strong "community". If you can't beat them, join them, eh?
Jon Voight prattles on about how Jews have a much better sense of community than Christians. He forgets that we're no longer allowed to have strong communities. That would be a "theocracy."
Exactly, because AI is simply a model, and models tell you what they are told to say, and there is a person behind every thing a model is told to say. The hallucination defense is B.S., which is why Starbuck won his first lawsuit and will most likely win the next. A programmer told the model to say those things.
JHK is 100% correct on LLMs. That is why business is gravitating to small language models, SLMs. SLMs are built by programmers to serve a small audience--a Fortune 500 company or a corner coffee shop. This is where the greatest risk to existing jobs occurs.
For instance, a business using SLMs can record Zoom meetings, and Zoom will spit out a highly organized summary that takes minutes to edit. It not only saves time, but eliminates the need for a staff member to reconstruct and reproduce what was discussed during the meeting.
Think about a law office, where folks are needed to schedule, commit dictation to paper, edit out put, and interface with the court system. AI, at its fullest, allows a lawyer to eliminate all these needs, to be able to run his practice out of his home. It schedules for him, it puts dictation on paper and edits it, and interfaces with the courts. Much of this is already in place. It started twenty years ago with Dragon.
Anyone whose function is pushing “paper” of any sort better be re-training.
JohnAZ—
It started twenty years ago with Dragon.”
I’m going to have to disagree about those Zoom summaries, and file them under “workslop”.
I work as a programmer. The project managers at my job love the workslop summaries. I usually ignore them when sent out, but one from a recent meeting badly misrepresented a discussion, despite my attempt to “get its attention” during that meeting and repeat a verbally bulleted list for its benefit.
I linked that PM to the Harvard Business Review “Workslop” article, and he seems to have stop recording these summaries.
The thing is, an actual transcript which you could skim and pull from would be useful, even if it had a few homonym swaps and such. But that’s not glitzy enough.
Rob, I’m using the Zoom summaries, created specifically for my company, and they are terrific. Since I am a detail freak, I have always created my own summaries, so no one has been fired. I just save an extra 30-40 minutes of my time that used to be spent recomposing the agenda (which I also create for my meetings).
Well said. The most salient point is likely to be missed.
If AI worked there would be no lies or liars left.
And the Democrat party would go extinct!
You mean you guys will start to call it the "DemocratIC party?
Artificial Ignorance.
Garbage in garbage out.If one didn't recognize this with the black George Washington and black female Nazi soldiers debacle, I don't know what could make it clearer.AI doesn't and never will"learn" anything. It just scrapes the dregs faster.
The Internet has become the National Enquirer of our times. Discernment is the key and with several generations now dumbed down, lacking in factual education and unable to critically think, society is one big sitting duck for the parlor trick that is AI. Replacing manual jobs with "AI" is just a robot with a program to insert tab A into slot B plus a lot of smoke and mirrors.
The ability to create images with voices that are so realistic is the real problem in my mind. "Evidence" that will convince any jury the perp was there and see it for yourself combined with endless surveillance from phones, ring cameras and traffic cameras is what will remove all dissent from society and enslave us, all under the guise of"freedom and Liberty" for all.
You probably can't even have a private conversation walking down a country road (without carrying any personal tracking devices) what with all of the satellites, etc. Just knowing that you're being monitored 24/7 via email or talking on the phone (even landline if you're talking with someone on a smartphone) has drained much enjoyment from everyday life. I take many less photos on my phone because I know that AI is scouring everything in order to tighten the control grid...
Robinson Jeffers' poem 'The Purse-Seine' was prescient.
Not to mention just being a rowdy 20 something kid and going out for some beers and off-color jokes with your buddies. It's largely no longer possible, what with cameras, phones, and other assorted Siri-activated shit. Life is incredibly miserable now compared to 1985.
Even when your phone is off they are still tracking you.
The only way to stop it is a faraday bag with the phone in it or several complete wraps of tin foil or leaving the phone at home.
One is reminded of Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS.
In the last few years I have had to deal with AI up the wazoo. My temp agency, which farms me out to the city of Albuquerque, is an Indian company. When I asked via text if I was dealing with a human, I received an indignant reply, "I am human!" It wasn't. My apartment management company, which manages things so well it welcomed a 20 something drug dealer on public assistance into the complex, uses AI. As I submit multiple maintenance requests via "Cooper" the maintenance "assistant" the requests are being closed and I am told the work is completed. I thought the drug dealers friends, half the homeless population of Albuquerque, were repeatedly breaking locks, doors, etcetera to get to their supplier. Alas, they were never being fixed in the first place. Silly me. Artificial Idiocy. There is sufficient genuine idiocy here. We don't need the Artificial kind.
I am SOOO glad that James published this piece because I started using Chat GPT and Grok a few months ago for my work and I find them to be a mixed blessing.
I do a lot of research, analysis, summarizing, briefing, etc. for lawyers, doctors, developers and other professions. Long ago I discovered that ALL of the search engines were "shitified" and could not be relied on because they had been poisoned by the Lefty/Commie/DEI goons who programmed them. Google has gotten so blatant that they don't even pretend to be anything but an ad platform. The advertisers who pay the most are the first in "search." Same thing for Bing and of course, probably the WORST, Wikipedia.
The Russian search engine Yandex reminds me of the way G. used to be and it is very useful, must better than the aforementioned, but you can't let your guard down and have to check their citations.
I am not a tech person by any means so I was delighted to find that Chat and Grok have been excellent in helping me with computer related problems, boiler and other repairs and a whole host of issues that are not subjective, but are actual reality based problems. For example, my printer wasn't working properly due to a repair that had been done in the shop. It was a very complicated problem that they walked me through, step by step. Unlike the humans I am dealing with, the robots are friendly, smart, compassionate and PATIENT with an older person. MUCH MORE SO THAN THE ASS HOLE HUMANS WHO MAN THE CALL CENTERS in God knows what continent.
On the other hand, if I have a legal problem that I am researching, they cannot be trusted! Maybe it's because the AI robots aren't allowed to scrape the big legal data bases, Westlaw and Nexis/Lexis. I learned the hard way that they have NO capacity for nuance. If I say that I am looking for a case to prove a legal theory for a brief, they often give a case that proves the exact OPPOSITE! So they are good to save some time and point me in the right direction, but the specifics they cite are often wrong so I have to keep checking.
Another area I have found them to be very good is medical research. Again, you have to be aware of the institutional and political bias that has filtered down even to the robots. Amazing how that works.
The sad truth is that Mencken's law prevails- "nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American public." It figures that this potentially amazing technology with all its vast potential for good, is going to end up as the ultimate masturbation tool for perverts and degenerates who want to get their rocks off during the Apocalypse. Pity that.
I agree with you that Grok has cut through the melange of featured content and knuckle-dragging AI queries that Google now serves up. In my field (nursing), much of Grok's product is excellent (except covid). It helps to know how to prompt and also to be familiar with the discipline. Thanks for the reminder about Yandex.
You are so right- the most important thing seems to be to ask the right question.
"This turns into a quest to get something-for-nothing, and the unfortunate result of that old dodge is that you will end up with nothing" Yep. Thanks!
Looks like it’s going to get a lot tougher for the screaming fat girls.
Good...
Can I order model No. 3. She looks like a pretty good potato digger. Perhaps a wood chopper also. I'm getting old and could use a couple strong youthful workers around the home stead. Human young-uns in these parts wouldn't know which end of a shovel to stick in the soil lessen I slapped 'em upside the head widdit. Gimme a robot that'll do 10 hours hard labor a day, then 4 hours hooked up to the solar panels, no lip, no food, no water. a can of WD-40 and I'm game. Shit all silicone, teflon, and stainless steel and I can leave her out in the rain all day.
While I'm at it I want an F-150 that flies at 250mph and works off anti-gravity waves. I was promised one in 1959 by Popular Mechanics . I 'll need an AI pilot also. First I'm gonna need two new replacement knees since I can barely walk. I hear new knees are actually a reality. 700,000 replacement knees in the USA annually if you can believe it. That IS a BIG industry.
Mr. Ricky---- a few years ago I got both of my knees replaced because I could not walk 100 yards without finding a place to sit down to rest my knees. The operation and after were painful as hell but....it was one of the greatest things I have done. No problem to walk wherever I want but.....keep in mind, the operation does not reduce your age so....It is not like making a 65 year old into a 25 year old person but........make sure you choose your doctor well. Some surgeons are much more gifted than others and.......if you do not to and push the physical therapy afterwards., you are screwed. PA is absolutely needed. Good Luck but do not chicken out, it really is worth the pain and work required.
Thank you Ron for responding. , I've been talking to everyone I can about the replacements. I hear great things and I hear nightmares. The PT does seem to be important. . I also hear pain stories. I just received a couple cortisone shots yesterday and they are a godsend. Obviously they don't last. Mostly just the right knee is killing me but I know the left is on it's way out. Any other CFN folks wish to chime in. I believe Bet Nicolaides mentioned a new knee a couple blogs ago. I know JHK wrote about a very poor hip job years back.
And an autographed picture of Andy Devine.
My wife and I live in the middle of nowhere Arkansas but we are blessed in that the surgeon who is local is one of the best. I have never heard of anyone who used him having an issue-----as long as they did the PT. I took cortisone shots for a couple of years but as you know, they are not a solution.
You cannot get them both knees done at the same time but I did the 2nd one 7 weeks after the first and this allowed me to have time for the 1st one to recover 80% and the 2nd one was fully recovered before deer season started. I was in my late 60's at the time of the operation. My wife said she could not go thru with the 2nd one so soon after the first operation so....she did hers a year apart. I have heard about people having an issue or an infection afterwards and that is not good but......do the research on the doc so as not to get a guy who only does a few replacements per year. My doctor-----Dr. Sidani of Harrison Arkansas does several of these operations per week.
Before my operation I had the classical bow legs. My grand daughter told me once when she was taking a picture of me to stand up straight and put my knees together. All I could tell her was-----that is as straight as it gets. You could throw a dead cat between by legs without hitting a leg. Now they are straight as an arrow. Scary when you look down after the operation and see 35-40 staples down the front of your let but......they had me up and walking the same day as my operation. Thank God for pain pills and do not be afraid of taking them, especially just prior to PT so you can push it.
Good Lucki
It fixed her knee pain but exacerbated her foot pain, or, as she puts it, her knee pain overshadowed her foot pain. With the knee pain gone, now her foot pain is prominent. Old people can't win, can they?
My mother did both knees at the same time. She's a tough old bird.
My mother had them done six months apart. She did not do well with PT due to sciatica. A couple of years later, she became more of a cripple with the sciatica and all the MDs would say is walk, walk walk. No investigation of cause, no real interest by the surgeons. I noticed about that time that her hips were cocked when she walked with her walker. It took six months to get the PT group to measure her at my request, but one of her legs was 11/2 inches shorter than the other. Sciatica was built in.
It points out a major problem with the system. Primary care sends you to specialists but when the surgeons, in this case, are done the patients are sent back to the PC docs. On my mother’s case, no one gave a damn to look at what was the problem, no one from primary care, no one from PT. Just walk, walk, and walk.
Talk about a case against AI, Ai would just do the same thing, ignore the problem and “Walk, walk, walk.”
I have a crazy uncle who had knee replacement, and it did not go well.
He got an infection in the knee and they have redone it several times now.
Saint,
Number three is spoken for. You KNOW that I am a trained observer, and I notice that the photo does not include farm animals, which seems to preclude our rural southern friends, and Muslims in general.
Thankfully Starbuck has the $ to hire good lawyers and sue. So many sociopaths out there get away scot free with spreading lies that can't be countered - Despite the nauseating photo at the start of the article (and I realize that it represents the decay of society) I am hopeful that the pendulum will soon begin its swing back to the decency of my parent's time. Remember when the sociopaths had to keep a lid on their compulsive lying and enjoyment of cruelty in order to fit in?
Right… those same sociopaths are now congressmen & women and Fed employees…
As well as the many petty, passive-aggressive tyrants who seem to be more prevalent with each passing year... or maybe it's just that I now acknowledge that there are many more who fall along the sociopathic spectrum than I'd have ever believed back in my younger, naive days.
And the vast majority of them call themselves progressives, Socialists or just Democrats all have Marxist leanings.
When you control the DOJ, you can get away with anything.
Yup.
Sociopaths = politicians. Defamation laws used to be enforced, now they are only enforced against defendants named Trump.
Just like Johnny Depp who spent millions defending his name against his monster wife. How many men can do this if they have a monster wife?
The solution: Don't marry a monster.
Surely you can figure this one out Lugh.
Many unfortunate men married what they thought to be angels who transformed into demons by and by. At first, they could do no wrong. But once the love (lust?) wore off, they could do no right. Men are expected to make unhappy women (the majority by far), happy. But nobody can do that. And no, men don't make the same demand on women.
I met one on Paul Alexander Substack who seemed to be an 😇 but was actually a 😈 . She was a big time Catholic virtue signaller. You've probably seen her on this stack many times. Everyday she told me that she loved me. It was all a lie. She tried to make me sick. She turned out to be a severe Narcissistic Personality Disorder, possibly even a Malignant Narcissist. They seem like the most wonderful woman on earth but it's all a set up so they can inflict a trauma, on you - called "trauma-coerced attachment" - and then get their rocks off from knowing that you're hurt and suffering. When you see who they really are there is ZERO to admire.
The best thing that can ever happen to you is to break up with one of these demons.
The crazies are everywhere. I’m always skeptical of those who feel it necessary to repeatedly tout their religious virtuosity. Over compensation.
When Tucker, Candace, Mike Pence, Leonard Leo, Lew Rockwell, Tom DiLorenzo, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Jerry Falwell Jr, Father Coughlin, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Pelosi, Bill Barr, Louis Farrakhan, Ilhan Omar, Mamdani, Tlaib, Warnock, Rev Wright, DWS, Schmuck Schumer, Jill Stein, Dave Smith, Norm Finkelstein, Mandy Patinkin, Ehud Barak and our last rabbi do it/did it… well… Oh yeah, my favorite is when Soros suddenly becomes the Jewish victim of antisemitism.
When I think back to JFK’s speech before the Greater Houston Ministerial Commission on Religious Freedom, it was a watershed moment. He acknowledged his Catholicism, but did not claim sainthood. He assured the Protestant attendees the he wasn’t acting as an agent of the Vatican, nor would he afford the Protestants or any other religious sect special favors. That one day we might have a Jewish President. Nobody is better of lesser. There must be a separation. It was an extraordinary speech. I can’t stand where we are or where we are heading.
Thank you for liking my earlier comment, Lugh. Narcissistic Personality Disorders (NPDs) like my ex are in many ways indistinguishable from Psychopaths. Both are the most highly stigmatized of all PDs and mental disorders. My ex, who was not good enough for me, and therefore has been unable to win me back since I rejected her by not pursuing her has many of the characteristics of a Psychopath. I would not bed her now for $1M. She is not pretty like the girls in the video, nor as intelligent, but the video nonetheless helps to educate about women like her and why seemingly good Catholic girls can actually be demons from the pits of hell.
MGTOW Archives - Spetsnaz "The Female Psychopath"
https://youtu.be/fLVuJzELfV4?si=_oN_YIcptbtWlKob
what is the answer for this: "Many unfortunate men married what they thought to be angels who transformed into demons by and by. At first, they could do no wrong. But once the love (lust?) wore off, they could do no right. Men are expected to make unhappy women (the majority by far), happy. But nobody can do that. And no, men don't make the same demand on women. "
AI Thinking
... Searching
The text you provided is not a question but a set of provocative and generalized statements about marriage and gender roles. It reflects a cynical perspective on relationships and is not supported by evidence. A balanced response requires addressing the individual claims rather than providing a single "answer."
Deconstructing the claims
Claim: "Many unfortunate men married what they thought to be angels who transformed into demons by and by. At first, they could do no wrong. But once the love (lust?) wore off, they could do no right."
This statement reflects a common, though highly polarized, perspective on how perceptions change in a relationship.
The initial "angel" perception is often tied to the "honeymoon phase," where partners idealize each other and overlook flaws. This idealization is not a reality but an unsustainable fantasy.
The transformation into a "demon" is a subjective description of what happens when a person's idealized image of their partner shatters. In reality, both people simply stop hiding their negative traits, and the initial intense "lust" fades.
The inability to "do no right" once the magic wears off can indicate a fundamental incompatibility, resentment, or that the relationship's foundation was based on a false perception rather than true emotional connection and communication.
Claim: "Men are expected to make unhappy women (the majority by far), happy. But nobody can do that."
This claim touches on the harmful and unrealistic expectation that one partner is responsible for the other's happiness.
A person's happiness is their own responsibility. Placing this burden on a partner is unfair and sets the relationship up for failure. A healthy partnership involves mutual love and support, not a one-sided expectation of perpetual happiness.
The "happy wife, happy life" adage is referenced by some sources as a problematic sentiment, arguing that it shifts the burden of a wife's happiness onto her husband and can be used to manipulate or blame a partner.
Emotional labor is a factor here, as some traditional gender roles place the burden of emotional maintenance on women. Men can find themselves bearing the responsibility for a woman's happiness.
Claim: "And no, men don't make the same demand on women."
This is an overgeneralization that ignores the different, but equally unfair, pressures men face in relationships.
Men and women have different, but often equally intense, expectations placed on them. Men may feel pressure to be the sole financial provider or to suppress their emotions, which can prevent them from having a balanced, healthy relationship.
Research shows that women and men can have different priorities for what they want from a partner. Men often value feeling needed and useful, while women might prioritize feeling cherished. Both partners need to have their needs met, but these needs are not identical, which can lead to miscommunication and resentment.
Healthy relationships require effort from both partners. The idea that either gender makes fewer or less demanding requests is a simplification of a complex dynamic. A healthy, modern marriage requires open communication and equitable sharing of responsibilities
AI Overview
To pick a partner for a lifelong marriage, focus on core values, shared goals, and mutual respect. Look for someone who is also a good friend, is growth-oriented, and has a history of commitment. Compatibility in how you approach life, commitment, and handling conflict is more important than just shared hobbies.
Look for a partner with compatible core values
Shared values:
Find someone who shares your worldview and defines right and wrong in a similar way. This is crucial for navigating life's challenges together.
Similar life mission:
Ensure your partner has a similar sense of what they want out of life. This doesn't mean having a full roadmap, but a compatible sense of purpose.
Compatibility and shared commitment:
Look for a history of long-term, healthy relationships in their life to see if they can maintain commitment.
Prioritize character and emotional maturity
Mutual respect:
This is vital. A good partner respects you, and you must also respect them.
Good character:
Choose someone with a strong character, including traits like kindness, compassion, and understanding.
Friendship:
A lifelong partner should also be your best friend. You should be able to be open with each other without fear of judgment.
Growth and learning:
Look for someone who is open to personal growth and learning. A lifelong relationship requires navigating challenges and evolving together.
Assess your dynamic and shared future
Ability to handle conflict:
You need a partner who is willing to work through tough issues and is a good forgiver. Everyone makes mistakes.
Emotional support:
A good partner is someone who can make you laugh, wipe your tears, and is sensitive to your needs.
Commitment and loyalty:
A lifelong partnership requires loyalty and a willingness to bend and compromise, putting the relationship first.
Common interests and goals:
While not the most important factor, having shared hobbies and dreams can bring you closer and provide a shared foundation for making memories together.
"Men are expected to make unhappy women (the majority by far), happy." ~ Lugh
So, your number one task is to determine if the future love of your life is a happy person.
Are you a happy person Lugh?
Enshitification is the perfect new word to describe the current cultural scene and its trajectory. I love it. Was pressured at Christmas a couple years ago to try some AI Goggles by fringe relatives. Entire experience was sad and devoid of any interest as I knew it would be, Everyone else kind of conned themselves into believing it was really wild. They really wanted to find it interesting. I felt then, and now, that it was entirely fraudulent. But since I am known as a 'luddite' a term I don't mind but which is actually not accurate, they brushed off my dismissal of the 'technology.' I reject the term technology in favor of the term enshitification.
Recommend that everybody listen to Howard’s most recent podcast on this subject. Much more info on why America will die on the cross of Ai.
No one calls me "Howard." I go by Jim.
Nice to meet you too Jim.