One more win for English speakers?

I have no qualifications whatsoever for chiming in on the current AI freak out. The tech boys seem on the verge of setting something loose that might bring tremendous benefits -- or extinguish us all. And they can't say which eventuality is most likely. 

Hell of civilization weve built here when we have to ask whether human inventions will kill us all for fun and profit! (Though, it's not the first time -- once there was Hiroshima...) But here we are. And we're all subjects in their science experiment.

Anita Chabria writes an opinion column for the LA Times. I often can't believe she keeps her job. Maybe those writers have a good union? Her common sense seems to me the sort of reflection on this moment that we need. She asks what any sensible woman might ask:

... companies are hoping that these poorly understood but powerful machines can take over creating newer, even less understood but even more powerful AI systems — leaving humans largely in the dark about what they are creating and even what these beasts can and want to do.

The idea is that, because AI systems even right now are so fast and powerful, they can do the job of creating new versions of themselves at a pace and scale humans simply can’t.

Why, you ask, would this speed-without-understanding be a good thing? Isn’t it a bit like driving a race car while blindfolded?

Yes, yes it is.

But for-profit companies like making profit, and to do that, they want the most powerful product to sell.

Many in the industry are framing this recklessness as a necessity to prevent another country, China in particular, from creating a superintelligent AI system first. The Trump administration has so far grasped on to this greedy bit of misdirection like, well, oligarchs clinging to money.

Those who would prefer not to destroy humanity have urged international cooperation in the form of a slowdown while we figure out how to proceed safely.

We have no reason to believe China would not go along with this — in fact, China has more national-level AI regulation than the U.S. And humans have successfully controlled other technologies with catastrophic power, such as biological and nuclear weapons, through cooperation.

Does it matter which country creates the AI that kills humanity? The logic here seems to be that if anyone is going to cause a mass extinction event, it had better be an English-speaking AI, because it would be a huge loss to America if the planet were destroyed by one speaking a foreign language. ...

May Day 2026

Here in the Bay Area belly of the beast, the menace created by the tech bosses is not a new revelation. The tech workers are one of humanity's lines of defense. I doubt many think that is what they volunteered for. But here we all are.

Who has got "the creativity, forcefulness and resilience to do something about it"?

Lots of people whose opinions I value find Joshua Marshall of Talking Points Memo a pompous ass. Sometimes I agree. But, because I also seem hard wired to try to understand the present in the context of what I know about the past, I sometimes also find his thoughts worth pondering. He turns a historical lens on the current mainstream Democratic Party, an entity that seems way out of touch with many of its voters.

I think he is onto something:

... while Chuck Schumer and the consultants may suck, it’s probably not really about them. It’s about something more fundamental, a crisis of liberal democracy which we have to try to solve even though we only dimly understand it. Yes of course there are theories and one or the other of them are probably partly right. But this isn’t about criticizing theorists. It’s about living in history, when the things really driving change are seldom that clear to those living amidst the change.

The danger here is that we collectively fall into a kind of self-disgust which I see all the time. Our leaders suck. We suck. We’re weak and hapless. The political faction or movement I belong to sucks. 

These all flow rather naturally from most of the mainstream media narratives about whatever challenges Democrats are facing at a given moment. And this is of course enervating. Or it can be. And it can promote conflict which is not necessarily productive conflict.

And yet just because it’s happening in [much of Europe] and in countless other similarly situated countries doesn’t mean we can say, “Welp, it’s bigger than us. That’s just how it is. Nothing we can do about it.” 

Obviously the challenge is still the same for any of us who believe in liberal democracy, in freedom and general human flourishing. In fact the challenge is probably greater because it’s not just some incidental thing that’s going to be solved in time for the next election — better consultants, no politicians over 65, politicians who will fight. It’s big and goes beyond any single person’s mistakes or individual excellence. 

And this is what I mean by a dual approach, the necessity of not falling into a kind of cheap and demoralizing self-critique while also recognizing that it is very much our responsibility to have the creativity, forcefulness and resilience to do something about it. 

In a way it requires us to understand our situation both from outside of history, looking at it from the long view, and also very much inside it, in the moment, with every action and option on the table, with every decision mattering because we don’t know how the future turns out.

We know we can still be agents in our own lives. We're in a moment in which many women especially are being reminded that we are need not be bound by what others think we are capable of. That's what Gloria Steinem came to mean to millions over a long political life. That's what Dolly Parton meant -- to some of the same millions as well as others looking to different cultural reference points. 

People make fun of the gray haired biddies of the "Resistance," but we're right to notice and try to arrest the democratic backsliding which is the MAGA/Trump regime. We've witnessed both a lot of BS and a lot of progress toward freedoms over our lives. We don't want to go back. 

In November, we'll vote and get out the vote. We'll accompany targets of Trump's anti-immigrant racial pogrom to court. We'll rally if we must. This is our country and the world those who come after will inherit. We won't give up on it.  

We can begin to understand what it might require to "get over it"

This is just so much to the point, I find I can't retreat into needed rest without amplifying it. Just as in January, Minnesota is showing the way in envisioning how a healthy community recovers from MAGA violence.

Journalist Lisa Needham writes: 

Justice for ICE’s victims requires truth and reconciliation ... Moving on as if it didn’t happen is not an option.

... For communities crushed by President Trump’s brutal immigration crackdown, there isn’t a world where people simply get over it. ... It’s a difficult and delicate thing to ask people to remember the hurt they suffered, even more so when the federal government that inflicted it remains in power. Speaking out against the administration has proven to be a dangerous, even deadly, affair, so the Truth Council (which was created by Gov. Walz after the occupation ended) partnered with The Advocates for Human Rights to create a process for collecting the stories of survivors and witnesses.

... Everyone knows some of these stories. The murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti are indelible, as is the memory of five-year-old Liam Ramos’s abduction. But thousands of Minnesotans suffered at the hands of ICE, in ways ranging from abject cruelty to outright violence. The Truth Council is charged with documenting “the harms and abuses” experienced by Minnesotans, and the first public meeting last week was full of these brief stories, tiny sharp remembrances of pain and humiliation: 

    •    “An elder who needed new dentures was too scared to leave her home to access dental care. So she ate baba or kanji with little protein for months on end because she couldn’t chew her food without new dentures.” 

    •    “The mother taken at her child’s bus stop has an anaphylactic peanut allergy and ICE denied her food for six days because the federal government could not be bothered to provide a meal free of the allergen.” 

    •    “A convoy of SUVs filled with agents sped through an intersection where our kids were climbing on their buses to go home, raced towards the school and halted in front of the main entrance” 

    •    “She taught her mother how to crawl up into the attic space and hide in case federal agents came to their door for questioning.”

The Council is also tasked with making findings about how to “prevent the recurrence of unlawful or harmful conduct by federal agents.” Sarah Lopez, the policy director of Unidos Minnesota, relayed a story — which actually did receive media coverage at the time — that stands out as emblematic of the petty, relentless viciousness of ICE agents: 

“In Willmar, four agents sat down at lunch at El Tapatio,” she said. “And that evening, after the family closed early, agents followed them out and detained the owners of the restaurant and the dishwasher.” 

Imagine being one of those agents. Imagine going to a small family restaurant and being fed and cared for, only to turn around and arrest those same people later that day. Imagine how warped and broken you have to be to behave that way. 

... Along with the accounts of victims, survivors, and witnesses, it’s also important to remember the ICE agents at the center of stories like this. The Truth Council doesn’t exist only to amplify those voices, but also to document the behavior of the federal agents who terrorized the state.

Supporting Minnesotans in San Francisco, March 2026

But for every story of humiliation and harm at the hands of ICE goons, there were stories about Minnesotans coming together, demonstrating solidarity and resilience and resistance. And that’s part of the charge of the Truth Council as well, to “document how Minnesotans came together, supported one another, and persevered.”

What went down in Minnesota, what is going down in various forms all over the country, must be remembered, acknowledged, documented. Once again, Minnesota is showing the way to authentic healing which doesn't deny what has and is happening, but serves as a foundation to the new community we must build after MAGA. 

An unanticipated rupture ...

If anyone has wondered where I disappeared to, the picture tells the story:

Last Friday, at the end of a six mile walk in Golden Gate Park, I crashed onto my side on an asphalt road, broke my hip and cracked the head of the long leg bone, and embarked on a new exploration of both my pain tolerance and involuntary participant research into the US health care industry. After four days in a Kaiser hospital for surgery and immediate stabilization, I'm now in a rehab facility learning how to walk safely while healing.

All this is tiring. I'm giving myself what will probably be a ten day break from posting here. We, the American majority of the sane and the kind, have got this foul national situation in hand and we aren't going to let the bad guys keep us down ...

Where do we go from here?

Okay -- I can't make a case that this woman is going to win her campaign. (Maybe someone from Florida can show me I'm too pessimistic?) But that the Democratic voters of the Sunshine State chose her for their US Senate nominee is delicious and probably instructive.

 

The lady in pink wearing tennis shoes lets it all hang out. If winning is such an uphill slog, why not just tell the voters what you really think?

 

Obama political operative Dan Pfeiffer thinks he knows what he is seeing:

Despite being outspent by more than 10 to 1, Nixon beat [Lt. Colonel Alex] Vindman to become the Democratic nominee to take on Senator Ashley Moody.

And Nixon didn’t just beat him; she romped, winning by more than 11 points. ...

...  She is a dynamic candidate who ran on the exact message that has been resonating in Democratic primaries this cycle — a progressive, populist approach focused on lowering prices for working families.

...  Like Vindman, she made fighting a centerpiece of her identity — but it wasn’t just fighting Trump. Nixon was fighting for working people.

Embedded in Nixon’s success is a model for progressive populists. Candidates like [Wisconsin's Francesca] Hong ran up huge margins among younger, college-educated, and mostly white liberals, but struggled mightily with Black voters, who have historically resisted more liberal candidates in Democratic primaries.

Nixon did not. Like Hong, Nixon did very well in areas with college campuses and younger, more progressive voters. But [in the Florida state senate] she represents Jacksonville, in Duval County, and won that county — which has a large population of Black voters — by roughly 60 points. She also did well in the I-4 corridor and in Miami-Dade County, which also have significant numbers of Black voters.

There was a skinny Black guy with a funny name whose success Pfeiffer understood. That guy won, in part, by riding a popular wave of desire to move on beyond George W, Bush and also Democratic conventions. Might we, in Nixon, be seeing foreshadowing of the next wave, the one that comes after the Orange Man slinks from the scene?

Angie Nixon campaign: 

 

Do we choose to survive?

Erudite Partner is at it again. The syndication platform Tom Dispatch has moved to the Intercept and today publishes her latest: It’s Time to Rein in Lethal AI Drones. 

The dystopian future became the dystopian present last month when state-of-the-art artificial intelligence agents went rogue and conducted a cyberattack of their own volition. Two experimental OpenAI agents escaped their supposedly sealed digital “sandbox” and hacked another AI-related company, Hugging Face.

... imagine lethal weapon-bearing AI agents escaping not an experimental sandbox, but the few constraints on their actions placed by the armies using them. Actually, no imagination is required. It’s happening already in Russia’s war against Ukraine.  ...

War -- death by independent machines raining from the sky -- is here and here to stay.

When the US Army releases publicity pictures like this one, they are playing to an impulse toward heroism which may have once served our species well, but which today threatens human survival. The Erudite Partner reminds us that international humanitarian law is in a race to keep up with lethal technology. Do we choose to survive?

Read Rebecca Gordon's latest here.  

Greg Abbott's theater of bigotry

Things I didn't have a mental picture of, but am glad to have learned -- from basketball great and good man Kareem Abdul Jabbar: 

Wudu is the Muslim ritual of washing before prayer, which we do five times daily, at dawn, midday, afternoon, sunset, and night. We begin by saying “Bismillah,” which means “In the name of God,” then wash our hands to the wrist three times, rinse the mouth and nose, wash the face, wash our arms to the elbow, wipe the head and ears with our wet hands, and finally wash our feet to the ankles. It takes just a couple of minutes but is an essential and sacred part of our religious practice.

While wudu can be done in a restroom sink, it’s hardly ideal, and some public spaces, such as universities and hospitals that serve diverse populations, provide dedicated stations as an accommodation to Muslims. That is what two airports in Texas (Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth) have done, to little fanfare or controversy until Governor Greg Abbott decided to make it his personal crusade to end this small act of courtesy. Earlier this month, Abbott sent a letter to Dallas-Fort Worth, which was planning a second station, threatening to cut off grants to the airport if it went ahead with the project, calling such facilities “illegal” and a form of “discrimination.”

Kareem's short paragraphs explain what I used to see around the corner from my mother-in-law's apartment in Manhattan -- lines of cabs parked every which way while their drivers ran briefly into the Islamic Center on the corner ...

Texas should be as bigoted as possible if you are the Republican governor. So Abbott, running for reelection, grandstands against his Muslim citizens. He won't admit that this is just ugly hate theater.  

Abbott ... he should know better. As a paraplegic who has been confined to a wheelchair since 1984, he needs special accommodations on a daily basis. When he goes to Houston or Dallas-Fort Worth airports, he surely uses the ramps designed to make life easier for disabled people like him. Why, then, is he so eager to make life harder for other people who need accommodation, in this case Muslims?

Betting against Canada is dumb and dumber

A Canadian friend posted this warning yesterday. It seems about right to me. 

Growing up on the US-Canada border, our big neighbor to the north was simply an ordinary part of my youth. Cross-border Canadian TV stations were where I could watch the National Hockey League. The parkway along the Canadian side of the Niagara River was where I ventured for morning long flat runs; the river itself was where I sailed my Sailfish to a foreign shore. None of this seemed extraordinary.

Canada was another country, a nearby country, a different country, a country I liked and respected.

Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney has Donald Trump's number and calls him out:

“We’ve recognized from the start that America has changed. We recognize that sometimes, its signature is written in pencil.”

US demands on Canada are mere bullying, rooted in a Trump fantasy of imperial annexaton.

Per historian Philips P. O'Brien: 

Canada is faced with a USA that is now fundamentally dishonest and rapacious. Moreover, it is faced with a US government that denies its ultimate right to exist and speaks openly (and regularly) about how Canada should be annexed into the USA.  

I bet on the moose; integrity and grit count and we've lost ours along with our brains. The Canadians, not so much.

Cheese heads for the win

Still a little brain fogged from the long trip back from Mongolia. But I encourage readers to click on this short introduction to Senator Robert La Follette, Wisconsin's fighting champion of the people. (By way of Heather Cox Richardson.)

They don't make public servants like this very often. He has great hair, doesn't he?

The narrator is Ben Wikler, the guy who seeded serious Democratic political organizing in the Cheese Head state over the last decade. His project may well result in a Democratic sweep of state offices this November. I've bought Wikler's book, This Is The Plan: How to End America's Meltdown and Save Democracy, and will comment further when I get to it.

People get ready ...

In the auditorium of San Francisco's Mission High School, a leftish segment of the Bay Area activist population was in the house this morning -- immigrant workers, organized teachers and nurses, the gray haired stalwarts of a hundred campaigns. Led by Bay Resistance, plans were laid out for the fall season. 

Here staffer Jane Martin lays out what we already know we have to do; I'll interpret her points in my own words.

• Work to win the election of anti-fascist Democrats in contested districts wherever located

• Make sure you are connected to whichever organization is available to do the work in your neighborhood and on your issues

• Join a pod; get into regular supportive contact with like-minded people

• More specific to the Bay: remind our tech oligarchs that the people won't give them a free ride on the road to ruinous rule!

Such meetings are how winning campaigns build!

• • •

And above all, resistance succeeds when there is room for everyone and we all find our own lanes. I'll give the last word here to one of my favorites in the broad national resistance movement, elder operative Simon Rosenberg. He's the last believing FDR Democrat and we could only wish there were more of him, even if some of us find a home elsewhere: 

There is nothing Trump and MAGA wants more than for us to be fighting with each other and not with him. We have one job now - elect as many of these [Democratic] candidates running for the House and Senate as we can. It’s where our focus must be. It’s a year of opportunity for us across the country. We must seize it, together. 

It's crunch time!