Category Archives: Americana

AI Bubble

Americana, Current Affairs

It’s not about how much you earn. It’s about what you’re worth. And who’s worth the most? Companies that lose money. Pinterest, Snapchat, no revenue. Amazon has lost money for every fucking quarter for the last 20 fucking years, and that Jeff Bezos is the king. Russ Hanneman in the HBO fictional series Silicon Valley.

The photograph above is of my first car on California Highway 395. In my car log, now lost on a hard drive on a computer I will never use again, I described it as A 1948 Pontiac 4-door sedan: faded blue with chrome stripes on the hood and an Indianhead hood ornament that lit up; powered by a flathead straight 8. It was my maternal grandmother’s car that I was asked to buy (for $300) when she got too old to drive. She had covered the seats with thick plastic seat covers, so when I got the car, it was an 8-year-old beater with new gray wool – derogatorily called mouse fur – seats. About this time, I started camping, and this car did many uncomplaining miles on dirt roads. The car had a good life. It eventually died on a dirt road near Longs Peak, Colorado, while being driven by the second owner after me. He, fittingly in my opinion, left it by the side of the road to exfoliate back into the earth.

I don’t remember ever taking this car this far south on 395, though. I also don’t remember the Velociraptors, but it was a long time ago, and I didn’t take the picture. I did, however, make it, or at least direct Gemini to make it. And the fact that an 85-year-old, computer-illiterate person can do this in about 15 minutes surprises me. Even more surprising is that this is just the start of the AI revolution, maybe iPhone 2 level. It is still early enough in the cycle that anything seems possible, and the stock market reflects that.

Just before Christmas, I heard the tail end of a speech by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – more commonly known as AOC – on November 18, 2025, during a House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing. AOC said we are probably in an AI bubble and that, when that bubble pops, the Government shouldn’t bail out Wall Street or AI companies. My first reaction was surprise that she knows so much about both AI and the Stock Market since I know so little about either. About a month later, I had lunch with a friend who pays close attention to the Market, and he felt the Market was acting strangely.

It led me to rethink AOC’s speech and credentials. I knew she graduated from Boston University in 2011; what I didn’t know or forgot was that she graduated summa cum laude with a double major in Economics and International Relations. I also went back and listened to earlier parts of AOC’s speech.

AOC said there is an AI bubble that poses a significant threat to the U.S. economy. She pointed out that 40% of U.S. economic growth and 80% of stock gains in 2025 were attributed to just seven major tech companies. Many of these companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, the creator of Claude, and xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, among other AI companies, have yet to turn a profit and might never make a profit. She argued that their current valuations are based on “promises” rather than actual returns and warned that the broader economy’s exposure to this single, unproven sector creates a massive stability risk.

    A couple of days ago, I read in the Washington Post that Michael Burry, the fund manager made famous in the book and movie The Big Short, is now saying he thinks we are in an AI bubble, so I’m convinced we are all in for an AI shock. I’m also convinced that Russ Hanneman, quoted at the top, is right, even though he is not real.

    What A Difference 15 Years Make

    Americana, Politics

    Fifteen years ago, in early January 2011, about when the top picture was taken, a shooter shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords in the head and killed six bystanders. President Obama led a national moment of silence.

    It is easy to compare that presidential reaction to President Trump’s reaction to Renee Good being publicly executed by ICE Agent Jonathan Ross. But I don’t want to do that. It won’t change anything any more than calling Trump names will change anything other than making me feel righteous. Trump was elected because a large portion of our population didn’t think our government – their government – was helping them or even paying attention to them (and I think they are right).

    They voted for change and authenticity over talking points from a teleprompter and more of the same inaction because “it’s too soon” or “too expensive”, and change and authenticity is what they got. Maybe some people are still thrilled with Trump, but I don’t think most Trump voters expected the change and authenticity to come with such assholery, and that assholery, especially without any of the promised financial relief, has soured a lot of people on Trump.

    People haven’t wanted politics-as-usual for more than a while. In 2008, they wanted change so much that they even voted for a Black guy with a name that sounded like the most notorious terrorist of the day. When they didn’t get the promised change, they voted for Trump, a guy who said he was already rich, so, unlike other politicians, he wouldn’t need to steal their tax dollars. He said he would end our endless wars and even make his voters, if not rich, at least less poor. They got Trump, who, it turns out, does need to get even richer and is now talking about fighting wars in Venezuela and Greenland.

    If that sounds hopeless, I don’t mean for it to be. Trump is a nasty, evil man and is doing a tremendous amount of damage to a lot of people as well as the country in general, but I am actually pretty optimistic about our future. First, Trump and his band of followers are inept and often sound like they are getting more done – or doing more damage, if you prefer – than they really are. Additionally, Trump’s manner of governing – for lack of a better word – makes for lots of headlines but results in relatively ephemeral changes, not the kind of long-term structural changes he would have gotten if he had run his stupid and fascist ideas through Congress and changed the actual laws. More importantly, or at least as importantly, our governmental and societal antibodies are waking up. Trump is losing legal challenges at higher levels of the court system, and his Congressional support is starting to weaken.

    Most importantly, in my opinion, the people, the electorate, still don’t want politics as usual. Trump hasn’t delivered the economic change they are asking for, and they are still pissed and still looking for change. In New York, a city with a large Jewish population, they were even willing to vote for a Muslim with a beard. He is also a Democratic Socialist who says he’ll govern as a Democratic Socialist. Actually, there is a growing group of potential and already elected legislators who are willing to run from the left with the aim of actually bringing the change we so desperately need. Reactionary powerhouses like AIPAC are losing power, and their campaign money is even becoming toxic.

    I’m not saying Trump isn’t dangerous and won’t continue to be dangerous and nasty, but I’m optimistic that the tide is turning. Just like the little Agave in the top picture has grown into the huge Agave in the picture below, and is getting ready to bloom.

    Happy New Year.

    Odds and Ends

    Americana, Current Affairs, Politics, Psychological Musings

    I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. An excerpt from Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King, Jr., where he was imprisoned as a participant in a nonviolent demonstration in August of 1963.

    I’ve grown up thinking that the Democrats were liberals, but I was only half right. The Democratic Party during my growing-up years was Fiscally Liberal with Social Security and Medicare, and, except for President Lyndon Johnson and a few others, controlled by the socially conservative southern Committee leaders. Just as the world has changed since I was growing up, so has the Democratic Party changed. It happened right in front of my eyes, and I didn’t even see it. Today’s Democrats are Socially Liberal and Fiscally Conservative. There are outliers like Ocasio-Cortez and a few others who are both Fiscally Liberal and Socially Liberal, but the Party, en masse, is Fiscally Conservative.

    On the other hand, according to Anthony Scaramucci, Trump says his supporters are Fiscally Liberal and Socially Conservative. Not counting, I guess, rich tech entrepreneurs who Trump keeps around with big tax breaks and are fiscally conservative and socially liberal.

    We live in a society where money has become so important that it demands special treatment. By that, I mean money – and making money – has the status of being more holy than secular. When Trump threatened to have the U.S. Federal Communications Commission unapprove a major merger between Paramount Global, which owned CBS, and Skydance Media, a deal that many in the media said was contingent on appeasing Trump by firing the late-night comedian, Stephen Colbert, over his anti-Trump comedy, the media didn’t blame CBS or Paramount Global. The general attitude was along the lines of They had no choice.

    The unspoken inference was They had no choice because it would cost their stockholders money, and that is of a higher value than doing the right thing. The unspoken part of the inference, BTW, is that the top executives will get more money at the expense of employees further down the totem pole. – I think that the Right Thing, the right choice, the moral choice, is to say “We believe in freedom of speech, which we have a moral obligation to protect and is guaranteed by the First Amendment, especially in political commentary, even though it may cost us money; therefore, we will not bow to political pressure.”

    Sort of on the same subject, a couple of days ago, I heard William J. Haynes II interviewed on NPR. Hayes was with the Bush Administration on 9-11 and was one of the people, along with the more infamous John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales, who gave Bush the Younger political cover on attacking Afghanistan after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

    Haynes was being interviewed on the Trump Administration’s use of the US Military for a strike on at least four vessels that originated from Venezuela, killing more than twenty people. The pretense was that the boats were smuggling drugs into the US, drugs that have “killed more people than have died in the World Trade Center attack”.

    Haynes thought the use of the US Military to attack the boats was illegal. I don’t remember exactly why, or how, but, somehow, Haynes came up with because al-Qaeda was attacking us with intent to harm us, they were a legitiment military target. The boats from Venezuela were not attacking us, even though their cargo killed lots of people; all they are trying to do is make money, so we couldn’t legally use our military.

    Speaking of NPR, sort of, I noticed that their commentary is now better, more insisive without being partisan, than I am used to. I think this is because NPR is no longer receiving funding from the Government, and they no longer have the Government looking over their shoulder with the implied threat of cutting off their funds if they were too partisan.

    A couple of months ago, every newspaper I read and almost everybody I talked to was outraged that Trump was going to cut off NPR’s funding. I don’t think most people, including people in the Trump Administration, were really thinking about what would happen if NPR funding were cut off; they were just reacting to Trump, ad hominem. Trump is a petty little man who is vindictive and seems to take pleasure in hurting people. He’s a punch down, kiss-ass up kind of guy, and it is very easy to be critical of everything he does, but sometimes, what he does is better for all of us, and I think making NPR truly independent is one of those times.

    Mamdani & The NY Mayoral Race

    Americana, Current Affairs, Politics
    Doctored picture used by the Cuomo campaign of Mamdani with a heavier and darker beard.

    Those Democrats who think Mamdani will hurt their party are right to be concerned, but they’re thinking about the problem the wrong way. It’s not the skeptics they need to worry about. It’s the fans. Those Democrats who think Mamdani will hurt their party are right to be concerned, but they’re thinking about the problem the wrong way. It’s not the skeptics they need to worry about. It’s the fans. Ramesh Ponnuru, the editor of National Review and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in an editorial in the Washington Post entitled How Zohran Mamdani is teaching Democrats to lose.

    I can’t speak to how other people feel, but I can say that as a Jewish New Yorker and as a member of a Jewish organization, I think that Zohran has done an incredible job of demonstrating care and concern and shown a real commitment to ensuring the safety of Jewish New Yorkers, of all New Yorkers. Sophie Ellman-Golan, director of strategic communications at Jews For Racial & Economic Justice

    I’m not going to let this Communist Lunatic destroy New York, President Donald Trump, after Mamdani’s primary win (and was repeated in August).

    Your dedication to an affordable, welcoming, and safe New York City where working families can have a shot has inspired people across the city. Billionaires and lobbyists poured millions against you and our public finance system. And you won. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, US representative for New York’s 14th congressional district

    The Anti-Mamdani Movement Is Fizzling New York Magazine

    Zohran Mamdani is running for mayor of New York City. He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America – which is the largest Socialist group in the United States – is 33 years old, a practising Muslim, and, surprisingly, he will probably be the next mayor of New York City. And those are not the most surprising parts of the story. He was born in Kampala, Africa, and moved here when he was seven with his parents,  Mahmood Mamdani, a professor at Columbia University and Mira Nair. The same Mira Nair who is the director of  Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding, and the Amelia Earhart biopic, Amelia, starring Hilary Swank and Richard Gere.

    Mamdani holds political positions that Conventional Wisdom, and a big hunk of the Democratic Party’s leadership, think – maybe hope is more accurate – it should be impossible for him to win anything, even a Municipal Dogcatcher Position. As a short aside, about 12% of people in New York City are Jewish, and 2.4% are Indian, and Mamdani has said both Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are war criminals and would be jailed if they came to New York if he were mayor. End aside. And he most probably will be the next mayor of New York City.

    Mamdani is running on a platform that includes free city buses and a rent freeze in rent-stabilized housing; he advocates for universal childcare and pre-kindergarten childcare, as well as the construction of 200,000 new affordable housing units and five city-owned grocery stores—one in each borough—to drive down grocery prices. He was also an early supporter of Defund the Police and continues to support public safety reform. He supports a $30 minimum wage by 2030 and proposed giving all new New York City families baby baskets containing diapers and nursing supplies. Mamdani’s platform calls for tax increases on corporations and those earning above $1 million annually. He is running against a lot of very powerful special interests, and I am thrilled that he will probably be the next mayor of New York City.

    While I am admittedly biased, the biggest reason I say he will be the next mayor of New York City is that the polls say that. Still, I have other reasons he is likely to become the mayor of New York City: he is young, personable, and, most importantly, authentic; the populace is tired of dour old men running the country for themselves, and Mamdani is running on ideas that are popular even though the conventional wisdom says they are loony tunes.

    There is another reason, besides the City of New York’s—and the country’s—general discontent with the status quo, that I think Zohran Mamdani will win, and it is very similar to why Trump won in both 2016 and 2024. To back up a little, there are three ways the Main Stream Media covers elections, and the New York Times and CNN in 2016 are the best examples of that. If they like a candidate, like Hillary Clinton, they give them lots of good, thoughtful – or seemingly thoughtful – coverage. BTW, lots is the operative word in the previous sentence. If they don’t like the candidate, like Bernie Sanders, they ignore him. Just ignore him, and people will forget that the candidate is even running. Or, if they dislike the candidate, like Donald Trump, they will constantly badmouth him. The last way is counterproductive; it ended up keeping Trump in the public’s conscience, and that is what is happening to Zohran Mamdani right now.

    The Met Gala or Anna Wintour Has Big Balls

    Americana, Art, Current Affairs,

    You can’t speak on Black dandyism, Black art, or Black aesthetics without honoring the Black women who shaped, nurtured, and redefined it all. This year, my intention was to uplift and be surrounded by some of the Black women whose brilliance moves me—artists, thinkers, visionaries who carry history and possibility in everything they do. I’ve invited Lauryn Hill, Regina King, Jordan Casteel, Ming Smith, Adrienne Warren, Danielle Deadwyler, Lorna Simpson, and Radhika Jones to my table this year. Thank you all for your presence, your power, and the gifts you so generously share with the world. I’m deeply grateful to have shared this evening with you. Lewis Hamilton on Instagram

    Last Monday evening, Michele and I watched the blue carpet extravaganza of the Met Gala on YouTube. If you are not aware of the Met Gala, it started as a dinner party at which the invitees were expected to donate money to the Costume Department of New York’s Metropolitan Museum. The dinner party was a low-key affair for wealthy people who loved and bought haute couture clothing. But everything shifted when Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour took over in 1999. Now, it’s a televised fashion event that brings invite-only famous people together for the price of $75,000 a ticket.

    Michele and I got interested in the Met Gala when Lewis Hamilton first got invited to the Gala sometime during the late 20-teens. He and Anna Wintour bonded over clothes and, strangely, for me, at least, over tennis, especially watching Serena Williams at Wimbledon. This year, the theme for the Gala was Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, and Lewis Hamilton was one of the co-chairs.

    These are dangerous times to have a political conversation, especially around DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). It is almost impossible to have a nuanced conversation. It is also a time when companies like Boeing and Google have reneged on their DEI commitments under pressure from the Trump Administration (although Apple didn’t). It is a time when a prudent person running a department in a museum that gets money from the Federal Government would not flaunt their DEI cred, but Anna Wintour is not prudent or timid.