Category Archives: Current Affairs

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.

    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.

    Israel & The Slaughter of Palestinians

    Current Affairs, Family, War, What's a man?

    My father, who died just before I turned 28, was a secular Jew. However, he was proud of being Jewish. He never said that we were the chosen people, but I suspect that was more because he didn’t believe in a Chooser than anything else. Still, he thought we were better than the people who looked down on us. We were more compassionate, more inclusive, more accepting, all Jewish virtues he strongly believed in.

    In a way, I grew up feeling that my compassion and inclusiveness were a result of being Jewish. In a Of course, I believe everybody should be treated equally; I’m Jewish sort of way. Now, watching Israel slaughter Palestinians in Gaza and constantly terrorizing other Palestinians in the West Bank, that all seems like a lie. To a certain extent, who I believed I was now seems like bullshit. It is more than disheartening.

    If there is any consultation, it is that I am not alone in my anger and existential grief. Below is a short (-ish) conversation between two very smart, very compassionate people about Israel, Palestine, and being Jewish during the horror of what is going on. Please give it a try.

    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.

    A Quick Aside

    Current Affairs, War

    Last Sunday, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) – maybe SBU works better in Ukrainian, Служба безпеки України – conducted a series of attacks on Russian air bases that were home to much of Russia’s nuclear bombers. The attack, code-named Operation Spider’s Web, involved smuggling drone parts into Russia and reassembling them near the targets, which was widely reported in American and European newspapers.

    What was not generally reported – at least I didn’t see it in the mainstream media – was that the Security Service of Ukraine hacked the website of the builder of the bombers, Tupolev (officially, United Aircraft Company Tupolev). Besides getting a bunch of confidential information, the Security Service of Ukraine changed the home page of Tupolev as shown above. The owl is a symbol closely associated with the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine (HUR), which is the mothership for the SBU.