Thursday, February 12, 2026

Bad Bunny! BAD Bunny!!

And why didn’t they do it? I was just telling the Lovely Wife how we’re going backwards culturally. 1940’s Bugs Bunny cartoons celebrated Latin stars and music and Cuba (before Fidel). Brazilian steakhouses are still popular here (myself included, not THAT much of a carnivore). Pandora has steered me to Latin Jazz, because I like Guaraldi). But less than 100 years ago “Latin American” music was broadly accepted. Santana sang songs in Spanish in the’60’s, nobody blinked. In the late last century Linda Ronstadt recorded 3 albums in Spanish of Mexican music, Tex-Mex left Texas and traveled the country, and now… we’re supposed to be upset by Bad Bunny?

Yeah; I don’t think so. MAGA’s last gasp in the “culture wars.”
l love when people do this with sincerity. “I would never call Secretary Noem a cos-playing bitch wearing more makeup than a circus clown. That would just be wrong!” There really is a way to denounce insulting nicknames without, you know, repeating them. 

If you don’t understand that, then, why am I taking you seriously? Or is Fetterman being ironic, and nobody’s noticing?
Well, certainly the way you’re doing it is mot safe. There have been 3 murders in Minneapolis this year. Two of them were by DHS officers who apparently will never be investigated by state officials for murder. But all you do is bellyache about crime. Indeed. Why prevent health problems when you can get healthcare? Like cancer treatments (radiation; chemicals), or oxygen tanks because you can’t breathe otherwise?  And if you can’t get treatment, then you’ll just decrease the surplus population.

BTW, I’m pretty sure Congress could do something about this.
The POTUS is an innumerate and unreliable narrator. Res ipsa loquitor. Do they have their passports? Or their birth certificates? And why are we so worried about who is eligible to vote? Shouldn’t we put more emphasis on who can be elected? Like, say, no felons allowed? As a matter of law, a felony is considered a crime of moral turpitude. Do we want people like that in office? I mean, maybe we, the people don’t, but office holders clearly do.

I’m old enough to remember when we used to have political parties to take care of this. Some people would never get the nomination. Then we reformed the system to make it more “democratic.” Be careful what you wish for….

I close with another rumination on AI. The internet was developed by DOD, and the infrastructure for it was built by users. Mostly it camped on to existing phone lines, and eventually users paid for other means of transmission. But crypto and AI are similar creatures: demanding massive costs be borne by the community, the people. Large sites that use large amounts of electricity and water, and benefit: who? The owners of crypto, mostly. Or of AI. I think AI is a load if crap, but why does the public bear the cost of the technology while a few private owners and investors reap the profits? In classical terms, that’s colonialism: exploiting resources for the benefit of a few, at the expense of many. Especially if AI (I really don’t think it will, but this is how it’s being sold) puts a large number of people out of work. We’re not exactly talking about buggy whip makers here. Seems like a huge social cost just to profit a few.

And besides, what is AI? Does anybody remember the thought experiment about a thousand (or 100; it varied) monkeys at typewriters, which, given enough time, would reproduce Shakespeare? It was supposed to be clever, but nobody ever thought to ask: why would the monkeys write in English? Especially Early Modern English? Because the keyboards wouldn’t have umlauts? Or diacritical marks (obviously they wouldn’t have Arabic, or Hebraic characters, or Asian pictographs; or even Cyrillic. Right?)?

That’s how the AI discussion/speculation runs; assuming facts and conclusions not in evidence. I still haven’t heard of anyone who predicted AI would make kiddie porn readily available. I remember when 3D printers were going to make “printed”guns readily available. Turned out buying real guns was easier and more reliable. But what stops AI from making porn on demand? Or what other socially disastrous uses have we not yet imagined, are coming? And why is society supposed to bear the cost of the technology so tech bros can get richer?

There were legitimate social purposes to the Space Age and even the advent of the personal computer (government made both possible; who uses a computer now without the internet?). But what’s the legitimate social purpose/value of AI? Or crypto?
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