What's up with Trump and Greenland?

 It makes no logical sense for the United States to try to take control of Greenland without the consent of its citizens.  Did we not go to war ourselves to gain our independence from Britain?  Are we not a part of NATO, a mutual defense pact that includes Greenland?  Would we not fight like hell if Russia tried to take Alaska back?  So what on earth is going on?

Trump is almost 80.  It's obvious that he is slowing down both physically and mentally.  The people he has put in positions of power around him, like Stephen Miller, seemingly hate international law.  Treaties?  That's for the Little People.  International courts?  We're above that.  The Constitution?  We've evolved past that.  

 Greenland has mineral resources, access to the opening Arctic waterways, has no defenses, and only has about 65,000 citizens.  AND, on there mercator map it looks HUGE!   It's a bit cold, but global warming is taking care of that.  So what's not to like?  It's like ripe fruit ready for the picking!  So you say it must be controlled by us, the smart people, who will know how to protect if from those nasty Russians and Chinese, and extract the natural resources to the greatest extent possible.  Yes, only the United States is in a position to handle all this.  So thinks Trump.

 But Greenland likes being independent.  They like their connection to Denmark.  They don't want to sell nor become under the thumb of the US.  NATO says Greenland is under their protection.  So what's an imperialist like Trump to do?  Well, first you huff and puff and swing around a big stick.  If that doesn't work then, darn it, we have to just go in and physically take over.  

And then what?  All other countries will shun us.  Our bases in Europe and elsewhere will be shut down.  We will become a universal pariah with a bit more space.  Our world will actually shrink as our former trading partners go elsewhere.  Our current allies will ignore us if ever we have a time of need again, like 9/11.   We will go from the Beacon on the Hill to the classless fool in the gutter.  

Trump is pretty much the only person on earth who thinks taking Greenland is a good idea.  His sycophants will cheer the idea, but even they know its ridiculous.  So America has a choice.  The 25th amendment gives us a way to remove a president who is careening the country into the abyss before it's too late.  And I hope we're not too late already. 

Trump tries to include "Empire Builder" into his legacy

 

Countries Trump wants to add onto the United States (pop. 347 million), turning the US into Trumpistan:

 Canada (pop. 40 million) - "The president has repeatedly floated the idea of acquiring Canada, despite Canada's repeated rejection of the concept." 

Colombia (pop. 53 million)  - "Trump Says U.S. Oversight of Venezuela Could Last for Years"

Cuba (pop. 11 million) - GOP Cheers on Regime Change With Cuba in Trump's Crosshairs

Greenland (pop. 56,000) - Exclusive: Trump Admiistration Mulls Payments to Sway Greenlanders to Join US

Mexico (pop. 132 million) - Trump's Attacks on Venezuela Put Mexico On Edge

Venezuela (pop. 28.5 million) - Trump Clarifies Who is Ultimately in Charge of Venezuela:"Me"

 If Trump had his way, 265.5 million more people would be called Americans, or rather, Trumpistanians.  Trump is almost 80 years old and knows his time is limited.  He wants to build his legacy with buildings (White House ballroom, an Arc d'Triumph, etc), an aggressive swerve to authoritarianism, billions more to his family coffers, and now, an empire.  

Even though the whole point of the creation of the United States was as an alternative to an authoritarian form of government, no one in Congress nor the courts seems to care that Trump is crumbling the very purpose of the United States Constitution.  It is as if the Constitution was just a quaint set of suggestions that could be followed until someone comes along who can compile enough sycophants in positions of power to throw it in the trash.  That time seems to have arrived. 

 

Social media rewards the bad, ignores the good

 Social media is designed to make us addicts.  And what do we get addicted to?  Scrolling nonstop through AI slop and unverified "news" coverage.  Content creators are more rewarded for sensationalism than reality.  And what does that do to society?  We become nonsense addicts.  We no longer care what facts are and instead rely on whoever seems to be the most aggressive and persuasive.

 I don't think I'm going to like the future. 

Trump likes the energy industry, or some of it

 https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/trump-admin-orders-another-coal-plant-to-stay-open/

 

"On Tuesday, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright issued a now familiar order: because of a supposed energy emergency, a coal plant scheduled for closure would be forced to remain open. This time, the order targeted one of the three units present at Craig Station in Colorado, which was scheduled to close at the end of this year. The remaining two units were expected to shut in 2028."

 BUT THEN...

 https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/government-officials-spark-backlash-over-003000545.html 

"Five major in-progress wind farm projects have come to a screeching halt after the Department of the Interior paused offshore leases on Monday. It cited national security concerns around radar interference from turbines. Developers, for their part, have said their designs were made in close collaboration with military officials."

* * * * *

 This is what happens when you put in a president who doesn't care about the environment.  Instead, his own personal bias persuades him to make outlandish claims against windmills, like “It is the worst form of energy, the most expensive form of energy, but windmills should not be allowed.”  Also, “When they start to rust and rot in eight years you can’t really turn them off, you can’t burn them. They won’t let you bury the propellers, the props, because there’s a certain type of fibre that doesn’t go well with the land.”  No, they last 20-25 years.  And there are now blades that can be recycled.

"Clean coal" that Trump likes to brag about doesn't exist.  It's dirty.  It's bad.  It's no longer needed. 

Billions for defense, not much left for the rest of us

 https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/trillions-for-war-pennies-for-people-how-soaring-military-spending-fails-americans

 

I won’t let Reagan off the hook — there was plenty of waste back then, but today it’s worse. We’ve built an expansive, “cover-the-globe” strategy, trying to be everything, everywhere at once. We’re overstretched, inefficient, and spending over half of the military budget — 54% —on Pentagon contractors.

When you combine all these factors, a clear picture emerges — what we call the “Trillion Dollar War Machine” — showing where all this money is going and why it’s not actually making us more secure.

William Hartung: Basically, we’re asking the smaller military to undertake missions impossible: impose democracy at the barrel of a gun, reconstruct a country at the same time it’s being destroyed. We’ve had 20-year wars in Afghanistan and Iraq where the U.S. spent more and had superior technology, but that didn’t determine the outcome. Local conditions, human motivation, and factors technology can’t address were what really mattered. Those two points together are deeply troubling. The question of why that happens was a lot of what we explore. 

 * * * * *

About 13% of the federal budget goes to defense in the US.  The Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, the largest in the world, cost $13.3 billion.  What are we using it for?  Plinking little boats off Venezuela to scare a country our president doesn't like.  We paid to design and build the F-35, arguably the greatest fighter plane in the world.  But now our president has pissed off Canada, so they're planning to cut their purchase of F-35s from the country that threatens to make them the 51st state.

So does all this money really help keep us safe if we're idiots in other international interaction?  No.  We need to be smart, not just spend-heavy.  

 

AI creates a popular music artist out of thin air

 

AI does not think for itself.  It only knows what it has been fed.  It can do amazing things WITH that information, but that's how it works.  So now, AI skeptic and musician Rick Beato has invented a musical artist out of thin air using AI.  

 Where do things go from here?  AI can not claim copyright.  So that's good.  But now real musicians have competition from non-existent competitors.  Is this good?  

 "The promise of automation was to do the mundane so human creativity can flourish.  Instead, human creativity is demeaned as mundane so Big Tech's machines can flourish." [Thinking Like a Human, by David Weitzner, p. 114] 

Would you buy a Black Box from a bunch of billionaires?

 

Imagine if a bunch of billionaires and large corporations got together and tried to push a shiny Black Box on the world. It would require that electricity production be doubled. It would take 20% of fresh water. The positive claims for it are that it would reduce work loads for humans. It would be inventive, smart, and powerful. And that’s all you know about the Black Box. Would you buy it?

This is AI, or the new Artificial Intelligence. It’s promoted as a sort of one-size-fits-all panacea for mankind. AI is training the Black Box to think more like a human, but still only being a Black Box that is limited to the data it is fed. The selling point is that AI can then replace humans in jobs.

“We believe that it is possible that deep learning systems are less than a decade away from superintelligence,” Pachocki added. He described superintelligence as systems smarter than humans across a large number of critical actions.  [https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/28/sam-altman-says-openai-will-have-a-legitimate-ai-researcher-by-2028/]

Is there a need for AI? Do we need to replace humans in jobs? Are there down sides to the Black Box? Take for example a newly graduated student. He needs to make a resume. So he asks the Black Box to make him a resume after feeding it bits and pieces that need to be put together to impress a company enough to hire him. The AI quickly spits out an impressive looking resume, and off it goes to several companies. These companies are swamped with impressive looking AI-generated resumes, so it uses AI to process them and pick the best candidates for each job. Is this an improvement of some sort thanks to the Black Box? No. The resume does not represent the actual human. The companies are using the Black Box to decide which human is best to work in a human job. The Black Box only knows data. It does not know people.

Certainly there are good uses for AI, perhaps in the military to replace a human that would be in a dangerous situation. AI can look through data faster than a human, so looking for a medicine to fit a particular disease could be speeded up. But that is not how AI is being sold. It is being sold as a universal panacea. Its goal is to replace people with a more intelligent, capable employee that doesn’t need to be paid. This is why the corporations and billionaires are so excited about AI.

But there are many down sides to replacing humans. AI is not human. It does not know what unemployment is like, for instance. It does not know human to human interaction. It is an attempt to make humans unnecessary. “The promise of automation was to do the mundane so human creativity can flourish. Instead human creativity is demeaned as mundane so Big Tech’s machines can flourish.” [Thinking Like a Human,, by David Weitzner, p. 114]

Do we need a Black Box that sucks up half of our electricity and 20% of our water? Are the promoters of the Black Box pushing it for personal benefit instead of societal improvement? These are things that need to be considered and thought through before we just give in to all the hype.