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AI and the Raid at Habbo Hotel

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  Habbo Hotel is an online site where users create an avatar and live in a virtual world with other players. It’s sort of a mini-world where people can interact online and do things together. It’s supposed to be a nice comfortable non-threatening place. In 2006 the online group Anonymous decided that they wanted to get involved in Habbo. Many of them joined, creating their avatars in the same style, with black skin, a business suit, and afro hair. They started blocking entry to the virtual pool, saying “pool’s closed due to AIDS.” They would find an open space in the virtual world and line up in the shape of a swastika. In other words, they created unexpected havoc. Artificial Intelligence is a huge software endeavor to create a sort of Big Brain that people will pay to use. The goal is to make life better for humans by doing thinking faster and better than humans can. With this, science will grow, medicine will find new cures, and peoples’ lives will be better. At le...
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Some smart people help the rest of us understand AI

 How Large Language Models (LLMs) work: https://medium.com/data-science-at-microsoft/how-large-language-models-work-91c362f5b78f   Why agentic AIs can do terrible things we don't want: https://yoshuabengio.org/en/blog/why-are-ai-agents-lying-cheating-and-coordinating   Basic ideas of AI: https://youtu.be/mUw27wG7uFA?si=PWLvXbQBxiqp-0S6     The current AI labs are doing crazy things and must be investigated: https://calnewport.com/its-time-to-investigate-the-ai-labs/#comment-169351  
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Tech Bros ADMIT that AI can be either good or evil

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 It just depends on who the creator is whether AI will be doing nice, useful things, or dangerous, harmful things.  So the entire world at the moment is dependent on a bunch of brooding, socially inept people who dream of how to replace democracy (read the book Nerd Reich) for what our future will be like.  And I'll just bet there are people out there with bad intentions who are deciding that AI might just help them with their bad intentions if they could build their own.  The Tech Bros are pushing their Super Brain idea at lightning speed, demanding that we give them vast amounts of water, land, and electricity at the very time that those commodities are in critical supply.  Why?  So they can create a Black Box that by their own statements will take over the world.  I for one am against this idea.   start at 7:22  
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An AI user quits AI, and sends a warning

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 https://brettcodes.com/im-done-using-ai/   "Upon reflection, I've come to believe that quality software is not about how many features something has or how quickly it is built but rather how cared for it is by the designers, developers, and product people who work on it. There's an ineffable aspect to my favorite pieces of software where I don't think of it is as feature matrix but rather as an interface made by a human for humans that's a joy to use. And when you build software with AI, it leads to worse software. Sure, it's faster to build initially, but I think to the detriment of the quality of the code and the user interface and the user experience." * * * * *  I hope to never use AI, so hearing from someone who's been there and bailed is helpful.    
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Plato explains Artificial Intelligence (AI)

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  Who could have guessed that Plato, that Greek philosopher from from the 4 th century BC, could have come up with a great explanation of our current Artificial Intelligence? His Allegory of the Cave is a great way to understand how AI works, and its built-in weaknesses. Imagine, says Plato, a group of people chained to a wall in a cave. In front of them is a high wall, which is all they can view. Behind them is a rise where a fire is burning. Between the fire and the chained people is a walkway where individuals walk, holding up silhouettes of various things. The silhouettes create shadows on the high wall that the chained people can see. These silhouettes are the only way the chained people get information about the outside world. To them, that is the world, since that is all they know. While Plato is using this allegory as a promo for philosophy, I think it’s an excellent explanation of AI. Consider the chained people as AI programs. The fire and silhouette hol...
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Some people to listen to regarding AI

  PEOPLE TO LISTEN TO RE AI: Molly Crabapple - https://www.mollycrabapple.com/ Cory Doctorow - https://doctorow.substack.com/ Gil Duran - https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Nerd-Reich/Gil-Duran/9781668221402 Karen Hao - https://karendhao.com/home   Gary Marcus - https://garymarcus.substack.com/     Nate Soares - https://intelligence.org/team/nate-soares/   Helen Toner - https://cset.georgetown.edu/staff/helen-toner/   Ed Zitron - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/19/ed-zitron-on-big-tech-backlash-boom-and-bust-ai-has-taught-us-that-people-are-excited-to-replace-human-beings  
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Is President Trump trying to bankrupt the US (part 2)?

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I wrote previously asking if President Trump is trying to bankrupt the United States. The current national debt (what our country has borrowed) is about $40 trillion. Of that, $3.18 trillion has been added in Trump’s second term in office, which is not even half way through. $7.88 trillion was added from his first term .  You would think this would be a priority for any president to REDUCE the national debt, since we have to pay interest on what we borrow. Currently we are paying $1 trillion annually in interest. Trump is simply spending like a drunken sailor, probably subconsciously guided by his own history of 6 bankruptcies. Here are a few other things he’s either spending or trying to spend our tax dollars on: $1.5 trillion proposed defense spending.  $275 billion to build Trump-class battleships , even though the Navy says they are a relic of the past.  $100 billion going back to businesses because of illegal tariffs $11 billion for Navy icebrea...
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