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The fine art of protesting Trump

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  1/28/26 I planned today to protest at the Trump statue downtown. Rapid City, SD has life-size statues of every president downtown, spread out to different corners. I wrote a city ordinance proposal that would require if any president had a felony or felonies, their statue must have a traffic cone on its head. This way, a felon would not be as honored as much as the other non-felon presidents. Trump, a felon, had his statue placed a few months ago. Of course, there’s not much chance that such an ordinance would pass, and when I sent it to the council persons, the mayor, and the group that manages the statues, only one councilman replied, and he thought it was a funny idea. So, if the city council doesn’t take you seriously, what to do? I thought to demonstrate by the statue and hand out flyers about the ordinance. And thus, flyers, sign, and traffic cone packed up, I drove downtown to demonstrate for about an hour (10-11). Nice weather, by the way. When ...
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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 i...
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Trump tries to include "Empire Builder" into his legacy

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  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 b...
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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. 
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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...
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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 outcom...
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AI creates a popular music artist out of thin air

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  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] 
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