caucus99percent

free-range politics, organic community

Good morning, good people! I hope your day/weekend is going great!

Well, some "good news" in the event you are sort of stocking up your food pantries for the likely hard times to come. Walmart, Kraft, and Nabisco announced they were lowering their prices because their typical customers were going broke before the end of the month. While it keeps them up and running our food supply with minimal profit, to them, the end of their existence is when they lose their shoppers. Something is better than nothing. It isn't altruism. They are not kind corporations.

On Wednesday, The State Bar of Texas offered a free PDF download of how to retire. Retirement must comport with 7 Rules of Professional Conduct, formerly know as The Rules of Professional Ethics. They changed the name, likely due to the younger generation not knowing the actual meaning of ethics.

There are 7 rules. Only 1 applies if you just finish your cases and stop taking new ones. So, I am finishing up what I have on the books. Should be done by August or September. I will have no partial retainers to refund, and since I intend to keep my license for 5 more years, I do not have to give hundreds of people notices, do not have to even announce a retirement. All I have to do is just finish up all trials, stop being talked into taking new cases, and if no clients want their files back on closed cases, after 5 years I can just destroy all files and be done with it.

Some lawyers put their files in their attics. Others pay to have them shredded. But others may just take some scissors and cut them up and put them in separate garbage bags so that no documents can be read top to bottom, and, of course, there is always the burn pile. Since I will be practicing from home, online, doing deeds and wills, I will have no retirement to announce.

August? September? Maybe...

It has been rainy all week, not particularly hot, lots of deer action, and rabbits, and a few mosquitoes, which I wonder if they have been genetically modified by Gates, et. al.

A pleasant and unusually cool spring and summer for us. I will take it!

Some music we cooked by last night:

Happy Friday everyone. Welcome to Friday Night Photos your once a week escape from the day to day insanity of the world we live in. Post any photos, memes, music or whatever else you find of interest that helps tune out the madness.

Back in April the camera club went to the USS Midway Museum for our monthly outing. The USS Midway (CV-41) is an aircraft carrier that was under construction during the latter stages of WWII and was not commissioned until eight days after the end of the war in September 1945, then spent the next 47 years on active duty until being decommissioned in April 1992. Here's a link to more info on the Midway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Midway_(CV-41)

Having spent a hitch in the Navy, most of it stationed on an aircraft carrier (USS Constellation CV-64), this is a subject I have a little bit of experience with.
An aircraft carrier is a floating city with it's own airport. Total population between ships company and air wing is around 5k and 70-75 aircraft. Like most city's on dry land, the Constellation included a post office, bank, doctors and dentists, a radio and tv station, library, chapel, barber shop and gym.

Shipboard life 101 (there will be a closed book test on this next week).
A short primer: terminology; onboard ship, floors are called decks, walls are bulkheads and the ceilings are overheads. No matter how large or small the diameter, there is no rope onboard a ship. It's always referred to as line. There are no kitchens. Meals are prepared in the galley. Officers eat in the wardroom. Enlisted eat on the mess deck. Drinking fountains (yes, there are drinking fountains all over the ship) are known as a scuttlebutt.
How to tell Port from Starboard. If you are standing at the aft/stern of the boat/ship looking forward to the pointy end of the boat/ship, Port is on your left and Starboard is on your right. Conversely, if you are at the pointy end looking aft, Port is on your right and Starboard is on your left.
Basic difference between a boat and a ship. A boat can be carried by a larger vessel, a ship cannot.

Length 1001 ft. Beam 121 ft. Draft 34.5 ft. Displacement 45000 tons.

I keep hearing about the 250th anniversary of the US and the really big beautiful celebration thereof scheduled for later this year. This prompted me to post this refresher of some of the key dates in early US history including the official start of the new US government under the US Constitution on March 4, 1789 for everybody's use and reference, or not, as they see fit.

July 4 1776: Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence,

Why is there such a rush for AI implementation on such a huge scale and the building of so many data centers throughout the country?

I have my own thoughts about this but since this is an essay about AI data centers, let's ask the Google AI Chatbot (everyone trusts that, right?):

The rapid explosion in data center construction is primarily driven by the massive computing power required to train and run Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI). Companies like Microsoft and Amazon are investing billions to build massive server farms because modern AI models need thousands of specialized processors working continuously to parse and generate data.

Beyond AI, the build-out is fueled by a few other core factors:

• The Shift to Cloud Computing: Most businesses and consumers no longer store files on in-house servers. Everyday activities—such as streaming ultra-HD video, scrolling social media, cloud gaming, and managing the Internet of Things (IoT)—all require centralized storage and continuous network availability.
• Real-Time Data Needs: To support instant financial trading, autonomous vehicles, and real-time analytics, tech companies are building "edge" data centers. These are placed geographically closer to users to eliminate lag.
• Continuous Global Growth: Worldwide data generation is increasing at an unprecedented rate, requiring greater physical space and infrastructure to undergird the modern digital economy.
• While these massive investments aim to future-proof technological infrastructure, they are reshaping local energy and water grids, pushing developers to heavily invest in Data Center Energy Crisis solutions to sustain long-term digital growth.

Really? If this is true, then why are we in a race, predominately with China, to obtain AI supremacy? Do any of the reasons above warrant the breakneck pace to rape landscapes, water sources and electricity at the expense of the many for the benefit of the few? Yes, it appears that the AI boom will be, in the end, financed by you and I, according to Larry Fink anyway, even if a portion of everyone's wealth must be requisitioned to bankroll it, IE; bail ins.

Cultural Deterioration

Smear campaign.

This is a story I thought was interesting. In Japan, as in Korea, publishing defamatory information about a political candidate for office during a campaign, is an election law violation. If a candidate or office holder is found responsible in court for the act or actions, then they are disqualified from office.

Billionaires Are Getting Angry! GOOD!
Matt Stoller recently wrote a good article. It's in his 'Monopoly Roundup' from about a month ago and is entitled: The Rage of the Billionaires Is Coming (Note, you don't have to be a subscriber to read the main article, just to read the roundup news after the article).

What I thought was good about the article wasn't that the billionaires' rage is coming, of course it is. I thought it was good because Stoller talked about what is making the billionaires angry, and... what is making everyone else angry at the billionaires. Stoller starts with AI and the rage against it:

The public is extremely angry, and they are centering their anger on AI. Seven out of ten Americans oppose data centers being built nearby. It’s not hard to see why.

AI and tech CEOs seem almost proudly villainous. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei routinely says that half of white collar jobs are going to disappear because of his technology. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, noted that “AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there’ll be great companies.” And Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, said during an earnings call that “This is a revolution. Some people can get their heads cut off.”

Voters are no longer brushing these comments off. They have experience with social media and enshittification, they don’t believe in the promise of the future. And even if they did, business leaders seem to luxuriate in explaining how terrible things will soon be for the little people. So they are starting to respond with frustration.