AI and SpaceX

XAI, the company, was started up by Elon Musk in 2023 to manage both the development of artificial intelligence (including the chatbot Grok) and the social media platform X (former Twitter).

Now, that company has been acquired by another of Elon's companies, SpaceX.

He announced it on Monday of this week, saying that this move creates: "the most ambitious, vertically-integrated engine on (and off) earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world's foremost real-time information and free speech platform."

What is vertical integration? A business acquires other companies up and down its production process so that it is not entirely dependent on those other companies for the components or services it needs. 

(image)

So, SpaceX now has put together rockets, satellites (it already had Starlink), AI, and social media. What is its ultimate purpose? Hint: it's not just rockets.

from SpaceX

(cont'd tomorrow)

Still going 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Yesterday's re-post is more than five years old, so there may have been tweaks in the plan since we first looked at it. The latest description of the Artemis Program (image) on NASA's website reflects a up-to-date overview.

The plan consists of four missions. Artemis 1 was completed in December of 2022, confirming that NASA has a "foundational deep-space transportation system" that really works, that can be relied on to carry out the rest of the missions.

People won't actually walk on the Moon until the third mission, Artemis 3. Two members of the crew of four will explore the lunar South Pole region for a week. So far, it's scheduled for some time in 2028. The mission is expected to last about 30 days.

Then there's the far more complicated fourth mission, Artemis 4. A new lunar space station will be assembled from modules brought by a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Astronauts will live and work there in orbit, performing multiple ground launches and experiments.

But before #3 and #4, there will be the second mission, Artemis 2 . . and that's going to launch next month.

from NASA

Still going

Remember the Artemis Program? It is still NASA's goal to take people to the moon--and to stay there with a continuing human presence. It's taking a long time, but there is news: the next mission in the program is coming up next month.

To refresh yourself about the goal, here's an inspiring re-post from 2021. As the video voiceover says, "None of this is simple, or easy!" 

Artemis

Next year, 2022, will be the 50th anniversary since men were last on the moon. That's fifty years, achieved by people with 50-year-old technology. We can do it again, and that's the goal. Under the previous administration, NASA made plans to return with international and private partners and establish the first long-term presence. 

Why do that? For the scientific discovery, the economic benefits, and the inspiration. "While maintaining American leadership in exploration, we will build a global alliance and explore deep space for the benefit of all."

Yes to Texas

Texas is where billionaires go when they leave California (at least some of them). 

Population is increasing, and more people make the state's economy bigger. But more importantly, measuring the state's economy per person reveals that "Texas is generating thousands of dollars more per resident than it did just three years ago."

"Economic output" rose from $64,000/year in 2021 to $71,000 in 2024. That means individuals produce more value and more income overall. Think GDP (Gross Domestic Product) for the whole state, divided by the number of people.

To generalize, families see their standard of living go up. Something is going right (photo of the governor).

from MSN

Fallen

How the mighty have fallen: Minnesota's governor (photo) says he will never run for elected office again. He has two years left in his position and he apparently plans to stick it out although many wish he'd make his exit now.

This is a man who ran for Vice President of the country just fifteen months ago. Tremendous fraud was discovered since then. Violence and terrible rhetoric have seized Minneapolis.

We'll see what his party wants to do with him, but it might be that he's done trying to manage these crises.

from Daily Wire

Not radicalized

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Someone could ask me: since you and half the people of Minnesota don't like those violent "protests" in Minneapolis, why don't you all go out on the streets and demonstrate for your side?

Someone who calls herself "Traditionally Sarah" has thought this question through. She posted some answers on X:

• Many protesters are not from around here but are hired and often dangerous. We won't risk our lives for theatrics.
• Law enforcement officers are not going to help us if things go bad.
• If we were out there opposing protesters, it wouldn't shed any light on the issues, and it wouldn't change anybody's mind.
• Confrontation, chaos and headlines are what they seem to want. Not going to cooperate.
• "We have families, jobs, homes, and real lives. I’m not throwing that away to scream at people who aren’t listening anyway."
• We're not playing their game.

from X post

Radicalized

(cont'd from yesterday's post) 

Yes, emotions in Minneapolis have been greatly amplified to the point that "protesters" are told that they must do everything they can (including risk their lives) to obstruct the legal enforcement of our democratically established laws. 

Who tells the protesters to do this? One of them is a leader of Antifa (image) who urges his social media followers to cast off all restraint. He's not talking about peaceful protest anymore, he says, but rather to march with guns: "“Get your f*cking guns, and stop these f*cking people.”

Oh, and he's asked them for "large sums of money." His Venmo account started to receive donations, but then Venmo deactivated his account and his Instagram account followed, possibly Facebook and Tik Tok as well. 

He seems to think he is "hunted" for his beliefs. No, it looks more like he lost his accounts for inciting violence and lawlessness. This is America and we won't stand aside while he tries to rip our society apart.

from Daily Wire

Only left

While out to lunch last Sunday, I picked up a newspaper and browsed through one section. Every headline assumed a single point of view, the left-leaning view. 

Minneapolis is wracked with conflict (image) right now, as you probably know. But a reader of the biggest Twin Cities' newspaper would never learn from the headlines I saw that there are other worthy interpretations of what's going on, that there are non-left decent people who have something to say.

Emotions are amplified. Additional facts and context to the stories don't get reported as they're discovered, because opinions and feelings are hardened. Stories or narrative get "crystallized before facts emerge." 

"Emotional polarization [is] amplified by ideological media driving radicalized behavior," according to this pollster. 

from Alpha News

(cont'd tomorrow)

Deepfake 2

Follow up to this post

"It used to be that we could believe videos of people saying or doing something, because the technology didn't exist to lie convincingly." Those days are so over. 

Would you believe that, by some estimates, at least half of new internet content is generated by artificial intelligence? That means it was written or created by AI at the command of a human giving a prompt. Casual viewers assume a human creator of this content and are easily deceived.

It's happening on Grok, the AI of X (old Twitter), and it makes people mad.  None of us want untrue videos, images or stories about ourselves circulating. 

How to stop it is the question. Grok is working on it: "We have implemented technological measures to prevent the Grok account from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis." Image creation and editing are only available to paid subscribers, so they can hold bad actors accountable. 

But we know that fake stuff on the internet will continue. How do we know what posts are true and which are fake? 

from Mind Matters

Henry Knox

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

So . . the situation in November of 1775 was that the British occupied Boston, and General George Washington had taken leadership of the colonial forces. He had a position on the highlands overlooking the British fleet down in Boston harbor.

But his troops were short on cannon and artillery. A 25-year-old bookseller, Henry Knox, suggested a daring solution to the problem. 

Fort Ticonderoga (a British garrison) on Lake Champlain had cannons and had been taken by Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys. 

Knox volunteered to take some men up there to present-day Vermont and drag the captured British cannons on sleds--300 miles through mountains and forest--down to Boston. In the winter.

American story 2

Before war was declared between England and the colonies--and before the colonies declared themselves an independent nation in 1776--there was that first shot in the skirmish of April 19,1775. 

Just two months later, there was something bigger: a pitched battle that is now known as The Battle of Bunker Hill. General Washington was not in charge yet, and colonial soldiers were untrained while carrying their own muskets.

But they acquitted themselves well and made their opponents pay a high price for their nominal victory. British General Clinton referred to the battle as:

"A dear bought victory, another such would have ruined us."

Fast food ↓

Is your favorite fast-food place in trouble? You probably wonder about that, if you see the take-out line of cars dwindling or the dining room looking old and shabby. Some old franchises just don't appeal to new generations.

Losing customers is one reason a business may fail. There are quite a few other reasons, including inflation. No business is untouched by inflation. Fast food may still be fast, but it's not so cheap anymore.

See if your favorites are in the video below:

McDonald's is on the list, but it still plans to expand with 8,000 new restaurants and some tweaking of the menu and prices. 

Tuition free 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

For many college graduates, the cost of their education wasn't justified by the results: 85% last year said, "I wish my college had better prepared me for the workplace." They paid the high price but didn't get the result they hoped for.

So, who loses when a college fails to deliver job-ready graduates? Everyone.

One wealthy individual is willing to try to change that dynamic by investing $100 million to make University of Austin tuition-free, with a vision as to how keep it free in the future:

"UATX will prepare students to become the next generation's leading entrepreneurs, innovators, scientists, and philanthropists. In turn, these successful graduates will financially support future generations of students . . ."

"UATX will live [or] die by the excellence of their graduates and the success they achieve in the world . . . If UATX doesn't deliver--in the eyes of its graduates and society--it will cease to exist. And it should."

"I'm Betting $100 Million on a New University"

Tuition free?

What if college were free to its students? How could that possibly happen? 

Universities and colleges are very expensive (image), usually requiring big loans that parents fervently hope will be worth it in terms of future income for their child. Often, it doesn't turn out that way. Many who borrow huge sums discover an ugly truth: the education they went into big debt for does not result in their having the ability to pay it back.

Higher education ought to build the character, skills, knowledge, judgment a student will need in order to flourish and contribute to society. But all that tuition must be paid to the school up front. 

The school gets paid before the student sees results. Some schools get money from the government. Harvard, for example, received $629 million last year from the government, while charging students $87,000 for one year of education. Does that pay off with wonderful results for the student or the taxpayers?

Something is not going right. Our higher education system is broken.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Oracle in TN

Billionaires have been fleeing California. Co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, moved his company headquarters to Austin TX in 2020 and Elon Musk did that with Tesla about the same time. 

Moving out is getting urgent for more of the state's billionaires now. A new state tax may be imposed on their assets (not their income, which is already taxed). That would include the collective worth of their businesses, art, stocks, collectibles, even intellectual property. Texas does not tax assets.

But Ellison (photo) is investing billions in yet another move for Oracle: to Nashville TN. (Tennessee doesn't tax assets either--of course it doesn't.) It's been coming for a while, and Tennessee is willing to invest millions into the move because they see it as a big economic benefit for the state.

The deal included Oracle providing over a billion dollars' worth of development alongside the river downtown, and 8,500 new jobs by 2031 with an average annual salary of $110,000. That's a lot of new money coming into the city.

Yet Oracle employees are not flocking to Nashville despite big incentives and a fancy new headquarters. They seem reluctant. I have to wonder if there's just a significant miss match between wealthy tech workers or executives . . and the culture & politics of the area. What, if anything, will happen politically to the state when all this change finally happens? 

from MSN

Gen Z work

Social media is compelling, sometimes addicting. Among the youngest generation to reach adulthood today, it's been much more influential than it's been for older generations. Negative results have been noted.

A few people have leveraged social media (photo) for big incomes. Gen Z'ers do watch a lot of it and some have done what yesterday's post talks about: they dove into social media and used it to monetize their own lives. 

In fact, a few of them make a whole lot of money doing it. They're open about the money and their audience is impressed: "Watching influencers has changed my perception of what a good job is!"

As one 23-year-old put it, "Influencers are so open and honest about making four times as much as their old nine-to-fives, and having such flexible lifestyles, has opened my generation's eyes into what's possible. It makes you feel completely disillusioned, and it's made Gen Z completely nihilistic about working."

Add the higher cost of housing and issues of affordability to their situation, and working a regular job doesn't look so good.

What could go wrong?

from "Why Gen Z Hates Work"

Gen Z "slop"

Market researchers are trying to understand what Generation Z (born 1997 to 2012) people want in retail products, in entertainment, in jobs, etc. -- of course they are. And they're not the only ones. Even members of Gen Z themselves are trying to do that. 

One Gen Z writer sees something she doesn't want to be a part of:

"They say my generation are wasting our lives watching mindless entertainment. But I think things are worse than that. We are now turning our lives into mindless entertainment. Not just consuming slop but becoming it."

"Influencers" make their lives into a tv series on social media (photo) complete with trailers, cliffhangers, finales--with wedding episodes, new house episodes, baby episodes, etc. ("I have this horrible feeling now that some of us are having children for views! Babies for clicks!")

For her own life, she wants no camera rolling at important personal moments and no one posting it on Instagram.

from We Are the Slop

Buy a house?

Investor and entrepreneur, Peter Thiel (photo), has credentials. When it comes to knowing his way around money, people listen to him because he has real-world results, being a billionaire. 

He notices things about our economy. Housing in America has gone way up in price over the past 5-6 years and you probably noticed it too. Part of the reason is that home building hasn't kept pace with our growing need for it and there are other reasons. But it is certainly true.

Is that good or bad news for all of us? It depends. If you owned property before this rise in prices, it could make you wealthier. But not in terms of income. You wouldn't be able to turn the new and higher value of your home into cash unless you sold it and moved into a much cheaper place. Other properties have risen in value too and you have to live somewhere.

But for everyone who has yet to purchase a property and wants to, it's bad news. Salaries and incomes have risen, but not as much as real estate. You'll pay more, in effect, for your first home than your parents did . . if you're even financially able to do it.

If real estate continues to rise, some segment of our population will be forever priced out. No one actually knows if real estate will keep rising in the future. But if you want to own a property and can do it, maybe you should get on the "real estate ladder" before it's out of reach.

from MSN

Charlie clips 1

After Charlie Kirk was murdered last September on a college campus, attention and controversy swirled around his work. He was loved by thousands (millions?) and hated by many on the other side. 

Opinions abound. If you have no experience in hearing him speak, you could be confused. But there's a simple way to find out what he actually stood for because there are lots and lots of videos of him talking with individuals on his campus tours: authentic and unscripted conversations.

Here's one:

Burned up 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Californians are used to the risk of fires, but the scope of this one was devastating, possibly caused by a century-old transmission line.

In less-affluent areas (where average properties were valued at one million instead of Pacific Palisades where the average was 3x that), some will never be able to afford to re-build. They may have to take the relatively low cash offers of vulture developers and even foreign billionaires who swooped in to scoop them up.

"This is about the end of a place. In the future, the fires will be a demarcation. There will be the times before and after the disaster, and the one will be remembered as this happy, gauzy surreality that never was" . . . When this is over, the politics of this place will be upended."

A local businessman got a call during these fires that his daughter's house was burning, and that the "firefighters' hoses ran dry because the fire hydrants didn't have any water." He says this is a "third world" sort of thing that should never happen in the America's second largest city.

He's expected to run against Los Angeles' current mayor for that office next June. I'll follow this story.

from The Free Press

Burned up

Today it's exactly one year since many Californians lost every material thing they had when their homes burned to the ground. That happened to a renter, Meghan (photo), and this is her account.

What she grabbed in her hasty evacuation by car was her: dog, laptop, change of clothes, dinner, handbag, shoes. She didn't really think the fires would reach her home. But on the 8th, ~nine hours later, her home was destroyed along with about 16,000 other homes in the Los Angeles area.

What she regrets not taking: family pictures, artwork, book manuscripts, etc.: "What haunts me is how much time I would have had to take more things, had I known what was about to happen."

from The Free Press

(cont'd tomorrow: LA fires)

Yes kings

Satire (not reporting) from Babylon Bee 😄

Angry left-wing protesters have made an amazing transition.

Last fall their signs read "No Kings" But now that a dictator (Maduro) has actually been stopped, their signs read "Yes Kings"!

from Babylon Bee

Resisting 5

Follow up to this post

Last summer in Venezuela, the presidential election was stolen by dictator Nicolas Maduro. Nelson Merino had worked the campaign for the opposition party and then worked to prevent Maduro from "illegally seizing power." He writes here about the subsequent suffering he endured for his efforts.

Despite the courage of the opposition and its leader Maria Machado, the dictator retained his power and declared his victory. Merino was soon arrested and charged with resisting authority, obstruction of public roads, incitement to hatred, and terrorism.

"We were tortured. We had no access to clean drinking water and no proper food . . . We had no rights--only what they called privileges." One of those privileges was the paqueteria: every 15 days, family members of prisoners were allowed to bring a 5-liter bottle of drinking water, five packs of crackers, and one chocolate bar. That was all." More details are given in his article below.

Like so many other (photo) Venezuelan patriots, he says "I celebrate and applaud the actions taken by the United States government against the narco-trafficker Nicolas Maduro . . ." 

"Today I am a refugee in Spain with an overwhelming need to return to Venezuela, out of love and commitment to freedom and democracy."

from "I Survived Maduro's Torture State"

Joyful fiction

Writer Andrew Klavan's favorite novel is A Christmas Carol. 

Charles Dickens, the 19th century author of this iconic story, was this sort of person: "joyful and loves humanity and is full of life and entertainment and humor." His characters are "larger than life." Sounds like an author you'd enjoy reading, doesn't it? 

Apparently the "intellectual class" doesn't care for Dickens, Klavan says, because they think darkness is "deeper" than light (which is not true). 

In some ways, reading a book rather than watching a movie based on it is a far richer experience. If you like fiction, consider reading a novel by Charles Dickens.

Everyone

People are working hard to bring The Chosen to a billion people around the world, a huge goal, and it's complicated. An organization outside the actual producing of the show was founded with the mission to accomplish that goal. It's called Come and See.

Spectacle

For wealth and luxury and spectacle, the world has a new icon: the city of Dubai on the coast of the Persian Gulf, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

New Year's Eve fireworks show at the Burj Khalifa was unique, an excessive display:

Blessing 2026

Hope your Christmas celebration was beautiful and joyous, and that your New Year will be full of good opportunities! 

We pause during this holiday week to think about the year to come . . and to pray, either today or tomorrow, about 2026. As you well know, it will present both happy and challenging situations to you and your loved ones.

New NASA Chief

Jared Isaacson has always wanted to be in space. He fulfilled his wish with a civilian project which he funded and organized himself, Polaris Dawn, in September of 2024.

Now he's the new Chief of NASA.

Local spots

 What are the local gathering spots like where you live? 

In my community most shops and cafes are franchises: efficient and predictable, they nevertheless don't lend themselves to neighborliness like "third places" do. We need to connect with our neighbors in casual ways.

"Third places" are independent gathering spots having walls cluttered with notices of lost pets and local sports teams, noisy, full of personality, menus of local favorites, all looking like the neighborhood. 

America used to have more of these. "People mixed across generational and economic lines where you could overhear a conversation wildly different from your own, where children learned to behave in public, and where adults remembered the value of showing up and being present. They were unpretentious, inexpensive, and abundant. And because they belonged to their neighborhoods, they carried meaning."

Understanding and trusting neighbors is "social capital." We need it in America, and it's been declining. "Social capital does not regenerate itself—it is produced in spaces where people encounter one another with regularity and low stakes. When those encounters disappear, people stop learning how to share space with those unlike themselves, and difference begins to feel threatening rather than ordinary."

Ideas to enable more third places . . here.

from AEI

American story 3 - No Christmas

The winter of 1776 held no Christmas joy for the colony's cold, ragged troops. Defeat after defeat left them in terrible circumstances. British generals assumed the Americans were finished and took a winter break from fighting. 

General George Washington finally came up with an offensive strike that his advisers and generals could agree to. They crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night, attacked Hessian mercenaries, and won a famous victory that changed the war.

How tough were those troops and officers? They were already in bad shape when they crossed the half-frozen river in the night. Two froze to death. A lot of suffering precedes death.