Trump’s AI plan would sweep away key environmental law | AP News
Beyond self doubt 🤷♂️
By many comparative measures things are pretty good in my life. I make good money – the fabled six figures – which doesn’t feel like much with inflation, I spend a lot of time in wilderness, I have a big jacked up truck and a number of toys – even if they are frequently in need of repair and the shine quickly wears off them and parts are hard to keep on maintenance on.
I am not the top dog but I’m also not the bottom of the heap. There are people with a lot more suffering then I have, though my life is still a story of trials and tribulations. You know I would have thought thing would be a lot better when I was making six-figures, when I had some money saved up and could afford my own home and land, when I had that title and nice office. But it’s not that way at all as there is always another dollar to chase, another step to get to the point where I can actually own my own land.
Things are never as simple as they seem. But I do got a lot of talent, knowledge and experience in the things I’m good at even if in comparison to others that might seem little. I am not a professional programmer but I am good at the R statistical language, among other programming languages that I don’t use as frequently. But I can query data, transform, load it quite proficiently. And I’m pretty darn good at making maps.
Now there are people who are professionally trained cartographers who have better tools then the open-source tools I use. Those who have gone to college for years to learn their craft. Those who do it professionally every day. Those aren’t me, but I think I do good work with the tools and knowledge I have. Sometime my outputs and maps have mistakes or aren’t perfect, but sometimes that’s more a matter of effort extended and time allocated to the process. But I do the best that I can do.
Why Don’t We Have a Crown in America?
One of the things I don’t like about America is how it’s democracy is vaulted and talked about in lofty terms, but in reality exists far less then what people suggest with the language they use. In America, we talk about our government doing “the people’s business”, government workers being “public service” and our police and firefighters “serving a noble cause” and our military, “serving a cause greater then themselves”. Criminal cases brought by the government are said to be brought by “the people”, that police are “law enforcement” rather then “state enforcers”.
Most parliamentary systems such as those in Canada and Great Britain use a very different, and I would argue more accurate words to describe the state. Laws in parliamentary countries are “enforced by the crown”, properties owned by the government are “owned by the crown”, all power goes through the “crown”. Parks and national forests in parliamentary countries are called “crown lands”. The crown is the king or queen that rules the country, their power limited by the people which at one point in their country’s history got together, revolted, and limited the power of the crown.
Words matter a lot. They help determine how the people view the state and those who are employed by the state. Government power should be viewed skeptically, people should believe that most who are involved in the governing process are primarily there for a paycheck, to help their family, their friends, and maybe the people who are closest to them in their community. Government workers – be it the police, the firefighters, the military, the legislature, or even the health inspectors – are primary there to get paid their salary, succeed in their chosen careers and collect a retirement check in their later years for leisure.
To be sure, every country needs a crown, they need laws and the enforcement of such laws. Democracy plays an important role in creation of the laws, but just because a country has a democratic process and a set of courts with extensive procedure and precedence, does not mean those laws are fair or just. It doesn’t mean your voice or even your community’s voice is heard in the legislative process. There are many ways elections are manipulated in America – from the laws that govern them to favor one party over another – to gerrymandering – to institutional hurdles that make even popular changes by the masses impossible.
A more skeptical view of the state in America, and those who are employed by the state would be better for our country. People should not assume that any particular law is the will of the people, or that laws are a result of a well-reasoned debate, representing popular or even a long-standing opinion of an intellectual elite. Instead, most law making and elections are a messy process, and most enforcement action on behalf of state enforcement agents, is not based on law, but are justified by law.
Committed activists do often succeed in making changes. Democracy can be made fairer, laws can be adjusted to be more representative of the people. Many government workers do a good job. These are all true points. But the worshiping of our democracy through our choice of language to describe the actions of government is really serving no one’s interest.
Confusion
Lately I find myself confused about so many things in this world. Maybe it’s the rapid rate of change, the conventional wisdom being smashed in most violent of fashions this year. Or being stuck in liberal suburbs of Albany that has all these plastic houses and ziegest I do not always agree with – even though I am aware of other places in world that aren’t Albany. I reached out to Google Gemini for it’s thoughts on what it means to be confused in world we live in today.
Feeling confused is a common human experience, often stemming from a lack of clarity, information overload, or the inherent complexity of life. It’s a state of mental disorientation where understanding or making sense of things becomes challenging. This feeling can be triggered by various factors, including stress, anxiety, fatigue, or even medical conditions.
- Information Overload: We are constantly bombarded with information, and our brains can struggle to process it all, leading to confusion and indecisiveness.
- Life’s Complexity: Life is inherently complex, with many unknowns and unexpected situations. This can be overwhelming and lead to confusion, especially when we’re faced with choices or transitions.
- Cognitive Biases: Our brains use shortcuts to process information, but these can lead to errors in thinking and make it harder to understand situations accurately.
- Psychological Factors: Stress, anxiety, and fatigue can all contribute to confusion, making it harder to think clearly.
- Lack of Clarity: When we lack a clear understanding of a situation or when information is ambiguous, confusion is a natural result.
- Medical Conditions: Certain medical conditions, like infections, strokes, or neurological disorders, can also cause confusion.
- Seeking Clarity: When feeling confused, it can be helpful to break down the situation into smaller parts, seek information from reliable sources, and engage in activities that promote mental clarity, such as mindfulness or journaling. It’s also okay to reach out for support from friends, family, or a therapist.
I’d rather be just anticipating things then doing them 💭
Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older, that Beach Boys song goes. Maybe the reason why I am so focused on procrastation and looking forward to the future is that I know at that at some level the future is pretty vapid despite the often colorful dreams about how good things will if we only reach tomorrow some point the future.
We will give you $250 is you agree 👍🏻 to the big snip this week 👀 the advertising text from LASIK wanted me to know. Itchy eyes and no swimming 🏊 for the rest of the summer seems like shit especially because I haven’t done summer vacation yet. Delay, delay, delay it seems. But once my vision is permanently fixed, what fun is that? I hate my irrated eyes and dealing with contacts, but it will be fun that morning when I wake up. 👓 After that, it will just be normal to never think about glasses or contacts for the rest of my life. I get when people say, I wish I had LASIK sooner.
I could be on summer vacation this week, 🏖️ if not for my delusions about the wheel bearing and my truck dying. But also I just like dreaming of summer vacation more then actually going on it. I could leave on Friday morning for vacation, but I want to avoid Watkins Glen for race weekend, 🏎️ and I need time to figure this all in my mind, what I actually want to do on vacation besides spend a lot of evening giggling and having fires. 🔥 And watching shooting stars and doing some fishing. 🐠 That said, I am kind of so bored with the Finger Lakes, and it almost seems like a waste of time to go out there again, for yet another year. But it’s an easy option that is pretty much thoughtless and vapid. Don’t you know vacation is supposed to be easy, just hours sitting in the sun next to the pool, riding trail, and floating on the tube. ⭕ Delay has it’s costs – we loose nearly 45 minutes in daylight in the evening over the next month, so it will be dark much earlier for summer vacation come a few weeks from now.
Yesterday evening was hot 😰 but so pleasant out at Five Rivers especially as it started to get dark out. Read for a while 📚 but I was having issues with the Libby book on homesteading loading on my phone 📱. In some ways it would be nice to have been on vacation this week. It was werid, I think it was actually warmer outside then in my apartment. Usually on real hot days it’s the opposite. I am out of frozen fruit, so I’ll have to plan on visiting Hannaford this evening or maybe on the evening commute. Need to get milk too so I have that for coffee and cooking. 🐮
I think this weekend I’ll make it a long weekend. 🌽 🏊 🏕️ Not sure if I am going to take Friday or Monday off. I need to build my confidence with the truck again and just deal with the slightly loose shock bushing as it ain’t getting fixed until after summer vacation and Labor Day. It’s really not a big deal except in my imagination. It will make it another month. Probably some of the movement I’m feeling is the frame rotting out and the shocks being bad. I could see if some places other places would take it sooner but it’s fine. Do need to get that replacement jack in case I get a flat before the weekend – I probably end up getting it from Tractor Supply 🚜 but I want to research my options a bit more today before ordering or committing to buy. I’m thinking Schoharie, I have been considering on Saturday getting up early and hiking the Diamond Notch Trail and exploring the Diamond Notch Falls, then head up to Mine Kill State Park to swim and camp at Burnt Rossman in the evening. I don’t know yet though for sure – depends on the ultimate forecast – plus I’m just so tired lately.
So you’re really good at the command line 🖥️
That was the compliment I got today at work.
It seems odd because I was thirty years ago the Macintosh kid, I couldn’t imagine doing anything from the command line. It seemed so backwards, so difficult having to memorize all those commands. But then some 30 years ago, I installed Linux on my Power Macintosh after Apple announced that they would not support it with Mac OS X.
I won’t say the day after installing Linux I became a command line guru. Indeed even to this day, I generally use GUI software but nothing beats a simple bash script or a pipeline for automating processes. Repetitive clicking is annoying and if I have to remember to do something I’m bound to forget about it. If it’s in a script and the process is automated I’m much less likely to make mistakes.
I’m by no means a computer guru or expert. But I know enough to do some pretty neat things – especially now with the R Statistical Language and duckdb. I’m no expert but I can still do great things with a few lines of code. I’ll be the first to admit that there is a lot I’m unfair with especially compared to the professional programmers I work with in the office. But certain things I’m really good at doing.
I’ve learned a lot of different programming languages over the years but R is my favorite and the one I best at. I just like it being an interpretive language, one you can execute one line at a time, build maggitr pipeline of commands, chaining whole lines of commands together. I like being able to preview outputs and explore while writing a bigger program. It’s really good for quick little data processing scripts. Duckdb and Parquets are wonderful for analyzing and pulling records and processing even larger datasets quickly. And there is a lot of value in data.
I still like GUI programs but for automation few things beat the command line. I might not be a real programmer but I can do some pretty neat things with R Studio.