Of course it's real magic. You can see him pull a rabbit out of a hat. And he won't show other magicians how he does it, or they'd steal his magic.

I'd rather have an audiobook use the old robotic text to voice than an Ai voice. I'd also rather try to sit still for hours and physically read a book without my adhd meds, rereading much of it because I got distracted than listen to anything created at all with Ai.

This isn't about influencing any one person, though. It's about whole populations. Oligarchs own all of SM, mainstream media, Ai, and they're collecting everything about you that they can to shape the world for themselves, and they're like movie villains, literally telling us their plans.

LLMs are the angel and devil on your shoulders. They know you intimately and exactly how to influence you. But it's not you or even another person on the other end. It's an algorithm controlled by tech oligarchs or governments, with their own motivations and goals.

Everything they learned about attention and influence on SM is or will be used in consumer Ai.
Every post and interaction adds to their data on you, as does every Ai prompt, facial recognition, license plate reader, phone tracking. Put your medical or financial data into an llm? That's linked, too.

James Carville is like a former assistant coach on a sports team that won a championship over 30 years ago, but never moved up and couldn't get on another winning team, yet he continues to ride those glory days.
He was also a paid advisor for Palantir.

Which update? I have auto updates and update notifications off, and apparently I'm a couple macos updates behind.

If you're not up for starting the main writing, start with just writing or doing voice memos of your ideas, outlining, backstory, characters, etc.

I am one with my hammock for much of the foreseeable future.

Other library systems in your area might have agreements to allow you to get a card through them as well. I have cards from 5 other area library systems besides my local. Helps for when my local doesn't have something or has a long wait list.

Which was facilitated by a long-term strategy resulting in a 6-3 GOP SC majority. All of whom were chosen for specific views, Thomas by Bush Sr, Roberts and Alito by Bush Jr, and Trump getting Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett, because the GOP congress blocked Obama's nomination of Garland.

Dems, also, constantly negotiate for the gop against themselves, and the gop still opposes everything. Rather than universal healthcare, dems adopted a gop plan, romneycare, and the gop still fought and continues to sabotage it.

I only looked back to roe v wade, but every Dem president since has had at least one unified congress. In that time, the gop had a clearly laid out plan that they've worked towards, resulting in roe overturned, among other things. Dems have done a few things, but have lacked the big vision plan.

I've been planting fruit trees in my yard, so I guess have a feeling that I'll at least make it another 2-5 years when they first start to produce fruit.

US avg q4 2025 home sale price=$534,000
$1 billion =1872.66 homes, housing 4737 people
$515.03B =all 964,477 active listings

TX avg list price: $297,592
$40.66B =all 136,647 active listings
46 people have more

FL avg: $372,755
$68.47B =all 183,682 active listings
26 people have more

I was wondering the other day what impact large protests targeting big corporate donors and contractors rather than government buildings could have. Politicians are pretty good at ignoring the people, even in mass protests. Might be harder to ignore if we really start affecting the $.

I got a 2017 Chevy Bolt 2.5 yrs ago originally for deliveries. I haven't done any long road trips in it yet. It's been great for about 100mi/day 5 days/week charging 99% at home on 120v. I put 22k mi on it the 1st year. Just fuel savings over my xterra covered payment and insurance.