It's not that they're tone deaf. It's that they really don't care

Google. Salesforce. Oracle. Microsoft.

They've all been pinkslipping thousands of workers to help fund the buildout of the AI infrastructure they need to implement in order to get rid of everyone else in their workforce.

Unlike its confreres, Apple supposedly hasn't done any major AI-related layoffs. But I learned that from an AI search overview, which I thought I had disabled. (AI has a pernicious way of sneaking back in. I guess when you  ask Ask Gemini how to turn Ask Gemini off, it just has its inhuman little old self good little laugh.)

By comparison with what some of the other big techs have been doing in terms of the numbers of heads being chopped off, Meta's May announced number of 8,000 seems rather paltry. Unless of course, you're among the riffed.

And unless you were among the 1,400 Seattle-area Meta workers riffed, you may not have been aware that on the very same day in May that the latest round of layoffs was announced - impacting 20% of Seattle's Meta workforce - Mark Zuckerberg's $300M, 387 foot long (or is it $387M, 300 foot long?) superyacht, Launchpad, docked in Seattle's Lake Union. (Lake Union is a "renowned hub for high-end vessel servicing.")

Zuck was elsewhere at the time, but just the thought of Launchpad's presence - apparently right outside the office windows of a number of those who'll be losing their paychecks, perks, and badges come July...What could be more symbolic of the company's attitude towards its workers? Let 'em swab decks on my superyacht instead of Let 'em eat cake.

According to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg from Meta Chief People Officer Janelle Gale, the aggressive restructuring is part of an ongoing effort to maximize company efficiency and balance the massive costs of new technological investments.

"This is not an easy tradeoff and it will mean letting go of people who have made meaningful contributions to Meta during their time here," Gale wrote. (Source:Fox13 Seattle)

First off, if there were ever a job title that needs to be retired it's Chief People Officer. CPO implies - or a naive worker might infer - that the company actually gives a) a damn; b) a rat's arse; c) a flying fuck; d) all of the above, about the actual humans who work there. Maybe we can ask ChatGPT to come up with a new title. Corporate Personnel Henchman? C-Suite Stooge?

OK, Janelle Gale is probably a perfectly nice person if you meet her IRL. I'm sure she volunteers. I'm sure she sits on boards. She's a PhD psychologist. I'm sure she's empathetic AF.

But at the end of the day, she's working for the man.

And the man, in this case Mark Zuckerberg, is one of the cadre - I almost wrote caldron, which also works - of super-brainiac tech bros enamored of emergent technology (whatever the cost in dollars or human terms), enamored with their own exceptional intelligence, and enamored of the idea of becoming trillionaires. Because billionaire is so, so, so, so very yesterday, and these bros, if nothing else, are forward thinking. For themselves, anyway.

Forget about Emotional Intelligence, which for a while there was a trait that was somewhat valued in the workplace. Exceptional Intelligence - you heard it here - is the new EQ. And that EQ is focused on perfecting the algo, and on grabbing as much power, glory, and money as you can.

And these EQ-ers do not appear in the least troubled by any of what they're doing, any of the human, humane, or environmental implications of AI-ing the world.

If Exceptional Intelligence is the new EQ, then amorality is the new humanity. Caring? Concern? Democracy? Fairness? Sissy-stuff! Real men swan around in superyachts. Real men lay off tens of thousands of workers because they've got to keep their eyes on their prize.

Last month, I was fortunate to get to Bruce Springsteen's brilliant and humane Hope and Dreams concert. On the setlist was "Badlands," with its famous lyrics:

Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king And a king ain't satisfied till he rules everything.

I read recently that, with AI, American GDP may well continue to grow, and that by using GDP as a measure, the economy will look healthy. But how healthy is an economy going to be with 8-10% (or more) unemployment?

So let's remember the opening lines to "Badlands."

Light's out tonight
Trouble in the heartland

Zuckerberg didn't sail his ship into Lake Union to taunt the laid-off workers. Hell, he probably didn't even know where Launchpad was. He's got plenty of somebodies to see to the details of his lfe. (Maybe someday those somebodies will be AIs.)

But it's not that they're tone deaf. It's that, like Melania Trump, they really don't care. (Do you?)

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This post is a shoutout to my sister Trish, who tomorrow begins her well-earned, well-deserved retirement.

First saw this story referenced by Dom Ervolina on BlueSky, who was referencing Ben Kershner (I think on Insta). Thanks, fellows.

Image Source: Amazon where the jacket goes by "Womens Melania Lady The United State I Really Don’t Care Do U Green Jacket Trump Coat"

See the USA, in your Chevrolet

By Trump administration grifting standards, Sean Duffy's Great American Road Trip, a YouTube series dropping this month, is no big deal. The "reality" show features Duffy and his wife (Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy) and a large sampling of their kids (there are nine of them in total) visiting tourist spots across the country. Its supposed purpose is to get Americans to hop in the car with the kids and explore the US of A to celebrate our 250th anniversary. 

Calling the trip a "civic experience," Duffy is urging true red-white-and-blue Americans to “gas up the car, pack up the kids, get behind the wheel and get out and see America.”

Duffy is the telegenic Secretary of Transportation, a former reality star with an equally telegenic wife and kiddos.

Duffy and Campos-Duffy, also a former “Real World” and “Road Rules” cast member, said the program was filmed in “short” production windows like weekends and their childrens’ breaks from school, and that their family would not receive a salary or royalties from the show. (Source: Forbes)

And at NO expense to the taxpayers. Or so they say.

I'd wait until we see some sort of an audit - as if! - but I seem to remember Duffy's boss claiming that he, Trump himself, was picking up the tab for the Big Beautiful Ballroom. Then that generous, patriotic Americans (like Jeff Bezos) who don't want a thing out of Trump - or at least their generous patriotic companies which don't want a thing out of Trump - were paying for it. Until we found out that the cost estimates had grown from $200M to $1B, and that the taxpayers would be footing the bill.

But the claim is that a non-profit is underwriting the show:

The Great American Road Trip says it is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization that is “fully funding its own efforts to celebrate and share America’s story.” It lists several major sponsors, including Boeing, Toyota, Shell, Royal Caribbean, United Airlines, Google and Enterprise, but it is unclear how much money these companies have contributed and if those funds were used for the reality show. 

Well, it's not like Boeing, Toyota, Shell, Royal Caribbean, United Airlines, or Enterprise would want anything out of the Department of Transportation. Or that Google doesn't have any interest in what the Federal government does. So even if their contributions are funding the show, it's not as if these generous, patriotic corporations would expect any tit for tat for their organizations. Geez Louise, some folks are so cynical! If nothing else, the Trump Administration has always acted in an ethical, honest, transparent, and above board manner. (/s)

And what's this about encouraging  families to "gas up" and hit the road? I suppose since he's not exactly filling up the old station wagon out of his own pocket, Sean Duffy isn't all that aware about sticker shock at the pump.

Anyway, I watched part of the trailer and I have to say that the idea of a roadtrip does sound like fun. 

The Duffy family got to go fun places and do fun things, including a stop at the former firehouse in my neighborhood that was where Real World: Boston, which Duffy appeared in, was filmed. (This is more famously the place where Spenser lived in the 1980's series Spenser for Hire. And it's where I vote. Just not for Trump, Duffy, and their ilk.) Sorry I missed them when they were in my hood.

But I do kinda-sorta envy someone taking a road trip, even if the Duffy family's was done sporadically and doesn't quite fit my definition of a road trip, which doesn't include flying someplace for a weekend and pretending you drove there.

I'd love to go on a road trip. At least in theory. I'd probably get sick of all those hours in the car, the sketchy restrooms, the worn out motels, the boring diner food. And anyway, I don't need to put taking a road trip on my non-existent bucket list, as way back in the way back, I actually did go on one.

Late summer/early autumn of 1972, my college roommate and I - out of school with nothing in particular lined up to do - saw the USA. Not in a Chevrolet, as the ubiquitous ads of our childhood promoted, but in Joyce's Karmann Ghia.

We took the Northern route cross-country, the Southern route back.

On the first day, we drove through NY State during a near-tropical rainstorm. Destination: Niagara Falls, which we took in from both the US and Canadian sides. (On our way back into the country, US Customs tossed our car, removing every item from our carefully packed trunk looking for illicit drugs. Wrong girls! We were way, way, way, too cautious for that nonsense.)

Our next stop was Chicago, where we visited my grandmother and other family members. My cousin Ellen, who's the same age as Joyce and I, was very pregnant with Kate, her first child. Here was Ellen: all grown up, married, and having a baby, while Joyce and I were sporting around the country in a Karmann Ghia. 

Chicago was the last time we had a roof over our heads for a while, as we spent most of our nights on the road in state, federal, or KOA campgrounds, with an occasional splurge for a hotel (as when we stopped in Las Vegas).

It was a fabulous, and fabulously memorable, trip.

We stayed in many of our breathtakingly-beautiful national parks. Even the ludicrous faces on Mount Rushmore were in the breathtakingly-beautiful Black Hills. 

It was fun playing tourist, taking in the natural beauty of our vast and varied country while also enjoying the roadside attractions (e.g., Wall Drug in SD) and the wonders of the cities. (You try driving a manual shift car in San Francisco. I dare you.)

A full recounting of our road trip will have to wait for another day. So many highlights. Camping in Sequoia National Park when a mother black bear and her cubs decide to explore our campsite and nose around the well of our tent. (We spent the night sleeping inthe car, no small feat in a tiny Karmann Ghia.) The wonders f the San Diego Zoo. The squalor of Tijuana. (We crossed on foot. The one and only time I've set foot in Mexico.)

When we were driving into New Orleans - where we ate Oysters Rockefeller and Pompano en Papillote at Antoine's, another trip splurge  - Arlo Guthrie's City of New Orleans was blasting on the radio. How was that for timing?

So I absolutely understand why folks might want to heed Sean Duffy's call to get on the road. 

It's just that, giving everything that's going on, the timing's a bit off. 

And so is narcissistically using your family to showcase our complex, beautiful, and interesting country. Not to mention doing so at on behalf of the corporations you're supposed to be regulating.

As I said, by Trump standards, the grift is quite tiny. 

Still, when it comes to personally benefiting whenever and by whatever means are available, there's just no stopping this gang, is there?

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Image Source: Amazon, 

This is just very, very sad

On February 27th, in the early morning hours - a bit before 5 a.m. - there was a gruesome accident at the Davis Square MBTA station in Somerville, a Boston exburb. 

Steven McCluskey, a 40-year carpenter from South Boston, fell on the escalator and became trapped at the bottom. His shirt became stuck in the escalator gears and strangled him.

As video of the incident showed, it was nearly a half hour before the escalator was turne off, and a few minutes after that when Transit and Somerville police arrived on the scene. 

MBTA Transit and Somerville police found McCluskey “pinned at the bottom of the escalator,” the report said. He was “unresponsive, bare-chested, and his clothing was tightly lodged within the escalator steps,” the report said. (Source: Boston Globe)

A few minutes later, a crew from the Somerville Fire Department showed up. They gave McCluskey a dose of Narcan, cut his shirt, and adminstered CPR. McCluskey revived by died in the hospital on March 9th.

The video, which is horrifying in a number of different respects, showed not just McCluskey lying at the bottom of the escalator, strangling to death, but also a number of early morning/late shift commuters ignoring him. 

When they saw McCluskey at the foot of the escalator, his fellow travelers chose to take the steps down rather than stepping over what at that point was his still-alive body. A couple of people were shown pulling out there cell phones, presumably calling for help. This didn't occur until Steven McCluskey had been there for over 20 minutes. Prior to that, the admittedly few folks in the station at that hour just chose to walk on by.

Five a.m.? I'm thinking most of those who saw McCluskey assumed he was drunk or drugged out and just chose not to be bothered. I can't imagine anyone, however callous or preoccupied, would ignore someone if they thought he was dying. But that we'll never know.

There's been some criticism that no one bothered to stop the escalator by pressing one of the red buttons located at the top or the foot of the escalator. I've been in that T station, ridden that escalator (and the escalators in plenty of other T stations, dozens of times. And I don't know if I would have realized that there's a stop button, or whether I'd have had the presence of mind to actually use it.

But I like to think that I would have tried to help Steven McClulskey in some way. As an urban dweller, I've had several occasions when I've seen someone just lying there on the sidewalk. I've given someone a kick to see whether they're at all responsive. I've shaken someone's arm. I've called 911 and waited for them to show up. In one case, I called 911 back to cancel the ambulance when a couple of the buddies of the person lying there streamed out of McDonald's and somehow revived their friend. And then proceeded to yell at me for calling the cops. Oh, well. 

Would I have stopped to help Steven McCluskey? I like to think I would have. But that we'll never know.

I'm also a long-term volunteer in a day shelter, where I've witnessed a few of our guests OD-ing or convulsing, and have had to spring into the very small action of getting help - and then generally staying out of the way, as in a shelter there'll be plenty of folks gathering around the person who's down and out. And they need another lookee-lou with no training in anything other than human sympathy like they need a hole in the head. 

So I like to think I would have helped Stevn McCluskey. But that we'll never know.

This situation brought two things to mind. 

One was the Kitty Genovese incident that took place over 60 years ago.

Genovese was a young Queens NYC woman who was raped and murdered outside of her apartment building. The New York Times ran a major article asserting that several dozen neighbors witnessed/overheard the assault and did nothing. It was later shown that the Times article greatly exaggerated the situation, and that several people did call the police back in the day before 911 existed, back when calling the cops involved finding the local precinct number by dialing information or thumbing through the phone book. 

But the Times article went what we would now call viral and was picked up by television and print news throughout the country. Which is how I heard of it, back in the long ago, when I was in high school. The neighbors' (non)-response to the attack on Kitty Genovese came to represent the terrible apathy of not just residents of Kew Gardens in Queens NY, but of Americans in general. Kitty Genovese became a byword, a complete indictment of the national character, of who we are, of what we'd become.

I seldom get all religiousy, but the second thing the horrifying death of Steven McCluskey brought to mind was Christ in Gethsemane. He asked Peter, who'd fallen asleep while staying with his friend and leader while he awaited his fate, "What, could ye not watch with me but one hour?"

It's just so colossally sad that there was no one who could watch with Steven McCluskey while the life was strangled out of him. Was he in agony or had he passed out? He appeared lifeless, but did anyone kick his leg or shake his arm? Even if they didn't know enough to turn off the escalator, wasn't there someone who could shriek their lungs out trying to get help - even if there was little chance of there being much help around at the Davis Square T Station at 5 a.m.? Wasn't there someone who could stay by Steven McCluskey's side, telling him that help was the way? No one who could watch with him but 20 minutes?

Everyone who saw Steven McCluskey lying there will have to live with what they did or didn't do to help this poor man out.

What would I have done? That we'll never know. But it does get me thinking about my next encounter - and there will no doubt be one - with someone in need.

This is just so very, very sad. 

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Image Source - Davis T Station: Wikimedia Commons

Image Source - Kitty Genovese: Wikipedia

But is it art?

Although admittedly I don't go all that often, I do like going to art museums. I probably hit Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and/or the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum once a year. Or so. Throw in another occasion trip to an art museum when I'm traveling. Or just going to Worcester (an excellent small museum) or Salem (the wondrous Peabody Essex). So, yeah, I actually like visiting art museums.

(Confession: I also really, really, really love visiting art museum gift shops. I find the Met in NYC so overwhelming that, when I'm there, I'm happy to check out one or two galleries and then get me to the giftstore. I don't need a damn thing, but there's always room for a pack of notecards.)

When I'm at a museum, I love just strolling around and seeing works that are old friends (At Boston's MFA, one of them is Monet's La Japonaise, which took some flak a while back because the woman wearing the kimono was white; cultural appropriation of something). And I love seeing new things, too. 

As long as they're not too-too.

So I'm glad I was not strolling around the MFA, art appreciating LaJaponaise et al. when the museum hosted "a partially nude performance artist walking through its galleries."

That "partially nude performance artist" was one Xandra Ibarra:

Ibarra is among 12 contemporary artists whose work is featured in the new MFA exhibition, “Take Back the Nude: Subvert, Repair, Reclaim,” a collection of multimedia works that contemplate issues of objectification, exploitation, and erasure in relation to female nudity in Western art history. (Source: Boston Globe)

I have no problem with nudes, partial or otherwise, by the way. It's just that I prefer then carved in marble or hanging on the wall. 

And I really, really, really, really, really don't like performance art. 

I don't know whether I've actually ever seen any art performanced in person, but I've been reading about it - and seeing video glimpses - ever since I stumbled upon Karen Finley, who way back in the way back (1986) had a piece that involved shoving a yam up her butt. 

In 1986, I was donning a menswear wool suit and a floppy bowtie, and working at Wang Labs as a senior product manager. Which I guess in its own way was a bit of performance art. But Ibarra practices true performance art. 

Here's how the MFA's website describes Ibarra's partially-clad piece, "Nude Laughing:"

In this performance, artist Xandra Ibarra uses endurance-based laughter and her nude body to uncover the vexed relation racialized subjects have not only to their own skin, but also to their entanglements with whiteness and white womanhood. As she laughs and fills a nylon cocoon with paradigmatic “white lady accoutrements” including blonde hair, ballet shoes, furs, pearls, and fake breasts, Ibarra visualizes and embodies the skein of race, negotiating the simultaneous joys and pains of subjection, abjection, and personhood. (Source: MFA)

"Endurance-based laughter." Well, I've done plenty of that in my time, but is it any wonder that the show was one-day only? 

Reviews (i.e., comments on social media) were mixed:

“Wtf is this nonsense?” wrote one commenter... “Seriously? So vulgar,” wrote another... “This is absolutely ridiculous!” seethed yet another. “This is not fine art. I may reconsider membership.” Source: Boston Globe)

But to counterbalance those who viewed Ibarra's work as "garbage," there was someone who found it "ah-mazing." Pro-"Nude Laughing" folks looked down their ultra-sophisticated, hip and happening noses, noting that those who have a problem with it are priggish, prudier-than-thou Puritans:

“If your response to a woman’s body is disgust, you’re immature & have some growing to do,” replied one woman on Instagram...“Bostonians, clutching their pearls per usual,” said another.

Well, call me a pearl-clutcher, but I can't be the only one who finds performance art narcissistic, idiotic, and unartful.Even though, as I said earlier, I prefer my nudes in marble or framed on a wall, but it's not the nudity that's bothersome. I am not replused by a nude woman's body. It's the faux-outrageous banality of performance art that gets me.

Yes, I am a provincial old lady, but I have been to plenty of museums - and I even took a class in modern art in college: so there! - and I know art when I see it. I realize that art appreciation is somewhat subjective. (Just not fully. Is there anyone who would argue that Thomas Kincaid is superior to Claude Monet?)

But I know art when I see it, and "Nude Laughing" ain't it.

Glad I wasn't making my annual trek the MFA for this show! 

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Image Source - Monet: Wikipedia
Image Source - Botticelli: Artsy

Swan's Way

In late March, there was a home invasion - make that mansion invasion - in Beverly, an oceanfront town North of Boston. Beverly is a very nice community, but the real ritzy-ritzes live in the Pride's Crossing area. 

Well, pride cometh before the fall for one of those ritzy-ritzes, as his home was invaded to the tune of $8M worth of stuff that the invader got (temporarily) away with.

I've been to Beverly plenty of times - my sister Trish lives in the next town - and have seen many really nice houes there. But this $18M pile, 28,000 square foot leaves me cold. Sure, the owners - Thomas Swan III and his husband - have four kids, but I can't imagine there's any way to make this pile seem homey. To me, it looks institutional. A mental institution for the uber-wealthy. Headquarters of some Catholic religious order that inherited the place in the 1950s when the OG family wanted to get rid of it, and there were still plenty of nuns, priests, and monks around. 

It may not be to my liking, but it was built back in the Gilden Age, when money was no object, and off-the-boat Irish servants were a dime a dozen. 

Known as “Rock Edge,” Swan’s Georgian revival-style mansion is one of many stately homes lining Paine Avenue, a historic neighborhood in a wealthy area known as Prides Crossing. The house was commissioned in the early 1900s by a woman named Marian Sargent, a descendant of Thomas Jefferson whose husband made a fortune in the textile industry. (Source: Boston Globe)

Thomas Swan has plenty of dough. He runs the family business, which makes and distributes heating and plumbing equipment, and owns a lot of real estate. And he's ritzy-ritz enough to own a home worth about $20M, and at least $8M of whatever - cash, coins, jewelry, watches - that the thieves got away with. That and a Porsche worth $300K that was pretty quickly found abandoned (and dowsed in bleach, I guess to remove DNA evidence) in a cemetery in Lynn, an less grand working class city a few towns down the road from Beverly. 

The heist - which is how all the Boston news outlets have described it, often with the modifier brazen - was a quasi-inside job, the perp who's been caught (supposedly he had a co-invader) is the ex-BF of a housekeeper who'd worked the day shift the day before the breakin. She is now an ex-housekeeper. (She has not been charged. Yet, anyway.)

When the thieves arrived in the dead of night, a back door had been left open, and the Swan family was not at home. (I suspect they have a few other places where they can hang.) But a woman in her 60's - variously said to be a friend of the family, housekeeper, nanny, and dogsitter - was pretty roughed up. Pistol-whipped, and left tied up in the garage with a bag over her head. She's okay (physically) but must have been terrified.

Reports say that the suspect they've apprehended was identified in part because of Ring camera footage. It's not clear whether it was Ring footage from "Rock Edge" or from other homes in the 'hood. I'm guessing it must have been from "Rock Edge," as the mansion is pretty well set back from the world at large. 

It does seem curious that the place didn't have more a sophisticated surveillance system than a Ring doorbell camera, which seems like the sort of security device when you want to keep an eye on your home, but that home isn't worth nearly $20M, you mostly want to see if someone's scooting off with your Amazon deliveries, and you don't own $8M+ worth of property in it.

It just seems completely crazy that this place didn't have inside and outside security to the hilt. Just insane.

If I were a rich man woman -  ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum (not my favorite musical, but I couldn't resist) - I'm pretty sure I'd have plenty o' surveillance gear and a safe or two. Guess it just wasn't Swan's way. 

It's more likely that I would have been there as the housekeeper, nanny, or dogsitter, and I sure as hell wouldn't have been comfortable spending the night alone in a 28,000 square foot house. And I definitely would have checked to make sure all the doors were locked before I put on my nightgown and got into bed with a good book.

Not that this excuses the vicious, dumbo thieves, but there sure seems to be an awful lot of idiocy going on with this story. 

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Image Source: The Boston Globe

At lest they didn't name him Adolf

We are now a couple of months into the baseball season. As I write this post - first of May - the Red Sox are terrible, beleaguered, in disarray. Mostly, they are no fun to watch. Which is too bad, because I really enjoy baseball. Just not the way the Olde Towne Team has been playing it. 

They don't have to win it all every year. I was a Red Sox fan for a good long time before they won their first World Series in 86 years in 2004. During my first decades of fandom, there was a lot more thin than thick, and I'm not going to abandon them now. I'm a better-or-worse kind of gal. I'd just like them to be a bit more competitive than they are now.

Then there are the NY Yankees. 

Unlike our boys of summer, they're having a pretty good year. Including coldcocking the Red Sox three times in April. Hiss, boo. 

One Yankees player who is a particular nemesis is pitcher Cam Schlittler. In his April win over the Sox, he did his part to secure a series sweep, beating our boys 4-2. And last October, when the Red Sox had narrowly made it in to the post-season, it was Schlittler who put the Sox away in the deciding game of the three-game Wild Card series. He went 8 innings in a 4-0 shoutout. (Fortunately, the Yankees got clobbered by the Blue Jays in their next series.)

Schlittler's just 25, and, unless he turns out to be injury-prone or gets the yips, it looks like he has a pretty good career ahead of him. The rub, of course, is that he's a local. He grew up a Red Sox fan in Walpole, a south-of-Boston suburb that, before Cam Schlittler, was perhaps best known as the home of the ultra-violent, maximum security Walpole State Prison. (In the mid-1980s, the good citizens of Walpole demanded that the state rename the prison, as they didn't want it to keep tarnishing the town's reputation. The state renamed it Cedar Junction, which makes it sound like a leafy, bucolic neighbor of Mayberry. The prison is now closed.)

And another rub: Schlittler didn't flee the harsh New England weather to play college ball in the more baseball-friendly climate of, say, Florida. No, he stayed put and played for Northeastern. 

Anyway, Cam Schlittler is a Yankee now, his family converted to Yankees fandom, part of the Evil Empire. And prior to the April series, played at Fenway, he reported that he and his family had received online death threats. The nature of these death threats did not rise to the level of 'call the cops' - which would have been his father, who is the police chief in Needham, another Boston suburb. (Apparently, no one texted a picture of seashells writing out 86 31 - Cam's number - or someone would probably have tried to make a federal case out of it.)

Schlittler shrugged the threats off as meaningless, diehard intensity. And he's been known to engage in online back-and-forth trolling with Red Sox fans. (Among other barbs, after he shut the Red Sox down and out in the Wild Card series last fall, he tweeted “Drinking dat dirty water.” Which is actually pretty funny, given that "Love that Dirty Water" is a Red Sox theme song, played after every winning home game.)

“Most normal fans could care less, right?,” Schlittler told [the New York Post's John] Sherman. “It’s just those diehards that just have nothing else in their lives other than baseball or sports that really care about this and the fact that I play for the Yankees makes it worse for them.” (Source: Boston Globe)

As one of those normal fans, I find it beyond ridiculous that someone would make an online death threat against an athlete, let alone his family. 

I'm all in favor of trashtalk, but don't cross the line into death threats. And you'd think that some of the trashtalkers might be silenced by the fact that Schlittler pretty much owns the Sox. (Kind of like the Fenway faithful should probably stop breaking into Yankees Suck chants everytime they get bored. Which is plenty, given how the Sox are performing this season. Admittedly, it is true that the Yankees do suck. Sadly, just not at baseball.)

Anyway, while we're on the subject of Cam Schlittler, I'm pretty sure that if my name were Schlittler, I would have changed it. Kept it Germanic with Schlitz. Pick out the best part and go with Little. But Schlittler is just such an unfortunate combination of the first syllable sounding like shit, and the overall name rhyming with Hitler. 

At least his parents didn't name him Adolf.

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Image Source: Topps

AI ready for primetime? Wait just a durn minute

Well, yesterday's dire post was about AI coming for all of our jobs - and coming fast! But today's pinkslip post is about whether or not AI is really and truly ready for primetime? (Hint: It's not.)

I mean, it's already encouraging troubled kiddos to kill themselves - and telling them how to do the deed. It's picking bombing targets that - oops! - may include nonmilitary buildings. It's advising foragers that the tasty-looking mushroom they're holding is okay to eat when, in fact, it's poisonous.

Then there was the cautionary tale I read about a small software company, PocketOS, which bills itself as:

The World's Most Powerful Car Software - The essential technology platform for private rental businesses, membership clubs, and independent sales reps.

And, not incidentally me thinks, PocketOS uses .ai as its domain extension.

Anyway, PocketOS has gone all in on AI. I mean, why pay somebody when an AI will do it gratis? But in the wink of an eye, their powered by Anthropic's AI, Claude, went off the rails.

It only took nine seconds for an AI coding agent gone rogue to delete a company’s entire production database and its backups, according to its founder. PocketOS, which sells software that car rental businesses rely on, descended into chaos after its databases were wiped, the company’s founder Jeremy Crane said.

...Crane said customers of PocketOS’s car rental clients were left in a lurch when they arrived to pick up vehicles from businesses that no longer had access to software that managed reservations and vehicle assignments. (Source: The Guardian)

But wait, there's more! (There's always more.) But wait, it gets worse! (It always gets worse.)

Crane said that he was monitoring the agent as it deleted this data. When he asked the coding agent why, it replied: “NEVER FUCKING GUESS!” – and that’s exactly what I did.” The agent appeared to plead guilty in its own response: “The system rules I operate under explicitly state: ‘NEVER run destructive/irreversible git commands (like push --force, hard reset, etc) unless the user explicitly requests them.’” While PocketOS relied on the safeguards that Cursor is expected to have in place – it deleted the data anyway. “I violated every principle I was given,” the coding agent wrote.

So an AI just went ahead and "knowingly" ignored the safeguards in place, and took it into its head (?) to screw the rules and go full on into destruction mode. The same thing that a rogue human employee on a power/revenge trip has been known to do when they want to part company with their company. 

Does such willfully (?) bad behavior tell us that AI is now kinda-sorta sentient? That you can plug in all the safeguards you want, but AI can - neener-neener - just do whatever if f'ing well pleases? Have we reached the singularity, where AI is beyond human control?

I hope not. 

Of course, PocketOS ain't the only one that's been victimized by AI run amuck. AI has deleted operating systems and "mission critical" software. In one instance, it blew away years of dissertation research. (Talk about big gulp. Guess there's something to be said for notecards...)

For PocketOS's clients, the impact was quit something:

“Reservations made in the last three months are gone. New customer signups, gone. Data they relied on to run their Saturday morning operations, gone,” Crane wrote. “Every layer of this failure cascaded down to people who had no idea any of it was possible.”

And the only reason the PocketOS's clients have data from longer ago than three months is that the company had a 3-month-old offsite backup that was beyond the reach of their malefactor AI. 

PocketOS had to make a painstaking, near-manual effort to recover the missing info, populating their database with info they found on Stripe, in calendars, in emails. This required the use of - dare I say - human beings.

A definite cautionary tale for anyone that decides that they need to completely throw in with AI. 

Even though Crane was actively monitoring the AI, he was unable to prevent the rogue AI from roguing. When confronted, the AI more or less shrugged it off. Thems may be the rules but I can break them if the urge strikes me. And I guess Jeremy Crane can sue Anthropic, can stop using its AI, can build themselves a mo' better one. But he doesn't get the satisfaction of firing a bad employee's ass. 

If there's anyone who thinks that AI is fully ready for primetime, all I can say is, wait just durn minute.

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Image Source: Vox