Never Trust An AI

You can never trust an AI's recommendation.  If you ask an AI to recommend a course of action, and there's any chance that pursuing that course of action could require the expenditure of resources, then that circumstance virtually ensures that the AI will provide a recommendation that results in benefits to the AI owner from the expenditure of those resources.  The recommendation itself is a vector for advertising.  Imagine asking an AI for stock tips, and the intrinsic conflicts of interest for a corporate AI answering the question.

-- Don Appleman (25 October 2026)

You Can't Go Home Again

You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time -- back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.

-- Thomas Clayton Wolfe (1900 - 1938), major American novelist of the early twentieth century, You Can't Go Home Again (1940) Book VI, Ch. 44: The Way of No Return

A Matter Of Time

President Trump's decision to lift sanctions on Russian fuel amidst Putin's ongoing and brutal attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine makes no sense and is a betrayal of the legacy and leadership of the late Senator Lindsey Graham.

America should not be throwing a lifeline to Putin's war machine.  Now is the time to stand strong against Russian aggression as we did during the first Trump administration. 

Putin doesn't want peace.  Putin wants Ukraine.  I have no doubt that if Putin overruns Ukraine, it will only be a matter of time until Russia's military crosses a border that our troops will have to deal with him.  

-- Former Vice President Mike Pence posting as @Mike_Pence (10 October 2026)

Bad Luck Follows

The deepest thing in any one is the conviction of the bad luck that follows boasting.

-- Gertrude Stein (1874 - 1946), American expatriate writer, poet, feminist, and playwright, Mrs. Reynolds and Five Earlier Novelettes (1952) Pt. 1 (written 1940-1943)

Why So Expensive?

Last year, the daily cost of hiring an oil supertanker (known as a Very Large Crude Carrier, or VLCC) to sail from the Persian Gulf to China was just $65,000, according to Clarksons, a London-based research firm.

By the time the Iran war was about to begin, that cost had climbed to $230,000 per day.

Now?  It costs $1.6 million per day to hire a VLCC for that route, according to Clarksons.

All of this -- the cost to hire a tanker, exorbitant payments to sailors and surging insurance rates -- is making it more expensive for consumers and businesses around the world.

It used to cost just $2 per barrel to get crude out of the Persian Gulf.  Now, that cost has spiraled to about $33, according to Tom Kloza, chief energy adviser at Gulf Oil.

"We're getting a reasonable amount of crude out, but that's misleading because the cost of that crude exiting is incredible," he said.

-- CNN, "If the Strait of Hormuz is open, why are gas and diesel so expensive?" (9 October 2026)

Once-Chosen Path

GOAL AND PATH - Many are obstinate with regard to the once-chosen path, few with regard to the goal.

-- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 - 1900), German philosopher, cultural critic, and writer, Human, All Too Human (1878) Part II, Aphorism 494, page 241

The Object Of Loyalty

It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions.  This has led millions into such a degree of dependence and submission, that they have at length found themselves to homage the instruments of their ruin at the very time they were at work to effect it.  The true object of loyalty is a good legal constitution, which, as it condemns every instance of oppression and lawless power, derives a certain remedy to the sufferer by allowing him to remonstrate his grievances, and pointing out methods of relief when the gentle arts of persuasion have lost their efficacy.  Whoever, therefore, insinuates notions of government contrary to the constitution, or in any degree winks at any measures to suppress or even to weaken it, is not a loyal man.

-- Samuel Adams (1722 - 1803), American revolutionary and organizer of the Boston Tea Party, governor of Massachusetts from 1793 to 1797, "Loyalty and Sedition," essay published in The Advertiser (1748)

RIP Margaret Hamilton

From my own perspective, the software experience itself (designing it, developing it, evolving it, watching it perform and learning from it for future systems) was at least as exciting as the events surrounding the mission.  There was no second chance.  We knew that.  We took our work seriously, many of us beginning this journey while still in our 20s.  Coming up with solutions and new ideas was an adventure.  Dedication and commitment were a given.  Mutual respect was across the board.  Because software was a mystery, a black box, upper management gave us total freedom and trust.  We had to find a way, and we did.  Looking back, we were the luckiest people in the world; there was no choice but to be pioneers; no time to be beginners.

-- Margaret Hamilton (17 August 1936 - 29 September 2026), American computer scientist, responsible for the Apollo On-Board Flight Software as director of the Software Engineering Division of MIT's Instrumentation Laboratory, quoted by MIT News (7 October 2026)

Courage Is Contagious

The charges against President Trump were the result of the evidence. Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions, as alleged in the indictments they returned. Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power. The evidence showed that President Trump attempted to induce state officials to ignore true vote counts; to manufacture fraudulent slates of presidential electors in seven states that he had lost; to force his own Vice President to act in contravention of his oath and to instead advance President Trump’s personal interests; and, on January 6, 2021, to direct an angry mob to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification of the presidential election and then exploit the rioters’ violence to further delay it. Over 140 heroic law enforcement officers were assaulted that day, a fact we should never forget.

As I appear before you today, it is my belief that the rule of law faces challenges unlike any we have experienced in our lifetime. Individuals are threatened with criminal investigation because they are perceived to have opposed the President. Predetermined outcomes increasingly seem to take precedence over the Justice Department’s long-standing core values, traditions, and norms. History teaches that the rule of law is rarely destroyed all at once. It is often weakened by attacks on the institutions and public servants sworn to uphold it. Since January 2025, we have witnessed precisely such an effort, including the vilification of the career prosecutors, FBI agents, and support staff who served on my team, simply because of their unwavering commitment to the fair and impartial administration of justice without regard for any personal costs.

I remain confident, however, that the rule of law will endure because so many continue to uphold it faithfully each day. Throughout our legal system, public servants have remained faithful to their oaths despite extraordinary pressure to do otherwise. Their example demonstrates that while fear may be contagious, courage is as well.

-- Opening Statement of Jack Smith, Former Special Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice, before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary (29 September 2026)

Better To Have Them

Well, allies can be very annoying, but it's better to have them than to not have them.  And, we bought $65 Billion dollars worth of weapons, we are building one US nuclear power plant, a big one, we just signed an MOU providing for 2 dozen more modular reactors.  We think we contribute to jobs in half US states.  We think this is a great economic relationship, and that Europe is also important for US footprint in a larger area.  

So, even if the love has left the marriage, we think it is a marriage.  You can have affairs elsewhere, but throughout you're married.  At least keep it that way.

-- Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, when asked by host Mary Louise Kelly "How does the world look from Warsaw, for Trump?" Sources And Methods podcast (29 September 2026)

Those Who Fear

Man may be governed by reason and truth.  Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth.  The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press.  It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.

-- Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826), third president of the United States (1801-1809), Letter to Judge John Tyler (28 June 1804); in: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition (ME) (Lipscomb and Bergh, editors), 20 Vols., Washington, D.C., 1903-04, Volume 11, page 33

We Appeal

To the capitalists we appeal to use their wealth, as many of their order already do, as a great national trust, and not for selfish purposes alone.  We exhort them to aid in the completion of the work they have well begun, and, having admitted the workmen to political independence, not to shrink from accepting laws and carrying out plans of social reform directed to secure his material independence.

To the workman we appeal by the memory and traditions of his own sufferings and wrongs to be vigilant to avoid the great guilt of inflicting upon his fellow-citizens the injustice from which he has himself escaped.

-- Arnold Toynbee (1852 - 1883), English economic historian, Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England (1884) p. 219 "Are Radicals Socialists?"

Yet You Refuse

That is why you are so troubled.  You see through the deception, yet you refuse to see through the deception.

-- Brian Wilson Aldiss (1925 - 2017), English writer of general fiction and science fiction, Aboard the Beatitude (2002) in Science Fiction: DAW 30th Anniversary, May 2002

September 11th Anniversary

Today, Director John Ratcliffe declassified 71 President's Daily Brief (PDB) products in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, and consistent with President Donald Trump's historic transparency initiative.

This collection represents the Agency's single largest release of declassified CIA PDB products related to 9/11, providing unprecedented transparency on America's most sensitive intelligence publication from the years before and the day after one of the darkest moments in our history.  The products trace the story of CIA analysts' evolving understanding of al-Qa'ida and efforts to highlight and warn of Usama Bin Ladin's attack plotting despite sparse, vague, and imperfect information.

-- Statement by the Central Intelligence Agency, "CIA Releases President's Daily Briefs in Commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of 9/11" with links to "71 Declassified 9/11 related President's Daily Brief products" available for download as PDFs (11 September 2026)

I Wonder

I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.

-- John Steinbeck (1902-1968), American author, 1962 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962) Pt. 3

Motivational Non-Alignment

I resigned from Anthropic today.  I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic.  Neither company is acting responsibly.  They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. 

The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.  This is not a marketing stunt.  If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible -- but I hear the same people express fear privately.  No other human activity poses this level of danger.

If you are a lab researcher, I urge you to consider what the next few years will actually feel like.  Do you want to kick off a superintelligent RL run without a rigorous understanding of its mind?  Should you put your head down because "it’s happening anyway" -- or take this moment to call for different conditions?

-- Jacob Coxon, posting as @hilbertspaess about the perceived dangers of Recursive Self Improvement in AI models, by AI models (8 September 2026)

Space: The Final Frontier

Space: the final frontier.  These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.  Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

-- Canadian actor William Shatner (1931-), in the voice-over introduction to the television series Star Trek in its debut episode, 8 September 1966.  I previously blogged this same quote 10 years ago today, for the 50th anniversary

Vast Reserve Army

When times are bad, however, in moments of crisis, when profits are low, or when there is little or no demand corporations and companies can protect themselves and their market value by simply letting workers go.  Workers, on the other hand usually must continue to pay for food, rent, healthcare, and basic utilities in order to survive.  As a consequence, while capital can often weather the storm of such economic crises, they can severely weaken the power of the working class by creating what Marx called a vast reserve army of labor.  And since unemployment insurance compensations are rarely available to all and always only for a short period of time, workers -- whether laid off or only threatened with the prospect of layoffs -- will eventually be pressured to work much harder for less wages. 

-- James Dennis Hoff, American author, educator, and activist, on the 2020 stock market crash, "Freeze Layoffs: Make the Capitalists Pay" (23 March 2020), Left Voice 

RIP Gloria Steinem

Voting isn't the most we can do, but it is the least.

-- Gloria Marie Steinem (25 March 1934 - 2 September 2026), American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist, My Life on The Road (2015) p.124

Names That Vary

The U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) has formally changed the name for "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" in the United States.  Since we update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS for the U.S., people using Maps in the U.S. will see "Lake America," those in Canada will continue to see "Lake Ontario," and those outside of the U.S. and Canada will see both names.  These updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country, and are starting to roll out now.

-- Google, Inc via their blog, "How the GNIS Lake Ontario/Lake America name change in the U.S. will appear in Maps" (29 August 2026)