Wake Up Before It's Too Late, Cretins

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid!

A study by Michael Gerlich at SBS Swiss Business School has found that increased reliance on artificial intelligence (AI) tools is linked to diminished critical thinking abilities. It points to cognitive offloading as a primary driver of the decline.

AI's influence is growing fast. A quick search of AI-related science stories reveals how fundamental a tool it has become. Thousands of AI-assisted, AI-supported and AI-driven analyses and decision-making tools help scientists improve their research.

AI has also become more integrated into daily activities, from virtual assistants to complex information and decision support. Increased usage is beginning to influence how people think, especially impactful among younger people, who are avid users of the technology in their personal lives.

An attractive aspect of AI tools is cognitive offloading, where individuals rely on the tools to reduce mental effort. As the technology is both very new and rapidly being adopted in unforeseeable ways, questions arise about its potential long-term impacts on cognitive functions like memory, attention, and problem-solving under prolonged periods or volume of cognitive offloading taking place.

Who am I kidding? It's already too late. "They made you a moron", to coin a phrase, except most of you were already.

[Phys.org]

You're Born Alone, You Die Alone

And In Between, Hell Is Other People

From Dentist Boy's Book of Faces:

3 days ago I called on some friends to help me because I don't drive and I was being evacuated now I know exactly who my friends are ... sometimes it's nice when the trash takes itself out.

Welcome to this reporter's nightmare, as lived 17 yrs. ago. People who "own" houses (&/or cars) are scum. I want to see the burned-out hulks of their plastic pollutionmobiles in the ash-covered driveways of the lots where their now reduced to nothing-but-a-fireplace-&-chimney houses once stood. Remember: You don't "own" anything you can't carry, pigs.

Oink Report

Take a deep fucking breath. Please.

Every Reason To Eat The Rich

Private firefighters in place to help Rick Caruso’s home and neighborhood: ‘He’s smart, he wants to be ready’

He's not "smart", he simply has grubbed more money than anyone needs or deserves & is a selfish prick, as well as a loud-mouthed asshole. He & his kind should be taxed w/in an inch of their greedy lives, so that all the people of Los Angeles can enjoy the non-discriminatory protection of adequately-financed public fire departments.

Speaking of people who have more money than they deserve, the publisher of the birdcage liner in which the above headlines first appeared is one of them.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Boxing Day, 1957. 26,000 acres.William Conrad on the voice over.

"String" Him Up!

Th' hell's wrong w/ stupid sumbitch & Sen. Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Nowhere)? Why do these Republican creeps hate America so effing much?

Zach LaChance / Washington Examiner:

Barrasso vows no ‘blank check’ for wildfire aid

Alex Galbraith / Salon:   “There will be strings attached”: GOP Sen. says Los Angeles wildfire aid won't be “blank check”

Pam Key / Breitbart:   Barrasso Predicts ‘Strings Attached to Money’ for California Fire Aid

David McAfee / Raw Story:   'C'mon. We aren't idiots': Onlookers blast GOP lawmaker over conditions on L.A. fire funds

Mallory Wilson / Washington Times:   Los Angeles fire aid to come with ‘strings attached,’ Barrasso says

Tara Suter / The Hill:   Barrasso predicts ‘strings attached to money’ for California fire aid

I'd like to see Wyoming, the crudhole that sent Barrasso to Washington, turned into a much expanded Yellowstone National Park, w/ no more representation than say, the millions of Americans in Puerto Rico get, but not before the state has made up the difference between the federal taxes it pays & the money the state takes from the Federal Treasury. A state, we note, w/ a relative to California population of zero. (To be fully truthful, a minuscule population of absolute mental zeroes, & the home of Dick Cheney.)The version(s) we were looking for when we found the two above.

Sink Of Despair

To sleep at 0500, slept until 1420. I'd spend the rest of my life asleep if I didn't wake up every fucking hr.
(To piss on your graves!) Then confronted by this:

And I had a bloody nose. Bunker humidity is 36%; may be the capillaries of the aged, which is another reason to get cracking on my kill-them-all-before-I'm-too-wretched-to-kill-them-all plans.

Flames In The Night

Psychedelic Saturday

W/ Current Events Subtext

Pillar Of Fire

It really is like a war zone out there.So much for Pharoah, Egypt & Babylon: Nature has had it w/ your bullshit.

Sissy-Boy Zuckerberg Comes Out Of The Closet

S'posed to be funny & childish, not how to run one's giant fascist corporation.

The son of a dentist speaks: "Sweetie, there's just not enough 'masculine energy' in this dump." How long before the S-E-X scandal?

St. Nick on a stick, I have more than had it w/ the psychosexual problems of assholes w/ too much money dictating how fucked this country is going to be.

Riley Griffin / Bloomberg:

Zuckerberg Says Most Companies Need More ‘Masculine Energy’

Rachel Wolf / New York Post:   Mark Zuckerberg praises benefits of ‘masculine energy,’ says DEI ‘culturally neutered’ corporate America

Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:   Mark Zuckerberg defends Meta's latest pivot in three-hour Joe Rogan interview

Ann Althouse / Althouse:   Mark Zuckerberg talks to Joe Rogan about his dissatisfaction with the “neutered” corporate world.

Fox Business:   Zuckerberg praises benefits of ‘masculine energy,’ laments ‘culturally neutered’ corporate America

Sarah Arnold / Townhall:   Mark Zuckerberg Exposes Alarming Details About Biden Admin's Social Media Influence

Jay Peters / The Verge:   Zuckerberg trash talks Apple in interview with Joe Rogan

Todd Spangler / Variety:   Mark Zuckerberg Defends Meta's Fact-Checking Ban to Joe Rogan: Company Faced ‘Massive Institutional Pressure to Basically Start Censoring Content’

Brad Reed / Raw Story:   ‘So rich and yet so weak’: Vitriol unleashed as Mark Zuckerberg lauds Trump to Joe Rogan

Alice Tecotzky / Business Insider:   Mark Zuckerberg tells Joe Rogan that he thinks Trump will protect American companies' ‘strategic advantage’

more at Techmeme »

"Neutered", eh? Who's stolen your masculine essence, Zucky? Maybe there's a cologne or something you could wear to restore it.

Hot off the news reader as we go to press: Digby excerpts/links to something else about what a weasel M.Z. is.

Smoke Over Century City

Friday Finger Pointing

Katya Schwenk / The Lever:

The Architects Of L.A.'s Wildfire Devastation  —  Developers and real estate interests crushed efforts to limit development in high-wildfire-risk areas — including in L.A. neighborhoods now in ashes. Back in 2019, a California state climate task force issued a stark warning: Endless development in the state’s high-risk wildfire zones was magnifying wildfires and putting more people in their path. 

It was a call that has echoed in the state for decades from environmentalists, urban planners, and policymakers, even as developers pushed to build ever more homes in zones designated as “very high risk” of wildfires.

Now, many of those homes have burned to the ground.

No, really?

Temperatures Rising

Seth Borenstein / Associated Press:

Earth records hottest year ever in 2024 and the jump was so big it breached a key threshold  —  Earth recorded its hottest year ever in 2024, with such a big jump that the planet temporarily passed a major climate threshold, several weather monitoring agencies announced Friday. Ronald Bailey / Reason:   2024 Was the Hottest Year On Record

WHNT.com:   LIVE: Fires devastating LA grow more slowly as winds die down

Yale Climate Connections:   Earth roasts through its second consecutive hottest year on record

El País:   Climate crisis breaks records in 2024: ‘The future is in our hands’

Associated Press:   Planet recorded hottest year in 2024, broke key 1.5 degree Celsius threshold

KLRT:   LIVE: Firefighters hope for a break from fierce winds in LA

KXAN Austin:   LIVE: LA area's 2 biggest blazes burn at least 10,000 structures; New fire ignites

Paul Godfrey / UPI:   EU climate monitor warns global temperature rise breached 1.5 degrees Celsius for first time in 2024

New York Times:   2024 Brought the World to a Dangerous Warming Threshold. Now What?

Mizy Clifton / Semafor:   2024 saw 1.5°C warming threshold breached

Chelsea Harvey / E&E News:   It's official: 2024 was the hottest year on record

Al Jazeera:   Earth records hottest ever year in 2024 and crosses key 1.5C threshold

Eric Roston / The Japan Times:   Record heat pushed 2024 above global warming threshold of 1.5 C

Bob Berwyn / Inside Climate News:   Global Warming Surges Well Past 1.5-Degree Mark in 2024

Roxana Bardan / NASA:
Temperatures Rising: NASA Confirms 2024 Warmest Year on Record
Oliver Milman / The Guardian:   2024 was hottest year on record for world's land and oceans, US scientists confirm

John Bateman / National Oceanic …:   2024 was the world's warmest year on record

Alejandra Borunda / NPR:   2024 was the hottest year on record. The reason remains a science mystery

Chelsea Harvey / E&E News:   NOAA and NASA confirm: 2024 was the hottest year on record

Eric Roston / Bloomberg:   Hottest Year Ever Sees World Breach 1.5C Global Warming Target

Keep It Simple, Suckers!!

The Schaden Freudes Itself

Ha ha ha. None of you bastards helped me, now you know what it's like to have nothing. Of course, since this affects filthy bourgeois "home"-owners, all the other hypocritical pigs are helping them rather than warehousing them in shelters to die as is done w/ poor people like me who are victims of the unnatural dangers of pig capitalism. Fuck 'em all. Where are your next meals coming from after the credit cards run out, pigs? Nice of World Central Kitchen to feed rich people who are "temporarily embarrassed", but where were they when I was homeless? More like Chef des Hypocrites than Chef de Cuisine.

Most deserving would be John Amato, who got his but good. Expecting people to type crap for you w/o pay, or even a free T-shirt, & then ignoring & otherwise treating your volunteers like crap will cost your house &, I hope, your fucking "Beemer". (Anyone who calls a BMW a "Beemer" deserves severe punishment anyway.) No one fucks w/ me w/o paying for it, y'hear me!!

And ++fuck Crooks & Liars & their bullshit AdBlocker blocker which doesn't allow one to access their shitty site even when one has paused one's AdBlocker. Sick & tired of all this shit, & more than ready to start the killing. What's stopping everyone? How much longer will you running dogs continue pretending everything's wonderful?

Yes! Yes! A Thousand Times Yes!!

Older map. We may have to write off those midwestern & northeastern states. Eff 'em.

Tristin Hopper / National Post:

Elizabeth May proposes California, Oregon, Washington join Canada after Trump's 51st state threat  —  The basic idea of ‘Cascadia’ is to calve off B.C., Washington and Oregon to form a super-rich hyper-progressive enviro-state  —  Amid repeated pledges by U.S. president-elect Donald Trump to annex Canada … 

Alix Breeden / Daily Kos:   Canadian lawmaker trolls Trump with pitch to US West Coast: Join us

Don't forget Hawai'i & Baja California & you can sign me up right now. I'll drop the rest of this benighted nation of impoverished reactionaries, religious nutjobs & environmental rapists like a bad habit.

++Schadenfreude

As not one "home"-owning bitch or son thereof was the slightest help to me when I was homeless, surely you people don't expect me to care about your houses & losses. I lost everything too, so fuck alla you middle-class pigs. Now you know what it's like to be nobody & have nothing. Hope your throats are slit in a homeless shelter. Haw haw haw!! 

Continuing to savor my hate & outrage, I realized not a single apartment-dweller was any help to me either. Fuck all you lower-class pigs too. There's not a person in this world of shit & pain I don't despise.

Nah Go

Wouldn't have gone had I been invited.

Local Action

California wildfires LIVE: Sunset Fire erupts in Hollywood Hills

Lived just south of there for eleven yrs. Since this, a new fire has started in Studio City, possibly a house fire that the wind spread. So literally nowhere is safe w/ this wind. Even if power lines are underground, a freaking grease fire could get out of hand & be blown all over.

Babylon Burning

Parts of Santa Monica now ordered to evacuate. That's, like, a city, not a relatively rural bedroom community. And more burning plastic to poison the atmosphere. Never seen "Smoke" as an atmospheric condition before.

Uncontained!

Uncropped & uncorrected.

O.K., trimmed a few pixels of extraneous branches at the top of the middle one. Current humidity inside the bunker: 13%. Usually between 40-60%. Can indeed smell the ash in the air, even inside.

Hell On Earth To Worsen Overnight

This reporter knows someone who is descended from the Eaton after whom the burning canyon was named.

The Wind Blows Forward 'n The Wind Blows Back

Also The Dust

Burn Off The Parasites!

"Rent is robbery. Only you can make a world w/o rent.
Talk to your neighbors. Organize your building. We don't need landlords."
latenantsunion.org

US Justice Department accuses six major landlords of scheming to keep rents high

DENVER (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department is suing several large landlords for allegedly coordinating to keep Americans’ rents high by using both an algorithm to help set rents and privately sharing sensitive information with their competitors to boost profits.

The lawsuit arrives as U.S. renters continue to struggle under a merciless housing market, with incomes failing to keep up with rent increases. The latest figures show that half of American renters spent more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities in 2022, an all-time high.

That means exhausting, day-to-day decisions between medications, groceries, school supplies and rent. It means eviction notices and protracted court cases in which children face the highest eviction rates, with 1.5 million evicted each year, according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab.

While the housing crisis has been assigned several causes, including a slump in homes built over the last decade, the Justice Department’s lawsuit claims major landlords are playing a part.

It's them or us. Just as damn evil as any healthcare executive, if you know what I mean, & I may mean murder self-defense.

The Wind

Fi-Yuh!!

Plenty of earlier footage if the feed isn't live.Actual content runs (38:13).

Finally!

What A Wk.! I Thought Tues. Would Never Get Here!