Waterworld was a flop that got a reappraisal, and is now considered a pretty cool movie. It was really a victim of a critical wall that was against it from the start. That happens with some movies.

Babylon is another. That’s going to get a reappraisal at some point, and become a cult classic.

Showgirls is going through a reappraisal, and people are starting to see it differently. It was a Paul Verhoeven movie, of course it was great.

They remade Dune, and somehow managed to make it worse.

A buddy and me were the first in our circle to get an apartment after college, so we became the meeting place. It wasn’t a party house, we drank beer, and smoked weed, but it was calm and quiet, and the old folks below us never complained. They were frequent visitors, as a matter of fact.

People would start showing up around 8. My buddy and I managed different record stores, and we were into all sorts of music, and we had ALL the latest promo recordings, so usually we had a ball game on the TV with no sound (for our buddy Mark, who loved sports), while we listened to music, smoked, and talked. There were usually a dozen people, guys and girls, all ages, right up to old folks downstairs, sometimes. He’d had a stroke, and he could understand everything, but couldn’t converse, beyond random curse words, which he would deliver with either exasperation or disbelief, which we all thought was hilarious, and so did he and his wife.

At 11:30, we’d watch Johnny Carson’s monologue on the TV, and at midnight wed switch it over to two episodes of Twilight Zone. After that, everybody went home.

That was our ritual about 3-4 nights a week for a couple of years, until everybody started to scatter as they found jobs in different places. We’d go out now and then, but only because we weren’t going to meet any new girls hanging around our apartment. Going out often meant moving the party to someone else’s place for the night.

We couldn’t afford to go out to party much, but we always had a better time at home with our friends, especially since there were no threats of judgemental parents, RAs, etc. Our first real taste of true adult freedom was sweet enough to keep us happy.

If you can get a decent sauce for $1.74, you should definitely buy it. I don’t shop at Walmart, but around me, sauces tend to be $3+, even house brands, and I find that they still need to be supplemented with more herbs like garlic.

Now and then, Publix will have one of the imported tomatoes brands for 10 cans for $10. You can make a lot of sauce for $10, and a bunch of seasonings, most of which are very easy to grow.

Learning to cook for yourself is helpful, and that means not just avoiding eating out, but avoiding the purchase of prepared foods.

For instance: Instead of buying a jar of Spaghetti sauce, get a large can of crushed tomatoes, add garlic and Italian herbs, and let it simmer for several hours. It’s super easy, and tastes far better, and is much cheaper. Cook up several cans in a giant pot, and freeze the sauce in single or double containers.

Chili is another cheap, nutritious meal that freezes easily. Just ground meat, beans, a can of diced tomatoes, and herbs. Just don’t forget the Cumin, that’s the taste of Chili.

When pork shoulders are on sale, cook one up in a slow cooker, and freeze that. Cheap pulled pork available whenever you want it. Do the same with chicken breast and/or thighs, when they’re on sale.

Do one of those, and a couple more, every Sunday, and you’ll have a lot of cheap meals for the next month or two.

Looking for the silver lining, if you’ve needed to lose some weight, now is a good time. I’m looking at it this way: I’m not short on food, I’m keeping temptation out of the house.

Now, this is the point where I disagree: if it is possible with today’s tech, why is it not happening? Why is automation limited to repeatetive tasks and stuff like self checkout?

They have the tech right now. My local news even ran a little disguised Chipotle PR video showing their new robotic burrito bowl machine, as the news anchors oohed and aahed over what was essentially a propaganda ad.

So Chipotle already has it, and every other fast food outlet is either working on it, or has it - and has for a long time. They’ve been salivating for this moment for decades. There are only two things holding it up:

1. The tech isn’t quite ready: It is, but it it isn’t. It’s ready to be fully tested on the public, and that’s when it will finally get fully perfected. They’ve gone as far as they can without actually installing it. Now they need real world scenarios.

2. It will be a PR nightmare. The first fast food chain to announce a fully robotic store is going to get savaged, including a massive national boycott, one that I will happily join. But once one company does it, and the dust settles a bit, the others will do it, too.

The next stage will be when someone announces that their entire company will be mostly automated, probably a fast food operation again. That will result in an even stronger boycott that may even bankrupt the company. It will certainly take a serious hit, but someone will make the calculation that the short-term PR risk is worth the long-term profits.

We are in the calm before the storm. We can see it on the horizon, and we can see how big and ferocious it will be. The job environment after the full implementation of AI, is going to get really bad. Saying that it won’t be so bad, that the approaching maelstrom won’t kill EVERYBODY, isn’t comforting.

I forgot that the US is a dystopian hellscape where many people work what would have been a college summer job a couple of decades ago just to get by, my bad.

Sarcasm aside

That was supposed to be sarcastic? Because that’s the reality for MANY people in America. If you don’t see it happening around you in your life, good for you, things are going well for you. But we are in a K-shaped economy, and a lot of people are on that lower rung, and those are the people that are going to get hit worst by AI.

Great, so in your scenario, things will still be great because people can always clean up busted milk jigs, and watch for shoplifters (both of which could be easily automated, by the way)? And that sounds like a reasonable job environment to you? Don’t worry about AI taking your job, you can always get a minimum wage job guarding the rich guy’s stuff, at least until they perfect the Slaughterbots to replace you. Nice career, you should get those $120k student loans for your software development degree paid off in no time.

And they’ll use the pizza vending machine, if they want a pizza, or any other fast food, because they’ll ALL be fully automated. The building itself will be the vending machine. Autonomous trucks will be loaded by robots at a robotic warehouse, driven to the locations and unloaded by robots, then cooked and served by robots. The entire process from end to end can be done without a single human touching it, with the technology they have RIGHT NOW.

It’s only a matter of time before it’s perfected and launched. Dismissing an obvious societal trend because it is inconvenient is a very American trait, and it has gotten us to where we are now. How about we start seeing the actual future that is looming in front of us, and stop pretending it’s not there? AI is coming, and the manner in which businesses are already deploying it is already losing jobs, just in anticipation of losing even more jobs.

Replacing as many human-powered the is the express purpose of AI by nearly every corporate entity. Stop pretending that it isn’t.

Of course industrial robots have always existed, but technology is much better now, and we have AI to power them now. These aren’t your grandpappy’s robots.

The combination of automation and AI is going to lead to the elimination of entire human powered industries. The technology currently exists to automate EVERY fast food outlet in the country, and every one of those companies already has a system ready to roll out. The only reason they haven’t is because nobody wants to deal with the backlash when it happens. But once it does, the rest are going to follow, quickly. A lot of these jobs are first jobs, second household incomes, retirement supplements, etc. The loss of those jobs will be felt deeply.

How many people are supplementing their income with driving a ride share? How many older workers are doing that after losing their jobs? Both Uber and Lyft make it very clear on their website that they intend to replace their ENTIRE fleets with autonomous vehicles, which are nothing more than AI powered robots. These are people who aren’t on the unemployment rolls because they have managed to scrape together driving to work. Without this, they go right back to being on the unemployment rolls.

I just saw a report on autonomous trucks, predicting 170,000 on the roads with a few years. That’s 170,000 lost truck driving jobs. What are those professional drivers going to pivot to?

AI/ Automation won’t replace every job, but we will eventually have to live with a permanent unemployment rate over 50%, and if they could figure out to replace EVERY job, they would, enthusiastically.

The overall problem with humanity is that we think we’re as smart as humans can be, so we are at the pinnacle of human achievement.

I just saw a video about the first synthesizer. It was built in 1897, and it took up the basement of a building the size of an entire city block. They had the technology to do it, but not to do it well. But they didn’t see it that way. To them, it was the pinnacle of technology. But 75 years later, and we can put that same instrument in a suitcase.

Data Centers may be something that will be useful in the future, but our tech isn’t good enough yet. Right now it takes an enormous building, and mind-boggling amounts of resources, and does incredible damage to the environment, as well as the damage to the economy and the job market.

It’s like realizing that you can talk with two tin cans and a string, and then running out and installing a giant international system of tin cans & string, instead of waiting for the tech to advance to a point where we can do it properly.

Maybe in 50 years, the tech, regulations, and policy will be caught up to the ambition, but right now, we aren’t ready for it at this level of technology.

Nobody has said that AI will replace everyone, except rhetorically. But it will replace MANY people, on an increasing basis, as each new iteration gets more powerful.

It won’t take long before we have a PERMANENT double digit unemployment rate, and the government will gaslight us all into accepting that as normal, even as it rises to the 50% or more.

100%. I paid for this space, and now you want to drop back into it, and make it difficult to use my tray table? Gimme $50.

Don’t bother me with facts, my mind’s made up!

I used to work for the largest record company in America at the time, and saw a LOT of concerts of all kinds. My favorites:

• Ella Fitzgerald with the Count Basie Orchestra: Two genuine legends, at the top of their game.

• kd lang: A private performance at a convention, and it was a PERFECT performance. It’s hard to describe what I mean, but I’ve never seen an audience react like that. A few weeks later, I saw her interviewed on 60 Minutes, and she mentioned that every now and then she does a perfect performance, and I knew she was thinking about that night.

• Debbie Harry/ Tom Tom Club: Tom Tom Club (Talking Heads without David Byrne) opened with a blistering set, and then backed up Debbie Harry, who also had her guitarist Chris Stein with her. Just an incredible show.

• Beethoven: Symphony #9: the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, with Thomas Hampson and Dawn Upshaw, at Carnegie Hall. Harnoncourt was one of my favorite conductors, very influential on my musical education, and seeing him conduct the greatest music ever composed was one of the most memorable musical moments of my life.

• Prince - Saw him twice, and he was unbelievable both times. Frankly, I don’t think those performances were anything special for him, I think he was just that good, all the time.

• Lindsey Buckingham - Private performance in a conference room with about 20 people. He played acoustic guitar, and sang three Fleetwood Mac songs. He sings so intensely, he turns bright red, and he looks like his head will explode. I met him after, and got a photo with him that I still have.

Wow, you pulled those out, impressive! I really mean it!

I’m a big Mark Twain fan, and all it proves is that our idols can be wrong, LOL. I’m dying on this hill.

Well, sure, I’d want to see the exact context of the use. It would be one thing if Twain was using it that way himself, it would be another if he was putting it into a character’s mouth, which would add a slight nuance.

A modern example would be the guy in Parks & Rec who used “Lit’rally” often, and with emphasis, in situations that were clearly NOT Literal. I wouldn’t assume that the writer endorses the concept.

Then why didn’t he say that? It sounds to me like he’s surrendered, and is giving them an excuse to not release them.

That’s exactly how they’d read that. They’re already saying that the American people have moved on, and they don’t feel like releasing the rest. Nobody cares anyway. When they hear our side saying it, it only proves them right.

Because theyve quarantined the truly monstrous, incriminating stuff, and haven’t released it yet, obviously.

Are you really that dumb? Or are you MAGA? Or both?

We gotta stick together against the Vocabulary Philistines.

That’s not what I was doing. I was illustrating that this controversy about Literally is particularly IRONIC, another grammar word that is often used incorrectly.

And you didn’t understand that, so your assignment for tomorrow is a 1000 word essay on whether your misunderstanding of my post constitutes irony itself, or if it is another example of false irony, such as the Alanis Morissette song.