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  While there is much to celebrate, it's import to acknowledge that Trump still wields the veto robo-pen and that Democrats don't have enough votes alone to override. On the other hand, the got enough of a margin in the senate that Fetterman doesn't matter and they can control judicial nominations once the new senate is seated. Keep an eye out for an Alito or Thomas resignation between now and then. Trump will try to govern through executive orders and emergency orders. While those will be challenged, I suspect his SCOTUS will allow it.

  Politics ain’t beanbag. ~Finley Peter Dunne

Listened to a podcast interview with Tilly Norwood yesterday morning. Tilly is an AI creation, "an awareness project. A piece of art." Tilly is a manufactured illusion meant to approximate a human female. While I could only hear her voice, I certainly found her to carry the semblance of authenticity. Throughout the podcast, I kept thinking of Elizabeth Holmes. With her Steve Jobs black turtleneck, her artificially modulated baritone voice, her wide unblinking eyes and her head-nodding to signal sincerity, Holmes was a self-made piece of art, a human female meant to approximate a manufactured illusion of authenticity. Separating reality from fiction is getting harder and harder. https://www.tillynorwood.com/?fbclid=IwY2xjawVVQA9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBwZG9mAXNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR-7MZlsE6zgeZZ-6Zu6tmwGsu2JVD0vh8eJ8n1dTSEVnum8JRatulFvMqJFIQ_aem_h1sReU-E3C5r14kBcDs57Q

There’s a lot of brouhaha surrounding the candidate Dan J. Sullivan. There are a couple of facts that need to be upfront in any rational discussion: 1. Even if the Democrats recruited Dan J. Sullivan because his name is similar to the incumbent Republican Senator, that’s not illegal. 2. The word “incumbent” appears on the ballot next to Dan S. Sullivan’s name, so there’s no reason to be uncertain which Dan Sullivant is which. 3. Alaska has ranked choice voting. Anyone who is genuinely confused can rank one Sullivan as their first choice and the other as their second choice. If none of the candidates gets more than 50% of the vote, the weakest candidate is eliminated and the second-choice votes on those ballots are redistributed to the remaining candidates. The process continues until someone has a majority. I’ll bet most Republicans know which Sullivan to rank first, so the few who are confused and illiterate but want the incumbent to win can just rank the Sullivans 1 and 2, and if the...

All God’s critters got viruses. Not just animals and plants, but fungi and bacteria. The viruses that infect and kill bacteria are called bacteriophages (or phages, for short).   For decades, the USSR developed and used natural bacteriophages to treat bacterial infections like cholera. Even after the discovery of antibiotics, the Soviet Union continued the clinical use of bacteriophages. Now, a US company has used AI to engineer a bacteriophage to treat infections: “ Rather than searching for a virus that could kill the patient's bacteria, Omnii-1 redesigned part of a virus so it could better recognize and attack the specific bacterial strain causing the infection. The company says the AI-driven process could eventually take just days.” An increasing number of bacterial pathogens have acquired resistance to common antibiotics, and in some cases, to all available antibiotics. So, bacteriophage therapy represents a potential new tool in the bacterial arms race. How effective is it? “...

What we seem to be getting back to is the nineteenth century. Then politics tended to be centered on the fight between liberals (broadly speaking), and illiberals or anti-liberals. That struggle, and the various victories and defeats of each side, defined the history of many nations throughout that era. We thought for a while that we’d moved beyond that. We were wrong.   ~William Kristol