Recent content by Swammerdami

I want to emphasize the clause I've reddened. When I wrote "Like some other East Asian films it is ... too simple to suit my taste" I was thinking specifically of Tokyo Story. Pondering this after I posted, I consulted Wikipedia, which informed me that Feel free to label me a "philistine" on...

Aliens. Obnoxious sadistic aliens. In this testable hypothesis the sadistic aliens will have induced world-wide political dysfunction. You do the math.

As I mentioned before, Trump approvers are more likely to vote than disapprovers. :( BUT Rasmussen Report's daily surveys of likely voters. show Trump's approval is worst yet in 2025. DateApproval IndexStrongly ApproveStrongly DisapproveTotal ApproveTotal Disapprove...

The Diplomat Season 1 got rave reviews. It was a fun political thriller. I posted about it 2½ years ago. (2½ years ago!!! I guess time flies when you're having fun.) I think I was the only one to comment on Season 2: Season 3 is now available. (The actors playing Josh Lyman and C.J...

Exactly how do LLM's extract and assign weights to "human" commentary? The 'Net is full of idiocies; does this give LLMs idiotic "ideas"? I write "human" commentary in quotes because I suppose there will be wars, one AI team versus another, with one AI trying to flood the other with phony...

Is Santa Monica going to be okay?

Nothing new to report but This article from Reuters provides an eye-opening graph (shown below) which highlights an effect of the Triffin Dilemma. Brief history review: By the 1930's the U.S. Dollar was so respected that people all around the world were selling their gold to the U.S. Treasury...

My personal opinion is worthless. I can only report what I hear via the 'Net. Many pundits agree that AI-related stocks are in a bubble, but some advocate buying anyway! Bubbles can grow for quite a while before popping. Some think AI will radically transform almost everything. Some think AI...

I'm glad that somebody gets what I am talking about. It fascinates me that evolution has given me (and millions of others) a fascination with the female form, elevating it perhaps to the zenith of visual beauty. The vast majority of women I glimpse only for a few seconds and hear not at all...

Both the migrations you mention were North-to-South rather than West-to-East. approaching via the large plains of Northern Europe, rather than through the mountainous bottleneck near Serbia. (Of course Napoleon and Hitler also approached from the North, but traveling W-to-E rather than N-to-S.)

I just watched How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (2024). It "was the highest worldwide grossing Thai-language film of all time, and broke box office records in several countries across Asia. It received praise from critics for its direction, screenplay, cast performances, music, and heavy...

No reaction to my post but Angry when I provide a source? Whatevs.

I read it at https://www.alternet.org/trump-black-americans/ which I read without subscription by using the Disable-Javascript trick. Googling, e.g. "Brent Bozell Murphy", yields lots of hits, e.g. https://www.commondreams.org/news/chris-murphy-brent-bozell Most of Altenet's articles are copied...

Companies buying computers and related hardware to bet on the future of AI aren't making money yet, but the companies supplying the hardware are reeling in cash. But are their stock prices commensurate with their sales? Here are the Price-to-Sales ratios of some major U.S. companies. (Vertiv...