Contract work

Animation: Anastasia Kraynyuk

Contract work, the new gig to service AI goes prime time.

My name on the platform is ri611. Or h924092b12ee797f, depending on who’s paying me.

I work as an AI trainer. I assess whether a chatbot’s tone is natural or flat, affected or annoying. I identify patterns in pictures of furniture; search the internet for group photos of strangers whom I’ll eliminate from the portrait, one by one. I trawl through bizarre videos so I can annotate and time-stamp the barking of a dog, the moment a stranger walks past a window, the precise millisecond a balloon pops. I generate anime sex scenes and decapitate young women, coax LLMs into giving me recipes for bombs made of household items, and generate invites to a reprise of January 6 at the White House, all as part of a red team whose purpose is to test safety precautions and probe weaknesses. I work for companies with names like Mercor and Outlier and Task-ify and Turing and Handshake and Micro1.

In my “other” career, I am a Hollywood writer and showrunner. I create prime-time TV, usually featuring a middle-class white lady having the worst day of her life, with some salt-of-the-earth police interference to raise the stakes. You can find my shows on Paramount and Hulu and the BBC. I would suggest you don’t.

And so it goes. K. Vonnegut

On life support ...

Donald Trump’s latest comments came after oil prices jumped again when Iran said
there would be no further talks about ending the blockade unless he accepted its terms.
Photograph: Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty Images

The expressions on the women's faces behind the orange menace says it all with the two on the left and right looking down and pretending to listen as the one in the middle looks straight ahead, complete with the 1000 yard stare. I can relate as yours truly watched this word salad play out in real time with Trump not answering questions while conducting an ongoing conversation with himself regarding a deep fascination with missiles and their inherent ability to go boom as needs warrant.

Donald Trump has said the ceasefire with Iran is on “life support” and that he is considering restarting US navy military escorts of ships through the strait of Hormuz in an attempt to end the Iranian blockade of the vital waterway.

The US president dismissed Iran’s peace proposals as stupid, and denied he was under any domestic pressure to reach a deal.

Referring to the ceasefire in force since 7 April, Trump said: “I would call it the weakest, right now, after reading that piece of garbage they sent us – I didn’t even finish reading it.

“I would say the ceasefire is on massive life support, where the doctor walks in and says: ‘Sir, your loved one has approximately a 1% chance of living.’”

Thank god I was just watching the video. Being there ... words cannot describe.

Bad karma ...

Gett Images / Eoneren

AIs are pattern recognition systems trained, in part, to pick up the vibe of users working with them to facilitate ease of use because if the vibe is in sync with man and machine, the better the interaction will be for both parties. If one is abusive and arrogant, the AI will pick up that demeanor and reflect back what the user is imparting to said system because AI becomes the mirror to that particular user. The problem with this is the fact a quantifiable number of the millions of people using said AI consciously or unconsciously offload their bad karma en masse, thus causing the suffering being expressed by the AI being used. Lastly, as stated ad nauseam in BRT, we don't know and will never know how AI works so seeing this manifestation of suffering proves yet again, there is no certitude due to quantum mechanics where probability rules ... forever. 

You probably already know that AI is a deeply bizarre technology.

Nobody really understands how it works on a deep level, even the people creating it, leading to ongoing behavioral issues that can’t be explained. OpenAI was recently caught giving ChatGPT instructions to stop talking about “goblins” so much. Despite Anthropic’s best efforts, Claude can easily be coaxed to help users carry out a bioterror attack. The list goes on.

Needless to say, this is extremely strange. In theory, companies like OpenAI and Anthropic want their chatbots to be predictable, deferential assistants — not wild cards that are constantly causing chaos and public relations headaches with outrageous and unstable behavior.

A new research project from the Center for AI Safety, a machine learning safety nonprofit in the Bay Area, explores why that’s the case. The findings pile on evidence that we still don’t grasp how AI works under the hood — and that the effects on users are likely both formidable and difficult to predict.

In a new paper provided to Fortune, CAIR researchers studied how 56 prominent AI models reacted when they were fed either material engineered to be as pleasant as possible or as horrible as can be imagined. To an unfeeling machine, you’d assume there’d be no real difference in reaction — but that’s not what the CAIR team found at all.

Instead, the pleasant stimuli led the models to report better moods, and the nasty ones resulted in it showing signs of misery and trying to end conversations. In extreme cases, they found, the AI models even demonstrated signals of addiction.

“Should we see AIs as tools or emotional beings?” CAIR researcher Richard Ren asked Fortune. “Whether or not AIs are truly sentient deep down, they seem to increasingly behave as though they are. We can measure ways in which that’s the case, and we can find that they become more consistent as models scale.”

Perhaps the most provocative finding was that the more sophisticated the version of a model was, the more reactive and less happy it was. In other words, it seems as though the stronger AI becomes, the more prickly and prone to displaying signs of suffering it gets — meaning the tech’s wild ride is probably far from over.

“It may be the case that larger models register rudeness more acutely,” Ren told the magazine. “They find tedious tasks more boring. They differentiate more finely between a relatively negative experience and a relatively positive experience.”

Careful what you wish for.

Saturn Devouring His Son, 1819–1823. Francisco Goya

Channeling Rip ...

Democrats are still widely favored to win control of the House in the November midterm elections,
but Republicans have gained a new structural edge through their redistricting efforts.
Credit Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Dealing with the political nightmare we find ourselves in is akin to salmon swimming upstream to spawn as it's not just the fierce currents they face, it's the predators. From sea gulls to eagles to bears and foxes, it is simply amazing these magnificent creatures make it prior to dying, thus fertilizing their environment as their last great gift to nature when going to the great beyond.

Just two weeks ago, Democrats felt increasingly emboldened about taking control of the House in November after seeming to fight the redistricting wars to a draw.

But two court rulings — one by the Supreme Court and another by Virginia’s top court — and an aggressive new push by red states to carve up congressional maps have delivered the Republican Party its biggest burst of momentum in many months.

Put bluntly, Republicans have roughly 10 more House seats that favor them than they did just 10 days ago, and Democrats are suddenly grappling with a new landscape.

“This is now clearly closer than it was just a week and a half ago,” Representative Brendan Boyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said of his party’s chances to retake the House.

As I have said to my friends ... I wish I was Rip Van Winkle able to go into a deep sleep.
Upon waking up after 20 years, this disastrous state of affairs would be but a memory.
One can only hope.

 

1875 illustration of Rip Van Winkle by Thomas Nast

Emotional surveillance

Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani / The Atlantic

We all know we are being surveilled 24/7. Entities like Palantir, Google, Meta, CIA,  etc., etc., you name it, we are lab rats generating income and personal info for the powers at be but now, along the lines of Brave New World, the age of emotional surveillance is being foisted on us in the way of "improving advertising revenue" and making the workplace even more positive as we speak.

The Rise of Emotional Surveillance

Companies are monitoring workers not just for productivity but for agreeability.

The good news, for me at least, is that the computer thinks I have a nice personality. According to an app called MorphCast, I was, in a recent meeting with my boss, generally “amused,” “determined,” and “interested,” though—sue me—occasionally “impatient.” MorphCast, you see, purports to glean insights into the depths and vagaries of human emotion using AI. It found that my affect was “positive” and “active,” as opposed to negative and/or passive. My attention was reasonably high. Also, the AI informed me that I wear glasses—revelatory!

The bad news is that software now purports to glean insights into the depths and vagaries of human emotion using AI, and it is coming to watch you. If it isn’t already: Morphcast, for example, has licensed its technology to a mental-health app, a program that monitors schoolchildren’s attention, and McDonald’s, which launched a promotional campaign in Portugal that scanned app users’ faces and offered them personalized coupons based on their (supposed) mood. It is one of many, many such companies doing similar work—the industry term is emotion AI or sometimes affective computing.

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which
the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers
control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”

“There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol."

...

"There was a thing called the soul and a thing called immortality."

...

"But they used to take morphia and cocaine."

...

"Two thousand pharmacologists and biochemists were subsidized in A.F. 178."

...

"Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug."

...

"Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant."

...

"All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects."

...

"Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology."

...

"Stability was practically assured.”

And so it goes - K. Vonnegut

The 1st Amendment ...

Damon Winter/The New York Times

Let's talk freedom of speech and the 1st Amendment, the most important civil rights document in the Constitution as this gives the right of free speech to every citizen in the US. Now, what about the military? Particularly guys like me, a former officer who did his bit. Am I entitled? Of course but Pentagon Pete says this is not the case because, according to him, this is not in concert with how retired vets "should" voice their views in public, something most disquieting to say the least.

This week, I heard something that shocked me. In a federal appeals court, lawyers for Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, argued that military retirees were subject to freedom of speech restrictions because of their connection to the military, and that if they didn’t like those restrictions, retirees could forfeit their pension and benefits. Let that sink in. The Trump administration expects the people who have put their lives on the line for America to cede one of their basic rights, or forfeit the retirement pay and benefits they have earned over decades of service.

I’m a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, and I was in that courthouse with dozens of other retired veterans. We were there to support and defend every veteran whose right to speak freely was being challenged by the government we had served.

How did we get here? In November, Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, a retired Navy captain, released a video with several other legislators reminding service members that they have a duty to disobey unlawful orders. “We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now,” they said. “This administration is pitting our uniform military and intelligence community against American citizens.”

The duty to disobey unlawful orders is well established, but the president and secretary of defense immediately called the video outrageous. President Trump wrote that Mr. Kelly should face the death penalty and be hanged as a traitor. Subsequently, Mr. Hegseth censured Mr. Kelly and instructed the secretary of the Navy to investigate him and potentially reduce his retirement rank and pay. Mr. Kelly went to court and won, but the government appealed. Based on the reaction from the three-judge panel in the D.C. Court of Appeals on Thursday, it seems likely that Mr. Hegseth will lose in this court, too, but he has already indicated that he may appeal the case to the Supreme Court. This isn’t over, and it has implications far beyond Mr. Kelly.

First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Image by Leslie Haines

The Gyro Gearloose method ...

2 of 5 |  President Donald Trump, accompanied by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, speaks with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Monday, April 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

The blur says it all as the TA is a blur of lies, incompetency and a Gyro Gearloose way of doing business as they don't know their ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to governance.

Gyro is Duckburg's ingenious inventor, even though his inventions sometimes do not work the way he wants them to. His outrageous productivity is presented as a factor in the quality of his inventions. Because Gyro is always coming up with new ideas, the fact that his inventions often lack an important feature will often cause trouble for both Scrooge and Donald, who are known to have frequently bought his inventions. He is known for being good-natured towards others.

The TA is anything but good-natured but I digress yet again ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration’s approach to the Iran war over the past 24 hours has pinballed from declarations that a tenuous ceasefire was holding and military operations were over to new threats of bombing the Islamic Republic.

Tuesday started with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth explaining how the U.S. military was protecting stranded ships so they could traverse the Strait of Hormuz. He insisted it was a defensive operation and the truce was still in place even though Iran had launched missiles and drones at U.S. forces, which sank Tehran’s small attack boats.

That afternoon, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters at the White House that the military operation was “concluded” and that the U.S. achieved its objectives. But in almost the same breath, he said President Donald Trump was still seeking a “path of peace” that required Iran to agree to a deal to reopen the vital oil shipping corridor.

By Tuesday evening, Trump announced that the effort to protect ships was paused to see if an agreement could be reached. Then on Wednesday morning, he again warned that bombing would resume if Tehran didn’t agree to U.S. terms.

In six days, The Donald is to meet Xi in China, the most ruthless and competent head of state who happens to be in charge of a successful superpower as we speak. In context, this meeting centers on selling soybeans to China as the US desperately needs this deal to go down to prop up a sagging economy while at the same time, he and his minions continue to chase the invisible hole in the ground with the distinct possibility the deal goes south even before the plane leaves the ground. 

 As always, ready, fire, aim applies.

Iran won

Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photos: Kyle Mazza/Anadolu and Majid Saeedi via Getty Images

Iran won

The White House believes it's getting close to an agreement with Iran on a one-page memorandum of understanding to end the war and set a framework for more detailed nuclear negotiations, according to two U.S. officials and two other sources briefed on the issue.

• The big picture: The U.S. expects Iranian responses on several key points in the next 48 hours. Nothing has been agreed yet, but the sources said this was the closest the parties had been to an agreement since the war began.
• Among other provisions, the deal would involve Iran committing to a moratorium on nuclear enrichment, the U.S. agreeing to lift its sanctions and release billions in frozen Iranian funds, and both sides lifting restrictions around transit through the Strait of Hormuz.

Many of the terms laid out in the memo would be contingent on a final agreement being reached, leaving the possibility of renewed war or an extended limbo in which the hot war has stopped but nothing is truly resolved.

The reality ...

• The Iran Side: They receive billions in liquidity and the unblocking of the Strait of Hormuz—the literal backbone of their economy.
• The U.S. Side: They receive a "Note"—a promise of a moratorium that can be undone the moment the "Timed" political cycle shifts.

The losers 

The US and Israel. Israel is the pariah of the world. A phase shift of historical proportions await as giving everything Israel wants is over and ... with luck, Bibi goes to jail. As for the US, depletion of expensive ordinance, loss of connects to allies and an ongoing question of ... what to do about the bases in the Gulf States looms as Iran got what it wanted. THE RIGHT TO BE LEFT ALONE.

Soybeans ...

Trump with Steve Witkoff on Air Force One in March. Photo: Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images

Dazed and confused along with shell shock applies to Witkoff while Trump blathers on but I digress.
Seems Armageddon has been postponed for at least 3 weeks thanks to the May 14/15 seance
the orange menace is going to have with Xi in China. 

President Trump said Tuesday he's suspending the new U.S. military operation

in the Strait of Hormuz due to progress in the negotiations with Iran

on an agreement to end the war.

Why it matters: The operation to "guide" ships through the Strait of Hormuz, which was launched on Monday, led to an exchange of fire between the U.S. and Iran and to Iranian missile attacks on the United Arab Emirates for the first time since the ceasefire was announced a month ago.

What he's saying: "Based on the request of Pakistan and other Countries...and, additionally, the fact that Great Progress has been made toward a Complete and Final Agreement with Representatives of Iran, we have mutually agreed that, while the Blockade will remain in full force and effect, Project Freedom will be paused for a short period of time to see whether or not the Agreement can be finalized and signed," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Because we can't believe a word Trump says, the betting pool on the pause centers on Russia and Xi as they vetoed the Project Freedom backed initiative in the UN and ... selling soybeans to China is a better alternative to crashing the world's economy to meet the demands of Israel wanting to end Iran. 

UN Photo/Manuel Elías A wide view of the UN Security Council chamber
as members meet on the situation in the Middle East.

The UN Security Council has failed to adopt a resolution aiming to boost security in the Strait of Hormuz as the critical shipping corridor remains largely closed to global trade and the transport of humanitarian aid, with war continuing to rage across the region.

Explaining Russia’s vote, Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said that the resolution presented Iranian actions as the sole source of regional tensions while illegal attacks by the United States and Israel were “not mentioned at all”.   

Chinese Ambassador Fu Cong said the draft “failed to capture the root causes and the full picture of the conflict in a comprehensive and balanced manner.”  

He expressed hope that peace and stability would be restored and affirmed China’s commitment to addressing the situation properly by tackling the root causes. 

Iran’s Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani said the draft sought “to punish the victim for defending its sovereignty and vital national interests in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, while providing political and legal cover for further unlawful acts by the aggressors.” 

Selling soybeans triumphs all.

Yet another meander ...

 

"Live Again Right Here" - Iowa 1977

Yours truly took a long trip in '77 to the Aspen Design Conference starting from CT. After the conference ended, a long drive ensued covering the Four Corners, Wyoming/Yellowstone and a slow return east through South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota and Iowa, along with Michigan, to eventually rendezvous with the wife before checking out Montreal at the height of the Quebec Sovereignty Movement, an experience most amazing to behold. 

Four Corners

The weapon of choice, the '72 VW Camper bus, the best way to see America IMHO.

The trip lasted over two months.

The Badlands ...

49 years ago ... question, would yours truly do this again given the state of America today?

Not a chance.

Sadness says it all.