Unchecked ...

Illustration by Paul Spella. Source: Douglas Sacha / Getty.

The supremes have been doing it for years, creating a de facto king instead of a president, something the Founding Fathers understood better than most as Noblesse Oblige ruled in Europe without restriction. Now we have a problem as the worst SC in history has flat backed to the extreme in the creation of something truly frightening to behold, a king in the making and ... we did it to ourselves.

In the normal course of history, the president of the United States is a figure who inspires optimism in the American people. The 47th president prefers to stir feelings of fear, vulnerability, hopelessness, and political inevitability—the sense that he, and only he, can rescue the nation from looming peril. Since his second inauguration, Donald Trump has seized authoritarian control over the federal government and demanded the obedience of the other powerful institutions of American society—universities, law firms, media companies. The question weighing heavily on the minds of many Americans is whether Trump will subvert next year’s midterm elections or the 2028 presidential election to extend his reign.

With his every word and deed, Trump has given Americans reason to believe that he will seek a third term, in defiance of the Constitution. It seems abundantly clear that he will hold on to the office at any cost, including America’s ruin.

The Founders of our nation foresaw a figure like Trump, a demagogue who would ascend to the presidency and refuse to relinquish power to a successor chosen by the American people in a free and fair election. Writing to James Madison from Paris in 1787, Thomas Jefferson warned that such an incumbent, if narrowly defeated, would “pretend false votes, foul play, hold possession of the reins of government.” Were that moment ever to come, the Founders believed, it would mark the demise of the nation that they had conceived, bringing to a calamitous end the greatest experiment in self-government ever attempted by man.

1816 portrait

Why Madison mattered ...

During the first Congress, Madison took the lead in advocating for several constitutional amendments to the Bill of Rights.[103] His primary goals were to fulfill his 1789 campaign pledge and to prevent the calling of a second constitutional convention, but he also hoped to safeguard the rights and liberties of the people against broad actions of Congress and individual states. He believed that the enumeration of specific rights would fix those rights in the public mind and encourage judges to protect them.[104][105] After studying more than two hundred amendments that had been proposed at the state ratifying conventions,[106] Madison introduced the Bill of Rights on June 8, 1789. His amendments contained numerous restrictions on the federal government and would protect, among other things, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the right to peaceful assembly.[107] While most of his proposed amendments were drawn from the ratifying conventions, Madison was largely responsible for proposals to guarantee freedom of the press, protect property from government seizure, and ensure jury trials.[106] He also proposed an amendment to prevent states from abridging "equal rights of conscience, or freedom of the press, or the trial by jury in criminal cases".[108]

To prevent a permanent standing federal army, Madison proposed the Second Amendment, which gave state-regulated militia groups and private citizens, the "right to bear arms". Madison and the Republicans desired a free government to be established by the consent of the governed, rather than by national military force.[109]

This all started with Nixon, the Unitary Presidency and Vietnam, a "war" based on a lie. 

Richard Nixon is associated with the unitary executive theory through his actions that pushed the boundaries of presidential power, which scholars would later label as having "unitary" characteristics. While Nixon's administration began with an initial plan to let cabinet members have more independence, his actions, particularly regarding the Watergate scandal and his attempts to cover it up, demonstrated a strong belief in and use of presidential control over the executive branch.

Official Portrait 1972

It's pucker time ...

The NVIDIA stock chart. Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images

It's pucker time, you know, the feeling you gotta tighten up or disaster ensues. This is where we are at regarding Nvidia, AI and all the companies invested to the moon with Nvidia,
something discussed in a "wonderful" BRT blurb titled The Tell.

As the price of almost everything has increased, and American workers’ wages have all but stalled, politicians like President Donald Trump have tried to ease our minds by telling us that the economy is “doing great” and that the stock market is booming. “Record high, record high, record high,” Trump said at an event earlier this month in Florida.

The world’s most important company, Nvidia, is driving the entire growth of the US stock market to an extent that no single company has in recent memory.

If it falters, there’s a fear it will take the entire US economy down with it — and there are signs that it might.

The shock waves of Nvidia falling would be devastating and far-reaching — from tech startups and cloud computing to construction, land development, and steel — because of the AI supply chain.

Still, despite what has been a good year for the stock market, it’s hard to find a day in which a podcaster, influencer, or economist isn’t warning that the AI boom that’s powering the economy could be a bubble — one that is about to burst.

The company that’s driving Wall Street’s positive movement is Nvidia, the most valuable company on the planet. And that’s because the recent rash of data centers popping up across the country are filled with Nvidia’s graphic processing units, or chips.

As per The Tell ...

While the report and guidance were strong, the one red flag with Nvidia's report was that the company continues to see its accounts receivable balloon. During the quarter, this metric climbed 89% year over year to $33.4 billion, outpacing its sales growth. Accounts receivable is how much money is owed to the company for products that have been shipped. Continued big jumps in this metric can be a sign of channel stuffing or collection problems. Given that Nvidia has started to make investments in its customers, like OpenAI and Anthropic, this makes it even more notable, as the chipmaker is essentially providing the cash these companies need to help buy its chips. This type of circular financing likely isn't sustainable over the long run.

AKA Stuffing the Channel ...

Channel stuffing is the practice of flooding a distribution channel with excess inventory to artificially inflate sales figures, often done to meet short-term sales quotas or inflate performance. This can lead to negative consequences like high return rates, bloated inventory, fluctuating demand, and reduced profits. It is a fraudulent accounting practice that can result in significant legal trouble for companies, notes KPMG International and MoloLamken.. 

The underlying issue no one talks about is the notion of AI hallucinating as virgin content for AI no longer exists so continued scaling of ever larger AI models necessitates the tech bros to enlist their AI's to create synthetic experiences, a process akin to inbreeding along the lines of the royals and we all know where that leads, correct?

And so it goes. K. Vonnegut

Natural Immunity ...

Ralph Abraham on Wednesday, June 6, 2018. Credit: Getty | Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

You can't fix stupid, rev XX. The brain hurts when thinking about RFK Jr's approach to medicine as his move back to the dark ages regarding health continues unabated with his selection of the new CDC head believing in natural immunity over vaccines.

To whit.

RFK Jr.’s new CDC deputy director prefers “natural immunity” over vaccines

Ralph Abraham is “dangerous,” but somehow not the worst among those considered.

Under ardent anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has named Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham as its new principal deputy director—a choice that was immediately called “dangerous” and “irresponsible,” yet not as bad as it could have been, by experts.

Physician Jeremy Faust revealed the appointment in his newsletter Inside Medicine yesterday, which was subsequently confirmed by journalists. Faust noted that a CDC source told him, “I heard way worse names floated,” and although Abraham’s views are “probably pretty terrible,” he at least has had relevant experience running a public health system, unlike other current leaders of the agency.

But Abraham hasn’t exactly been running a health system the way most public health experts would recommend. Under Abraham’s leadership, the Louisiana health department waited months to inform residents about a deadly whooping cough (pertussis) outbreak. He also has a clear record of anti-vaccine views. Earlier this year, he told a Louisiana news outlet he doesn’t recommend COVID-19 vaccines because “I prefer natural immunity.” In February, he ordered the health department to stop promoting mass vaccinations, including flu shots, and barred staff from running seasonal vaccine campaigns.

It's the mushroom theory of business.

Keep them in the dark & feed them bullshit as needs warrant.

Willy Stöwer - Magazine Die Gartenlaube, en:Die Gartenlaube and de:Die Gartenlaube

Titanic Sinking, engraving by Willy Stöwer.

Titanic sinking.

Mushroom management can also occur during the handling of one-off, individual situations. When the RMS Titanic hit an iceberg, only a few members of the crew were aware that the ship was going to sink. Most of the crewmen were not informed about the seriousness of the situation by the captain, which resulted in chaos and disorganisation. The captain attempted to act on his own, without incorporating the officers into his decisions.[9]

And they didn't have enough life boats.

The word assume ...

U.S. Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) Market

The word assume applies as predicting the future's a fool's game due to quantum and the two laws of thermodynamics. There is no certitude yet this report assumes the market will increase nearly 10 fold within the space of 9 years as BAU (Business as Usual) applies. 

The United States Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) Market is expected to reach US$ 136.07 billion by 2033 from US$ 19.03 billion in 2024, with a CAGR of 24.43% from 2025 to 2033

The growing demand for gaming, artificial intelligence, and data-intensive applications, as well as the expansion of cloud computing, machine learning, cryptocurrency mining, high-performance computing, and improvements in 3D visualization, as well as consumer preferences for immersive digital and multimedia experiences, are driving the growth of the GPU market in the United States.

Applications such as data analytics, 3D modeling, scientific simulations, machine learning, and artificial intelligence depend on them. GPUs are perfect for high-performance computing because they can process several jobs at once, unlike CPUs, which handle tasks sequentially. GPUs are essential in a variety of sectors, including gaming and entertainment, healthcare, finance, and autonomous cars, because to their adaptability, efficiency, and speed.

High-performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence (AI), and gaming are the three industries driving the graphics processing unit (GPU) market in the United States. Advanced GPUs are required by the rapidly expanding gaming industry for esport, virtual reality, and immersive experiences. Demand is further accelerated by the use of AI and machine learning in the fields of healthcare, finance, and autonomous cars because GPUs are excellent at performing complex algorithms in parallel.

In order to manage enormous workloads, growing cloud computing and data centers depend on GPU-powered infrastructure. Growth is also fueled by applications in scientific research, media, and 3D rendering. Performance and efficiency are improved by ongoing innovation in GPU architectures, which makes them indispensable in a variety of industries and propels steady market growth.

Notice, there is no analysis about the inevitable costs of said tech beginning with the eating the world scenario regarding the intense resource requirements to drive said systems as tech companies are contemplating buying nuclear reactors to power the tech in question. Another issue not discussed is maintenance as GPU life spans are 2-3 years at best so the data centers in question must be constantly updated in order for the AIs to function and lastly, we haven't even discussed the woeful power grid situation or climate change as CC impacts the making of stuff in ways boggling the mind. 

In essence, the word assume is the most dangerous word in any language as it is truly the Ass of You & Me. :)

Factoid, systems hallucinate as LLMs have run out of content to crunch so AI companies are asking the AI's to create artificial experiences, a process akin to the in-breading of the royals with Charles II of Spain as poster child. 

Charles II of Spain Portrait by Juan Carreño de Miranda, c. 1685

0.02

RM Pix - Midtown NYC

RM Pix from above, Nano Banana 0.02

 Accurate to a "T" Any questions?

3 more ...

Original pix

45 degree rotation in 3D NB

45 degree rotation in 3D with cobalt blue ceiling NB

NB did it right save for the grey heating duct connected to the front wall. I'll take it anyway. :)

470 & counting ...

We have three more years of this crap. You know, The Donald's revenge porn jihad against perceived enemies daring to question his intelligence, competency and ethics as this once great nation continues to suffer under an administration like no other since the Founding Fathers got together in 1789 to craft the basics in creating a country imperfect to the max but with intent opposite to what we are facing regarding the machinations of Trumpism in the year of our lord 2025.

Trump’s campaign of retribution:

At least 470 targets and counting

Reuters documented at least 470 targets of retribution under Trump’s leadership – from federal employees and prosecutors to universities and media outlets. The list illuminates the sweeping effort by the president and his administration to punish dissent and reshape the government.

In his second term, Donald Trump has turned a campaign pledge to punish political opponents into a guiding principle of governance.

What began as a provocative rallying cry in March 2023 – “I am your retribution” – has hardened into a sweeping campaign of retaliation against perceived enemies, reshaping federal policy, staffing and law enforcement.

A tally by Reuters reveals the scale: At least 470 people, organizations and institutions have been targeted for retribution since Trump took office – an average of more than one a day. Some were singled out for punishment; others swept up in broader purges of perceived enemies. The count excludes foreign individuals, institutions and governments, as well as federal employees dismissed as part of force reductions.

It’s a campaign led from the top: Trump’s White House has issued at least 36 orders, decrees and directives, targeting at least 100 individuals and entities with punitive actions, according to the Reuters analysis.

Trump openly campaigned on a platform of revenge in his latest run for the presidency, promising to punish enemies of his Make America Great Again movement. "For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution," he said in a March 2023 speech. Weeks later, while campaigning in Texas, he repeated the theme. “I am your justice,” he said.

Today, the White House disputes the idea that the administration is out for revenge. It describes recent investigations and indictments of political adversaries as valid course corrections on policy, necessary probes of wrongdoing and legitimate policy initiatives.

“This entire article is based on the flawed premise that enforcing an electoral mandate is somehow ‘retribution.’ It’s not,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said. There is no place in government for civil servants or public officials “who actively seek to undermine the agenda that the American people elected the president to enact,” she added. Trump is abiding by campaign promises to restore a justice system that was “weaponized” by the Biden administration, Jackson said, and “ensure taxpayer funding is not going to partisan causes.”

Read the amazing Reuters piece. You will learn a lot, I know I have. 

Dada ... What we need now :)

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917; photograph by Alfred Stieglitz

DADA, a wry and smart way to deal with the absurdity of Trumpism ...

Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Epoch of Weimar Beer-Belly Culture in Germany, 1919, collage of pasted papers, 90×144 cm, Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Ready Made applies. :)

Happy T Day :)

Happy T Day :)

Pix ...

Of night & water

Winter

Pickup game

Flight ...

Full Moon

Estuary

Falling water ...

Just Bugs :)

Insects never disappoint. From honey and bumble bees to orange beetles living only on milkweed,
the relentless progression of life never ceases to amaze.

H. Moon 25

 

First super moon of the year. Hellacious wind, cold temps and occasional whitecaps,

complete with one guy residing under the lights. :)

“It’s preposterous.”

“Our laws are clear,” Senator Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain and astronaut, said in a video.
“You can refuse illegal orders.”Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Without merit ...

Pentagon Opens Inquiry Into Senator Mark Kelly Over What Hegseth Calls ‘Seditious’ Video

The defense secretary called the senator’s remarks urging troops not to follow illegal orders
“despicable, reckless, and false.”

The highly unusual announcement is the latest in a series of moves by the Trump administration to seek retribution against President Trump’s perceived political enemies.

Instead of employing the Justice Department as his means for punishment, this time the Trump administration seems to be turning to the Pentagon and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Senator Kelly, a retired Navy captain and astronaut, appeared in the video with five other Democratic lawmakers who served in the military or the intelligence community.

“Our laws are clear,” he said. “You can refuse illegal orders.” The other lawmakers repeated a similar message.

The lawmakers did not refer to a particular order that they viewed as illegal. But Mr. Kelly and others in the video earlier raised concerns about the fate of U.S. troops involved in the 21 strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

“What does this mean for their future if they find out later that they did this without legal justification?” he asked in an interview with NBC. “It puts them in legal jeopardy at some point.”

The brief video drew the ire of Mr. Trump, who called last week for the lawmakers to be punished and suggested that they be executed. “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” Mr. Trump wrote on his social media site. He shared another person’s post that said: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an online post on Monday that the video was “despicable, reckless, and false,” and he asserted that the lawmakers, whom he disparaged as the “Seditious Six,” were encouraging troops to “ignore the orders of their Commanders.”

“Their foolish screed sows doubt and confusion — which only puts our warriors in danger,” he wrote.

In the wake of Mr. Trump’s accusations, all six of the lawmakers said that they had been subjected to death threats.

“If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work,” Mr. Kelly said on Monday in a statement. “I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.”

As part of their training, troops are told that they should not follow orders that are illegal or immoral, such as the intentional targeting of unarmed civilians.

Charlie Swift, a lawyer and a retired lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy, said that in his view the  lawmakers in the video made a “true statement of the law” when they said troops should refuse illegal orders.

Mr. Kelly’s statements are also probably protected by the speech and debate clause that protects members of Congress from prosecution, Mr. Swift said.

Mr. Hegseth’s threat to recall and punish Mr. Kelly for speech made long after he retired is without precedent, Mr. Swift said. Retired officers are typically recalled for crimes committed only while they were serving on active duty, he noted.

Mr. Hegseth dismissed that distinction, contending that Mr. Kelly’s remarks were “addressed directly to all troops while explicitly using his rank and service affiliation — lending the appearance of authority to his words.”

Mr. Hegseth’s threat came on the same day that a federal judge tossed out separate criminal charges against the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, saying Mr. Trump’s appointment of the prosecutor was invalid.

Some military experts maintained that it was unlikely that Mr. Hegseth would be able to prosecute Mr. Kelly. “I have no idea what they’d court-martial him for,” said Eliot A. Cohen, a military historian who worked for President George W. Bush. “It’s preposterous.”

Yes it is.

The Tell

Image source: Getty Images

A poker tell is any physical, verbal, or behavioral cue that a player gives away, often unconsciously, which hints at the strength of their hand or their intended actions. Tells can be obvious or subtle, and players might try to fake them to deceive opponents, making it a skill for experienced players to distinguish real from false signals. Examples include changes in body language like posture or eye contact, the way a player handles their chips, or even the time it takes them to act. 

Now, let's see how this applies to Nvidia, the poster child of AI, the tech powering AI 24/7.

While the report and guidance were strong, the one red flag with Nvidia's report was that the company continues to see its accounts receivable balloon. During the quarter, this metric climbed 89% year over year to $33.4 billion, outpacing its sales growth. Accounts receivable is how much money is owed to the company for products that have been shipped. Continued big jumps in this metric can be a sign of channel stuffing or collection problems. Given that Nvidia has started to make investments in its customers, like OpenAI and Anthropic, this makes it even more notable, as the chipmaker is essentially providing the cash these companies need to help buy its chips. This type of circular financing likely isn't sustainable over the long run.

Channeling Enron?

In reality, when you dig into the details, Enron’s downfall is the predictable mixture of human greed, poorly structured incentives, and lack of sanity checks when everyone has their fingers in the pie. 

You might be surprised to learn that most of Enron’s accounting tactics were not technically illegal at the time – they were actually publicly celebrated for being financial innovations. Shareholders, employees, investment bankers, and accountants all benefited from the situation and enabled Enron for years. They only stopped when it became untenable. This is a big part of the question “Why did Enron fail?”

The most important takeaway from The Smartest Guys in the Room is to understand the key enabling conditions for Enron’s deception. When multiple conditions mutually reinforce each other and create positive feedback loops, a massively outsized result – a lollapalooza – can happen.

These are also the warning signs you can use to detect unstable situations and desist from bad behavior.

1. Accounting practices that disguised the fundamentals

The root of the Enron collapse has to be the accounting tactics that enabled deception. They let Enron book more revenue than they actually earned; keep losses and debt off balance sheets. If these were disallowed, the money-losing state of Enron would have been apparent far sooner.

Mark-to-market accounting allowed booking the total value of a deal immediately, rather than spaced out over time.

Complicated SPE deals allowed Enron to borrow money while keeping it off their balance sheet

One-time asset sales were booked as recurring revenue

Deals that were actually dead were fictitiously kept alive to avoid a writedown that quarter

All this structure became so convoluted that no one totaled up the big picture. No one pieced together the dependencies between Enron’s deals, and how the dominoes would fall if Enron’s stock price fell.

Lesson: Resist the temptation of clever accounting tricks that mislead on fundamentals, even if they’re technically legal. You may eventually deceive even yourself on the true fundamental strength of the situation. 

AKA Stuffing the Channel ...

Channel stuffing is the practice of flooding a distribution channel with excess inventory to artificially inflate sales figures, often done to meet short-term sales quotas or inflate performance. This can lead to negative consequences like high return rates, bloated inventory, fluctuating demand, and reduced profits. It is a fraudulent accounting practice that can result in significant legal trouble for companies, notes KPMG International and MoloLamken. 

Question, what does this really mean for AI. No one knows, do one? - Fats Waller

Revenge porn ...

A federal judge dismissed criminal charges against the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and New York’s attorney general, Letitia James.Monica Jorge for The New York Times; James Estrin/The New York Times

Well, the court cases against Comey and James collapsed due to the fact the attorney assigned to both cases lacked the qualifications to pursue the cases in question as this was revenge porn perpetrated by
 The Donald plain and simple.

To whit.

A federal judge on Monday tossed out separate criminal charges against the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, saying the loyalist prosecutor installed by President Trump to bring the cases was put into her job unlawfully.

The twin rulings, by Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, were the most significant setback yet to the president’s efforts to force the criminal justice system to punish his perceived foes. The case dismissals also served as a rebuke to Attorney General Pam Bondi, who had rushed to carry out Mr. Trump’s orders to appoint the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Judge Currie’s orders center on Mr. Trump’s unorthodox decision to appoint Ms. Halligan to her prosecutorial position in an interim capacity, replacing his previous pick, who was also serving in a temporary role. Within days after assuming her new post, Ms. Halligan rejected the advice of the career prosecutors in her new office and moved single-handedly to indict both Mr. Comey and Ms. James, two of the president’s most reviled targets.

Ms. James’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said the court ruling showed Mr. Trump “went to extreme measures to substitute one of his allies to bring these baseless charges after career prosecutors refused. This case was not about justice or the law; it was about targeting Attorney General James for what she stood for and who she challenged.”

In late September, he rushed to oust Ms. Halligan’s predecessor, Erik S. Siebert, the career U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia who had expressed concern that there was not sufficient evidence to indict Mr. Comey and Ms. James. The president then replaced Mr. Siebert with Ms. Halligan who had no previous experience as a prosecutor.

Any questions?