Consistently ranked as one of the top ten Hospitals in America, this week, Massachusetts General Hospital was lucky enough to be visited by a crack team of hacker-jackers to improve the efficiency of the hospital. And, boy did they!! Pull up a chair and throw a log on the campfire, boys and girls. You’ll be amazed at how much money they saved!
And by “saved” I mean “saved from going into stupid, unglamorous things like bedpans and surgical masks and instead being funneled into the pockets of billionaires.” It’s not all that surprising. After all, it’s well known that poor people tend to waste their money on trivialities like food, clothing, shelter, and child care while billionaire geniuses tend to spend their money on important things like buying yachts, vacation homes, Judges on the US Extreme Court, and golden toilet seats.
We don’t typically think of surgeons as “poor people” but compared with the greediest people on the planet they sure are! The average salary of surgeons is only about 300 thousand dollars a year while world’s greediest man made over $200 billion! If we round down the surgeon salaries because they often pay taxes, we discover that he makes a million times more than a surgeon! So, it’s not really a great surprise that he can also make a hospital a million times more efficient!
First, President Mush discovered that every single patient seen at Mass General Hospital in its first one hundred years of existence (1811 to 1911) died! Yes, you heard that right: Died! Despite its reputation and ranking, not a single patient seen in that entire century is still alive!
(AI generated image to the prompt: “A graveyard with scores of tombstones. Each tombstone shows birth dates and death dates in the 1800’s.” Notice any issues?).
So, the first brilliant insight of The World’s Greediest Man is simply that Mass General Hospital is actually no better at preserving life than no hospital at all! Everyone who lived during those same years (1811 to 1911) and did not go to Mass General is also dead. There’s no difference! All that money wasted on medical care made no difference at all in the end.
A good workman doesn’t blame their tools. But that doesn’t mean that tools don’t differ in their efficiency. Surgeons, probably because they have a phallic fixation, prefer long thin tools like scalpels, catheters, and scissors. These are not tools for fast work though. For instance, a typical quadruple bypass surgery takes three to six hours! Are you kidding me!? No wonder hospitalization is so expensive.
President Mush and his cracker-jack hackers discovered that there is no part of the human anatomy that cannot be cut much faster with an ordinary chain saw. Sure, the feminized, woke, namby-pamby doctor boys will say that a chain saw isn’t delicate enough for heart surgery. How ridiculous is that? If it’s good enough to hack limbs off a tree, it’s good enough to hack cholesterol out of an artery or whatever the hell it is these pretty boys do during heart surgery.
(AI generated image to the prompt: “A hospital operating room with bright lights. A patient is on the table. The patient is being operated on by a surgeon wielding a chain saw.”)
Not only are there direct savings from having more efficient surgical tools. There are side benefits. When surgery takes three to six hours, time is wasted prepping the patient, giving them pain-killers, monitoring their vital signs, giving them blood—on and on and on. You don’t need such an elaborate set-up when you use a chain saw.
There are other advantages and cost-savings as well. There’s no room between here and the end of this article to list them all in detail, but you can take The World’s Greediest Man at his word. It doesn’t matter if he lies every day on the platform he bought to spout lies. He might lie about test results or political matters but certainly not when it comes to money.
One simple example arises from vastly simplified training programs. Limit doctoring to rich, white, Nazi, males since they are obviously superior. In fact, they are so superior that they demand every aspect of society be even more unfairly tilted so they are guaranteed a win in everything. That proves they’re superior. While training a doctor today takes more than a decade, you can show a rich, white, Nazi male how to run a chain saw in minutes!
For this and other reasons, formulas, fudging, faking, numbers, data, hand-waving, obfuscation, and moving things over three to ten decimal points, President Mush and his hacker-jacks will be able to cut over $5 trillion dollars from Medicare and Medicaid thus enabling an additional $500 trillion dollars to flow into the pockets of The World’s Greediest Man. These savings will also erase the national debt and cause water to flow uphill. Do the math!
This money, by the way, will not be spent on some stupid vanity project such as saving starving children or keeping the earth’s ecosystems from collapsing. Instead, it will be spent on something important and visionary—establishing a Cult Colony on Mars for President Mush and a carefully chosen cohort of consorts to populate the red planet.
Let’s face it. Earth is overrun with all sorts of life forms that are not The World’s Greediest Man. Why would anyone want that? Yech! Spiders! Bees! Trees! Birds! Bacteria, for God’s sake. Mold. Mushrooms. Flowers. Polar bears. Dragonflies. None of them is a problem on Mars. It’s got sand and rocks. And, once The Greediest Man on Earth is there, it will have everything it needs.
(AI generated image to the prompt: “Two rectangular panels. On the left is an image of a lush and beautiful garden with flowers, birds, and butterflies. On the right is an image of the Martian desert with no plants of any kind. Nothing green appears in the right hand image.” This was my fourth attempt to remove any plants from the image of Mars!)
(AI generated image to the prompt: “A blacksmith wields a large hammer. He strikes down on an anvil. The anvil is composed of people.”
There is no simple or universal answer to when “The Stone Age”, “The Bronze Age,” and “The Iron Age” occurred. The timing varied widely depending on the region. These names refer to the types of materials used for tools. More recently, many people refer to the “Industrial Age” or the “Industrial Revolution” and the “Computer Age” or the “Computer Revolution.”
Now, we see humanity entering a new age, perhaps best referred to as “The Irony Age.” At least in The United States of America, we are well into “The Irony Age” though we are not the only such country. I use the term “The Irony Age” to refer to an age where people’s behavior, individually and collectively, is determined by the informational world they inhabit rather than the real world in which they live.
I use the word “determined” and not the word “influenced.” Words, images, and stories have always influenced human behavior. Indeed, this kind of influence exists in the non-human world as well. The social behavior of ants depends on chemical signaling. Bees that have foraged and found sources of pollen and nectar “dance” for other bees so as to describe the size, contents, and location of these sources for other foraging workers.
Words can be used, not only to influence, direct, teach, or share but also to mislead and control. This is nothing new, but now the conditions are right for “The Age of Irony” in which these misleading communications actually override reality. Examples of such misleading communications abound.
Politically, we can see The Age of Irony in the names of countries. The official name of North Korea, for instance, in not “The Totalitarian Dictatorship of Kim Jong-Un” but is rather “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” In reality it is not a republic; it is not a country for the people and it is not at all democratic.
It is not only in the political realm that we find such ironies. People have been touting “miracle cures” my entire life and before. Various “tonics” have been sold by charlatans throughout the history of America. They often contained opium, tobacco, alcohol, and other noxious substances. Sometimes, people would fall for it and spend money on something that would supposedly fix a malady (or even every malady) and it would make them sicker. There has always been deception. Three things in modern society contribute to making it “The Age of Irony” and not just an age that contains some irony.
First, most people most of the time are not narcissistic sociopaths. Most people most of the time are decent and tell the truth. Studies show that people are particularly likely to be ethical and fair to those with whom they are in direct contact. (See, for instance, Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely). If you are at a face to face meeting, for instance, and a tray of cookies gets passed around, there are very few people who will immediately grab all the cookies for themselves. As the physical distance grows and the bad behavior becomes more abstract, however, more people are willing to cheat a little and some few people will cheat as much as they can.
In the past, almost all of our interactions were fairly local. Charlatans who sold “miracle cures” tended to be itinerant. If they stayed too long in one place, they were likely to be “run out of town on a rail” (See, for instance, Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain). Now, however, false cures are sold via podcasts, television, and social media. In The Age of Irony, a large proportion of our purchases are done remotely and the people who sell us nostrums are much harder to bring to justice. Equally importantly, it’s much easier for them to “live with” their evil deeds because they don’t have to face social consequences—they don’t know or see the people harmed by their lies. So, the first thing that contributes to making this The Irony Age is distance. Increased distanced means decreased accountability both legally and socially.
The second major reason that America is entering “The Irony Age” is the ubiquity and power of entertainment. This is partly a side-effect of increased prosperity. Increased prosperity means that people have more time to be entertained. In addition, television, for instance, now shows images that are larger, in color, and in higher definition. Perhaps more importantly, there are many more channels. Advertising is more targeted. And, a greater proportion of live TV time is advertising time.
More recently, podcasting, time on social media, and gaming are also more compelling and more targeted. People are spending less time in face to face interaction and more time is spent in remote interaction.
The pacing of entertainment is also changing. People are spending more time “channel surfing” and interacting in short sequences like chat. This means long, thoughtful discussions are relatively rare while clever one-liners and short videos are relatively more predominant.
(AI generated image to the prompt: “A very large room is filled with robots typing on computers. Hung from the ceiling is a very large dollar sign.”)
While there have always been unusually talented storytellers and orators, now science has formalized these talents and made them essentially available to anyone with a huge amount of money. An extremely wealthy individual no longer needs to be clever or charismatic in order to influence people. He or she can pay for the expertise to make them appear clever and charismatic. Taken together, these trends mean that the tools to manipulate people are generally much more powerful than before.
There is also a potential counter-trend. People are more educated than they were hundreds of years ago. In theory, this should enable them to be critical thinkers and be less likely to believe a lie. In most cases, however, people do not use their education and intelligence to decide whether to believe something or someone but instead use their education and intelligence to defend their current beliefs whatever they may be. They come to view themselves and their “team” as being under “attack” when a belief is questioned and they view their role as to use their brain to defend their team—not to question whether they are on the right team.
The third trend is the self-reinforcing vicious cycle of wealth, greed, and power. This has enabled—some would say guaranteed—that the most sociopathic, greedy, self-centered people on the entire planet now control weapons, information and entertainment channels, and the wealth. It isn’t merely a random set of people in control—it’s largely the very worse people in control. Just to take one example, there are many hundreds of local radio and stations, newspapers, and publishers. But they are not independent of each other. They are controlled by a few major companies. The same applies to food and banking. Your experience is that you go to the grocery store and see hundreds of brands. They look different. They taste different. They are advertised to appeal to different groups. But, behind the scenes, there are a ten companies that control things. https://www.businessinsider.com/10-companies-control-the-food-industry-2016-9?op=1
Briefly, here are a list of some of the major Ironies which are prevalent in the attempted destruction of America.
Many people voted they way they did because the slogan “Make America Great Again” resonated with their love of America and they desired to make it great again. In reality, America, though far from perfect, was already great and Putin’s plans are aimed at making America much worse, not better. Plans are now being implemented to make nearly every aspect of America worse.
Many people voted the way they did because they thought they were voting for a “strong leader” who would do whatever it took to put America first. In reality, that “leader” is extremely cowardly and has been his entire life. He was so cowardly, he begged his daddy to bribe doctors so he could avoid military service. He has a long record of forcing himself on women because he’s too cowardly to risk being rejected. He’s so cowardly, he can’t even publicly tell the truth about his height and weight or the status of his mental faculties. He’s so cowardly, he can’t even admit to a single mistake.
Many people voted the way they did because they thought their candidate and his party were better for the economy. What’s the evidence of that? The party and the candidate claim to be better. Historical fact shows quite the opposite. But neither party has done such a remarkably bad job with economy as what we are now witnessing.
(AI-generated image to the prompt: “A ghost town with tumbleweed. Nothing grows. A sign proclaims: ‘Golden Prosperity Estates’.”)
Many people voted the way they did because they thought their candidate would restore law and order. Why? Because they said so. What actually happens when you vote in a serial rapist who is also a convicted felon, a fraud, and a tax cheat? He pardons traitors who viciously attacked police and he attacks judges who do not agree with him and ignores the rule of law and the Constitution he swore to uphold.
Many people voted the way they did because they were sick of the government telling them what to do. Instead, they voted for less regulation and more freedom. The reality is that while the current Misadministration is trying to reduce regulations on air quality, water quality, and food quality, they are also trying to institute regulations on whom you can love, what you can do with your own body, what you can say, whether and how you can worship, what you can read, and whom you can protest against.
Many people voted as they voted because they bought the story that illegal immigrants were a “drain” on the economy. The truth is that many such immigrants were contributing to the economy including paying taxes and social security and were unable to reap many of the benefits of citizens. Moreover, far from being disproportionally criminal, immigrants were less likely to be criminals than natural born US citizens.
Many people voted as they voted because they specifically thought a more complete wall and more agents at the border would keep immigrants out. In fact, walls are much more effective at keeping people in a country against their will than keeping people out against their will. If the Misadministration is successful in destroying the National Parks, the Economy, and the Rule of Law, a wall won’t be necessary at all to keep people out. No-one will want to come. But it can be quite useful in keeping people in. On the US side of the border, the military can be deployed along with machine guns, land mines, and search lights. The Berlin Wall wasn’t put up by East Germany to keep West Germans from coming into East Germany. It was built to keep the East Germans from fleeing the repressive and ineffective government of East Germany. That’s the real reason Putin wants walls around America—to keep American citizens in.
(AI generated image to the prompt: A large wall with many signs. Signs read: “Up is Down” “Good is Bad” “Power is Truth” “Truth is a Lie.” “Lies are truth” “Life is Death”)
In The Ironic Age, the Ironies don’t stop with the fact that many people voted as they did but got the exact opposite of what they voted for. It isn’t turtles all the way down. In The Ironic Age, it’s ironies all the way down.
Some people continue to “like” the current misadministration and think that by showing loyalty to it, they are helping their “hero.” In fact, supporting him in his bad policies and decisions is the very worst thing for him as well as for the country. It’s precisely like “helping” a drug addict by giving him heroin. Such an action doesn’t “satisfy” the addict. It just increases their tolerance for the drug and makes them want even more. It’s the same with narcissistic sociopaths. Telling them their ideas are wonderful no matter how stupid and counter-productive they are doesn’t help the person at all. It just encourages them to be more stupid and disconnected from the actual results. It won’t “moderate” or “reform” him any more than agreeing with a spousal abuser will make them less likely to abuse you in the future.
(AI generated image to the prompt: “A doctor in a white coat tosses a bottle of vodka to a ragged drunk lying in the gutter.”)
As I said, it’s ironies all the way down. President Mush and his side-kick know that they are “smart enough” to view everyone else as a tool. To them, people who have actual friends, have empathy, or love? Those are fools. What they fail to see, however, is that Putin is like them. He doesn’t seem them as peers at all. To him, they are the tools. They are his fools. Once he achieves his goals about dividing and destroying America, they will have served their purpose and he will take over the reins. Apparently, they are too busy slaking their greed to have noticed what has happened to the enablers of Stalin and Putin once they become too successful.
Perhaps the most fundamental irony of all is that even Putin cannot win. Narcissistic sociopaths die too. They live their entire lives fundamentally disconnected from true love and friendship. Not only are their days on earth numbered as individuals—just like everyone else—they have traded in the joys of life for a grim fight that ends in their own destruction.
Cancer always loses in the end. Yes, of course, cancer causes destruction and even death. So, it can cause others to lose, but cancer itself always loses.
The San Diego area has famously good weather. Flowers blossom forth all year round. I like it!
But that doesn’t mean it never rains. In fact, I’m glad it does rain. Without some rain, it would be much less pleasant. Fewer plants would grow which would mean fewer friends from diverse parts of the Great Tree of Life: fewer butterflies, fewer lizard, fewer rabbits, fewer crows, fewer hummingbirds and fewer bees just to name a few of the critters I see almost every day.
On the other hand, I was supposed to play tennis this morning and that had to be canceled. We can’t really let the dogs out by themselves to play in the garden because now it’s too muddy. I have to take them out for a walk even when it’s raining. It seems to me that houses should be built with multi-species toilets that would allow humans, cats, and dogs all one place to go without causing a mess. It doesn’t seem that difficult a design problem.
But in our actual house, the toilets are only for humans so it’s important to take the dogs out several times a day. And that means I end up walking in the rain.
It’s wet. My feet often get wet. If it rains hard, I get wet on my head, my back, and my legs as well. As for the dogs?
They love to go out—rain or shine.
Sadie, who is now nearly three years old, often looks up at the sky when we begin a walk. I talk to her about the weather, the airplanes she spots at night, the moon, the stars, the planets. Perhaps she doesn’t understand every word, but, honestly, neither do I. I don’t know “why” there is gravity or how it relates in some way to the strong and weak nuclear forces. I’m not even sure there is a “why” to it.
What I do know is that Sadie does not just tolerate the rain. She loves the rain. She cannot change the weather. So why not love it?
Nor, for that matter, can I change the weather.
When it rains hard, the nearby storm sewer provides a mystery: a never-ending rushing gush of water! She looks up at me as though to ask: “Where does the water go?”
“The ocean,” I explain. To Sadie though, it remains a portal into another universe.
On its way to the sewer, the water rushes down the gutter and the raindrops cause bubbles to appear in the stream! Bubbles! Sadie snaps at each bubble and destroys it. Perhaps she does this in case they are tasty fish, but I think more likely she does it for the same reason I used to like to pop soap bubbles: sheer joy.
The moisture changes the intensity of smells and provide her with unusual odors. She likes to drink the water on the street which I discourage since the water probably contains more gas and oil than is good for her. Soon, I think, my water supply too may be too polluted to be healthy.
The passing cars make more noise in the rain. If it’s a hard storm, the wind blows the trees which she often looks up at as well. She does not wear shoes or boots and seems not to mind at all splashing through the cold puddles on her way to the next novel aroma.
These days, I’m not a big fan of the rain. I’d rather play tennis. I’d rather take pictures of the flowers in the sunshine. I’d rather not get wet.
But Sadie helps me remember an earlier time when I desperately wanted to go outside in the rain. I loved to splash through the mud puddles and wade in the just-born streams of the gutters. The deeper the stream, the better. I tried not to let the water spill over the rim of my boots—not because it was unpleasant to have the water suddenly soak my socks but because I knew my parents would be quite upset. Sometimes, I came home and managed to hide the fact that I had waded into too-deep water. That, in itself was a pleasure.
Even though I’m not as much of a rain fan as are Sadie and her younger brother Bailey, I’m something of a fan. The raindrops on flowers are beautiful. I enjoy Sadie’s enjoyment of the rain.
Why not love it?
Yes, we do teach our dogs.
We teach them tricks.
And, the dogs teach us.
They teach us to love and to live and to sing of the rain.
(AI generated image to this prompt: A Reporter interviews a Martian. The Martian has antennae on its head and a small child draped around its head.)
Reporter: “Mister President, do you have any comment about the explosion of yet another one of your rockets last night? Are you at all concerned it might have caused property damage or injured anyone?”
President Mush: “There was no explosion.”
Reporter: “Well. Many people saw the explosion and the falling debris in the night sky. How can you say there was no explosion.”
President Mush: “Easy. I use my mouth. Watch carefully. There was no explosion. See how I did that? I’m a genius. Did I mention that?”
Reporter: “Here’s a photograph of the explosion.”
President Mush: “Oh, that! You’re referring to an unscheduled disassembly. It’s a great way to improve things. If you were a genius, you’d know that.”
Reporter: “Sorry, what’s the difference between an explosion and an unscheduled disassembly?”
President Mush: “An explosion sounds dangerous and might make people think we’re incompetent. An unscheduled disassembly makes it sound as though our rockets are so smart that they don’t even need to wait for us to tell them to disassemble. They do it on their own through artificial intelligence.”
Reporter: “So, you are saying AI caused the explosion?”
President Mush: “No! I’m not saying that at all. I just want to use polysyllabic words people don’t understand so they don’t object. If you’re stuck, in order to get unstuck, it’s sometimes mandatory to deconstruct and disassemble the stasis preliminarily prior to the instantiation of the improved and more efficient and effective state. That’s what we’re doing now with the government.”
Reporter: “You’re performing unscheduled disassembly of the Federal government? What are the side-effects of that?”
(AI-generated image to the prompt: Exploding buildings. People screaming.)
President Mush: “I’m having fun. The shady hackers I’ve hired are having fun. Putrid’s happy. I’m finding trillions of dollars of savings so it’s making America great again!”
Reporter: “You’re firing long-time experts in many parts of the government and that will impact many government services. Will it not? Just to take one example, you’re firing people from the Park Service. That means longer lines, less safety, more crime, more danger of fires. Is it worth it?”
President Mush: “Why should the Federal Government be involved in Parks at all? The private sector can do it much more efficiently. All Federal property should be turned into profit-making theme parks or used for strip mining or oil drilling. This will make quadrillions of dollars for the wealthiest .001% of Americans and we can pass along at least two bits worth of savings to every US Citizen. I mean, of course, real citizens whose parents are both white and were born in America.”
Reporter: “The US Constitution says quite clearly that anyone born in America is an American citizen.”
President Mush: “Right. And how stupid is that? When the Constitution says things that are clearly against the best interests of the ruling elite, we should ignore it and do what common sense demands.”
Reporter: “Were you born in the United States? Were your parents?”
President Mush: “I was born rich. And my parents were white. And I am rich. And, did I mention I am really really rich?”
Reporter: “Yet, you don’t pay taxes.”
President Mush: “I’m cutting more waste out of the Federal budget than you pay in taxes. Much more. For example, take the Veteran’s Administration. Do you have any idea how many veterans are no longer serving their country but they are taking advantage of the services of the so-called Veteran’s Administration? If they are no longer going to war for us, why are we giving them any services at all? And, even so, this so-called Veteran’s Administration is wasting incredible amounts of money! Just to take one example, they sterilize surgical instruments, perform an operation and then they want the taxpayers to pay for sterilizing those instruments all over again! What a waste!”
Reporter: “Did you yourself serve in the Armed Forces?”
President Mush: “I do better than that! I build rockets and satellites and exploding cars! Also, I helped insure Putrid’s victory over the Democrats with my money and by repeating the Kremlin’s propaganda on NaziX until people believed it! That’s a real contribution! The previous administration was siding with Ukraine for God’s sake! How stupid is that? Do you know how many nuclear missiles the Ukrainians have? Zero! Zero! Why the hell don’t we join forces with North Korea and Russia? Then, we’ll have the vast majority of the nuclear weapons! Don’t buddy up with Ukraine!”
Reporter: “As I understand it, Ukraine did have nuclear weapons but they agreed to give them up in return for security guarantees from America and Europe.”
President Mush: “That’s what I mean. How stupid was that? Why would anyone do that?”
Reporter: “To help reduce the risk of unlimited nuclear proliferation and atomic war?”
(AI generated image to prompt: Atomic war.)
President Mush: “Yeah, yeah. That’s why I need more trillions of dollars to get humanity to Mars. That way, if we do have an atomic war, some of us—me, mainly—will continue the human race. Mars is perfect, by the way. No atomic weapons and no pollution. In fact, no disease. No large predators. No small predators. No pesky insects. No idiotic trees dropping their leaves. No stupid mushrooms to poison people. It’s ideal!”
Reporter: “It would be incredibly expensive to populate Mars, wouldn’t it?”
President Mush: “Who cares? We can tax the poor till they remember that they’re poor and were meant to be. All it takes is me and say a hundred beautiful baby ovens.”
Reporter: “Baby ovens?”
P-Mush: “Yeah. What you woke types slavishly call ‘women.’”
Reporter: “So, you want the people of earth to fund you to start a new colony on Mars which will consist of you and some young women? Aren’t you sad to leave your own kids on earth?”
P-Mush: “My human shields? No, they will have served their purpose by then.”
Reporter: “The rest of us…here on earth…what are your plans for us?”
P-Mush: “No plans. The rest of you are stupid enough to blow yourselves up.”
Reporter: “Does that include your sidekick?”
P-Mush: “He will have served his purpose as a clownish distraction. So, he should be happy. He’ll get a chance to kill a few hundred thousand people. He’s got Vlademort Putrid to help him. And Rat-Fink Klansman Junior to help him. Maybe he’ll kill a million. Maybe more. A guy that obese can’t live forever. At least his life won’t have been in vain.”
Reporter: “Because he’ll have been responsible for the deaths of others?”
P-Mush: “Sure, and have stolen most of their wealth. What on earth is life for except to be the apex predator? If you can’t actually eat people, you should at least ruin their lives. Right? I mean if they’re stupid enough to believe some bull$hit I spew about making things more efficient for them and they swallow that bull$hit, then if I steal every last shred of joy from their life, don’t they deserve it?”
(AI generated image)
Reporter: “I would say, no. No, they don’t deserve to be lied to and cheated. For example, people paid money into Social Security their whole working lives and now you’re trying to steal the money. I wouldn’t say that’s something that they deserve. In fact, rumor has it that your real reasons for investigating fraud in the government is to plant evidence of fraud on the part of your competitors and squash investigations into your own fraud and incompetence. Is there any truth to that?”
P-Mush: “Truth is whatever the richest people say it is. You’ll find that out when I call the head of your paper and have you fired.”
Reporter: “I see our time is up. Thank you for your time, President Mush.”
P-Mush: [Laughs a maniacal laugh]. “Our time? No. Your time is up. Not mine. I’m the apex predator and it’s time for my lunch!”
(AI generated image to prompt: Hannibal Lecter eating lunch. The lunch is a reporter. SIDE-NOTE: Do you want AI driving your car?)
When the Mushonauts landed on Kepler 69-c, they were surprised to learn that there was not only life, but that life that had evolved in ways similar to the way life had evolved on earth prior to the destruction of the entire planetary ecosystem. Indeed, the native life on Kepler 69-c had evolved civilizations, atomic weapons, politics, and even television! The Mushonauts, following protocol, cloaked their ship and listened in to some of the televised political broadcasts in order to learn how to destroy the inhabitants of the planet as painfully as possible. The crew sat agape as they listened, awed at the parallels to their home world. Here is a partial description of the program they happened to tune in on. Naturally, everything was AI-translated into English so they could understand it. None of the Mushonauts had learned more than a few words of the native language, X8TC-cha-ching-gla#%&.
(AI generated image to the prompt: An orange clown sits behind a desk. To his right, stands a man dressed with a black suit. The man in a suit has a small child sitting on his shoulders. The clown, the child, and the man each have a red star on their foreheads.)
Sycophant 344 announced, “Your Orangeness, Putin’s DOGGIE is here to see you.”
The Orange Side-Kick glanced at the cameras. He had forgotten why they were meeting, and, for that matter, that they were meeting, but he put on his Mussolini Mug face for the camera and arranged his face into the semblance of a supercilious smile. “I’m the greatest! Did you know that? Of course you knew that. Everyone knows that. Everyone will know that. We’ll destroy everyone too stupid to know I’m the brilliantest. The stablest genius who ever lived. Did you know the doctors made up a whole new category for me? I’m not just a genius. I’m a stable genius. I hate kids. Why are you here with a kid? Why do you always have a little kid with you. I hate kids. Kids are stupid. And weak.” The Orange-a-Tang shook his head a little sadly and a little arrhythymically. He glared at President Mush before asking, “Why do you keep bringing one of your kids with you? They are covered in germs.”
“I have my reasons. Papa Putin wants me alive at least long enough to finish destroying our country.” President Mush steepled his fingers like the “church” in a children’s game. He had read somewhere that this signaled dominance. It also gave him a chance to show off the length of his fingers. He noticed that his orange sidekick stayed seated. Mush snorted as he thought, the Orange-a-Tang doesn’t want to stand next to me because he’s repeatedly told his devotees that he’s six three and I’m six two and I tower over him. Whatever. We’re on camera so I’ll have to keep pretending he’s President for awhile longer. I’ll be happy when Papa Putin pulls the plug on this ridiculous charade and I can perch openly on my golden throne in public.
“Sir, I brought a few more Executive Orders for you to sign.” Mush smiled and thought, When the time comes, I’ll just slip an order for him to be executed into the middle of the pile and have him sign his own Execution Order framed as an Executive Order. How sweet would that be?
The Orange-a-Tang said, “Did you write the one yet where I get 72 virgins every time I steal—I mean invest— another billion dollars from the public?”
Mush began to frown and shake his head but immediately recovered and smiled to the camera. “Now, now, King Orange, we all know you mean that as a joke. Our priorities. Let’s remember Papa Putin’s priorities. First, we destroy trans people; then we destroy gays; then we destroy the old and the sick and the poor. We destroy the liberals. Then, and only then, do you get your pick of underage girls, okay? Let’s not rush things.” For a split second, Mush worried that he might have spilled too many beans but then he thought, Nah, the devotees will simply chalk it up to chump being chump and think it’s a joke. And when it comes to pass, just like every other way we’re destroying America, they’ll rationalize it. We’ll simply label it as a “teaching exercise” so girls don’t have to be embarrassed by their sexual inexperience and they’ll go along with it.
The Orange-a-Tang picked up the order on the top of the pile and scanned for a word he knew. He picked out: Natural [sic] Parks, Naval [sic] Americans, Drill, Oil, Hunt, and Money. He wasn’t sure what this was about but he came up with a lie he knew the base would love: “I am signing today one of the greatest best most important Executive Orders in the history of American, and frankly, to be honest, in the history of the universe. For too long Naval Americans have been squatting rent free on land that we gave them for free and not letting us drill for money and oil on their lands and outlawed hunting with assault weapons and bombing from airplanes. We have been so unfairly treated by them. So, today, I am demanding that all these immigrant Naval Americans be sent back frankly to wherever and we are opening up all our Natural our Notational our Navigational Parks to hunting, drilling, and money. This will save the average taxpayer about at least 20 million dollars a year, maybe more. You’re welcome! And, that doesn’t even count the millions more that the Bygone Admenigestration stole from you when you weren’t looking. They have the absolute worst record of any Ministation in the history, frankly, to be perfectly honest, in the history of the Republican. It’s going to be beautiful, beautiful, Notational Parks now with casinos and views—you won’t believe the views—because we’ll cut down all the trees so you can see the mountains from anywhere. I hate trees. And kids. Why do you bring your kids everywhere anyway?”
————
(AI generated image to the prompt: Ten white male astronauts sit in a circle watching a TV).
The all-white, all alpha-male Mushonaut crew sat in a circle jerking their heads rhythmically from side to side. They were amazed how much this world resembled the one they had left behind them.
In ashes.
Then, they began nodding in a circle jerking their heads up and down as they realized how easy it would be to conquer a world so corrupted by hatred, lies, cowardice, and greed.
Just as theirs had been.
————————
(A word about the AI-generated images. AI can be a useful tool. But it has a long way to go. Right now, people are being fired and replaced by AI. You can judge for yourself how much quality will be lost based on the examples I’m showing.)
Increased government efficiency! Sign me up! That sounds great!
It sounds especially great if your billionaire-owned media companies keep reminding you that you are paying too much in taxes! Not only that! The national debt keeps going up, up, up and your kids and grandkids will have to pay even more in taxes. And, hey—if billionaires don’t end up paying any taxes, that actually a good thing because that way they can create lots of new jobs! And, besides, if they weren’t doing something worth billions and billions of dollars, why would they be so rich? Of course they deserve it! And, if CEO’s weren’t paid outrageous salaries, they wouldn’t even be CEO’s and some second rate person would just run the company into the ground.
It all sounds so plausible. Yet, every bit of it is a lie. But it isn’t just a bunch of lies that’s been told here and there by a few people. It’s been propagated over and over and over and over again for decades on various media and on social media. It’s been propagated on podcasts, and books, and pamphlets.
“That old lady doesn’t deserve to steal your one cookie! Watch out for her!”
Here are some things to consider.
The very greediest people in the world are not necessarily the most competent. Most jobs are actually created by small businesses, not by giant corporations. Giant corporations often outsource jobs to other countries where the labor is cheaper and where they don’t have to follow any pesky child labor laws or safety in the workplace regulations. Increasingly, giant corporations look to automate more and more jobs and to use AI to replace people.
Highly paid CEO’s have often run giant companies into the ground. Remember that on your next trip to Montgomery Ward’s or Radio Shack. Who else? Lehman Brothers, Bank of New England, Texaco, Chrysler, Enron, PG&E, GM, WorldCom and a host of others. But wait! GM still makes cars. I can get gas at a Texaco station. How could it be that they went bankrupt. You bailed out GM. Texaco went bankrupt, but the brand name was still worth something. Chevron owns the brand.
Also note that in countries where the CEO’s are only paid ten times the average wage of their employees instead of a thousand times as much, the CEO’s do just as good a job.
Are government agencies sometimes inefficient? You bet your life! And you know what else is sometimes inefficient? Everything! Small businesses are inefficient. Large businesses are inefficient. Medium sized businesses are inefficient. Your car engine is inefficient. Your body is inefficient. Your furnace is inefficient. Your stove is inefficient.
You know what is 100% efficient? Things in your dreams. Things in your imagination. I’m not only efficient in my dreams—my God!—I can frigging fly! When I play basketball in my dreams, I can not only jump higher than I ever have in real life, I can hover near the rim! It’s amazing how well I can play various sports when I dream about them.
(AI generated image of an oldster jumping high in a dream.)
But that’s not reality.
In reality, yes, you can improve the efficiency of systems. But to do so effectively, you have to understand the systems you are trying to make more efficient. Here are just a few of the things you need to understand.
You need to understand what the purpose of the system is. How is its performance measured? Who are the stakeholders? What are the different roles that people play? What formal processes and procedures do various people have to follow? What are the unwritten norms that people follow? These are often more important than the formal processes.
You may recall the scene from the movie A Few Good Men when the attorney points out that “Code Red” is nowhere in the manual. He implies that if “Code Red” is not in the manual, it does not exist. Tom Cruise points out the absurdity of this by asking the witness to point out in the manual where it lays out where the mess hall is. Of course, it doesn’t say that because people learn from others where it is.
In almost every complex organization, people find critical short-cuts and work-arounds to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization. In fact, one of the things people sometimes do to protest idiocy on the part of management is to “Work by the Rule” which means they will not do the things they have discovered make things easier but instead follow the written rules to the letter which typically slows things down considerably.
During the 1990’s, management fell in love with something called “Business Process Re-engineering.” This is how it often worked (or, to put it more honestly, how it often failed to work). Management consultants would come in and talk to a few third or fourth level managers to find out how the work was performed now. The consultants would then construct a map of how things worked (often called the “is map”) and then, they would figure out a more efficient way to do things and map that out; the “to be map.” Then, it was the job of management to make people use the new “more efficient” process rather than the old process.
(AI generated image of the Trumputin Misadministration.)
That seems like a good idea—right? Well, yes, in a dream, it’s a good idea. But in reality, the third or fourth level manager hardly ever knows how things are actually done. Their mental model is a vast oversimplification. To understand what is going on in reality, you must observe the people actually doing the work and talk to them as well.
Below is a link to a satirical piece I wrote some time ago that imagines “Business Process Re-engineering” coming to Major League Baseball to make it more efficient. It is meant to make it obvious how silly it is.
But what DOGE is doing is much worse that Business Process Re-engineering. Even putting aside the obvious conflicts of interest and the illegality of what they are doing, they are going about “improving” things without even understanding the high level over-simplification of what is happening!
Imagine you slipped on the ice and broke your arm. Sadly, it’s not a simple fracture. It’s a compound fracture. This means your bone is sticking out through your skin. You are in a great deal of pain. But no worries! While you are going to the emergency room, a group of teen-age hackers go on-line and examine all your private medical records. They discover that you were vaccinated for smallpox, measles, mumps, and whooping cough. Not only that—they look through a sample of other records and find that more than 90% of the Americans who break their arms have been vaccinated for these diseases! Voila! The vaccinations must be the real cause of your broken arm!
(An AI-generated image for the following prompt: “A man has a compound fracture of the upper arm. The arm bone (the humerus) is jutting out of his shirt and his arm. He is bleeding.”)
These folks don’t know diddly squat about medicine, but they sure know how to hack into systems in order to get data! What they are not so good at, however, is making valid inferences about the data they find. You cannot conclude anything from the fact that 90% of Americans who break their arms have been vaccinated without also finding out about other things. For instance, you also need to know what percentage of Americans who have not been vaccinated have also broken their arms. Suppose it’s 95%. That might mean that vaccinations serve some protective function about bones. Or not. We need to look at other things too. But, let’s suppose that they do look at that and it turns out that only 80% of Americans who have not been vaccinated break their arms. See! See! Surely, that proves that vaccinations cause arm breakage.
Not so fast. You still need to look at other factors. Suppose that people who do not get vaccinated tend to die at a much younger age. That could easily account for the difference. All sorts of factors have some influence on the incidence of fractures. Just to name a few, it depends on the type of fracture; it depends on age; it depends on the prevalence of certain activities (people who ski, or paraglide might tend to break more bones than people playing chess); it depends on diet; it depends on weight bearing exercise. If you lift weights and go to the gym, you help protect yourself from fractures. Of course, separating out all these factors takes time and takes expertise. You can’t expect someone, not matter how brilliant a hacker they are, to find an answer.
But hey! We left you in the emergency room! Sadly, we left you there all by yourself. There are no human experts at the hospital, as it turns out, because the hospital was closed due to lack of funding. You happen to be unlucky enough to have been born in a rural area of the country. There’s only one nearby hospital and much of its funding has been cut. It has to operate with a skeleton crew. But, as it turns out, skeletons, ironically, don’t actually know that much about medicine. They are, after all, skeletons. And while a hacker might come to the conclusion that skeletons are much more efficient than flesh and blood humans (lighter, no caloric requirements), it turns out that they cannot move or think without other parts of the body. To make up for that, DOGE put in some automation and AI systems. But they didn’t have time to debug the system before moving on to the next project.
(AI generated image).
The last thing you experienced before passing out and dying from sepsis was this little snippet of dialogue with the AI system.
“Hello! I am the brilliant AI system called MUSH: Multi-User System for Health. I am here to help you with your medical problem! What seems to be your problem?”
“I broke my arm. Can’t you see? My bone is sticking out through my shirt sleeve.”
“Excellent! We’ll have that fixed in no time. Please put your insurance card in the slot provided.”
“I can’t. It’s in my wallet and I can’t reach it with my left hand. And I can’t move my right arm at all.”
“Excellent! We’ll have that fixed in no time. Please put your insurance card in the slot provided.”
“I need a human operator.”
“Excellent! We’ll have that fixed in no time. Please put your insurance card in the slot provided.”
“No, you don’t get it. I have an insurance card but I can’t reach it.”
“You have failed three times to insert your insurance card. Next patient please. I hope you will fill out a short questionnaire about your experience with MUSH: Multi-User System for Health.”
I worked in Corporate America for many decades. Something that always brought a smile to my face were conversations like this snippet of dialog.
“Hey, I know we’re supposed to meet at 9 am but I need to drop by HR and discuss something for a couple minutes.”
A slightly more realistic but still insanely optimistic version which I also heard numerous times: “Yeah, I’ll be there in ten minutes. I just need to deal with an HR issue.”
The people who made these statements were not irresponsible. Nor were they stupid or uneducated. These were generally people with Ph.D.’s who had also worked in corporate America for years. They weren’t newbies by any means. How could their time estimates be so completely absurd? I suspect that part of the answer was that they had a very simple representation of both the problem and the solution in their head. Sometimes, a very complex problem can be posed quite simply.
The “Four Color Theorem” comes to mind. This is a major reason I decided not to pursue a degree in mathematics. Once I heard the problem, I was immediately convinced I could solve it. Then, I couldn’t sleep for about three days because I couldn’t “turn off” thinking about the problem. Finally, my body took over for awhile.
If even straightforward mathematic problems can be simply stated but difficult to solve, it might seem obvious that the same can be said for most issues involving people and organizations. That’s not to say people won’t try a seemingly simple solution.
For a time, I worked as a “Knowledge Management Consultant” at IBM. On one occasion, we visited a well-known and successful pharmaceutical company. They wanted us to design a computer system that would make their chemists share information more readily across their organizational silos. They wouldn’t change the organization. They wouldn’t provide any changes to motivate people to share. They wouldn’t give any time or space for people to share. But they were convinced that we could simply plunk down a computer system and — voila! — knowledge would be shared across the silos! Talk about a miracle drug!
AI generated image.
Like other organizational functions, the people in HR varied considerably in their skills and ethical standards. I met some very good people in HR. And, sad to say, I also met some who were not so good. But I never met any as inept as the one in this purely fictional story.
Dealing With The Problem Child
Mr. Low-Cee belched loudly. He leaned back in his swivel chair, steepled his fingers, and put his feet up on the table. He felt a slight tickle in his amygdala. He had read somewhere that showing the bottoms of your shoes to someone from an Arab country was disrespectful. He scratched the tickle away with the stick of his well-used rationalization, Well, hell. Ishaaq isn’t really in an Arab country, is he? He’s right here in the God-Damned US of A and I’m doing him a favor anyway.
“So, Ishaaq, tell me more about this person you refer to as your ‘Problem Child.’ I’m sure we can find a spot for him somewhere. What are his qualifications, his background, his accomplishments?”
Ishaaq frowned. He pursed his lips. “That’s just it, Mr. Low-Cee. He doesn’t have any accomplishments in the usual sense of the word. He did manage to avoid the draft on numerous occasions. He managed to lose a ton of money that he inherited from his dad. He’s certainly famous. He’s sexually assaulted a lot of women. He’s cheated on his taxes and he ran a fake university and he ran a fake charity for kids with cancer. He managed to drive a casino into the ground financially and, as you may know, that’s not easy to do. They are legally set up with games designed to insure that the House wins on average.”
Mr. Low-Cee belched again. He vaguely wondered whether he was allergic to blueberry muffins and whether anyone was allergic to blueberries. He thought: Lots of people are allergic to strawberries. But then, why not blueberries? Interesting. “So, Ishaaq, I’m curious. Have you ever heard of anyone being allergic to blueberries?”
Ishaaq blinked a few times. “You mean…is our ‘Problem Child’ allergic to blueberries? I have idea. What does that…does it matter?”
Mr. Low-Cee shook his head vigorously. “No, no. Never mind. Was this so-called ‘Problem Child’ a good student?”
Ishaaq sighed. “I really have no idea. He says he was but he won’t share any of his official records. I don’t see how he could have been. But who knows? He likes to talk a lot. That’s for sure. He doesn’t always make sense, but he makes a lot of faces when he talks and he shouts a lot. Maybe a clown?”
“That’s an idea. Any other special qualifications? Anything?”
Ishaaq winced. “Well, he is a felon. So there’s that.”
“A convicted felon and a serial rapist. Challenging. Challenging.” Mr. Low-Cee hammered himself in the sternum and let out the largest belch so far. “Ah! Now, I feel better! And, I had a thought! How about a position as Figurehead? He sounds perfect for that! I’ll tell you why it occurred to me. Just this morning, I had a surprise call from none other than Vlademort Putrid. He wanted to talk about installing Elong Muskrat as POTUS. Muskrat has the perfect qualifications. He’s run a couple major companies into the ground and, like ‘Problem Child’ avoided paying taxes and lied about test results. Elong wants to come in like gangbusters and steal all the information and money from America and destroy the country for Valdemort, but Elong has no interest in kissing babies, traveling to disaster areas, etc. Maybe your guy would be just right for that? I’m just spitballing here, but it might be a good fit. What do you think, Mohammed?”
Ishaaq tilted his head. “Mohammed?” He turned around to see whether there was someone else in the room. He turned back and frowned. “I’m Ishaaq, not Mohammed.”
“Oh, right. Sorry. Ishaaq. Ask your guy whether he’s okay with…hey! I had another brainstorm. Don’t even tell him that he’s applying for Figurehead. He doesn’t sound like a detail-oriented guy. Just tell him we want him to be POTUS! Elong, you, me, and Vlademort will know he’s a Figurehead, but why tell anyone else? What do you think, Isaac?”
petersironwood 