Psalm 142:4

Look and see, there is no one at my right hand;

    no one is concerned for me.

I have no refuge;

    no one cares for my life. 

The final lines of "Sorry, Baby"

When you grow up, you can tell me whatever.  Like, if you have a thought, and you're like, that's a bad thought, I probably had that same thought.  But, like, ten times worse.  So you can just tell me.  I'll never be scared by that.

If someone does something bad to you, if someone says something scary, if you want to kill yourself with like a pencil or a knife or whatever, you can just tell me.  I'll never tell you you're scaring me.  I'll just say yeah.  I know.  It's just like that sometimes.  Yeah.  I'm sorry that bad things are going to happen to you.  I hope they don't.  If I can ever stop anything from being bad let me know.

But sometimes bad stuff just happens.

That's why I feel bad for you.  In a way.  That you're alive and you don't know that yet.  But I can still listen and not be scared.  So that's good.  Or that's something, at least.

******

I'm not a fan of art films.  I'm not a fan of "relationship" films, where the characters stumble around, not really understanding their own feelings.

Even so, you have to see this film all the way through to get the real power of the final scene.  Even though it is turgidly slow, and you don't see how carefully it is done until the end.

But the final lines are an incredibly powerful statement about loss, and the inability of our society to accept the pain of those who have suffered a major trauma or distress.

Black Heart

Elon (or Grok: it's hard to tell the difference) has created a little video valentine for us.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1970744420522996204

But I wonder how many people realize that the "heart," in the video, starts out as a black hole ...

Resistance is futile.  You will be absorbed ...

Generative Enlightenment

Some recent research notes that the LLM/genAI model Claude, when talking to itself, eventually comes to produce something that looks like eastern mysticism.

https://asteriskmag.com/issues/11/claude-finds-god

This has led to excitement, in some quarters, that AI has "found God," or, at least, enlightenment.

However, I wonder if this is not yet another case of taking perfectly good data and drawing precisely the wrong conclusions from it.  I'm rather an AI cynic, and my own research into eastern mysticism tends to indicate that it contains some truths (such as that suffering arises from desire, and that eliminating desire would remove suffering) that are demonstrably true, but not particularly helpful.  So I can't help but wonder if this result doesn't indicate not that AI has been enlightened, but that eastern mysticism, with its self-referential and self-reflective processes, has, over a longer period of time, reached the same point that large language models have reached much faster.

And with similarly unhelpful conclusions ...

Illuminati

For years I have heard vague tales of the Illuminati, a secret cabal that rules the world. I have, of course dismissed this as antisemitic nonsense, the province of the tin-foil hat crowd: the utterings of those who, dissatisfied that they are not as important as they think they have a right to be, imagine that there is some mythical opposing force that is keeping them from their deserved power and wealth.

I was, apparently, in error.

Recently, I have received a number of email messages inviting me to join the Illuminati. (How did they get my email address? Of *course* they have my email address! They're the Illuminati!) So, I will be taking my proper place among those of rank and consequence, ruling the world, and will no longer have time for dealing with rabble like you lot. (Just wanted to let you know before I supposedly disappear.)


(I am a little surprised that is has taken the advanced fee fraudsters this long to get around to this particular variation on the 419/Spanish Prisoner scam, even though I suppose that it takes an oddly convoluted mind to invert a conspiracy theory and make it a hustle. Probably an effective one, of course, since conspiracy theorists are unlikely to have the analytical skills necessary to realize that they are being taken ...)

🙂

I find that I am getting better at Gloria's "pleasant resting face."  I am, in public, with people who don't know me, getting more smiles from people who *think* that I am smiling at them, simply because I am not scowling all the time.  When it happens, I often feel kind of bad, because I am, essentially, lying to these people, by presenting as someone who is OK, and not constantly wishing that I were dead.

See also:

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/how-are-you.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/05/synack-let-me-know-if-i-can-ever-help.html

MGG - 5.51a - HWYD - Positive

Both the RCMP and ICBC want us to track "positives."  A positive is a compliment, or a positive comment, or even a wave and possibly a smile, that members of the general public give us while we are out on shift.  This allows both the RCMP and ICBC to track the public's general perception of the program, and therefore, partially, the possibilities for its success in changing driving behavior.

So, while we are out on shift, we dutifully track "positives."  Tracking the positives also forces us to pay attention to them, and, I suppose, also helps to reinforce us in the perception that our work, as volunteers, is worthwhile and valuable.  (I suppose that this is a point to be added to my series on motivations for managing volunteer staff.)

In addition to positives, we are quite well aware that we get some "negatives."  There are some people who don't wave the whole hand at us, but only one particular finger.  There are those who shout abuse at us as we are on shift by the side of the road.  (I suppose that I shouldn't point out to strongly that, while we generally get the gist of the tone of the message that they are trying to send, very often on a noisy street soundscape, we simply can't hear whatever words they are shouting.)  Then there are those who stop for a chat, and try to convince us that it is illegal for us to note license plate numbers and other information.  These people seem to belong to the sovereign citizen movement, which doesn't seem to have any strong legal or constitutional background or political theory behind it, but is more driven by the hypothesis contained within the statement "freedumb means I can do anything I [expletive deleted] well please and nobody is allowed to make any rules about it."

We are well familiar with these negatives.  I suppose, having discussed the issue elsewhere that I need not stress too strongly that we, as volunteers, consider that we are doing the community a service, and sometimes even saving lives, and so we tend not to spend very much time thinking about the fit of pique displayed by one of these individuals.

In any case, today we were out doing a distracted driving check.  This is primarily about ensuring that people aren't actually talking on their cell phones while they are driving, but it also includes things like whether they are drinking while driving, or eating a hamburger while driving (sometimes holding the hamburger with both hands, which raises the question, who is actually driving the car?), or having an overly affectionate dog on your lap while driving.

There is one particular intersection in the city where we frequently set up a distracted driving check.  This one particular intersection is the place you are most likely to encounter an actual conversation with the occupants of cars.  When the light turns red and a car stops right where we are standing, surprisingly frequently, the window may roll down, and the driver start up a conversation with you, usually starting with, "What are you guys doing here?"

So today we had had a few similar conversations.  And then one particular car rolled up, and stopped, and the window rolled down, and the driver turned a very sour face upon us.  I must admit that I was rather preparing myself for one of the usual sovereign citizen blasts.  And he started out with a very grim, "What are you guys doing here?"  So I answered that we were checking for people who were talking on their cell phone while driving.  He got a look of withering disgust on his face, and I braced myself for one of the sovereign citizen diatribes.  He started off with, "Well, [expletive deleted] that!"

I was pretty certain, by this point, that we were going to get a negative blast.  But, almost immediately, although still with the incredibly sour look on his face, he said, "Good for you!"  And made a thumbs up gesture.  And added, "Keep it up!"  And the light changed to green, and he took off.

So, we counted that as a positive.  Although it was one of the *weirdest* positives I have ever encountered ...

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/12/mgg-551-hwyd-community-policing.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/02/mgg-552-hwyd-555-1212.html