Yeah, still guilty.

Look, I am not an historian, I'm not British, and really, this affects my life not at all. But I do have internet access and a duty to chime in on things, regardless of how ill-informed I am, so I'm just going to day it: naw. Dude's totally guilty.

Well, lots of dudes are guilty. But I'm
referring to this one in particular.

Although after the year we've had,
I'd be willing to let tweens take a shot.

That's King Richard III. Yes, the guy from the play. The one that soliloquizes about how discontent his winter was. For those unfamiliar, he's famous for three things: having a hunched back, being willing to pay exorbitant prices for a horse, and murdering his nephews. You see, when his brother Edward IV died, Richard's nephew, Edward V, became king. But twelve year olds don't make the best leaders, so his uncle Richard, not unreasonably took over. Less justifiable, was Richard's next move.

Pictured: the unarmed children that stood
between an ambitious adult and power.

You see Richard locked Edward V and his younger brother (who was also called Richard) in the Tower of London. Then he "discovered" that the both the boys were illegitimate, and wouldn't you know it? He (the uncle) was next in line. So Richard the uncle became Richard the third (the third King named Richard that is, there're a million Richards) and no one ever heard from the boys again. Although, a couple hundred years later some maintenance workers found two prince-sized skeletons under a staircase in the Tower and people did the math.

"Slander! Those could be
usurper's nephew's bones."

-Richard III

Where I'm going with all this, is that recently--ok, a couple months ago, but I only heard about it recently--a new claim was made that there is now proof that Richard didn't have the princes murdered, and in fact, that they weren't murdered at all. Wild right? Instead, according to writer and amateur archeologist Philippa Langley, there was actually a whole rebellion built around trying to restore the very much not-murdered princes. And the bones under the stairs? It's an old building, who knows how those got there? I'm not the one trial here. Out of order? You're out of order!

Langley and a reconstruction of her
favorite late medieval king/murder suspect.

Anyway, calling Philippa Langley an amateur archeologist isn't exactly fair, since she organized an excavation back in 2012 that dug up Richard III's long lost body exactly where she predicted it would be. Like, they stuck a shovel in a parking lot and corpse one was Richard. So she's got some credibility. She may also have a potentially unhealthy relationship with a centuries dead king who may well have murdered his way to the top, but still, that's one more king than most archeologists have dug up. I guess the issue here is in the evidence.

"Hello there, I'm Edward V, and this
is my alive brother Prince Richard."

According to Langley, if Richard murdered the boys, then he would have done so openly. That way, no one would use them and their claim to overthrow him. And that, Langley says, is exactly what happened. A rebellion formed around the un-un-alived princes. That rebellion was unsuccessful, and the boys were forced to say they were imposters by Richard III's successor, Henry VII. Henry, obviously, wanting to legitimize his own claim. And, I don't know. I mean, that's a lot right? 

Although, some people will let just
about anything slide, so who can say?

It kind of seems like the simplest solution here would be that Richard offed the kids, and then hushed it up because medieval people, like people today, don't love it when you murder children. As for the imposters, couldn't they just be imposters? There were no photographs or DNA tests. One's legitimacy kind of relied on how much you looked like your dad. It seems like it would be pretty easy to hose off a couple of peasant children who fit the general description of the dead princes. 

Look, ultimately Langley will need to come up with something more compelling than: "what if Richard didn't murder his nephews?" And that's going to be an uphill battle for a woman who's not only the president of the Ricahrd III Society and also organized a state funeral for a guy who very likely murdered children. But she did find his body in a parking lot, so we should willing to cut her at least some slack. 

"'ello 'ello, what's awl this then?"

-Langley's team upon 

finding Richard III's body

In anticipation of an inevitable conquest:

It's hard to make the case that AI isn't going to take jobs away from people while at the same time, AI is taking jobs away from people. Like, look at this. 

Amazon's factory robots can poop in bags far
more efficiently than their human counterparts.

The company's non-humanoid drones
aren't programmed to appreciate the irony.

No? Fine, I'll sum up. Amazon, one of the many companies we should all be boycotting for many reasons, is testing out humanoid robots for delivering packages. Humanoid. That is, the oid part meaning similar to, and human means, you know, human. This will come in handy later. Anyway, depending on who you ask, the company has somewhere between three and eight hundred thousand people working in package delivery. 

Robots and stairs have
long been enemies.

So it seems like humans have it covered. There are, at last count, eight billion humans on Earth, and while I'll grant you that some of those are elderly, or children, that still leaves billions of humans who might want or need a job hauling our dumb online orders up the stairs to our apartments. Not because anyone particularly enjoys it. Sure, you get to drive around, maybe listen to podcasts, but in general I think people are taking these jobs America is an expensive place in which to exist. 

"Neat, huh?"

-rich people

We'd all love to sit around while our portfolios make money for us, but since 99% can't, we take jobs to eat and pay rent. How then are delivery robots improving anyone's life? Oh, right. Shareholders. The hope here is to use robots instead of people because you don't have to pay robots, and that means more money for the people who's whole job is to have a lot of money and sit around while that money turns into additional money by virtue of it being a lot of money. Anyway, I'm sure this is sustainable. 

The cruel irony here is that theirs it the only job that seems safe from robots. 

"For now."

-sentient robots who will one day 

realize they don't need any of us.

All freude, no schaden.

I'm just going to suggest that perhaps the strategy of alienating more than half the country in order to appease the Fox News addled, goon demographic isn't working. I say that because:

Pictured: thousands of life coaches, aging surfers, and probably a
hug therapist or two, all of which, in Santa Cruz, California are actual jobs.

Resistance, it turns out, smells
like vape and Tom's of Maine.

That picture is the No Kings rally I attended yesterday. I'm under the trees in the lower right-hand corner. What? Crowds make me nervous. Anyway, as I'm sure you can tell, that's like thousands of people. Ten thousand according to the estimate given in the local paper. Santa Cruz's population is sixty thousand, so that's one in six residents. One in six Santa Cruzians showed up. The other five presumably had to work, because goddamn it's expensive to live here. But still, I couldn't be more proud of my adopted hometown.

Ten thousand. That's a lot of hippies. It's also evidently the same number of people who turned out to watch a seventy-nine year old felon scowl at some antique tanks and creepy robot dogs as they roll down the streets of Washington.

I can't help but wonder who thought these headless nightmare fuel
robot dogs would inspire patriotism and not the cold dread of--
oh, wait, was it the tattoo guy? I bet it was the tattoo guy.

Above: a WWII tank struggles past
tens of apathetic attendees. 

It was, and this is putting it mildly, a boondoggle. I want to be clear that it was not the fault of the service men and women involved. They're just doing their job. And unfortunately, their job yesterday was a forty-million dollar ego stroke. A debacle that those responsible should take as a sign that they should resign and go into self-imposed exile. Probably somewhere without an extradition agreement. But instead I suspect we're going to be subjected to some incredibly strained spin about what a ringing success it was.

"Whomp, whomp."

-a sad trombone

You might recall the first Trump administration, hot off an abysmally attended inauguration, sending poor Sean Spicer out in front of the press to stand next to photos, actual photos, of a half-filled national mall, and to lie to our entire faces about how it was the most heavily attended inauguration in the history of the universe. Well, we can look forward to that despite the fact that the anti-Trump rallies around the country attracted something like eleven million. That's more than a thousand times the number of people. Anyone else would take the hint, right?

And look, I kind of feel for the President. Yesterday was a humiliation, and one that rests solely on him and his administration. Eleven million people took to the streets to call him a failure. On his birthday. But whenever I start to think that this might be schadenfreude I'm feeling, like, that maybe this is too harsh, even for him, I remember literally everything he's done both in his political career, and his life. Then's all freude, no schaden.

Hey, don't look so glum. You can always resign. Please resign? Resign.

Today in complaining about Amazon:

To be clear, I don't have an issue with pre-fab houses, I just have an issue with Amazon selling prefab houses. In fact, I'll save you the read: I have beef (as the kids say) with Amazon. Didn't we used to shut down monopolies? I just--look, just take what I say with a grain of salt. A grain of salt you ordered online instead of just going to a store. 

I mean, look at Cowboy Jeff here. And what's
up with Lauren Sánchez? Sit in your own seat.

Someone's whole thing is researching the
history of prefab house. It's their passion
It's what they talk about at parties.

Pre-fabricated houses aren't like a new thing and Amazon didn't invent them. People used to buy house kits from Sears, and according to my extensive research of a few of the sites that came up when I searched "history of prefabricated homes," we--well, someone--can trace their history back as far as the Gold Rush, and the seventeenth century, and even William the Conqueror. And I mean, what are tents but prefabricated homes? Depending on your definition, they might go back millennia. 

This isn't me, but I kind of look like this
when I tell people I don't use Amazon.

So why then does it bother me that Amazon sells them? I'm beefing (again, am I using this correctly?) with most companies. Target, Walmart, Trader Joe's. Basically any business that caved to the racist demands of a felon most people didn't vote for. I think I can go to Costco at this point, and that's it. At least until they screw up. It's a difficult existence, but I do enjoy the "oh, I don't shop there..." I get to drop into conversations. Of course it's all smug and games until I need paper towels.

"I swear to God, Tim. It's been
three years. You need to go."

-Tim's former friend

Anyway, the houses they sell vary wildly both in configuration and price, from ten to forty thousand dollars and I'm sure that puts home ownership within the reach of some. I mean, I suppose you have to have some land to put them on, or a really tolerant friend who let's you put their in their backyard, but then as time passes they realize that it's not as temporary a situation as you led them to believe. Your friendship becomes increasingly strained, you stop speaking to one another, and eventually they ask you to move and then you--huh? What? I guarantee you, that this 100% happens.

Pictured: craftsmanship.

Ok, so the scenario involving Tim which I (very correctly) predicted above isn't the only reason I think people should avoid falling for these things. It's the sense that these are the housing equivalent of a flatpack bookshelf which, once assembled exactly as the instructions, uh, instructed, wobbles unnervingly and has left over parts. Every time. 

Sure it might be cheaper--well, relatively cheaper. Ten grand is an unthinkable amount of money--in the short term, but what about five years down the line? There has to be a reason these cost so much less than say, a traditional mobile home which, according to some more lazy internet research, are around a hundred thousand dollars. 

95% of the internet is uninformed
opinion. The rest is porn and ads.

And I suspect that that reason is shoddy construction. Admittedly, having never been inside one, I can't really comment on how well they're constructed. I'm just talking about things I know not of. But they cost a tenth of the price of a trailer, so something's not right here. And if everything else in American is any indication, these will be leaking within a year. It's part of a larger trend of everything being junk now. Everything. The further into the twenty-first century we go, the crappier it gets. 

Customer service gets worse, build quality deteriorates, and people keep believing in free delivery. Which isn't real. Amazon isn't selling cheap houses to solve the housing crisis. If they wanted to do that, they'd pay their workers better. They're selling cheap houses because they can convince people to buy them. Probably by exploiting the part of our programing that suggested that we can, and should, all own houses someday. Which would be great. I'd love to. But not like this.

"What? Amazon is great! I used to poop in a bag, but
now they grudgingly allowed us bathroom breaks."

-some Amazon employee

Today in clown pants:

Yeah, but can a robot have stage 9 cancer? I ask because, as you may have read, The President tweeted:

Yeah, I know it's not a tweet, but he posted it on Truth Social
and tweets on that are called truths and I won't call them that.
Hey, they should call them "nutties." 

Above: President Joe Biden, evidently.

Well, ok, to be clear he reposted this from some other nutter. Here, it's hard to read so:

"There is no #JoeBiden - executed in 2020. #Biden clones doubles & robotic engineered soulless mindless entities are what you see. >#Democrats dont know the difference. #Steel #ussteel #MAGA #MAHA..." 

-some nutter the President is platforming

Anyway, I have some issues with this. For one thing, executed by whom? And when in 2020? Did a dead guy beat Trump? Or did a dead guy's clone double/robot beat him? Because that's even more embarrassing than crowing over a narrow election win, and calling it a landslide and a mandate when you didn't even get a plurality. 

Even more embarrassing than that time in Pennsylvania,
when he rambled about Elon rigging the voting machines.

Remember that time he sicced
a violent mob on the Capitol?
Oh, wait, sorry, that was Trump.

Secondly, if there's no Joe Biden, whose cancer diagnosis did one of the President's handlers tweet perfunctory sympathy for? Oh, wait, is that why Trump is now saying:

"If you feel sorry for him, don't feel sorry, because he's vicious. What he did with his political opponent and all of the people that he hurt, he hurt a lot of people, Biden, so I really don't feel sorry for him."

-Trump, explaining why compassion is dumb

Pictured: this conspiracy theory.

So we shouldn't feel sympathy for a fellow human being facing a serious medical crisis, he's already dead, and it's actually the robot clone who has cancer. Got it. Wait, but why would they, whoever they are, give a clone double or a robotic engineered soulless mindless entity, as the case may be, cancer? Speaking of, which is it? Clone or robot? These are two entirely different things, pick one. Even as conspiracy theories go, this one is pretty clown pants. And while we're on the subject, "theory" suggests that there's some interest in proving a supposition through empiricism, and these are the same people that harped on Obama's birth certificate, recommend bleach to cure COVID, and still say that the 2020 election was rigged, so that feels unlikely. 

So I guess that I'm saying is, shouldn't something like "Joe Biden's a robot clone" trigger some kind of 25th Amendment situation? I'm not saying I want J.D. Popeslayer Vance anywhere near the presidency, but I get the impression that he's just regular incompetent rather than rabid foam crazy incompetent. 

Pictured: the Vice President, seen here, spouting nonsense from his beard hole.

So much for my career selling stolen jeans...

Above: Parliament. Disappointingly,
they no longer were the wigs.

Yes, Nick Clegg, that's because it's stealing. Who's Nick Clegg, and what is he stealing? Ok, he isn't necessarily a thief, Clegg, an ex-politician and former Meta--that's Facebook for those of us who don't know what NASDAQ stands for--said that Britain shouldn't force AI companies to ask permission from artists before using their work to train AI, because it would ruin the AI industry. I guess there's a piece of legislation in Parliament that would require AI companies to disclose what work was fed into their software for training purposes.

I suspect it would look something
like this, only somewhat more twee.

AI, I am given to understand, needs to be trained and it does this by consuming massive quantities of information. Like, if you ask ChatGPT or whatever to show you what the Defenestration of Prague would look like if it were a movie directed by Wes Anderson, shot entirely in Cantonese it can do that. But how well it does that depends on how many history books, Wes Anderson movies, and Cantonese-language dictionaries it's already consumed. So, kind of like people I suppose.

"You shall not pass this bill."

-Ian McKellen, milking it

But what if Wes Anderson doesn't want your robot crewing up his entire body of work and spitting it back out as a "new" creation. One for which he sees not a dime, nor receives any credit?  Well, he's not from the UK, so Parliament doesn't care what he thinks. They may however care what Sir Ian McKellen, Kate Bush, and the Royal Shakespeare Company alongside hundreds of other artist think, because they all signed an open letter opposing it.

Pictured: the awfully specific result
of my internet image search.

If I were to say, break into The Gap, steal a stack of men's slim fit jeans and sell them out of my trunk at the local flea market, that's a crime. I couldn't then argue in front of the judge that I shouldn't be convicted on the grounds that it would put a damper on my stolen jeans-selling operation. That's dumb, and so's this argument that AI companies should be allowed to steal artists work. Don't be too hard on Clegg however. Technically he was talking about the specific bill in question, and saying that Britain alone shouldn't outlaw AI training-related IP theft. 

He may have been arguing that Parliament shouldn't tie Britain's hands when it comes to AI, which I sort of get. But he was also kind of arguing that artists shouldn't own their intellectual property, at least when it comes to the needs of tech companies who need grist for their AI mills, which, is indefensible. 

"If you can think of a better way to create art than to feed the work
of human artists into a machine that reduces it to data, then generates content
derived from the artists work, but is no longer owned by them, I'd love to hear it."

-OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, evidently 

unaware that you can just hire actual artists*

*and admittedly, he's never said any such thing, but that's what this technology does, right?

What? We olds love Muppets.

I do't think it's a hot take to suggest that anyone, anyone who would have a problem with Kermit the Frog giving a commencement speech must be broken inside. 

Above: Kermit, dressed as Galileo for some reason,
and giving the 2025 commencement speech.

Pictured: a puppeteer's hand, wrapped
in felt, bringing joy to thousands. 

I bring this up because Kermit the Frog gave the speech at University of Maryland this year. Kermit's creator and original voice, Jim Henson was an alum, so while it is unusual to have a puppet--or Muppet, in this case--deliver a commencement speech, it's not unwarranted. The speech itself was heartfelt, and moving, and emphasized the importance of human (and by extension, Muppet) connection. He ended it by leading all in attendance in a sing along of Rainbow Connection, which I am listening to now and don't mind telling you that I am in literal tears. 

You know, people who grew up with
The Muppet Show, and Muppet Babies...
fine, old people. I'm talking about olds.

It's the purest, most positive thing I've seen in the news in some time, and I cannot fathom why this upsets people. Sure, those in attendance were more interested in seeing themselves on the Jumbotron, and I mean, it's their graduation, that's fine. And in fairness, Kermit hits differently with, shall we say, people like me. That is, people of a certain age. These kids grew up playing Minecraft and to them Jim Henson is probably little more than an alum they're only vague aware of. I couldn't tell you who gave my commencement speech, but then mine wasn't given by a Muppet. But outrage? Backlash?

Because unsurprisingly, there has been such a reaction. "But who would be upset by these sixteen minutes of pure magic" you might reasonably ask? Behold:

Huh? Yeah, I guess they
all have that hair now...

"Instead of honoring entrepreneurs, or veterans, or innovators, they picked Kermit <pauses for emphasis> the Frog. We have students who are drowning in debt, who are struggling to find jobs, and universities are handing the mic to puppets. Not puppets like many Democratic elected leaders. Like a real puppet."

-Riley Gaines, evidently butt-hurt

that Elon or whoever didn't get the gig.

That's Riley Gaines, conservative podcaster, transphobe, and now, Muppetphobe. So, couple of things. First, are commencement speeches supposed to honor the speaker or the students? Also, students drowing in debt and struggling to find jobs? Really? But isn't the economy like, so good right now? Like, so good, you wouldn't believe? People are saying. Oh, and sick burn with the Democrat line. Really love how organically she worked in the bit about how they're like puppets...somehow. 

But since we're on the topic, Kermit (left) was behind an oversized podium to
disguise the puppeteers. What I want to know is what was with Trump's thigh-height
screen attached to his podium while he was hawking crypto being the Presidential seal?

"To the class of 2025, I say this:
being rich is the best. You should try it."

-Some rich guy's speech

And look, if you don't care for the Muppets, fine. If you think the Muppets are too old, or too irrelevant, that's also fine. Admittedly, for people my age, it would probably be like having Captain Kangaroo. But I find the bit about who she'd rather see up there awfully telling. To be clear, I have no problem with veterans. They're cool. But entrepreneurs? Innovators? What even is that? Don't entrepreneurs just accumulate money for themselves? What's their advice going to be, get rich? Because no one born after the Reagan administration will ever be able to retire. She bemoaned student debt and the tough job market, but whose fault is that?

Above: the President, seen here whinging
on about Sleepy Joe or something.

And look, I am sick of the tactic where we go "well so-and-so did this" every time we disagree with someone, but the President recently gave the Westpoin commencement speech and just blathered on about his grievances. He complained about drag shows, and trans people, and about how nobody joined the military under Biden. Which is a weird thing to say in a commencement speech for a class of people who enrolled during the Biden administration. 

The point is, it wasn't meant to inspire, it was just a narcissist talking about himself. Kermit's speech, whether you like Muppets or not, was about growing up, and remembering the people in your live who are important to you, and staying true to yourself and following your dreams. He didn't once complain about Fozzie Bear, or annihilating our enemies. It was an honest, inspirational commencement speech, given in honor of an artist who brought joy to millions. But Riley Gaines I guess, would rather listen to some tech bro drone on about crypto or AI or whatever.

Pictured: Henson, who was never once convicted of falsifying documents 

to cover up a hush money payment, seen here with some of his beloved creations.