Althouse: Sunrise.

May 31, 2026

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

69 comments:

chuck said...: #1 is both nice and unusual. It catches the eye.; 5/31/26, 6:25 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Yeah, #1 is one of the rare examples of white being an important sunrise color.; 5/31/26, 6:30 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: The top tops them all.; 5/31/26, 6:54 PM
Eva Marie said...: Bill Whittle’s contribution to Pratt for Mayor:
https://youtu.be/JZcgESpwwfo?si=DHucbqfjuW9ZnhYc; 5/31/26, 7:06 PM
James K said...: I like the last one too, with the trees framing the sunrise and the goldenrod (or whatever it is) in the foreground.; 5/31/26, 7:29 PM
RCOCEAN II said...: Madison the blue and the gold.; 5/31/26, 7:37 PM
Gospace said...: This contribution to Pratt's campaign by Gene Parmesan is right on point. https://x.com/dsonoiki/status/2061120363611001332

Seems he's getting a LOT of free campaign ads all over the internet. That are being reposted and reposted again.; 5/31/26, 7:53 PM
Achilles said...: Welp.

Looks like it is the fast part for the Shia in Iran.; 5/31/26, 7:54 PM
narciso said...: How do you get the deep blues; 5/31/26, 7:57 PM
RCOCEAN II said...: The blue of her eye and the gold of her hair are a blend of the western sky, and the moonlight beams on the girl of my dreams...
She's the Sweetheart of Sigma Chi.”; 5/31/26, 8:19 PM
RCOCEAN II said...: Gentlemen prefer blondes,
But they marry brunettes.; 5/31/26, 8:20 PM
RCOCEAN II said...: Blondes have more fun,
But only their hairdresser knows.; 5/31/26, 8:21 PM
Ann Althouse said...: “ I like the last one too, with the trees framing the sunrise and the goldenrod (or whatever it is) in the foreground.”

It’s golden alexander.; 5/31/26, 8:23 PM
RCOCEAN II said...: The "hair wars" used to be fun.
Blondes vs. brunettes.
Now its just "Hey don't touch my hair, white girl".; 5/31/26, 8:24 PM
narciso said...: Red heads also; 5/31/26, 8:24 PM
narciso said...: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2180812/; 5/31/26, 8:32 PM
RCOCEAN II said...: Red hair, green eyes.
Hot. But stay outta the sun.; 5/31/26, 8:33 PM
RCOCEAN II said...: Nice 1928 version of Sweetheart of Sigma chi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5f5QHJ-rTs

My mother would've hated it. And my wife too. they both despise male tenors.; 5/31/26, 8:34 PM
narciso said...: Yet she couldnt save cowboy bebop no one could; 5/31/26, 8:41 PM
Big Mike said...: @RVOCEAN, did they even despise Pavarotti? Do they even despise Michael Spyres?; 5/31/26, 8:54 PM
Original Mike said...: "Red hair, green eyes.
Hot. But stay outta the sun."

I'm blushing.
Or is that sunburn?; 5/31/26, 8:55 PM
HistoryDoc said...: Periscope up, in #1; 5/31/26, 8:58 PM
Indefinitely Extended Excursion™️ along with $1.8bn of Kleptocracy said...: A deal with Iran is the least worst outcome available to Trump.
Aside from not starting the war in the first place.; 5/31/26, 9:45 PM
Quayle said...: Mr. Big Assertions. Usually wrong but never in doubt.; 5/31/26, 10:12 PM
Eva Marie said...: So this is kinda cool.
“CTH predicts AI will become a localized and optimized sub-set for each sector of the economy, requiring each major organization and corporation to adopt specific cost/benefit data libraries and networks for use and functionality.
At scale, a thousand coders each working on Gemini, ChatGPT, Anthropic, Grok, etc. will become 100,000+ software designers working inside companies to create personalized, targeted, bespoke AI data systems and networks; each system specifically tailored to the industry or sector of business. The intranet of internets will happen again.
Creating and selling AI system networks and integration functions that are personally tailored to highly specific company functions, creates an entirely new sector of the technology industry that has not even begun yet.”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2026/05/31/a-conversation-about-artificial-intelligence-ai/#more-283940; 5/31/26, 10:12 PM
Eva Marie said...: Centralized AI is structurally doomed and distributed AI is the actual future.; 5/31/26, 10:15 PM
Peachy said...: #1 makes me want to dive in and cool off.; 5/31/26, 10:23 PM
Peachy said...: #4 has a curvature of the earth quality to it.; 5/31/26, 10:29 PM
Eva Marie said...: The perfect video:
https://youtu.be/8qrriKcwvlY?si=t5A9w-iDGzqIaeUp; 5/31/26, 10:35 PM
Eva Marie said...: Is everyone from Wisconsin? TIMBUK3 started out in Madison, Wisconsin.; 5/31/26, 10:43 PM
Eva Marie said...: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked up people’s bios: Wisconsin, Wisconsin, Wisconsin. So many creatives come from Wisconsin. Liberace, Frank Lloyd Wright, Orson Wells, Georgia O’Keefe, Seymour Cray, Al Jarreau, Spencer Tracy. Pretty amazing.; 5/31/26, 11:25 PM
Peachy said...: I arrived in Wisc.; 5/31/26, 11:40 PM
Eva Marie said...: See what I’m saying,; 5/31/26, 11:41 PM
Iman said...: Don’t forget Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer. They were very creative.; 6/1/26, 12:01 AM
Iman said...: At one point, John Wayne Gacy lived there, but moved to Illinois for work, as Wisconsin was chock full of clowns.; 6/1/26, 12:08 AM
Eva Marie said...: lol; 6/1/26, 12:09 AM
Eva Marie said...: You gotta have the sour with the sweet.; 6/1/26, 12:10 AM
Peachy said...: iman -lol.; 6/1/26, 12:32 AM
Peachy said...: the bodeans; 6/1/26, 12:32 AM
Peachy said...: the adorable and beautiful lead character from Mrs. Maisel - from Wisconsin.; 6/1/26, 12:33 AM
Eva Marie said...: It’s a quietly very productive state.; 6/1/26, 12:42 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: “Nice 1928 version of Sweetheart of Sigma chi”

ΣΧ, ΒΓ Chapter. Used to serenade the widow of one of our founders with it. And, yes, she was generous… which was the point.; 6/1/26, 1:07 AM
Kai Akker said...: Blue moon is shining up there through our pine trees.

Once in a blue moon..... things happen.
Something is going to happen. And it is not AI or DNC. It is a matter of human psychology that has been a constant since our first recorded days.

Ignore nearly all the explanations. It is just a repetitive part of human psychology.; 6/1/26, 2:57 AM
Saint Croix said...: Republican party: Flawed But Human
Democrat party: Party of Bullshit

Democrats are like, "We need some flawed but human candidates, like Trump. The voters are sick of our bullshit."

Democrats: "We hate Zionists. We hate Zionists. We hate Zionists."

Flawed but Human Democrat: "Zionists ought to be locked up in a concentration camp and castrated."

Democrats: "No, no, no. That's too flawed."

Flawed but Human Democrat: "Zionists are so bad. I've had a Nazi tattoo for twenty years."

Democrats: "Stop, stop, stop. We need some fucking A.I. Can we run a robot, please?"

Flawed but Human Democrat: "God loves abortion and is non-binary, just like me. And meat is murder."

Democrats: "Okay. All right. We'll try it and see what happens."; 6/1/26, 4:12 AM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: Eva, don’t forget Steve Miller, Wisconsinite who wrote “Take the Money and Run.”; 6/1/26, 5:12 AM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: It’s also a very inventive state. The SC Johnson Innovation Center has a great round up of em.; 6/1/26, 5:15 AM
wendybar said...: THIS gets more and more relevant every single day.....

I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸
@ImMeme0
"If I Were The Devil" - A Warning to America from Paul Harvey to America From 1965
https://x.com/ImMeme0/status/1651690408093556738?s=20; 6/1/26, 5:28 AM
Christopher B said...: Eva Marie said...
Centralized AI is structurally doomed and distributed AI is the actual future.

That was predicted my entire nearly forty year career as a computer systems engineer and hasn't happened yet. For once CTH said something sensible. The fact that the consultants are going to be writing prompts rather than code (which if you know computer tech, no programmer has written uninterpreted code for decades) is immaterial.; 6/1/26, 5:33 AM
Leland said...: I have never been to Wisconsin. I haven’t even traveled through the state. I have been to Chicago to get to Indiana, but not the other way. I tend to visit warmer places.; 6/1/26, 5:40 AM
Leland said...: Wendybar, I’m listening to the latest Triggernometry with Kelsi Sheren. Paul Harvey barely scratched the surface. I’m not surprised that progressives push eugenics anyway they can. What amazes me is the liberals, who will decry the death penalty as cruel and unusual, yet find MAID to be death with dignity because progressive tell them so. In a sane world, support for MAID with be a litmus test to prove a person unfit to hold office or any leadership position.; 6/1/26, 5:47 AM
Jaq said...: Ukraine just gave a state funeral for a nazi collaborator, Melnyk, go ahead and google him. I guess if you view Hitler as an anti-Soviet freedom fighter, then they are both heroes, but why did the Soviets come west? Because Hitler’s army got to within sight of Moscow, and they were driven back.; 6/1/26, 6:18 AM
Jaq said...: We also put an al Qaeda head chopper in charge of Syria, this was Obama who set that one in train. We will climb into bed with anyone, what happened in Tehran with the protests used the same template as Maidan Square, we have a playbook, we use it over and over. Impose economic pain, dangle relief, create protests, arm people to set off violence, then put a puppet in charge. We call them color revolutions but they are coups that we back.; 6/1/26, 6:26 AM
Quayle said...: Supper clubs. everyone else in America goes out to dinner. Wisconsin goes to the supper clubs. I’m no expert, but it looked pretty much like dinner to me; 6/1/26, 6:27 AM
Jamie said...: Our Toronto Airbnb seems to have no way to make coffee except an espresso machine. Now, I'm a big fan of espresso, but the only coffee we have with us at this early hour is already ground and not for espresso.

So. My first and much-needed cup, because the dog knows not of timezones and wakes with the sun, has very satisfactory crema, but I think the coffee beneath is weak and watery, as you'd expect from coffee ground too coarsely for the method. I'll have to tamp harder, or find a mortar and pestle around here, for Cup #2.; 6/1/26, 6:31 AM
Jaq said...: If you think that this is brilliant strategy, fine, but Trump ran against this, he lied, so don’t be surprised when many of his voters feel betrayed.; 6/1/26, 6:31 AM
Enigma said...: @Eva Marie: “CTH predicts AI will become a localized and optimized sub-set for each sector of the economy..."

The key questions remain:

(1) What is the gain of AI over stable and curated domain-specific encyclopedias (i.e., Wikis)?

(2) Can their inherent sycophancy and hallucinations be controlled, or will overlooked errors and error checking labor costs outweigh the value of "instant brilliant answers"?

(3) Are open-ended AI tools the best tools or a distraction for smart users? Should employers adopt the "horse in blinders" approach to keep human energy focused on core tasks?

(4) Are AI tools merely a high-cost update to hardware product marketing (i.e., expensive chips, RAM, and servers)? This follows the costs and frequent uselessness of Big Data 10 to 15 years ago versus representative sampling and statistics.

"Brute force and ignorance" has been a common sloppy IT strategy for decades and decades and decades.; 6/1/26, 6:33 AM
Achilles said...: Enigma said...

@Eva Marie: “CTH predicts AI will become a localized and optimized sub-set for each sector of the economy..."

The key questions remain:

(1) What is the gain of AI over stable and curated domain-specific encyclopedias (i.e., Wikis)?

LLMs have a mathematical ceiling and will never achieve AGI on their own.

What LLMs do do is create an analog <-> digital interface.

It did this by creating a mostly deterministic reasoning process similar to what humans do but in a way that is more understood and controllable.

They have infinite mental energy, perfect recall, and rapid execution.

They will act as a multiplier for people who can supply reason and logic.

But as you point out they will also multiply the stupidity of the people using them.; 6/1/26, 6:50 AM
Eva Marie said...: Enigma said, “The key questions remain . . . “
Those are key questions for other people. For me the key question has been: are AIs a step toward freedom or a step away from it? I think there’s a greater chance they reinforce freedom than limit it. And really, that’s all I care about. There are an awful lot of people in this world who believe their own intelligence entitles them to make decisions for what they call stupid people. I want us stupid people to remain free.; 6/1/26, 7:31 AM
Indefinitely Extended Excursion™️ along with $1.8bn of Kleptocracy said...: Berkshire Hathaway buys Taylor Morrison in $8.5bn housing sector deal ~ Traders Union

Glad to see that Abel is continuing Warren's path in not hiring investment bankers to do deals. But the real winners are anyone holding Taylor Morrission paper..... now backed by BH.; 6/1/26, 7:37 AM
Eva Marie said...: A tool that amplifies the user is a freedom tool if everyone has access to it. It becomes an oppression tool the moment access gets restricted to the credentialed class. That’s the fight worth having.
The fact that so many techies are taking up that fight is proof that freedom runs in our blood.; 6/1/26, 8:04 AM
Eva Marie said...: Amend that to the quest for freedom.; 6/1/26, 8:08 AM
Enigma said...: @Achilles: They have infinite mental energy, perfect recall, and rapid execution.

They will act as a multiplier for people who can supply reason and logic.

Yep. I describe them as giving me 200 mile long arms. I can execute first-pass overviews in minutes rather than hours. Still, the DO forget random facts with abstract tokenization and I pick up many errors. So, I doubt their quality and end up spending hours re working the first passes. They are a mirror of my intellect and a mirror of my blind spots too.

Given their mixed value, I've turned error corrections into a game: ask a random question and then spot a couple mistakes or latent source biases. Build counterarguments to pull the yarn and unravel the entire sweater. Compare the early vs. late AI answers to confirm how spongy and dubious the first answers were.

The problem is not that smart and self-aware people will use AI with care and caution, rather, mediocre people will use AI to compete in domains they don't understand. AI is therefore the weaponized update to: "A students hire A students but B students hire C students."

The B and C (and D and F) students fully lack the capacity to spot their own mistakes, but they presently run entire governments and major cities in CA, NY, IL, etc. etc. etc.; 6/1/26, 8:09 AM
Kai Akker said...: And there go the futures. It will go fast when they see it.

Headlines this morning:

US Stocks at All-Time Highs
South Korea's market climbing to new records
Greg (Abel, Buffett's successor) The Builder [pays $72.50 in cash, 24% premium) for Taylor Morrison Home

The AI Trade Hits Overdrive

Nvidia Introduces blah blah

The Exclusive Retreat Where Wealthy Kids Learn How Not to Blow an Inheritance (this will prove to be far less of a problem than feared); 6/1/26, 8:19 AM
Original Mike said...: "Supper clubs. everyone else in America goes out to dinner. Wisconsin goes to the supper clubs. I’m no expert, but it looked pretty much like dinner to me"

Supper.; 6/1/26, 8:33 AM
Eva Marie said...: @Enigma:
Thank you for amplifying my point. AI makes it cheaper to look smart than to be smart. So if it amplifies whoever’s holding it, and the people holding the levers of power are often the least equipped to use it well, then the case for keeping it in the hands of us stupid people gets stronger. Better everyone has a flawed tool than a few people have a monopoly on it.
BTW, the CTH post I linked to earlier is worth reading. He lays out exactly how us stupid people (you excluded, of course) can keep bureaucrats and petty officials in check.; 6/1/26, 8:34 AM
Original Mike said...: I never did get the "club" part. Is there some historical reason for that?; 6/1/26, 8:34 AM
Eva Marie said...: Hey, this is cool:
https://x.com/MelissaRedpill/status/2061153769983782972/video/1?s=46
Everyone, have a great day!; 6/1/26, 8:44 AM
Indefinitely Extended Excursion™️ along with $1.8bn of Kleptocracy said...: It's a useful reminder for everyone that says "this isn't like the dot-com bubble, because it was just companies that made no money back then".

This just isn't true.

There were a lot of very successful (and fundamentally good) companies that made lots of money that became very overvalued (alongside a bunch that made no money), and it took a long while for their valuations to recover (Cisco as a case in point -- which continues to be an excellent company with great products).

So what about today? Right now there is little transparency on the business model for AI. More so when one considers the circular financing these companies utilize.

Until very recently the real costs of AI have not been passed through to the users. Up until now the whole AI industry has been running a subsidized model -- with the offer prices not really representative of the costs of delivering the service.

Yes -- this looks very much like the dot-com bubble with companies providing services at low or zero cost with the aim of figuring out how they would get people to pay for it later.

That's now changing and we're starting to see the true costs of the AI services (corporate customers only so far), and some users are beginning to question the value.

I recommend this piece in Fortune from this week -- https://fortune.com/2026/05/26/uber-coo-ai-spending-tokens-claude-code/
where Uber burned through their entire $3.4bn AI budget for 2026 in four months -- and that's without the full unsubsidized prices. Needless to say, their CEO is questioning the value proposition.

Hence we're going to see the AI prices rapidly rise as it is unsustainable to continue making massive losses on these services. Microsoft, it seems, is going to be one of the first out the gate on this. with GitHub shifting all Copilot plans to full usage-based billing through GitHub AI Credits starting June 1, 2026. However we don't know if this is still going to be a subsidized price...only that we're going to see a proper usage based model.

Further, and more worryingly, all of the investment in the datacenter buildout is happening off balance sheet in SPV wrapper companies so we can't see the costs in the accounts of META, MSFT, etc., but just because that debt isn't on the balance sheets doesn't mean it disappears -- that debt still has to be serviced. Worse we don't know how much of that debt is floating, and how much is fixed (a lot more private credit debt is floating that you might think).

Of course that debt might not get serviced - again a call back to the dot-com bubble and the huge amounts of long-haul fiber that was installed and written down.

However, the consequences of not servicing it will be spectacular for private credit. And shortly thereafter the banks (who are carrying a lot of that debt indirectly).

And very shortly thereafter the stock market...and economy.

So I suspect this is why you're seeing the rush to get the big AI IPOs away this year.

Caveat emptor.; 6/1/26, 9:28 AM
rcommal said...: @rcocean: SO enjoyed the link to 1920s Sweetheart of Sigma Chi. Thanks for posting it. One of my great uncles loved singing that song and would include it in his combo sets. Nice memory brought back by your post.; 6/1/26, 10:24 AM