"I mean, the crazy idea — but in the spirit of crazy ideas — is that if the world — there's like 8, roughly 8 billion people in the world — if the world can generate, like, 8 quintillion tokens per year..."

"... if that's the world, let, let, actually, let's say the world can generate 20 trillion quin- 20 quintillion tokens per year, each word generated by an AI — okay, just making up a huge number here, okay? — we'll say, okay, 12 of those go to, you know, the normal capitalistic system. But 8 of those 8 quintillion tokens are gonna get divided up equally among 8 billion people. So everybody gets 1 trillion tokens. And that's your kind of universal basic wealth globally. And people can sell those tokens. Like, if I don't need mine, I can sell them to you. We could pool ours together for some like new art project we wanna do. But, but instead of just like getting a check, you're getting — everybody on earth is getting — like a slice of the world's AI capacity, and then we're letting the, like, massively distributed human ingenuity and creativity and economic engine do its thing. I mean, that's like a crazy idea. Maybe it's a bad one, but that's the kind of thing that I think sounds like someone should think about it more."

Said Sam Altman, in the new episode of Theo Von's podcast (audio and transcript at Podscribe).

The word in boldface is the word that I said out loud as I was listening to the podcast, through earbuds, as I walked in the woods just now. I would describe my tone of voice as: derisive. Art! Art reared its goofball head in the midst of that insanity. I've heard it before, this notion that if only we were set free from the limitations of the workaday world, what we would do would be to make art.

"The most extreme end of the promortalism movement is 'Efilism,'which takes its name from 'life' spelt backward..."

"... and argues that all sentient life should be extinguished to prevent suffering. Gary Mosher... one of its most prominent proponents... endorses violence towards women, even claiming he will murder any woman he gets pregnant who refuses an abortion. 'The end goal is for the truth [Efilism] to win, and once it does, we can finally begin the process of sterilising this planet of the disease of life,' he wrote in an online manifesto. But after the IVF clinic in Palm Springs was bombed, he distanced himself from the violence. 'The fact is that there’s people in the world who are lonely, and some that are crazy, and this, that and the other thing,' he said on [YouTube]. 'They have some reason to be despondent, and they have low investment in their existence, and those are dangerous people.'... [I]t is not hard to find members recommending various methods for killing oneself, or using the term 'CTB' — or catch the bus — for suicide...."

From "Inside the ‘strangest terrorist movement the US has ever seen’/Guy Bartkus tried to destroy an IVF clinic to save the embryos the pain of existence. Alarmingly for national security, his ‘promortalist’ philosophy does not die with him" (London Times).

People don't want to shout out their own name, but Kamala Harris seems to have thought it would be a cool way to demonstrate that "It's about all of us."

They were loudly chanting her name, and she instructed them to shout out their own name, the idea being, I think, to unleash a hilarious, heartwarming cacophony:

This might be the most awkward moment ever, the second-hand embarassment is real pic.twitter.com/ObaMKPR9c3

— TaraBull (@TaraBull808) October 29, 2024

But she got silence. She still pretended she'd received the desired response, and declared the conclusion to be derived from the demonstration that hadn't happened: "It's about all of us."

Apparently, individualism is not in vogue... or not something her people feel good about expressing loud and proud.

If I followed the method of the elite media and the Democratic Party, I would call it fascistic. The crowd showed that it only wanted to be unified behind the identity of the adored leader.

ADDED: I feel the strong need to republish a post I wrote in September 2018:

"Reminds me of that 'Chimp Crazy' thing I was watching. People love animals and get inside their fantasy."

Something I texted after receiving the following viral deer video (and agreeing with the guy who began "Nice story, too bad...."):

Nice story, too bad it’s made up of multiple random clips. Also, did dude repair the fence after cutting or just leave it that way for the owner to deal with?

— Jim McCaslin (@JimMcCaslin23) September 2, 2024

And if you're not familiar with "Chimp Crazy," check out the trailer:

People are delusional about wild animals. That reminds me to get back to my rewatching of "Grizzly Man."

Incorrect "Literally" of the Day.

"Why put out the effort to challenge the Haley effort ahead of time when Trump knows he’s going to win Indiana no matter what? The bottom line is he’s completely unhinged. He is literally off his rocker."

Said Mike Murphy, a former Republican member of the Indiana House of Representatives, quoted in "'Literally off his rocker': Why Trump is fixated on Indiana/Trump’s focus on the heavily Republican state has become a bizarre subplot of the 2024 primary" (Politico).

The straining to characterize Trump as crazy is... crazy. But it's especially absurd to put "literally" next to such a concrete metaphor.

I don't know the origin of the phrase "off his rocker" — the OED finds it in an 1890 "Dictionary of Slang" — but it feels ageist to me, as though the person belongs in a rocking chair... and can't even do that right.

ADDED: Grammarist has this:

"... Israel’s last two major wars... were both started by nonstate actors backed by Iran — Hezbollah from Lebanon in 2006 and Hamas from Gaza now — after Israel had withdrawn from their territories."

"And they both began with bold border-crossing assaults — Hezbollah killing three and kidnapping two Israeli soldiers in 2006 and Hamas brutally killing more than 1,300 and abducting some 150 Israeli civilians, including older people, babies and toddlers, in addition to soldiers. That similarity is not a coincidence. Both assaults were designed to challenge emerging trends in the Arab world of accepting Israel’s existence in the region. And most critically, the result of these surprise, deadly attacks across relatively stable borders was that they drove Israel crazy.... Since 2006, the Israel-Lebanon border has been relatively stable and quiet.... And while Israel did take a hit in terms of its global image because of the carnage it inflicted in Beirut, it was not nearly as isolated in the world or the Middle East over the short term or long run as Hezbollah had hoped. Hamas must have missed that lesson...."

Writes Thomas Friedman, in "Why Israel Is Acting This Way" (NYT).

If Friedman's use of the word crazy bothers you, you should read the whole column. He uses the word crazy (or a variation on crazy) 10 times.

As Friedman imagines it, Hamas, seeing Israel's increased acceptance in the Arab world, thought: "OK, Jews,

Trump has caused the New York Times to write a front page article about his purported positivity about performing a perp walk!

I'm laughing while trying to force myself to read "Trump at Mar-a-Lago: Magical Thinking and a Perp-Walk Fixation/Those who have spent time with Donald Trump in recent days say he has often appeared significantly disconnected from the severity of his potential legal woes."

See? Their idea is that he's crazy and delusional and out of touch with reality. Do they even consider that he's playing them and just doing what he always does and making the best of whatever misfortune comes his way? It's just media judo. Can't they recognize it by now?

Oh, I'll give them credit. They recognize it, they just also keep doing what they do, characterizing Trump's genius/"genius" moves as craziness.

And I say that even as I do what I always do: read the NYT in the morning. But I'm going to give myself credit for not reading this article. Not yet, anyway. Am I missing something?

"As well as changing cultural references such as 'Walkman,' the publisher removed words that it believed some readers might find offensive. A character is described as 'cheerful' rather than 'plump'..."

"... references to villains making victims 'slaves' have been removed and 'crazy' has been changed to 'silly.' In one of the novels, a character wearing a Halloween costume, dressed as 'a dark and stormy night,' no longer wears black face paint.  Scholastic said that it had made the changes to 'keep the language current and avoid imagery that could negatively impact a young person’s view of themselves today, with a particular focus on mental health.'"

From "Goosebumps books ‘sanitised without RL Stine’s permission’/Mental health and weight references tweaked to avoid offence" (London Times).

Stine — who cranked out 67 of these books and claimed he could write one in 6 days — tweeted: "I’ve never changed a word in Goosebumps. Any changes were never shown to me." 

If you really cared about the "mental health" of children, you'd want them reading better things than the Goosebumps series. But I can see that Scholastic is keen to keep the old series from getting cancelled for seeming behind the times for repetitively calling its characters fat and crazy.

ADDED: Four days ago, the London Times published "Goosebumps author edits mentions of weight and mental health/Writer’s self-censoring includes changing ‘plump’ to ‘cheerful’ and ‘crazy’ to ‘silly.'" That article is linked to by the newer article that contradicts it.

Did Stine self-censor or not? One or the other article needs a correction update.

"The contention that the world of politics tends to attract more than its share of crazy people seems self-evident."

"Politics offers fame, power, glamour, and, often, considerable amounts of money (or, at least, the ability to control considerable amounts of money. You will run into nutty candidates, nutty campaign managers and staffers, nutty volunteers, nutty donors, and nutty hangers-on. Who knows, maybe even some political correspondents can be nutty from time to time."

 
From "Do the Democrats Have a . . . Murder Problem?" by Jim Geraghty (National Review). 

Great title, by the way.

Just when Trump is calling the Democrats "crazy," we get some loonily angry outbursts from Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.

Is this ludicrous theatricality as a cynical tactic to get attention in the Era of Twitter or are they really this unsteady and short on self-control?

Wow.
Pelosi is unhinged.
She just completely snapped. pic.twitter.com/x3wELO6WHo

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) December 5, 2019

Watch Joe Biden’s tense exchange with a voter in Iowa who accuses him of selling access to the White House with his son in Ukraine and being too old for the presidency
pic.twitter.com/dn49FyVW0j

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 5, 2019

MEANWHILE: There's some talk about making Trump crazy:

This seems like a pretty good ad in that: a) Biden has been hammering away at this theme; and b) It will drive Trump crazy. https://t.co/5mqt0Mz9hy

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) December 5, 2019

AND: Here's where Trump is calling them "crazy":

The Do Nothing Democrats had a historically bad day yesterday in the House. They have no Impeachment case and are demeaning our Country. But nothing matters to them, they have gone crazy. Therefore I say, if you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast, so we can have a fair....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 5, 2019

ALSO: It sure seems to me as though Biden calls that man "fat." Why is Biden yelling at that guy? He's asking a question that Biden should be prepared to answer briskly and soundly. There's zero reason to go off on the man.

PLUS: Biden did the same thing back in 1988 — challenged a citizen interlocutor to an IQ test:

Trump floats a new nickname — "four horsewomen of the apocalypse" — and rails against the do-nothing Democrats.

I'm reading Trump's tweets this morning.

First, there's this quote from Louisiana Senator John Kennedy (in 3 parts: 1, 2, 3):

"In America, if you hate our Country, you are free to leave. The simple fact of the matter is, the four Congresswomen think that America is wicked in its origins, they think that America is even more wicked now, that we are all racist and evil. They’re entitled to their opinion, they’re Americans. Now I’m entitled to my opinion, & I just think they’re left wing cranks. They’re the reason there are directions on a shampoo bottle, & we should ignore them. The 'squad' has moved the Democrat Party substantially LEFT, and.....they are destroying the Democrat Party. I’m appalled that so many of our Presidential candidates are falling all over themselves to try to agree with the four horsewomen of the apocalypse. I’m entitled to say that they’re Wack Jobs."

Then, Trump's own words:

The Democrats in Congress are getting nothing done, not on drug pricing, not on immigration, not on infrastructure, not on nothing! Sooo much opportunity, yet all they want to do is go “fishing.” The American people are tired of the never ending Witch Hunt, they want results now!

I added the boldface to reveal an interesting resonance.

ADDED: So... the rhetoric is — They think we're wicked and there are witches, and we think they are the destruction of one fourth of humanity:

I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest... Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword... before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, 'A quart of wheat for a day's wages, and three quarts of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!'... I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him.... They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by the sword (war), famine, and plague and by the wild beasts of the earth.

Crazy eyes.

This is a great example of "crazy eyes" associated with delusional policies. I dare you to propose something this crazy in public without your eyes bugging out this way. https://t.co/g3uYmWpplm

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) April 12, 2019

"Chris Cuomo and Kellyanne Conway Slug it Out For 39 Absolutely Crazy Minutes on CNN."

Mediaite headline. It's not that crazy, but Drudge linked to this so I clicked. The headline is click bait, and I couldn't watch much of the clips. In real life, I avoid watching any of the TV commentary shows, so I'm not the audience for this anxious roiling. It's theater — put on for the money and for the power. It's not crazy at all, let alone "absolutely crazy."

I was motivated to look up the word "crazy" in the OED. One of the meanings — going back to 1927 — is: "slang (orig. U.S.). (a) Of music, esp. jazz: unrestrained, wild; exciting. (b) Hence as a term of approbation: excellent, admirable, satisfying. Cf. cool adj. 8b."

1935 Hot News Apr. 13/1 Where musicians are concerned..if I say a man is crazy you may be sure that I think he is very, very good.
1953 Time 14 Sept. 68/3 The latest Tin Pan Alley argot, where ‘cool’ means good, ‘crazy’ means wonderful.
1959 Punch 14 Oct. 319 The swing-cats sway, the hipsters tap their feet As Victor pounds his low-down crazy beat.

I guess I'd accept the Mediaite headline if I thought it was mean in the sense of "unrestrained, wild; exciting." But I do find that sort of present-day political excitement quite boring.

Trump's word of the day yesterday: Loco.

I don't remember hearing it from him before, but I heard it twice yesterday.

1. Sparring with the press after announcing the U.S. Mexico Canada trade deal: "Oh, I think the press has treated me unbelievably unfairly. In fact, when I won I said, the good thing is now the press finally gets it. Now they’ll finally treat me fairly. They got worse! They’re worse now than ever. They’re loco, but that’s OK … I used that word because of the fact we made a deal with Mexico."

2. At a rally in Tennessee last night: "Democrats believe that they're entitled to power, and they have been... in a blind rage ever since — boy! — they lost the 2016. They've gone loco. They have gone loco. They have gone crazy."

"Loco" has been used colloquially in American English (of the western kind) since the mid-1800s, the Oxford English Dictionary tells me. The OED defines it as "Mad, insane, crazy" and says it's often used — as Trump uses it — in the phrase "to go loco." Here's the oldest example:

1852 V. S. Wortley Young Traveller's Jrnl. xx. 250 She said, she knew not what she did, but was ‘loco’ (mad) when we paid her a visit.

I looked in the 15-year archive of this blog to see if I'd ever used the word "loco" (even in a quote). I'd only said "in loco parentis" and referred to the song "The Loco-Motion" and an incident in which someone had the name "Bloody Loco." And in the context of arguing that the word "locavore" should be spelled "locovore," because the Latin root for place is "loco-" not "loca-," I speculated that the "locavores" wanted to avoid the association with the word "loco" (meaning crazy).

By the way, some people think it's wrong to make an insult out of "crazy" and words that mean crazy, because there's collateral damage to persons with mental illness. But it's so common. It would be insanely inhibiting to self-censor that one, but I did use to have many long conversations with a person who insisted on my refraining from deploying "crazy" as an insult. I know what you're thinking: He sounds crazy.

"Durkheim saw groups and communities as being in some ways like organisms—social entities that have a chronic need..."

"... to enhance their internal cohesion and their shared sense of moral order. Durkheim described human beings as 'homo duplex,' or 'two-level man.' We are very good at being individuals pursuing our everyday goals (which Durkheim called the level of the 'profane,' or ordinary). But we also have the capacity to transition, temporarily, to a higher collective plane, which Durkheim called the level of the 'sacred.' He said that we have access to a set of emotions that we experience only when we are part of a collective—feelings like 'collective effervescence,' which Durkheim described as social 'electricity' generated when a group gathers and achieves a state of union. (You’ve probably felt this while doing things like playing a team sport or singing in a choir, or during religious worship.) People can move back and forth between these two levels throughout a single day, and it is the function of religious rituals to pull people up to the higher collective level, bind them to the group, and then return them to daily life with their group identity and loyalty strengthened. Rituals in which people sing or dance together or chant in unison are particularly powerful. A Durkheimian approach is particularly helpful when applied to sudden outbreaks of moralistic violence that are mystifying to outsiders...."

From "The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure" by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt — which I started reading a couple days ago and am in the middle of reading.

I wanted to blog this passage because of the prompt, "You’ve probably felt this while doing things like playing a team sport or singing in a choir, or during religious worship." Tell me how you relate to that. I'll tell you how I do.

I've been in some situations where I have seen it happening to other people, and my own reaction was markedly to separate from the group and become especially aware of my individuality. I never feel pulled into the collective. It has the opposite effect on me. I don't know why I'm immune, but I may have been inoculated by Frank Zappa.

It was Friday, February 2, 1969, at the Fillmore East, and in the middle of the show Zappa — I believe he was wearing red velvet/satin pants — divided up the audience into parts — maybe 4 sections — each assigned to sing out when pointed at. I didn't sing when pointed at, but I was interested in the sound he got flowing through the big audience as he escalated to more and more elaborate pointing patterns. He kept going until the crowd — struggling to respond to his showy conducting — could not keep up and it became cacophony. At that point, as I remember it, Zappa gave the crowd a gesture — perhaps a contemptuous 2-handed get-outta-here — and said something to the effect of, You people were idiots to have followed me in the first place. But I had not followed him, and so my resistance to the ecstasy of crowd merger — which I'd worried was stand-offish and putting me at risk of a joyless future — was vindicated.

That was a rather innocuous occasion. (And — I had to look this up — the words "innocuous" and "inoculate" do not have a shared etymology. The "oc" in "inoculate" goes back to the Latin word for eye — "oculus" — which also came to mean bud. The idea of grafting a bud into a plant got transferred into the medical context we think of today, which I was using metaphorically, above. The extra "n" in "innocuous" should get you to see — with your oculus — that it's not "oc" but "noc." That word comes from "nocere," the Latin meaning to hurt, which is also the source of "noxious.")

So... that Frank Zappa routine was a rather innocuous display, but it worked — as he intended? — to inoculate at least some of us... at least me... from susceptibility to collective effervescence.

When else have I seen that kind of crowd merger and felt stronger in my sense of individuation? First, I remember another concert — Pantera, in 1996. I attended this concert here in Madison only because in those days I had the privilege of driving 15-year-old boys to concerts. I enjoyed it, but in a distanced way, and there were times when the lead singer was exhorting a crowd and the crowd was responding en masse in a way that made me contemplate what it would be like to be in the midst of a 1930s Nazi rally. And, most notably, I remember the Wisconsin protests of 2011, as they gained momentum day by day, with endless hours of drumming and chanting. The protesters would stay for long hours in the state capitol building — many of them overnight — and I would observe for a while then go home but come back another day. So the changes in the atmosphere were very striking to me. Whatever serious ideas and beliefs individual protesters may have had, their collective mind was courting madness.

IN THE COMMENTS: Lots of great stuff, but I wanted to highlight this video recommended byDust Bunny Queen ("One of the best recent examples of this spontaneous collective effervescence is the Green Day concert in Hyde Park, England in 2017. Green Day was late and to keep the crowd entertained the song by Queen Bohemian Rhapsody was played on loud speakers. The crowd spontaneously started to sing all the words, perform to the song, singing, dancing, jumping. Bohemian Rhapsody by by 65,000+ singers"):



That was great. I got chills watching/listening here at my little desk.

Fall colors.

"Trump colors the fall campaign landscape: ‘He’s been the only thing that matters’" (WaPo).

The striking split screen as this week wound down — former president Barack Obama made his campaign-trail debut mourning the departure of decency and lawfulness from the White House just as President Trump called on the Justice Department to hunt down a nameless personal enemy — neatly framed the midterm dynamic.

The prose is by... hmm... it says Philip Rucker...

That's with the "reader view" button pushed, but if I go back to the standard view, I see Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker...

I wonder what the Parker/Rucker division of labor was? That is, who tarted up the prose? Who turned up the saturation on the fall colors? Color us Trump. He's always had the color dialed up. Color him ORANGE! Yeah, that's a very fall color. Pumpkin spice!

The spike in Democratic enthusiasm....

Spike my latte with nutmeg and clove.

The funeral for John McCain was as much a commemoration of the Vietnam War hero and senator-statesman as it was a rumination by official Washington on the existential threat of Trump.

All week, doubt hovered over the president about his intellectual capacity and fitness for office....

The Trump stories were all consuming....

The one-two punch of the Woodward book and anonymous Times column inspired Trump to take the extraordinary step of publicly defending his very mental capacity....

Obama came out of political hibernation Friday.... Even Obama, who until now had pulled his punches and studiously avoided mentioning Trump by name, found himself addressing his successor directly and forcefully. He called Trump a “symptom” of a dark turn in the nation’s politics toward bigotry, fearmongering, corruption, dishonesty and an erosion of institutions....

Trump brings out the fall colors by being his usual self — orange — but he's got everyone else turning up the saturation — even though John McCain died that civility might live....

“This is not normal,” Obama said at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “These are extraordinary times. And they’re dangerous times.....”

“The three Democratic pillars are raising wages, fixing health care and cleaning up corruption,” said Adrienne Elrod, a Democratic strategist. “But I just don’t think you can sugarcoat the fact that people are fearful of Trump, and if that makes them turn out to vote in record numbers for the midterms, then that is fantastic.”

Yes, it's just fantastic to scare the hell out of people if it makes them vote the way you want. Everybody's Trump now. Everybody's orange. Because look, it worked for him, so let's all do it.  Even though McCain —  The Icon of Civility — died that we might all come together.

This is not normal. These are extraordinary times. These are dangerous times....

"Rich Lee, a grinder with dreams of turning his pelvis into a cyborgian vibrator, is in the front row."

"After he and his wife divorced in 2015, she sued for custody of their children. Mr. Lee has magnets inside his ears which act as headphones; shortly after his divorce, he attempted to implant his shins with foam armor, which ended in swelling, burst stitches and removal. His children, he wrote in a GoFundMe raising money for legal fees, 'used to think I was an awesome dad with super powers, but now they have been told I am a self-mutilating parent with a problem and that they are victims for seeing the stitches in my legs.'"

From "Magnet Implants? Welcome to the World of Medical Punk/'It’s not good enough to talk,' says Jeffrey Tibbetts, a registered nurse whose home plays host to Grindfest, an annual meetup of biohackers. 'You should be taking action. That’s kind of our ethos'" in The New York Times (which chose not to allow commenting on this crazy nonsense).

"No, no, no. That's not how you negotiate. You don't tell them they've got 30 days. You tell them, 'This guy's so crazy he could pull out any minute.'"

"That's what you tell them: Any minute. And by the way, I might. You guys all need to know I might. You don't tell them 30 days. If they take 30 days they'll stretch this out."

Said Donald Trump, allegedly, to Robert Lighthizer, a trade negotiator who was part of a discussion about the U.S.-Korean trade deal (along with Defense Secretary Mattis, Agriculture Secretary Perdue, and Secretary of State Tillerson), quoted in "Scoop: Trump urges staff to portray him as 'crazy guy'" (Axios).

Why are we hearing this? Is it an unauthorized leak or part of the art-of-the-deal game?

Axios has a lot of analysis but doesn't entertain those questions. From Axios:

Plenty of world leaders think the president is crazy — and he seems to view that madman reputation as an asset. The downsides are obvious: the rhetoric can unnerve allies and has the potential to provoke enemies into needless, unintended war....

The president's top aides argue his negotiating strategy has forced Mexico and Canada to renegotiate NAFTA, China to put more pressure than ever on North Korea, and NATO allies to spend more than they'd otherwise have spent on their militaries (a claim that's impossible to adjudicate.)....

Bottom line: Trump's threats can only produce short-term results, if he doesn't follow through on them....

"I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job."

Said Donald Trump to Russian officials — "according to a document summarizing the meeting," according to the NYT. He's also said to have said: "I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off."

The White House document that contained Mr. Trump’s comments was based on notes taken from inside the Oval Office and has been circulated as the official account of the meeting. One official read quotations to The Times, and a second official confirmed the broad outlines of the discussion.

ADDED: An awful lot of people are quick to call Trump crazy, and here he is calling Comey crazy. Everybody's crazy now. Maybe the idea of insanity doesn't mean much anymore — doesn't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

"The Crazy Story of the Professor Who Came to Stay—and Wouldn't Leave."

"It's not easy to evict someone in California. Usually that's a good thing."