Scott Boehmer

Author: Scott Boehmer

  • Trump & Putin

    President Donald Trump emerged today from his summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin without a deal and without much to say. Trump rarely misses a chance to take advantage of a global stage. But when he stood next to Putin at the conclusion of their three-hour meeting, Trump offered few details about what the men had discussed. Stunningly, for a president who loves a press conference, he took no questions from the reporters assembled at a military base in Alaska.

    Jonathan Lemire

    Well, What Did You Think Would Happen? (The Atlantic)

  • State Capitalism

    If “state capitalism” were proposed by Democrats or progressives, it would be considered socialism or communism. Done by a neofascist president — as chronicled by the The Wall Street Journal — it’s simply considered inefficient (as the Journal concludes).

    Robert Reich

    Trump’s “State Capitalism” (Robert Reich)

  • Beach Trip

    Last week, we took a trip out to the Atlantic coast to visit Carolina Beach, Kure Beach, and the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher.

    Bald Eagle
    Rays
    Sea Turtle
    Otters
    Waves
    Waves
    Fireworks
    Beach from Above
    Bird on the Pier
    Waves
    Looking Inland
    Waves

  • The President’s Police State

    “This is liberation day in D.C.,” Trump said. Nothing says liberation like deploying hundreds of uniformed soldiers against the wishes of the local elected government. District residents have made clear that they would prefer greater autonomy, including congressional representation, and they have three times voted overwhelmingly against Trump. His response is not just to flex power but to treat the District of Columbia as the president’s personal fiefdom.

    David A. Graham

    The President’s Police State (The Atlantic)

  • Pete Hegseth & Christian Nationalism

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reposted and praised a video interview of a self-described Christian nationalist pastor whose church doesn’t believe women should be allowed to vote.

    Julia Simon

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reposts video of pastors saying women shouldn’t vote (NPR)

    He thinks America should adopt a Christian theocracy. And he’s finding a new audience under Trump (CNN – YouTube)

  • The Most Nihilistic Conflict on Earth

    Meanwhile, the countries that might once have banded together to stop the fighting have lost interest or capacity. The institutions that might once have helped broker a cease-fire are too weak, and can’t or won’t help. “We live in a very interesting, many people call it, new world order,” Hamdok, the former Sudanese prime minister, told me. “The world we got to know—the consensus, the Pax Americana, the post–Second World War consensus—is just no more.”

    Anne Applebaum

    The Most Nihilistic Conflict on Earth (The Atlantic)

  • A Blue Screen :(

    On Thursday, I was in a hotel room using my laptop. It suddenly blue screened, and then when it restarted, something was wrong. After logging in, I got a bunch of error dialogs about various programs not being found or missing the permissions to access them. Then as I poked around, File Explorer claimed that I lacked permissions to open the main C:\ drive. Since I was on vacation, I just shut it down. I’d deal with it when I got home.

    The next evening, back home, I opened it back up. I plugged in a USB hard drive and copied the few files that weren’t in cloud storage already. Then I ran through the Windows reset flow in an attempt to get things working again. After a wait, I went through the Windows setup experience and then after setting up my account, logged in, and got a similar set of error prompts. The reset hadn’t fixed anything.

    At this point, I started digging in a bit more to see if I could figure out what the actual problem was. After a bit of poking around and comparing to my other computer, I came to the conclusion that the drive permissions had been messed up by the blue screen. At that point, I could either try to replicate the correct settings using my other computer as a template, or attempt a reformat of the drive.

    Since I had already erased everything from the computer, I decided to go ahead with a reformat. I created a bootable USB to reinstall Windows and then started that process all over again. This time, Windows setup informed me that it lacked network drivers and couldn’t reach the internet. I briefly tried to find the right drivers on my other computer and then copy them over, but the right way to accomplish that eluded me. Luckily, I have a USB wifi adapter, so I grabbed that and Windows setup was able to work fine through it rather than the onboard wifi.

    With the drive reformatted, Windows was finally working properly on my laptop again. The process of getting there was just a pain well beyond what a normal user could deal with. Reset should have examined and fixed the drive permissions, and with it not solving the issue, I think most people would just be stuck. If I wouldn’t have had a wifi adapter around, I’d have gotten stuck with no way forward without running to a store.

    Going through Windows setup twice also drove home just how hostile Windows has become to users. Setup tries to get you into subscriptions to Microsoft 365 and Xbox and then leaves your computer littered with recommendations (ads) and unwanted software. The clean Microsoft install was better than the Lenovo-customized reset (which included more pre-installed software), but neither was a good experience. It’ll be a while before the computer feels properly personalized again.

  • Giant Robot Fight Club

    Last week, a friend invited me to attend Giant Robot Fight Club at Motorco in Durham. It is a show where people dressed in cardboard robot suits battle one another in pro wrestling-style bouts. It was a ton of fun! If you’re in the area and have a chance to go, you should.

    Sold Out Show
    Robot Fight!
    Bot Man
    Automaton Selleck
    Animatronica
    The Masticator
    Seam Ripper vs Table
    Terror Byte

  • Boiling Water

    There’s a thought that sunlight is the best disinfectant, that by exposing fascists as fascists and Nazis as Nazis, it will raise awareness of the truth of what they are, and thus will turn people away from them. This seems to hold a certain logic, but my problem with it is that by any reasonable metric we have been testing the theory out to the maximal degree for at least the last decade, and the exact opposite effect has happened. I think we have to assume that actually sunlight has a normalizing effect.

    A.R. Moxon

    Boiling Water (The Reframe)

  • More AI Necromancy

    I posted about how gross it felt to use generative AI to create an avatar of a dead person back in May (AI Necromancy), and now there is another example with Jim Acosta interviewing a piece of video generating software that is making use of a dead kid’s appearance. This feels so incredibly wrong, and everyone involved, from Acosta and the parents to the developers building the software, should be ashamed of themselves.

    Jim Acosta, the former CNN chief White House correspondent who now hosts an independent show on YouTube, has published an interview with an AI-generated avatar of Joaquin Oliver, who died at age 17 in the Parkland school shooting in 2018.

    Ethan Shanfeld

    Jim Acosta Interviews AI Version of Teenager Killed in Parkland Shooting: ‘It’s just a Beautiful Thing’ (Variety)