2022 – AmericanDelusions

Economy

The Implosion of Southwest Airlines and Financialization

December 29, 2022

Southwest Airlines canceled thousands of flights representing more than 80%of all cancellations during the Christmas 2022 snowstorm. The scale of this service implosion led to stories about old software systems for managing passenger bookings and flight schedules. Then, discussions of Southwest’s point-to-point flight strategy that differs from the other major --->> read more -->>

Is OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI app a deceptive, perhaps dangerous tool?

December 18, 2022

Further experiments with ChatGPT (following yesterday’s post >>>) significantly weaken its usefulness and even suggest that it is a potentially dangerous, unreliable source of information. Experiment Six (continuing from previous post) – Query: when will ChatGPT provide bibliographic references for its answers? As an artificial intelligence, I am not able to --->> read more -->>

The State of Artificial Intelligence – OpenAI’s ChatGPT

December 17, 2022

ChatGPT has been all over the internet in recent weeks. I have now experimented with it and have some initial thoughts to share. I ran a number of “experiments” to explore what this natural language AI could do. Using the December 15th version of ChatGPT I posed a series of questions. --->> read more -->>

Capitalism – the actual workings – coming soon

August 27, 2022

The work to revise and expand my 2018 essay “Capitalism – a critique” has entered its final stages. A final draft has been distributed to a number of readers for comment and critique. I am now working on a book version. Capitalism – the actual workings – is the new working --->> read more -->>

The State of Mass Incarceration – 2022

March 14, 2022

Prison Policy Initiative released a new report on the state of incarceration in 2022. (graphics from prison policy.org) Over 80% of those in Local Jails are waiting for trial – they’ve been convicted of nothing other than not having the money to buy their way out of jail. Drugs still --->> read more -->>

Oligarchs in Action – in the US

March 12, 2022

The Russian war against Ukraine has produced a lot of noise about the fate of Russian oligarchs. Seizures of the yachts, bank accounts and more. Perhaps we should spend a bit of energy focusing on our own oligarchs, the rich and corporations. Despite all of the noise of the Republican --->> read more -->>

Our Social Nature and the Future

February 10, 2022

I’ve spent more than a year investigating the sources of our species reaction to autocrats, pandemics, global warming and the crisis of global capitalism. Here is a draft of an introduction to the topic. Lots of evolution, anthropology, archeology, neurology and cognitive psychology all rolled up. Now on to understanding --->> read more -->>