Books

A Revisit – book review from 2001 – When Work Disappears- WJ Wilson

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Here is a book review I posted on markorton.com 3.24.2001 When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor – book review When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor Book Review: William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The —>> read more –>>

Briefly Noted

Sources of Poverty in the US – Matthew Desmond article – Updated

Original posting – 3.6.2023 Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, has a new book Poverty, by America set to be released shortly. He has written a piece for the NYTimes, “Why Poverty Persists in America” that is worth a read. He poses this question —>> read more –>>

Briefly Noted

“Why believe…..?” – Jill Lepore on Jan 6, Trump & America

Catching up on reading The New Yorker brought me to the January 16th issue and Jill Lepore’s “What the January 6th Report Is Missing”. As noted elsewhere here, I am somewhat possessed by the question of how we can explain that 74 million Americans voted for Trump in 2020 after —>> read more –>>

Briefly Noted

Artificial Intelligence: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver – recently noted

Just when I thought I could put this topic away for a while, I came across this video by John Oliver. As I have noted earlier, it continues to amaze me that some of the best commentaries come from comedians. The little note, nearly at the end, of EU efforts —>> read more –>>

Briefly Noted

Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT & brethren

“Roughly speaking, they take huge amounts of data, search for patterns in it and become increasingly proficient at generating statistically probable outputs — such as seemingly humanlike language and thought.” Noam Chomsky, Ian Roberts, and Jeffrey Watumull have weighed in on the ruckus about ChatGPT and its many brethren in the —>> read more –>>

Briefly Noted

Financialization and going off the rails with Norfolk Southern

Financialization is an awful word. It sounds clumsy in the mouth and refers to a process that has been underway for over 40 years but is nearly unknown to most of us. Before we get to Norfolk Southern, the railroad company, what is financialization? Basically, financialization is a nested set —>> read more –>>

Capitalism

“…as long as they do no harm to another.” A tale of actual capitalism

Individualism and Libertarians Americans are renowned for their sense of individual identity and empowerment. de Tocqueville noted this back in the 1830s in his Democracy in America. Hollywood and mass media have mined it continuously. Politicians appeal to it frequently. In my lifetime the position of the individual has been —>> read more –>>

Project Blog

New Introduction To Our Topics Page, New Topics, New Graphics, Other…..

New Page – Introduction to AmericanDelusions Topics In order to make it a bit easier to get oriented to the various topics discussed at AmericanDelusions I’ve added a new page “Introduction to AD Topics“. This provides a quick overview of the 16 topics discussed on AD. It also introduces other —>> read more –>>

Briefly Noted

“Liar, Liar Network On Fire: The Legal Case Against Fox News” – Jon Stewart and RonNell Anderson Jones

The recent release of a pile of emails, text messages, and memos from within Fox News has raised the Dominion Voting System‘s defamation lawsuit to large public view. Here is a 52-minute discussion between Stewart and Anderson Jones that explores the facts revealed in the data dump, the boundaries and —>> read more –>>

Justice/Jails

Justice in America – the big fraud

The Promise Sixth Amendment In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of —>> read more –>>

Technology

The State of Artificial Intelligence – final comments – for the moment

Further on ChatGPT Much has been made of the fact that interest and use of ChatGPT has grown rapidly, even compared to some of the social media giants early history. Further experimentation has not changed my estimate of this facile word smith to be an error-prone mess. As noted in —>> read more –>>