Lunacy

The Antipersonal Assistant

William TimbermanLeave a comment

My flirtation with so-called smart home technology began with internet connected cameras that allowed me to see inside my house when I was away on trips, and with locks that I could unlock remotely in case my neighbors needed access in emergencies. Maybe the memory of my mom driving my dad crazy by wondering an hour or so into every Sunday drive if she’d left the iron on is what set me up for this. Whatever it was, I found that the offer of a personal panopticon to help control the things in my life that might still be controllable was genuinely seductive, even though I’d long been aware that the things one can control in life aren’t the things that actually matter.

In any event, ten years or so into this adventure, the technology had matured to the point that relying on it to help me do things I hadn’t previously been able to do seemed quite natural. Then the daemon of generative AI sprang full-grown from Sam Altman’s brow—unbidden, unannounced, largely unfathomable—and demanded to be a full partner in the adventure I had up till then considered to be my private life.

Would you like me to show you what movies are on that you really want to watch? Here’s all the news I compiled for you today—I left out all the things I know would upset you. I saw that you were out of coffee, so I ordered ten pounds of your favorite whole beans from that new place you got the push notification from last Tuesday, the one you saved in your shopping list.

No, thank you. Raped by the heralds of demented late-stage capitalism was definitely not something I wanted chiseled on my tombstone, let alone tattooed on my backside. Was there any way to avoid it, though? Well, not entirely, but there was Apple.

Apple was (and still is) almost universally considered among the technorati to be hopelessly behind in AI, particularly in the generative AI that made Alphabet’s Gemini so much smarter and more responsive than Siri, so much more competent at the agentic functions that made a personal assistant genuinely useful. FIne, I thought, investigating further, I’ll stick with Apple, then. They promise they’ll let me turn the good shepherd stuff off, and retain at least the illusion of free will.

I should have known better. I don’t think anyone has yet realized just how demeaning, yet inescapable our dance with the agents of virtual personhood is going to be. For example:

I like to read before going to sleep, but I don’t like having to get out of bed to go turn the lights out when I’m finally ready to put away the reading and get some shuteye. Most people probably just switch off their bedside lamps, but given the built-in recessed ceiling lights that came with my house, I skip the bedside lamps and instead engage in a three-part Siri conversation with a HomePod on the other side of the room:

Siri, good night. This turns out all the lights except the lights above the bed, locks all the doors, turns off the TV and speakers in the living room if they’re still on, and checks to see that the garage door is closed.

Siri, before bed. This sets the lights above the bed to the right color temperature and brightness for reading.

Siri, bedtime. This turns the lights above the bed off.

A couple of nights ago, I mistakenly began the sequence by issuing the second request, before bed, instead of the first, good night. Siri, however, responded as though I’d actually said good night. Since the two requests don’t actually sound anything alike, I’m tempted to believe that the Siri algorithm(s) have taken note not only the content of the requests I’ve been issuing almost every night for the last few years, but also their sequence, and very helpfully did what it assumed I wanted it to do instead of what I actually asked it to do. The fact that its inference was helpful in this particular situation didn’t keep it from feeling like a scenario straight out of 1984. These are precisely the sorts of judgments that no one who values their personal autonomy wants a stochastic parrot to be making, even in support of the seemingly benign act of turning lights off and on.

Get ready folks. Unlike me, you might not have to share your bed with them, but it does look like these corporate nursemaids are going to be looking over everybody’s shoulder from now until some future Sam or Elon decides there’s more profit in thermonuclear war, desertification, or Soylent Green. Last one to the singularity is a rotten egg!

Almost Imaginary Poll

William Timberman2 Comments

On a scale of one to ten, ten being the most comfortable, how comfortable are you waking up to the news that Pete Hegseth has just started WWIII?

Republicans: MAGA! MAGA! SIS. BOOM. BAH!

Democrats: Well….

Independents: (sic) Where’d you hear that?

Unbidden Bits—January 30, 2026

William TimbermanLeave a comment

I hate to say it—and this is the first place I’ve said it publicly—but my personal doomsday clock for how close MAGA-style Republicans are to getting the civil war they’ve spent the last 40 years jonesing for is telling me that it’s now about 2 seconds to midnight. The inhabitants of the great cesspool at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue should be well pleased. The rest of us can only repeat what every previous victim of the human impulse to carnage and destruction has long since been forced to acknowledge. Knowing what’s coming has never saved anyone from disaster except those with the means to escape it. Einstein made it through the last world-wide cataclysm. Anne Frank and Sophie Scholl did not.

On the Morality of Violent Political Resistance

William Timberman2 Comments

From Ken White at the Popehat Report comes a long inquiry into the morality of political violence, ending with this concluding paragraph:

I think I have been perfectly clear. However, for the benefit of people easily offended by implication over bluntness, I think there is a plausible argument that it is morally permissible, and even morally necessary, to use political violence against the Trump Administration and its agents and supporters under the current circumstances in America. The arguments in favor are likely to grow.

Here is my response, edited to correct the name of the of the Border Patrol “commander at large” apparently in charge of ICE operations in Minneapolis:

I’m afraid I feel compelled to offer a different answer than the one Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. gave their lives to defend. No community is morally obligated to suffer what Gregory Bovino and his murderous thugs have done in Minneapolis to Renee Nicole Goode, Geraldo Lunas Campos, and Alex Pretti. Any community attacked the way ICE has attacked Minneapolis is morally justified in taking up arms against their attackers and driving them back to the sewer that spawned them. Our Declaration of Independence, as well as our own right to defend ourselves, says as much.

Practically speaking, of course, an armed response by a community under siege in the circumstances that Minneapolis finds itself in today would simply result in ending the lives of a few depraved assholes in exchange for the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands of innocents. Abstaining from violence in these circustances has nothing to do with morality, but it does have everything to do with a resistance that is prudent as well as courageous. That’s why I agree, for the moment at least, that Governor Walz has the right strategy, if not the right tactics, to respond to the Federal Government’s atrocities. If we’re serious about our resistance, more consistent and more effective tactics will come to us eventually. In the meantime, sadly, we can count on continuing news of blood and cruelty that a genuinely moral person will find extremely hard to endure without striking back.

To Speak Plainly:

William Timberman4 Comments

This document could have been published by the German Nazi Party of 1933. It betrays our democratic constitutional order, threatens our most reliable allies, and makes white supremacy the cornerstone of our future foreign policy, It is nothing less than a blueprint for the creation of a fascist international. Every citizen of the United States who values the democratic traditions of this country should renounce both it and the filth it represents, shun the people who dared to write it, and drive them all from office.

Rum, Buggery, and the Lash

William Timberman

Judging by his extended prance before the nation’s grand assembly of military poobahs this past Tuesday, Secretary of Cosplay Hegseth seems to have decided that Britain’s 18th century royal navy had developed almost the perfect formula for military effectiveness.

He did, however, trim the original just enough to take all the fun out of it. This may have seemed a bit weird for someone reputed to be both a drunk and a misogynist, but it was perfectly in tune with the Trump administration’s oft expressed infatuation with ignorant belligerence. Oorah! Semper Fi!