Academy Awards 2026

  

All of this mindless Trump war stuff of late has really put some enervating dings in my topical focus. So, I thought I'd just veg out for a whole evening and watch the entire Academy Awards show. Worth it, in ways I'd not anticipated. to wit:

What Bugonia reveals about the real search for aliens
In the Oscar-nominated film Bugonia, Emma Stone’s character is accused of being an alien. But would we know extraterrestrial life if we saw it on Earth?

[Scientific American] In Bugonia, it all starts with bees. A warehouse worker, Teddy (played by Jesse Plemons), accuses high-powered CEO Michelle (Emma Stone) of being an extraterrestrial who is secretly killing bees, disrupting the ecosystems humans depend on for food.

“The signs,” Teddy says, “are obvious.”

It’s a funny and gripping premise. But at the center of the movie is a compelling question that scientists all over the world are working to answer: How would we know if we saw an alien?

To identify alien life, scientists must be able to tell that the thing they are considering is alive. But there’s not as much consensus about what “life” really is as you might think.

"We don’t have a really clear theoretical and experimental program to ask questions about the nature of life,” says Sara Walker, an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist at Arizona State University. Essentially, our working criteria are based exclusively on life on Earth. But across the vastness of the universe, life might present as radically different from what we’ve seen on our planet.

Walker theorizes that life may not have to be based on organic molecules, cells and DNA, for example. Rather it might be easier to identify life using what she and her colleagues call “assembly theory,” which means spotting complex systems that stem from traceable lineages and that have changed their environment in a way that only a living entity could…

What might that look like beyond Earth? Well, we have no idea—yet. “The vast possibility space [of] life far exceeds both what has been actualized here on Earth in our one single biosphere and also potentially our imaginations,” says Mike Wong, an astrobiologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Earth & Planets Laboratory.

Every living thing on Earth has been honed by millions of years of evolution and coevolution alongside all the other creatures and the planet’s different environments. It’s reasonable to assume that an alien probably won’t look anything like an Earthling, Wong says, because its evolutionary history could be determined by a radically different world with unique pressures and environments.

And as for Bugonia, “I think it would be highly unlikely that aliens would look like Emma Stone,” Wong says…

"Sara Walker," 'eh?

 

Yes, indeed. Sara Imari Walker. Swoon...

 

 

OK, "OTHER SENSES, OTHER WORLDS?"

 

Yep.
 

I'll get back to prior post topics ASAP. apropos,

 

Lots of concerns focused on AI and toxic social media of late. Jacob Ward is on it big-time. See here as well.

 

ERRATUM 

Ugh.

 

CODA: A "TRUTH SOCIAL" MESSAGE FROM YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT

"Iran has long been known as a Master of Media Manipulation and Public Relations. They are Militarily ineffective and weak, but are really good at "feeding" the very appreciative Fake News Media false information. Now, A.l. has become another Disinformation weapon that Iran uses, quite well, considering they are being annihilated by the day. They showed phony "Kamikaze Boats," shooting at various Ships at Sea, which looks wonderful, powerful, and vicious, but these Boats don't exist—It's all false information to show how "tough" their already defeated Military is! The five U.S. Refueling Planes that were supposedly struck down and badly damaged, according to The Wall Street Journal's false reporting, and others, are all in service, with the exception of one, which will soon be flying the skies. Buildings and Ships that are shown to be on fire are not—It's FAKE NEWS, generated by A.l. For instance, Iran, working in close coordination with the Fake News, showed the Lincoln Aircraft Carrier, one of the largest and most prestigious Ships in the World, burning uncontrollably in the Ocean. Not only was it not burning, it was not even shot at—Iran knows better than to do that! The story was knowingly FAKE and, in a certain way, you can say that those Media Outlets that generated it should be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information! The fact is, Iran is being decimated, and the only battles they "win" are those that they create through Al, and are distributed by Corrupt Media Outlets. The Radical Leftwing Press knows this full well, but continues to go forward with false stories and LIES. That's why their Approval Rating is so low, and I can win a Presidential Election, IN A LANDSLIDE, getting only 5% positive Press—They have no credibility! I am so thrilled to see Brendan Carr, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), looking at the licenses of some of these Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic "News" Organizations. They get Billions of Dollars of FREE American Airwaves, and use it to perpetuate LIES, both in News and almost all of their Shows, including the Late Night Morons, who get gigantic Salaries for horrible Ratings, and never get, as I used to say in The Apprentice, "FIRED." Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP."

"I want to talk to you tonight about 'Anger'."

Malcolm Gladwell comes to Baltimore.

    

On deck. He was excellent. Canadian Wry Bred. Dude, if your current career goes south on you, you would utterly kill at Stand-Up.

 

Certainly no shortage of anger around the world these days. Interesting that he was so self-deprecatingly funny.

 

Tangentially: 

 

"THE TIPPING POINT?"

 

OK, once more, "two cheers for uncertainty."

 

More to come... 

Friday the 13th update

Magazine cover art perfection.

Understanding Iran under attack

Well, Ok, THAT was "exciting."

Baltimore, March 11, 2026, just after 7 pm.
   

OK, then...

Both of our iPhones went code red loud.

 

  

I screen-grabbed these from my iPhone and iPad. The little encircled blue arrow north of downtown "Baltimore" denotes our house.

 

OK, down to the basement storage closet under the stairs. Pino Noir in hand.

 

8:20 pm. All clear. Refill the wine. I had had other plans. Bail to NetFlix.

 

Today was weird. 85F. Normal temp here for March 11th is 50F. Recall my "Goundhog MONTH" post on our unusually bitter early winter.

 

We moved here in April 2019 from The SF Bay Area. The summer that year could boil asphalt.

 

THURSDAY UPDATE

 

1 pm. It's now snowing. Wet, but snowing big flakes, as the temp drops. Ambient 37F, windchill 25F. Ugh. Below, on my front porch.

 

Trailer: Ben McKenzie's upcoming theatrical documentary release on cryptocurrencies

Understanding Iran vs the Arab States. A 2018 Frontline documentary.

Visionary Donald J. Trump, 2026

Citation

Monday March 9th. President Trump holds a Presser at his Doral FL resort. A tour de force of incoherent, repetitive contradictions taken to new mumbling depths.

 

@SecWar

Will he be tried as an adult?

  

Pete Hegseth’s Troubled Soul 

   

Certain moments are worth paying attention to because they reveal something essential about a person. They act as windows into an individual’s psychological state, their ethics, the orders of their loves and their hates. Such occasions are crystallizing.

That’s been true of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon briefings since the war against Iran began. We haven’t learned anything we didn’t already know about Hegseth in these briefings. But the press conferences have reminded the world why he is exactly the wrong person to hold the position he does.

Wednesday’s briefing, for example, featured the usual Hegseth hubris, strutting, and cockiness. “I stand before you today with one unmistakable message about Operation Epic Fury: America is winning decisively, devastatingly, and without mercy,” he said. He declared that, four days into the mission, Iran is “toast, and they know it. Or at least soon enough they will know it.” He compared the Persian nation’s predicament to that of a football team: “They don’t know what plays to call, let alone how to get in the huddle and call those plays.” There was not even a hint of the challenges that might lie ahead in the conflict with Iran, a nation of 90 million people that borders seven countries—challenges that might include internal fragmentation and chaos, a dangerous insurgency, humanitarian crises, regional destabilization, and global economic disruption.

Now, it may be that none of this comes to pass. The joint American-Israeli air campaign has been stunningly effective. A peaceful, enlightened, democratic, pro-American regime may emerge. And even if Iran turns out to fall far short of that ideal, it could still be that the next regime is better than the previous, wicked one. So the world may be better off as a result of this war. Or it may not. It’s simply too early to tell. Wars that begin well don’t always end well, and they often produce unintended consequences.

Hegseth displayed the prickliness and defensiveness we’ve come to expect, along with his resentment against “fake news.” Hegseth complained that the war-related deaths of six Americans were front-page news. The press, he claimed, “only wants to make the president look bad.” There were also the requisite shots at Democrats, who he said are “rooting against the country

But what was most striking about Hegseth’s press conference was his emotional affect, his delight in celebrating mercilessness, his talk of death and destruction raining down from the skies, his glee in “punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”

We have seen this manosphere affect before from the defense secretary. At a press briefing on Monday, he mocked “our traditional allies who wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force.” In this war, there would be “no stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise, no politically correct wars,” he vowed. “We fight to win.” He added, “We are not defenders anymore. We are warriors, trained to kill the enemy and break their will. History is watching. Be the force you swore an oath to be—focused, disciplined, lethal, and unbreakable.”…

What an embarrassment. He is egregiously unqualified.

 

Sorry, that was irascibly funny. Found it online.

That foregoing lead-in article excerpt is from The Atlantic. They have recently published a raft of excellent pieces on the Trump Administration's attack on Iran. I've been a reader and subscriber for decades. (The photo above is one I Photoshopped using a pic found elsewhere on the internet.)

 

_______

 
"1979?" HOW ABOUT 1953? 

 

I really tire of pundits going no further back than 1979 and the Iranian revolution and hostage debacle that ousted the dictatorial Shah. to wit:

 

 

1953? I was 7. I am now 80.

 

Below: Some quick pertinent documentary history (~40 minutes total). 

 

 

There are relatively few clean hands among all of these geopolitical players.

UPDATE 

 

CODA

 

FYI, an inexpensive ($3.99), relatively quick, well-regarded read on the history of Iran/Persia.

Kristi Noem, buh-bye.

 

Why Trump Changed His Mind on Kristi Noem

Kristi noem played “Hot Mama” as the walk-up song for her formal introduction at the Department of Homeland Security headquarters in January 2025. President Trump had put her in charge of his signature campaign promise—the largest mass-deportation campaign in U.S. history—and Noem took a fast, flashy approach to the job. She dressed as a Border Patrol agent and an ICE officer, and rode horseback at Mount Rushmore in ads. She flew to El Salvador and posed in front of a prison cell crammed with tattooed inmates. She made no apologies for aggressive enforcement tactics on American streets, even those that likely broke the law, or for the deaths of two U.S. citizens who opposed her approach.

But it wasn’t the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis earlier this year that finally cost Noem her job today, making her the first ousted Cabinet secretary of Trump’s second term. Instead, it was her self-promotion. 

 

Noem’s standing was already shaky when she went to Capitol Hill to testify this week. On Tuesday, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, a Republican, asked whether Trump himself had approved Noem’s $220 million ad campaign that featured her urging migrants to self-deport. Noem said yes, and defended the ads as “effective.”

The ads “were effective in your name recognition,” Kennedy told Noem, saying that she put Trump “in a terribly awkward spot.” He was implying the commission of a cardinal sin for a Trump Cabinet member: seeking to outshine the president. Kennedy told reporters today that he had spoken with Trump. “Her version of the truth and the president’s version of the truth are decidedly different,” Kennedy said...

The Rescuer-Victim-Persecutor Triangle writ large

 

Before I get to the broad clinical underpinnings of this Transactional Analysis-based “Life Scripts” allusion, let’s just cut to the current Iran strikes chase. It’s really rather simple:

I, President Donald J. Trump, the beneficent, altruistic world-leading intervenor, arrogate to myself the imperative of rescuing you, the Victim. In the wake of my unprecedented, selfless efforts, should you respond with insufficient compliance and gratitude, I will then have no choice but, reluctantly, to forcefully apply appropriate and necessary sanctions on you—which, of course, our naive, unmanly Woke Liberals would call Persecution.

 

ON "PERSONA"

 

A lot of negative connotation in the dictionary list of synonyms. Steiner posits that to the extent we adopt "life scripts" (mostly beginning in young childhood) we forego full moral agency and concomitant rational thinking. We are hemmed in by being the "stars" and aggrieved "victims" in our melodramas. People like Donald Trump take this to exasperating, often tragic extremes. In the current context, the President exhorts the Iranian people to "take your country back" in the wake of his armed attacks while "hinting" that, if they "screw it up," they too will come to experience his wrath via his co-starring role as "Persecutor-in-Chief."

 

Originally published in 1976. Updated edition released in 2007.

 

A FEW QUICK SNIPS

 

 

A long book, 528 pages. The focus is nearly entirely at the clinical interpersonal - transactional level, but the broader sociopolitical implications are rather clear, if only infrequently cited episodically. I stand confidently by my speculation that Donald Trump will betray the emerging Iranian civil society with rhetorical Persecution the moment it becomes geopolitically expedient.

March Madness 2026

 Stock markets will surely be “fun“ this coming week.
The Middle East will surely not be.

 

Donald J. Trump Bored of Peace

 

Woke up this morning, turned on my iPad, and saw this...

 

 

DONALD TRUMP, OCT. 2019 TWEET

The United States has spent EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS fighting and policing in the Middle East. Thousands of our Great Soldiers have died or been badly wounded. Millions of people have died on the other side. GOING INTO THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE WORST DECISION EVER MADE.....

Trump 2013 tweet.

 

UPDATE, 6 PM EST    

• Per CNN, Iranian leader Khamenei is dead, according to Israeli sources and Trump.

  Also, WaPo reports that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu together goaded Trump into attacking Iran. I smell a Jared.

  

What is “Consciousness?“ Is the question unanswerable?

“Two Cheers for Uncertainty?“ “Untying the knot of self.”

SOTU 2026, Jacob Ward‘s thoughts

In the grand tradition of presidential addresses, I stand here — well, no, I’m sitting, actually —to tell you exactly how things are going. Unlike those addresses, I do not tell you things are going great. I borrowed the format — the gallery anecdote, the foreign policy chest-beating, the optimistic entrepreneurship section, the infrastructure close — and used it to describe the world as I’m seeing it right now. Consider this your State of the Union from someone with no speechwriters, no approval rating to protect, and nothing to sell you except the truth as best I can see it.

Tonight’s address covers a seemingly random mishmash, but I promise I pull it all together: a soccer riot in India that is actually about all of us, a race with China that may be less about values than about who profits from the panic, a Pentagon deadline handed to the one AI CEO who tried to hold an ethical line, a concentration of power that makes “the market” sound quaint, the loneliness that comes with a billion-dollar company of one, and a set of courtroom reckonings that are a preview of where AI is headed next. The State of the Union is anxious. I remain hopeful. God bless America.

Very well stated. A lot to reflect upon.

Also of note below,

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is threatening to blacklist Anthropic from working with the U.S. military over the artificial intelligence company's refusal to loosen its safety standards.

The threat came on Tuesday during a meeting between Hegseth and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, according to two people with direct knowledge of the meeting who were not authorized to speak publicly...

DARIO AMODEI

The Adolescence of Technology 

Confronting and Overcoming the Risks of Powerful AI

January 2026

There is a scene in the movie version of Carl Sagan’s book Contact where the main character, an astronomer who has detected the first radio signal from an alien civilization, is being considered for the role of humanity’s representative to meet the aliens. The international panel interviewing her asks, “If you could ask [the aliens] just one question, what would it be?” Her reply is: “I’d ask them, ‘How did you do it? How did you evolve, how did you survive this technological adolescence without destroying yourself?” When I think about where humanity is now with AI—about what we’re on the cusp of—my mind keeps going back to that scene, because the question is so apt for our current situation, and I wish we had the aliens’ answer to guide us. I believe we are entering a rite of passage, both turbulent and inevitable, which will test who we are as a species. Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political, and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it.

 

In my essay Machines of Loving Grace, I tried to lay out the dream of a civilization that had made it through to adulthood, where the risks had been addressed and powerful AI was applied with skill and compassion to raise the quality of life for everyone. I suggested that AI could contribute to enormous advances in biology, neuroscience, economic development, global peace, and work and meaning. I felt it was important to give people something inspiring to fight for, a task at which both AI accelerationists and AI safety advocates seemed—oddly—to have failed. But in this current essay, I want to confront the rite of passage itself: to map out the risks that we are about to face and try to begin making a battle plan to defeat them. I believe deeply in our ability to prevail, in humanity’s spirit and its nobility, but we must face the situation squarely and without illusions...

And, check this out.

One Blood Clot Away II: René Girard, Curtis Yarvin, and the Billionaires Plan

How Peter Thiel Turned a Philosophy and a Manifesto Into a Vice President