Memorial Day
I hope you had an enjoyable and meaningful Memorial Day
A worthwhile poem for you to read: Ode for Memorial Day by Paul Laurence Dunbar - All Poetry
I saw this video yesterday and thought I'd share it:
Just One Thing: Who are AI's allies right now?
Do AI and data centers have any important allies outside of Trump and Big Tech? Even the pope is concerned and there's an absolute wave of anti-AI and anti-data center sentiment and legislation going on, and not just in the US.
I'm a tech optimist. AI will create a LOT of jobs, especially for small companies that can start up with just a few employees and a modest amount of money rather needing than a dozen employees and a few million bucks. But it will also kill jobs or at least reduce hiring. Wouldn't want to be a middle manager or a person who does a mediocre job at coding, accounting, or any other automatable process.
AI will improve health care and drug development. It will help solve lots of scientific questions. It will be as transformational as the Internet on which it depends. (Maybe even more, actually.)
It's not going to be easy to cause the public to be somewhat balanced in their view of the risks and promise of AI.
Separately, I don't see why any city that doesn't have lots of open space would want a data center. They use a lot of power, can use a fair amount of water (though they're working on minimizing that), and create very few permanent jobs. They should be in cool (temperature, I mean, not "hip and cool") areas with lots of open space, including room for the tech company to build a small power plant for the data center. I never understood why some politicians wanted to give tax incentives to attract them into cities.
Tapped: Is water a problem for data centers in Colorado? - Colorado Politics
Now even the pope is coming out with serious concerns about AI:
Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Leo XIV Magnifica Humanitas (15 May 2026)
Fascinating take from a big player in AI...who was invited to speak at the presentation of the Encyclical: Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah's remarks on Pope Leo XIV's encyclical "Magnifica humanitas" \ Anthropic
More info: Pope Leo’s ‘Magnifica humanitas’: AI must serve humanity not concentrate power - Vatican News
Pope Leo: AI “Must Be Disarmed” - Robert Bryce
Slowing Things Down. - by John Ellis and Tom Smith
5 ways Pope Leo says AI could warp humanity
Anti-AI Laws Now Get Unanimous Support from Left & Right
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Today's Guests
Christina Blunt is seeking the Republican nomination for Colorado's 2nd Congressional District. (There's one other candidate who will join us on Thursday). She seems like an interesting character. I'm looking forward to the conversation despite no Republican actually having a chance to win the seat.
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Colin Grabow is Associate Director at the Cato Institute’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies where his research focuses on domestic forms of trade protectionism such as the Jones Act and the U.S. sugar program. Colin is one of the nation's (and therefore world's) leading expert on the Jones Act, a law that's been incredibly harmful to the nation and yet still finds support among those who naively think it somehow benefits an American shipbuilding industry that basically doesn't exist and clearly wasn't spurred to exist by the presence of this harmful protectionist law. President Trump has now repeatedly issued waivers of the Jones Act to try to help minimize the cost of fuel in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and much of the coastal US. If that's what waiving the act does, why not just repeal it?
Book: The Case against the Jones Act | Cato Institute
Jones Act Waiver Makes the Case for Full Repeal - Unleash Prosperity
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Other Stuff
One more pope thing: Pope apologizes for Vatican's role in legitimizing slavery | AP News
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Early in the weekend, President Trump was crowing about an imminent deal. As with the last half-dozen times he's done that, there was no deal announced. One day there will be a deal but I sure wish he'd shut up about it until there actually is one. I do think I understand what he's doing: he's talking down oil prices for domestic political purposes...and, frankly, it's working, so you have to give him credit for that.
The details are going to matter a lot, for global security, oil prices, terrorism, and for domestic US politics.
Deal with US not imminent, Iran says
What's inside the Iran deal Trump is close to signing
Iran Update Special Report, May 25, 2026 | ISW
Sticking with evil regimes: This is why Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon. Hopefully you understand the logic without further explanation: Russia threatens more Kyiv strikes and tells foreign nationals to leave
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Hockey news (isn't great for Colorado)
Rough situation for the Avs right now after losing game 3 on Saturday night despite scoring the game's first three goals. Tough to go from missing their best defensive player for the first two games to losing their best offensive player in the middle of game 3. (No idea if he’ll be back for game 4.) As I said the other day (I don't remember if it was on Twitter or on the air or both), but I just don't think our goaltending is good enough to win the Cup, and the Vegas Golden Knights' goalie is en fuego. The last thing you want as a hockey team in the playoffs is to run into a hot goalie, and that's what's happened to the Avalanche in this series so far.
What’s your guess as to how many teams have come back to win a Stanley Cup playoff series after being down 3-0, meaning they lost the first 3 games of the series and then won the next four?
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They're trying to get kids interested in Star Wars again. My kid saw it and said it was very good. And Baby Yoda is a good vehicle for toys and other stuff to sell to kids. (And a certain kind of adult.)
‘Mandalorian and Grogu’ Tops Box Office as Disney Bets on ‘Star Wars’ Revival - The New York Times
Mandalorian & Grogu Box Office: Star Wars Movie Opens to $100 Million
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The bison at Genesee Park have babies! ← At some point today, Jeana will get a video of them on KOA’s instagram: KOA Colorado (@koacolorado) • Instagram photos and videos
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Texas holds their primary election today. The big race is obviously for US Senate where, very late in the game, President Trump endorsed state AG Ken Paxton over incumbent Senator John Cornyn. Betting odds had Paxton as the favorite even before the endorsement, up by between 15% and 20% (which is not the same as the expected win margin, just the expected chance of winning), but Paxton has jumped to about 96% to win due to the endorsement.
Texas Republican Senate Primary Winner Trading Odds & Predictions (May 26, 2026) | Polymarket
Lots of Republicans are upset about Trump's endorsement but remember that Paxton cheats on his wife, cheats in business, and cheats in government so it's obvious that Trump would endorse him. Paxton is just Trump with less money. Paxton, as flawed as he is, is still a slight favorite to win the general election over Democrat James Tallarico who positions himself as a moderate (but I don't think he is), but the GOP may have to spend $100 million or more, maybe much more, to try to ensure the victory, whereas a Cornyn win would have been much easier and allowed the GOP to spend that money where it's really needed, like in Georgia or Maine or Michigan.
Trump doesn't care. He's not trying to win as much as he's trying to remake government in his image for after he's out of office. After all, if there's no early departure from office, whoever wins this race would be the senator for at least 4 years after Trump is no longer president.
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The most ridiculous part of all of this is that Algore won the Nobel Prize for his utter nonsense: The inconvenient truth about Al Gore’s climate alarmism
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I guess it still pays to go to medical school. Well, maybe...I mean that's a LOT of years and dollars into education...
This is the highest-paying job in Colorado, according to federal data
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Yep, now it is: Is it illegal to park in a bike lane in Colorado? - The Colorado Sun
HB26-1237 Transportation Safety Modifications | Colorado General Assembly
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Today's Video
This (see video below) is interesting...but AI has gotten better enough that it's actually not a great test anymore.
I asked ChatGPT: "Is telling someone in a video meeting to put three fingers up in front of his face a good way to tell if he's real or AI?"
Here was the response:
It can help a little, but it’s no longer a very reliable test.
The “hold up three fingers” trick comes from older concerns about deepfakes and prerecorded videos. It checks whether the person can react in real time to an unexpected request. But modern AI video systems are getting much better at handling that.
Some reasons it can fail:
AI avatars can respond live. Real-time video generation can increasingly handle requests like “wave,” “turn your head,” or “hold up three fingers.”
A prerecorded scammer can still pass if a hidden human operator is controlling the stream.
Camera quality and lag can make a real person seem fake.
Hands are still a weak point for AI, but much less than before. Finger generation errors used to be obvious; now they’re improving fast.
If you're trying to verify someone in a high-stakes situation (romance scams, job interviews, financial requests, identity checks), stronger tests work better:
Ask them to do a sequence of actions: “Touch your left ear, look out the window, then hold up two fingers.” Random combinations are harder to fake.
Ask contextual questions: “What’s sitting on your desk right now?” or “Rotate your camera toward the room.”
Move to a different communication channel unexpectedly.
Use official verification methods if money or identity matters.
For detecting sophisticated AI, behavior often gives more clues than a single gesture: unnatural eye contact, odd timing, overly smooth speech, lip-sync mismatches, or evasiveness.
A three-finger test is closer to a quick screening trick than a dependable authenticity check.