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What a week. It’s difficult to watch the current administration turn the National Guard and Marines on people exercising their first amendment rights in Los Angeles. Heather Cox Richardson’s post from June 8th outlines the events that led up to this escalation. That escalation seems designed more to fan the flames than protect anyone.

Later in the week, Senator Padilla was shoved to the ground and handcuffed by agents for daring to ask a question at a press conference. Once again, Cox Richardson’s summarizes the events and points out that Noem’s comments about “liberating” Los Angeles from the democratically elected government are as shocking as a US Senator being roughed up by someone’s security detail for asking a question.

Then, early Saturday morning, a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband were assassinated in their home and another lawmaker and his wife were shot several times in their home. If the President denounced this political violence, I certainly haven’t heard it. The President denounced the shootings. Then, staying true to his character, he called the Governor “grossly incompetent”.

This is just a bit of what happened in the US. Meanwhile, things are far from peaceful abroad. Yet the President seemed most focused on his birthday military parade.

On a somewhat brighter note. Thousands of people all over the country took to the streets on Saturday in an overwhelmingly peaceful protest of this administration’s many encroachments on our freedom.

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SailGP is on this weekend. We were fortunate to have a view of Saturday’s racing action from the (covered) comfort of the Adrenaline Lounge. Light winds, heavy rain and a strong current made for challenging racing conditions. It seems like those boats spread out a lot more when the wind is light, perhaps because falling off the foils kills their momentum and it takes time to start flying again. When the boats are all over the course, there aren’t as many contentious mark roundings and finishes, which are the crowd favorites. Even with the rain, it was a great time. I hope today’s race sees better conditions though.

There are another handful of AI related links below. One of which is an example of a corporation using these tools the right way (AI documents the legacy system, humans write the new system). Denis Defreyne writes, more eloquently, about some of the same AI thoughts I did last week. He mentions his employer’s mandate to use AI, which doesn’t seem uncommon these days. These mandates seem like an effort to force the x% savings their tech leadership promised AI would bring.

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It’s hard to believe that summer is upon us. Although, here in New York, it feels more like fall. I don’t ever having the heat kick on in June, but it did last night.

There are a few AI related links below. I’m conflicted about the whole thing. First of all, what gets labeled with “AI” today, while quite remarkable, is far from intelligent. I don’t even think it should be called AI yet. Perhaps I’m just being pedantic, and I believe that ship has sailed anyway. So, AI it is.

I’ve dabbled with a couple of the Large Language Models (LLM), and they are pretty damn useful for a number of things. However, the power to drive all of this is approaching crypto-mining levels of greenhouse gas production, which seems pretty short sighted. Plus, the thought of neophytes vibecoding production systems is the stuff of nightmares.

Even if AI is a bit over-hyped at the moment, it seems like it is here to stay. I just hope we remember that it is a tool and continue to treat it that way.

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Last week, I renounced YouTube, sort of, in hopes of redirecting that time towards other, more fulfilling activities. A week in, YouTube is still blocked on my computer–excellent! However, bass practice time increased only slightly. Judging from the number of links I’ve collected this week, most of that tubetime went towards reading feeds. While this may be better than watching rando videos, it’s not what I was shooting for. This week, more bass!

Even with only a couple practice sessions this week, jam night was better for me. Every little bit helps.

Also, full disclosure, I did watch CityNerd’s latest video on my phone. For me, it’s much easier to stop at the end of one video on the phone than on a PC.

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Youtube has become a major timesuck for me. There are a couple channels I enjoy, but evening hours spent clicking on random, recommended videos doesn’t leave me feeling fulfilled. I’ve blocked it on my home computer, we’ll see what happens over the next 30 days.

What will I do with all this free time? Practicing bass will be at the top of the list. My skills have plateaued, and not at a level I’m proud of. In past years, I practiced more in the winter months, but this season, our weekly jam sessions were the only regular playing time I had.

I’m hoping that I’ll see a bit of progress in the coming weeks if I can stay motivated to do meaningful practice on a more regular basis. Wish me luck!

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