Monthly Archives: December 2025

It’s time to deadhead – us or AI?

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Our first fully intended, and fully human and fully placed in an artificial reality, has arrived. No, not Mickey Mouse. No, not Arnold Schwarzenegger. No, not Taylor Swift. Our new flame is one Tilly Norwood:

For all the details check out an interview on CBS.com

Tilly has her own AI set, an historical collection of backdrops and an AI cast as needed. One person writes script, finds cast and background and creates Tilly as the lead character. Barbie Doll hasn’t got a chance! Not even a physical, three-dimensional, conversational sex doll like Lucy has a chance.

Readers could easily accept her alongside all the other TV stars on television, smartphone and laptop. The difference is that about 500 paid artisans aren’t needed. Get hold of Donald, he has new group of folks he can extradite.to reduce health costs and Social Security.

I fear the day when my doctor is replaced with a TV screen. At the least, his replacement should be as attractive as Tilly. When women went to the hairdresser, who would they talk to? Wouldn’t it be scary if the AI hairdresser asked you about some embarrassing event from your past that had been forgotten but still available from Google? What if there were only one or two hair styles available?

Mariner jests to a point. The real point is that the worker class is about to be dispersed in a way no one can guess. Mariner continually advises readers to aim to be debt free and have a supportive family that can help carry the reader through hard times.

Ancient Mariner

!

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Mariner has a tag line that often causes a response. Many people use the trite phrase, “Kill two birds with one stone.” What did birds ever do? Mariner says “Kill two people with one bullet”.

Yes, it’s that kind of post. Mariner is afraid. He decided to watch broadcast news the other night. By the end of the evening, he felt as if he has toured a burning trash dump. The scene wasn’t one of focused debate nor one of organized battlefronts nor one of religious commitment to ethical values. It was a Donald Trump inspired bedlam – void of structure, void of promise, soaked in character assasination, and compressed under a threat to life liberty, jobs and health.

To step to the State level, it was worse; it was petty and vengeful; it was the core functions of a republic being thrown about like political trash; it was a Supreme Court without justice, fairness or equality.

AI corporations continued to trash the human psyche without moral consciousness or social empathy; It was Trump gathering billions of undocumented dollars from Arab nations for disrupting precariously balanced international relations.

It was planet Earth, itself turning vengeful because of all the Homo disrespect.

At the end of the evening, he sat for a moment to contemplate. It wasn’t just a fog or a haze, it was a fiery holocaust with no exit.

He went back to Nosey Mole’s tunnel. Mariner is afraid.

Ancient Mariner

A Nice followup

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This is a nice followup to mariner’s post, ‘Good News’. It is published by Axios:

It’s Giving Tuesday — the annual day when people across America and around the world donate to the causes and organizations they care about.

  • It also kicks off the holiday giving season, and charities see donations continue to roll in through December.

📈 The big picture: Americans are giving more. Last year, Giving Tuesday donations hit $3.6 billion, a 16% jump from 2023.

  • The generosity didn’t stop at cash: The number of Americans who donated goods jumped 32% and the number who volunteered ticked up 4%.

Zoom in: Writing a check isn’t the only way to participate in the season of giving:

  • Here are four other powerful ways to give back:
  1. 🩸 Donate blood. “Of the approximately 62% of Americans eligible to donate blood, only 3% do so each year. But someone needs blood every few seconds in America,” Vox reports.
  2. 🥫 Donate food. Many food banks and pantries across the country say they’re still seeing surging demand even after SNAP benefits have been restored. Check out Feeding America’s list of items to donate to food banks and which ones to skip.
  3. 📚 Donate your skills. If you can code, ask local charities if they need website help. If you love to read, pick up volunteer shifts at your library. If you’re on top of your own shoveling, offer to clear an elderly neighbor’s driveway.
  4. 💌 Donate your good cheer. Several organizations are seeking volunteers to spread joy — especially during the holidays. A Million Thanks mobilizes people to write letters of gratitude to service members and veterans. Love for our Elders collects letters for older adults. Cards for Hospitalized Kids distributes handmade cards to children in hospitals in all 50 states.

Try it! Many families weave giving back into their holiday traditions. Consider a group volunteer outing or spend a Sunday afternoon writing letters and cards together as you gather with your loved ones this season.

Bottom up is best!

Ancient Mariner

Good News

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Over the last month or so, mariner has seen a notable increase in efforts to save water. What is even better, water projects frequently are implemented at the ‘grass roots’  level. These efforts are documented in newspapers, gardening magazines, clips on YouTube and even on the search engine advertising strips. Even local public libraries have garden books that show how to build everything from a downspout system to self sustaining ponds. A local fire company has taken steps to catch roof water into a huge beer barrel like one would see at a brewery, which it uses as the primary water to put out fires.

The good news is this: If you want to change or improve a societal circumstance, the best and fastest way is from the bottom up. Saving water, it turns out, is easy and effective if only in your own back yard.

Another rapidly growing change at the neighborhood level is solar-based electricity.

The same is true in politics,  The situation is a broken government with little insight how to prepare it for the 21st century. Perhaps if you were to visit campaign activities and elect a sound, local mayor or state representative, this may be the fastest and best procedure to pull our government together again – start at the bottom.

Economics is a tough one to change from the bottom. When mariner had a contract in Taiwan, the culture there, while not running the national economy, was still run by family businesses. The local citizens ran a plethora of businesses at street locations and night market setups. Even light manufacturing was family run.  While there was no motive by the Taiwanese to change the Nation’s economic policies, it occurs to mariner that family run retail using local resources, would be a good method for  pushing back on the economy – a fact that may become real as AI changes the concept of workforce.

The current fear in the US that prices are rising generally for the common citizen has led to a resurgence of farmer’s markets in many suburban and rural areas – meaning that corporately processed vegetables are being augmented by home grown gardens.

Mariner’s grandmother was an excellent example of bottom up modification; this time because WWII demanded it. She was a full time seamstress for a large department store and further augmented her income by making clothes, draperies, rugs and any other sewing requests she could find. Plus she made most of the clothes for the family who at the time had very low income.

It will be difficult to tame electricity, computer, oil versus solar and manufacturing (although his neighbor rebuilt an early farm tractor to create a marketable item displayed in parades and his wife started a house cleaning service).

Bottom up is the best way to go to fix societal issues. Here’s the hard part: You must, with your own gumption, disrupt your staid lifestyle, get out of the house and use your smart brain and physical body to get things started.

Ancient Mariner