I had no idea that one of my favorite Jethro Tull songs - "Wond'ring Aloud", from their 1971 album "Aqualung" - had an extended version. I'd only heard the abbreviated version from the album. However, there was a longer edit, on the 40th anniversary re-issue of the album.
That made my week to hear that. After 55 years, an old favorite lives again!
Peter
I'm obliged to the anonymous reader who sent me the link to Matt Shumer's latest blog article about the current state of artificial intelligence (AI). It's a remarkable article - so much so that I can't begin to cover all its points in a short post like this. Here's a small sample to whet your appetite.
For years, AI had been improving steadily. Big jumps here and there, but each big jump was spaced out enough that you could absorb them as they came. Then in 2025, new techniques for building these models unlocked a much faster pace of progress. And then it got even faster. And then faster again. Each new model wasn't just better than the last... it was better by a wider margin, and the time between new model releases was shorter.
. . .
I've always been early to adopt AI tools. But the last few months have shocked me. These new AI models aren't incremental improvements. This is a different thing entirely.
And here's why this matters to you, even if you don't work in tech.
The AI labs made a deliberate choice. They focused on making AI great at writing code first... because building AI requires a lot of code. If AI can write that code, it can help build the next version of itself. A smarter version, which writes better code, which builds an even smarter version. Making AI great at coding was the strategy that unlocks everything else. That's why they did it first. My job started changing before yours not because they were targeting software engineers... it was just a side effect of where they chose to aim first.
They've now done it. And they're moving on to everything else.
The experience that tech workers have had over the past year, of watching AI go from "helpful tool" to "does my job better than I do", is the experience everyone else is about to have. Law, finance, medicine, accounting, consulting, writing, design, analysis, customer service. Not in ten years. The people building these systems say one to five years. Some say less. And given what I've seen in just the last couple of months, I think "less" is more likely.
. . .
The models available today are unrecognizable from what existed even six months ago. The debate about whether AI is "really getting better" or "hitting a wall" — which has been going on for over a year — is over. It's done. Anyone still making that argument either hasn't used the current models, has an incentive to downplay what's happening, or is evaluating based on an experience from 2024 that is no longer relevant. I don't say that to be dismissive. I say it because the gap between public perception and current reality is now enormous, and that gap is dangerous... because it's preventing people from preparing.
. . .
This is different from every previous wave of automation, and I need you to understand why. AI isn't replacing one specific skill. It's a general substitute for cognitive work. It gets better at everything simultaneously. When factories automated, a displaced worker could retrain as an office worker. When the internet disrupted retail, workers moved into logistics or services. But AI doesn't leave a convenient gap to move into. Whatever you retrain for, it's improving at that too.
. . .
We're past the point where this is an interesting dinner conversation about the future. The future is already here. It just hasn't knocked on your door yet.
It's about to.
There's much more at the link.
I can only recommend very strongly that you click over to Mr. Shumer's blog and read the entire article. He knows whereof he speaks, and does so with far more authority and experience than most so-called "experts" in the field. If you wish, compare what he says with Elon Musk's views on the short-term evolution of AI. They're pretty much in step with each other.
This is extraordinarily important. It's going to affect all of us in ways we can hardly foresee or imagine right now. Naysayers who dismiss AI as "just another fad" or "only a large language model" or "only as good as its programmers" are missing the point. AI is becoming a self-perpetuating, self-improving, self-expanding phenomenon that may well have a greater impact on human society - in a vastly shorter time - than the Renaissance. Its impact is likely to be at least as great.
Go read the whole thing, and talk to your spouses, your children and those of your friends who are in the workforce about these things. How can we prepare for the "Brave New World" that confronts us? Mr. Shumer offers several very useful suggestions. Which of them can we apply to ourselves?
Peter
Artificial intelligence (AI) is having some unexpected consequences, and they're still shaking themselves out as the impact spreads. Jeff Childers reports:
The Financial Times reported that KPMG— one of the world’s Big Four accounting firms— bullied its own auditor into a 14% fee cut. Their argument was elegant in its simplicity: if your AI is doing the work, your people shouldn’t be billing for it. KPMG’s hapless auditor, Grant Thornton, tried to kick but quickly folded like a WalMart lawn chair, dropping its auditing fee from $416,000 to $357,000.
And now every CFO on Earth is reaching for a calculator.
Here’s the dark comedy. Grant Thornton’s UK audit leader bragged in a December blog post that AI was making their work “faster and smarter.” KPMG took note, and immediately asked why it was still paying the slower-and-dumber price. This is why lawyers tell their clients to stop posting on social media. The marketing department just became the billing department’s worst enemy.
As a lawyer who bills by the hour —and I suspect many of you work in professions that do the same— I can assure everyone that this story sent a terrifying chill racing through the spines of every white-collar professional who’s been out there cheerfully babbling about AI adoption at industry conferences.
The billable hour has survived the fax machine, personal computers, email, electronic filing, spreadsheets, and the entire internet. The billable hour has the survival instincts of a post-apocalyptic cockroach and the institutional momentum of a Senate tradition. But AI might finally be the dinosaur killer, and KPMG just showed everyone exactly how the asteroid hits: your client reads your own press release and demands a discount.
. . .
The billable hour won’t die overnight. But it just got a terminal diagnosis. Every professional services firm that’s spent the last two years bragging about AI efficiency is now staring at the same problem: you can’t brag to your clients you’re faster and also charge them for the same number of hours. As they say at KPMG, it doesn’t add up. Somewhere in a law firm right now, a partner is quietly deleting a LinkedIn post about how AI is “transforming their practice.” Smart move.
There's more at the link.
It's not just company-to-company billing, either. How many professional services do we, as consumers, use, and get charged by the hour?
How many of these services will be affected by AI? Quite a few, I'm guessing. A mechanic can use AI to finish his repairs more quickly, as the software guides him through the process on an unfamiliar vehicle. The tax preparer is almost certainly going to use AI to do his job, so the number of hours they spend on the job should go down - and so should your bill. Even domestic service calls should be quicker and easier if the technician or professional can look up a reference to what he's doing, possibly on equipment on which he's never been trained, and do the job faster and better.
I think AI can be considered the monkey wrench that just got tossed into the professional billing pool. This should be interesting . . .
Peter
Yesterday saw yet another example of a transgender individual going insane and trying to destroy everyone around him - taking them with him, so to speak.
Ten people including the shooter are dead after an assailant opened fire at a high school in western Canada in the town of Tumbler Ridge on Tuesday in one of the country's deadliest mass casualty events in recent history. Initial reports by local police and the Canadian media described the shooter as female.
However, the authorities reluctance to release the identity of the suspect was an immediate red flag. Their reports only indicated that the shooter was a female in a dress.
Independent journalists now say they have the identity of the alleged shooter, corroborated by family members: Jesse Strang, a 17-year-old biological male who started identifying as a "woman" in 2023, is reportedly the culprit behind the school massacre which left 10 dead and 25 wounded.
. . .
The tragedy represent yet more evidence that transgenderism is a dangerous mental health crisis. Multiple mass shootings (including school shootings) have been perpetrated by transgender suspects in recent years, and suspected Charlie Kirk shooter, Tyler Robinson, was living with his transgender boyfriend at the time of the shooting.
In almost every instance, the transgender status of the shooter has been covered up or dismissed by authorities and the establishment media.
There's more at the link.
One has to ask whether someone who suffers from gender dysphoria, particularly if they insist on living a transgender lifestyle should not be automatically classified as potentially dangerous. Not all of them are, of course; I've known three genuinely transgender individuals, all of whom have undergone permanent sex-change surgery and lived as their chosen gender for decades. However, they are the exceptions that prove the rule. I've met dozens, perhaps scores, of "pseudo" transgender people whose behavior, outlook, etc. demonstrate serious mental problems, to the point that some might better be labeled as bat**** crazy. Where does one draw the line? Is it possible to draw a line and say that, if someone crosses it in any measurable way, he or she is more or less dangerous to society?
Strang killed nine victims, including his mother and younger brother, and injured 25. The small, close-knit community where they lived will be haunted by the horror of his crimes for years to come. May the souls of the victims of yesterday's shooting receive mercy from God, and may those who mourn them receive what comfort they may. May the injured be blessed with healing, and may their families be given grace to help them recover. And, please God, may the rest of us learn from this and all too many other tragic examples, and do what we can to protect ourselves and our loved ones from transgender insanity and violence.
Peter
That's the punch line to a recent article by Restricted Daily on X. I think it makes good sense, although it doesn't offer solutions. I think it's important enough that I'm going to re-publish it here in full, hoping that the author of Restricted Daily will permit that.
We keep pretending this is just another rough chapter in American politics, but deep down everyone knows that’s a lie. This isn’t disagreement anymore. This is disillusion. This is two completely different nations trapped inside the same borders, pretending we share values when we don’t. The Declaration of Independence was written when people finally admitted they could no longer coexist under a system that no longer represented them. That same feeling is back, whether people want to admit it or not.
We don’t argue over tax rates or road funding anymore. We argue over reality itself. Over biology. Over speech. Over history. Over whether borders matter. Over whether personal responsibility even exists. One side believes the country should be preserved, protected, and handed down stronger to the next generation. The other believes it should be dismantled, reprogrammed, and endlessly apologized for. You cannot reconcile those worldviews. You can only delay the inevitable by pretending compromise still exists.
Every election now feels like an existential threat, not a policy debate. Every law feels like an act of force instead of representation. People don’t feel governed anymore, they feel ruled. And when a large portion of the population feels that way for long enough, the social contract is already broken. You can wave flags and sing songs all you want, but unity doesn’t come from slogans. It comes from shared beliefs, and those are gone.
The truth nobody wants to say out loud is this: forcing people who fundamentally despise each other to live under one federal system is not unity. It’s pressure. And pressure always finds a release. History doesn’t care about feelings. Empires don’t fall because people stop loving them, they fall because they stop believing in them. When laws feel illegitimate and elections feel meaningless, separation stops sounding radical and starts sounding logical.
Maybe it’s not about hate. Maybe it’s about honesty. About admitting that the experiment has split into incompatible outcomes. About recognizing that peaceful separation is better than perpetual cultural warfare, political revenge cycles, and a federal government that half the country views as hostile. Coexistence requires mutual respect, and that left the room a long time ago.
You can call it the Declaration of Disillusion. You can call it dissolution. You can call it whatever you want. But pretending we can duct tape this together forever is the real fantasy. The bottom line is simple: we’re already divided in everything but name. The only question left is whether we keep lying to ourselves, or finally have the courage to admit it.
I fear the author is correct. I don't see how we can restore unity to a nation so far divided as ours has become. It's a lot more difficult than during the American Civil War of the 19th century, because there are many issues dividing us, not just one central debate. Furthermore, we don't have neatly divided states: we have representatives from multiple perspectives in every state. Big cities tend to be "blue", smaller towns and rural areas tend more towards "red", but overall the states are "purple" - and I don't see any practical way of satisfying all the blended colors in our present political melange.
"A house divided against itself cannot stand." Jesus Christ said that. Abraham Lincoln made it the focus of his famous "house divided" speech almost two millennia later. It's as true today as it's ever been. Unless we find a way to bridge the gaps between us - and I have no idea what that way might be - our house, our nation, is probably going to fall.
Peter
Watts Up With That? links to this tweet. Click the image below for a larger view on X.com.
That's a beautifully simple explanation - and every word of it is true. You'll never hear vegetarian and vegan activists admit to that, though. If they did, they'd expose their scam operation for what it is. They rely on scaring people into taking them seriously - and this tweet demonstrates that they're anything but serious. Their loud screams about the permanent climate damage caused by eating meat and breeding cows are nothing more than "sound and fury, signifying nothing".
Pass it on. The more people who understand this, the better.
Peter
This cartoon is a fun reminder of the early stages of relationships, when one is still finding out about the other's haps and mishaps, mistakes and corrections. Click the image to be taken to a larger view on the "Foxes In Love" Web page.
Ah, memories . . . !
Peter
