Awaiting

I was reading an article on Christian Nationalism, and this lead me to an interesting paper on The Rise of the New Apostolic Reformation and Its Implications for Adventist Eschatology. The paper is some thirty pages, so I didn't read it carefully all the way through, but it was interesting nevertheless. Reading it, I was reminded of an article that I'd read in Slate, back in the day, Full House at King of Kings Assembly. There was a quote in it, that reads as follows:

There's something in the bloodstream of American Christianity that looks for, and reacts to, signs of the apocalypse. To me, it's not a great thing to herald the end of the world while I'm living here. I have kids. I want to see them grow up.

While Full House at King of Kings Assembly was about Christian Zionism, that desire to see the end of the world (or at least the end of the present world) come as quickly as possible is still prevalent in Christian Nationalism, which also wants to bring about the return of the messiah. And this seems driven, at least in part, by a notable hostility to the world as it currently is. Which makes sense once you learn a little bit about their theology. This is, after all, a worldview that holds that "much of the world is under demon control, which includes many individuals, people groups, nations, territories, false religions and ideologies." I suspect that if I believed that literal demons were leading most of the world around me, I would be pretty hostile to it, too. Especially if I saw a number of post-Enlightenment changes, such as acceptance of homosexuality, religious pluralism, and separation of church and state, as being the result of supernatural "evil influences."

But the thought that I kept coming back to while reading the paper was: "Man. That has to suck." Because it simply can't be a pleasant experience to look at the world around oneself and understand that a good deal of what one sees as being the result of the enemies of what is just and right. The world can sometimes come across as a pretty miserable place even when one grants that everyone has good intentions and is doing their best. Seeing people as in thrall to literal forces of evil, of their own doing or not, has to make the world into a much darker and more hostile place that it would be otherwise.

Untimed

The problem with the idea that the moral failures of people in the past were the result of their negligence in understanding the self-evident moral principles that were present (although often not widely held) in their world is that it presumes that today is the end of moral history; or at least a history with any clarity. Either today's moral viewpoints become the indisputable, universal, and eternal strictures that somehow eluded the whole of humanity before us, despite having been in plain sight, or we somehow have the misfortune of encountering hidden moral truths that won't be uncovered until later generations discover them. Both of these options strike me as unlikely; accordingly, judging yesterday by the moral standards of today seems hold past generations to a standard many deny the present should meet, all in the service of the pretense that 50 years from now, the 2020s won't be found as morally wanting as many people today find the 1970s.

Accounting

The other day, I did another experiment with Generative A.I., this time around a question that I'd been looking to answer for some time.

I asked "A.I.": "How many grocery stores are there in Washington State?"

In keeping with the original experiment, I asked the Usual Suspects: Bing, Copilot, ChatGPT and Gemini. Alexa had been included in the original experiment, but I don't own an Alexa-enabled device and don't want the application on my phone, so it was excluded. In it's place, I added Perplexity, which I'd just heard about recently. I also asked Google, which was part of the original experiment, but had been excluded from my trials, as it's primarily a search engine. (This time, as expected, Google simply give me a list of web links. I was curious if it would present any inline answers, but it didn't.)

When the question first occurred to me, several months ago, I'd asked Bing, and it didn't really give me an answer, but it did offer some not-particularly helpful links. This time both Bing and Copilot appeared to dodge the question. Rather than even attempt to answer the question as asked, they focused on "notable" local stores, providing what seemed like ad copy for Trader Joe's, Grocery Outlet and Haggen. The wording was different between the two, with Copilot being more verbose, but they offered (unsurprisingly) fundamentally the same answer.

ChatGPT flat-out admitted that it didn't have the information, and offered places where I might be able to find current statistics. (But, since it's not a search engine, no direct links.)

Perplexity gave an interesting answer, informing me of how many independent grocers and food co-ops were in the State in 2019. It also gave the number of Kroger and Albertson's stores in the state that would be sold to C&S Wholesale Grocers if the merger were to go through. But it said "The state is also home to various top grocery chains like Amazon Go Grocery, Safeway, and Haggen," so its clarity and timeliness may need to be updated.

Gemini offered a verbose and nuanced answer, noting that how many stores qualify depends on the definition of "grocery store," and offered a range "between several hundred and a few thousand." But it was able to find a source that gave a definitive number (2,313, if you're curious), explained how they arrived at that number, and noted the potential shortcomings of that methodology. (It also took a moment to plug Google Maps and search {natch}, but that can be forgiven.)

In the end, finding specific information that someone else hasn't already packaged up and put out there is still outside the capabilities of "A.I." The various systems mostly fell back on behaving like search engines. The information they gave me was well-presented, but there was no attempt to problem solve. I can think of a few ways that I'd come up with a count, if I could access information as quickly as modern computerized systems do.

Deleveraged

"We're eager to continue working with the [Security] Council on this proposal, one that would see a temporary cease-fire as soon as practicable, based on the formula of all hostages being released," [U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield] said after the vote. The proposal "would get aid into the hands of those Palestinians who so desperately need it," she added.
The U.S. has again vetoed a U.N. resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza

So... let me get this straight...

Israel to Hamas: You release all of the hostages that you still hold, and we'll temporarily stop trying to kill all of you.

United States to Hamas: It's a good deal. You should take it.

There's clearly something here that I don't understand, because I'm having a hard time seeing why anyone thinks that Hamas would agree to this, as Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield laid it out. When the United States vetoed Algeria's proposed resolution calling for a humanitarian cease fire, the Ambassador argued that in order for their to be a durable peace, Hamas had to release the remaining hostages. So if the plan expects Hamas to release hostages, why not offer a durable peace, rather than a temporary cease-fire?

The more the United States wants to be seen as instrumental in creating "peace in the Middle East," the more I suspect that the process would do better were the United States to stay out of it. Because in order to be able to work with both sides, the United States has to be seen as an honest broker, and no-one outside of the State Department or the government of Israel sees the nation that way. And with good reason. One can debate the cause, but it's pretty clear that the effect is that the United States is pushing for a settlement that is acceptable to Israel, without regard for what anyone else wants. The White House and other elements within the government make occasional noises about a "two-state solution," but that seems to be the one option that American administrations are unwilling to put any political capital behind.

In the end, the Palestinians have no good options. They can't fight their way into a position that would allow them to deal with Israel as equals, but it seems unlikely that even if they completely gave up the fight, that they'd be granted equal status, given that current Israeli policy insists that any independent Palestine be effectively a client-state of Israel. Palestine can't win a war of attrition; attempting to do so will likely only end in their gradual extermination and/or expulsion from the land they currently hold. If this is really a state of affairs the United States wants to avoid, something needs to change. And Washington is as good a place to start changing things as any.

Snuck

Trump's high-top sneakers sell out hours after launch

Personally, this seems more like an advertisement for Brand Trump than something that would be filed under "Politics & Policy," but maybe that's just me. Presuming that this is a legitimate news story, what I would like to know is: What are the sources? As near as I can tell, the only way the Axios reporter knows that the shoes are sold out is that they went to the website, and saw the "Sold Out" stamp on the picture of the shoes.

But that's not proof that the shoes are sold out. Only that they've been marked as such. Granted, with the ability to buy three pairs at a time, only a few hundred people needed to make purchases to buy the 1,000 pairs reportedly available for sale.

Still, anyone can go to a website, see a "Sold Out" stamp, and then come up with two hundred words. Axios didn't even seem to bother looking into the company that's reportedly selling the shoes, "CIC Ventures LLC." (Which, according to one X sleuth, is headquartered at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.) Instead, they simply copy and paste a statement from the website seeking to put some distance the business and Donald Trump.

This isn't a story, it's journalistic filler. Which I get. After all, filler content is cheaper than material that actually takes work to put together. But it seems like part of the death spiral that news outlets find themselves in.