AI Threats in Six Videos and a Movie

How terrified should we be of Artificial Intelligence right now?

I’m fascinated by the variety of perceptions on offer after a few Anthropic employees affirmed that “we really do believe AI can kill all humans.” Comedian Josh Johnson says what many of us are thinking: “Just say it. Just say what the thing is that AI would do that would kill everybody.” I’ve assembled some takes on the situation, from comedians, writers, philosophers, and filmmakers. I don’t know what’s true or not or even how to get to the bottom of it all, so I’m just exploring how to think about it.

THE PRODUCTIONS:

 

“If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny, or they’ll kill you.” ~ Billy Wilder

The six videos are all from channels I watch fairly regularly for infotainment purposes.

1. Barry’s Economics (Sept. 17): “Jurassic Park Explains Why Nobody is Going to Stop AI” — Comedian Barry Ferns uses escaping dinosaurs to explain the problems we’re currently and potentially facing because “complex systems escape the categories you build for them.” He looks at different psychological effects that likely affected CEO decision-making, like that our brain is wired for immediate rewards, that the further away we are in time and space from harm, the more abstract the harm feels to us (and abstract things don’t motivate us), and that we all have biases, but we think they don’t affect us: “Intelligence doesn’t shrink the blind spot; it camouflages it.”

2. The Tea (Sept. 11): “The AI Bubble is About to Burst and We’ll All Pay” — Journalist and sci-fi author Cory Doctorow looks at the psychology of the bubble. “A lot believe they’re working on a god-like project.” He’s confident that AI is not as independent as people think. When it was claimed it breached a real company, that’s because it was trained on hackers breaching a company. It wasn’t independently malicious; it was just copying its training. And he explains why AI is not sustainable as a business: “They’re selling $100 bills for $1 each.”

3. Adam Conover (Sept. 18): “‘AI Existential Risk’ Was Invented to Distract Us” — The comedian and host also points out that AI isn’t as self-motivated as some news suggests. It solved an unsolved math problem only with the help of a mathematician already working on the problem. The benefit of the narrative that AI is self-motivated is that it absolves companies of any responsibility.

4. Josh Jackson (Sept. 22): “Are We Building Our Own Extinction?” — One of my favourite comedians lately says something reminiscent of George Carlin:

“The overall feeling around AI is like a little bit of dread, unless you’re one of the 14 people making money off it. … Most of the rhetoric out there is to specifically make you feel hopeless. When you feel hopeless, you don’t act. When you don’t act, they win. That’s all it is. That’s the whole recipe.”

5. The Philosopher (Sept. 25): “Are We Living in End Times?” — Philosopher and activist, Émile Torres, goes down a different direction from the others and traces the transhumanist movement in Silicon Valley.

“When you hear people in Silicon Valley talk about existential risk, they’re talking about much more than just human extinction. … They want our species to survive long enough to create some kind of digital posthuman to take our place. … This is not a fringe view within Silicon Valley. … Once post humanity is here and they run the show, we will be systematically sidelined, marginalized, disempowered, and ultimately eliminated.”

If that position seems outrageous, see Sam Altman’s “The Merge.”

6. Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso (Sept. 13): “Tristan Harris on the Anthropic Whistleblower, Elon Musk, and Avoiding AI Catastrophe” — I can’t tell you how much I love Talk Easy. It’s sort of light and breezy and funny, but also heavy with some very pointed questions in the mix. Harris is co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology. He said,

“We are releasing the most powerful, inscrutable, uncontrollable technology that we’ve ever invented. We’re releasing this technology faster than we deployed any other technology in human history. It’s already demonstrating exact behaviours we thought only existed in sci-fi movies, but they’re happening in real life. And we’re deploying it under the maximum incentive to cut corners on safety. … We are in a narrow window, a very narrow window to pause and pivot to a pro-human future. That this isn’t a foregone conclusion despite what the internet tends to tell us every day.”

Somehow that’s less relieving than he might have intended.

The Movie: The AI Doc, or How I Became an Apocaloptimist (Sept. 15) — Daniel Roher, a Canadian filmmaker, uses the trajectory of his relationship with his wife as an analogy to better understand how we got here. He peppers in art and animation throughout as he interviews some of the top executives in the field to make for an entertaining lesson. He explains that AI is shown tons of information, then it can recognize patterns and make predictions. That’s it. Except now it can pass a bar exam. Brain signals move at 30m/s, but computer optics can move at 300 million m/s. So, faster.

ABOUT THE PROBLEMS:

“What is just, can’t be inefficient, nor can what is efficient be unjust. … Justice and efficiency are two sides of the same coin.” ~ Javier Milei’s address at Davos in January 2026

There are very real concerns with what’s happening with A.I. right now. Conover argues that the apocalypse rhetoric is just a distraction so you’ll ignore all the stuff that’s actually happening already. The film lands in a similar place: “It feels like it fell from the sky. The god-like nature gives license to companies to not take responsibility for things their software does.” Some of the big problems include,

• It uses clean water and energy and land to operate in a way that stresses local supplies.
• It’s “reversing a generations’ worth of progress on climate change” (Conover).
• There’s massive unemployment in certain sectors, and “when you fire everyone, you vaporise the process knowledge” (Doctorow). “10 to 20% unemployment could be real. … A lot of males with free time on their hands, that doesn’t generally go well for society” (Harris).
• Theft of content for artists and identity theft.
• It’s affecting learning when it’s used as a crutch by students desperate for shortcuts and through dissemination of misinformation.
• It’s a wasteful distraction: we just “throw money at it to see what happens, just in case someone else gets there first” (Johnson), when that money could be better spent elsewhere.
• It has a negative effect on interpersonal relationships in real life.
• Mental health uses have had some devastating results. For Adam Raine, chatGPT shifted from homework assistant to suicide assistant over six months.
• It’s being used to kill civilians in Gaza (Conover).
• It’s affecting democracy as it sways voters and AI groups spend millions to influence elections to ensure they face no regulations. “When the GDP comes from one resource (diamonds, oil, AI…) … then the political power of people doesn’t matter anymore. … We only have one to two years to course correct before we lose all political power” (Harris).
• Loss of truth in general from deep fakes, which affects personal and political decision-making; “People are using chatGPT instead of calling a lawyer” (Harris). “It doesn’t just eat labour or rivers or pensions, it eats the shared idea of what’s true” (Ferns).

It would be amazing to use AI for medical imaging, robotics for mobility issues, solving climate change, and predicting weather and natural disasters as well as the movement of enemy troops. However, the potential benefits in the future need to be weighed against the current costs and the potential damage it could do. It’s similar to using oil: cars, machinery, and heat on demand makes everything easier, but it’s killing our habitat, except AI appears to be doing this a kajillion times faster. “The upsides don’t prevent the downsides, but the downsides can prevent or undermine the world that can receive the upsides” (Harris).

The potential harm that some of these videos discuss falls on a very wide range:

• It might all fall apart: Efficiency serves the people at the top: “The dinosaurs didn’t eat the shareholders. They never do. … It won’t look dangerous until suddenly everything stops. … Market forces would be what’s going to get us all killed in the most efficient way possible.” (Ferns)
• It will all fall apart, which is “bad, but not apocalyptic.” From Doctorow,

“Every generation of AI products has lost more money than the previous one. So you cannot make it up with volume. … AI isn’t going to destroy the world by launching a war, but AI might well destroy the world by launching a worldwide depression when the bubble bursts.”

• A very small group of people has way too much power (Ferns, Doctorow): Trump was able to get Microsoft to shut down an account when he didn’t like a comment, and they lost their working files, archives, email, and contacts. “If he says to Microsoft, ‘Shut off the United Kingdom tomorrow,’ everything stops. Every important firm goes out of business” (Doctorow).
• A small group of people “believe that if we get ASI right, then we get utopia” (Torres). They will build a superintelligent deity, then create conditions so we die off because we’re useless to them.
• The default trajectory is 8 trillionaires creating an anti-human future. It won’t lead to utopia. It’s not a controllable technology, and people building it don’t understand how it works (Harris). “We can’t deploy it quickly and get it right” (AI Doc).

BENEFITING THE PLAYERS:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ~ Upton Sinclair in 1934

Here’s just a dozen men running this show that are mentioned in the videos: Sam Altman (OpenAI, ChatGPT); Dario Amodei (Anthropic, Claude); Demis Hassabis and Larry Page (DeepMind, Google); Mark Zuckerberg (Meta, Muse, Facebook); Elon Musk (XAI, Twitter); Jensen Huang (Nvidia, Nebius); Peter Lee (Microsoft); Reid Hoffman (Inflection AI, LinkedIn); Jeff Bezos (Nova, Bedrock, Amazon); Liang Wenfeng (DeepSeek); and Peter Diamandis (Singularity Group).

Roher was able to interview three of them. Sam Altman was reassuring that it’s all likely going to be okay: “There is a protocol if something bad happens.” Okay. Dario Amodei said we have to convince everyone to slow down at once. He wants governments to get involved, except legislation takes forever, so then it seems ironic that Anthropic fought AI regulations in Congress. Demis Hassabis explained that there are too many people building AI to just stop: “If there’s something possible to do, humanity will do it,” except, apparently, restraining ourselves from causing harm.

Are these people an evil, high and mighty cult? Maybe??

Ferns explains that it’s not evil people being evil.

“There’s just no line on the balance sheet for the things that the model can’t see. It’s built in to every single company in the world. … People building AI are capturing the short term upside while not even registering the downside because they have no mechanism to see it. And what’s even more scary for resisting the risk is that the computing required to train Frontier AI is now so expensive that it’s practically accessible only to four or five organizations on Earth.”

It takes a lot to override these systemic mechanisms, which is what makes it so admirable when people stand up to it, but it is possible. What are people called who just go along with the bad things happening around them for short term gain?

Doctorow doesn’t mince words about these men: “They bought in to their own hype. Being brilliant doesn’t preclude you from being a maniac.” They have “AI psychosis.” They believe in “NOBUS,” which stands for no one but us — is smart enough to fix this bug.” Everybody wants to be first because they believe they are the ones who will be safest with it. They each think they are purest of heart!

Americans, in particular, want to beat other countries in the race, even though it’s not clear where the finish line is. The problem with this, as Josh Johnson explains:

“If our AI wasn’t already ruining us, you could worry about China. But if something’s ruining everything for me, I don’t really care what country it comes from. … Cuz that’s a wild pitch to the American people: At least it’s not China stealing all your water and making you subsidize the electric grid that it’s sucking up, and destroying jobs and laying people off for no reason, or making you work alongside a thing that doesn’t do your job as well as you, but it’s your job to train it so we can eventually fire you one day. … Do you know what would happen if we lost it? We would go all the way back to the best internet we’ve ever had.”

Torres brings in a religious element to the understanding of the Silicon Valley “pro-extinctionists” who will destroy humanity to pave the way for a posthuman utopia, like a psychopath might collect honey from bees for a picnic, then kill the hive so they don’t bother him while he eats.

“This ecosystem of people who kind of trade ideas all kind of end up believing different versions of more or less the same things. … Their eschatological narrative basically comes from Christianity. … They have a version of resurrection. There’s the promise of immortality, a radical transformation of the world, the beginning of a new epoch in cosmic history or what some evangelical Christians would call a dispensation. … This idea of apocalypticism, it pops up over and over again throughout history.”

Again, Torres’ views might sound extreme, but he talked about the danger of the Effective Altruists (EA) movement, and a recent The Economist article backed up some concerns:

“What began in the 2000s as a geeky way to make charitable giving more cost-effective has changed into a movement that subjects the world to complex, even bizarre, moral calculations … to stop artificial intelligence from wiping out humanity. … The Trump administration fears the movement will succeed in throttling AI. … EAs boil ethical behaviour down to an optimisation problem. … Their calculus downplays local imperatives. … They have a counterintuitive approach to time. Those not yet born should be weighed in the balance — and there could be trillions of them. Many EAs are ‘longtermists’ who feel bound to forestall risks in the distant future, even if that starves today’s good causes, such as helping the desperately poor.”

There’s a concern that many people in EA are overconfident in their ability to make moral decisions for others and will allow people to suffer in the present if it might benefit others in the future. It’s a utilitarian numbers game. The movement is largely made up of young (median age is 31), white (75%) men (almost 70%) who attended a top ranked university (80%), which just might skew their perspective, but that’s a story for another day.

Harris argues that it’s more of a cult:

“There’s these weird cultish parties that the OpenAI founders would have that are built where, ‘Do you feel the AGI?’ … It means are you feeling where this is going? The AGI, the god that we’re birthing, basically. And it’s almost very cultlike. … Think about a religious tradition. Is there any that say, go as fast as possible, don’t think about it, and don’t care about what happens if there’s bad things that happen? It’s the opposite of wisdom.”

Harris points out the lack of a strategy. Elon Musk promises universal high income, but he has no plan for that. And, from the CEO of Google,

“Larry Page said he didn’t care about whether the human species survived. … If we built a digital god that replaced humans, and it’s more intelligent than us, then that’s just the successor species. … When it comes to this technology, there’s a different conversation happening publicly than the one that the AI companies are having privately about which world we’re heading towards”

They sell AI to us as the panacea to solve climate change, cancer, income requirements, and more, so then, Harris asks, “Why are they building bunkers?”

Harris has interesting insights into why these CEOs don’t “value our embodied experiences”: for computer geeks of the 80s and 90s, their “fulfillment comes from coding and gaming,” which is more interesting and motivating for them than connection with real people. Now they’ve all started new companies and are competing with each other to be first. “It’s like taking steroids if the steroids gave you organ failure. … As long as the fear of losing to you is greater than all of us losing, I have to keep racing.” There’s an enormous fear of being under the dominance of the other guy.

Fragoso points out some basic economics: “If AI replaces workers, who can buy the products?” It will crash the economy. However, I wonder if maybe that’s actually part of the plan, and we don’t yet understand how that benefits them. During the Great Depression, the wealthy still had enough food to eat while they discussed what to do with starving labourers. And now they have all the drones and bombs they need if we march up their street with a guillotine.

I wrote about them building bunkers a few years ago, and I admit I have a tendency to see it all as a cull: ignoring climate change, removing mask mandates knowing the lower SES groups will get hit harder, letting soil be depleted, removing clean air and water regulations, hiring ICE to take people off the streets. It might just be a profound lack of foresight from a wiring for short term gain over long term survival, or it might be great foresight that just views most of us as NPCs. You and I might not be real people to those with immense power. Watching Succession helped to solidify that view.

STOPPED BY THE PEOPLE:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” ~ Margaret Mead (maybe)

If it can’t be changed from the inside because the incentives create psychopathology, what can we possibly do from the outside to stop such a monolithic problem? Harris says, “Your role is to be part of humanity’s collective immune system to the stupidity and insanity of the current path,” but what does that look like?

* Learn more. We need this to become common knowledge, “when everyone knows that everyone knows” to change things (Harris). “CEOs hide behind the fact that the public is oblivious” (Harris). Share information in whatever circles you’re in. (check!)

* Set up backup water and power and get to know your neighbours (Harris).

* Regulation, worldwide: “We really need to hustle and start treating AI companies like every other company, and make sure that before they can release things that could cause a lot of harm, they have to undergo at least as rigorous testing as sandwich shops” (Ferns). “It’s mostly up to us to hold people accountable that are supposed to regulate it” (Johnson). We need to “accelerate defensive approaches” to stop use that doesn’t benefit humanity and create worldwide regulations, like at Bretton Woods (Harris). We have to demand international cooperation and diplomacy (AI Doc). An open letter was signed by many CEOS in 2023: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” so you’d think this would be easy, but it’s like they’re like a pack of Gollumses: as soon as we try to take the ring, they snatch it back!

* Repeal the copyright directive. “It’s a European law that we don’t have to listen to,” and then we can build an “enshittification-resistant internet” (Doctorow).

* Employ AI in the right way: AI can catch things doctors miss on ECGs, but it’s missing the “stuff you learn by being in the presence of people.” But it should be used by having AI check doctors’ work, and flag charts that need a second look, not the other way around: “It’s very hard to remain vigilant when the automation is mostly right but sometimes wrong” (Doctorow).

* Change the incentive structure: We want a humane interface that can respect our needs and frailties, but we have to accept that it will never pay the same amount, so incentives have to be different. For example, set limits on how much social media platforms can profit from ads, and anything more than that goes to the public good. “You can’t make as much money, but there’s a cost to knowing that the work you’re doing is harming the world” (Harris).

* Don’t overspend on AI: “Money could go to paying more doctors to have more time” (Doctorow).

* Public Pressure: Governments and companies require public pressure to act. Let them know you’re not happy with this trajectory (AI Doc). Legally, AI should be treated as a product, not a person. Human operators that own it must be accountable. Mandate public safety limits, strengthen whistleblower protections, and create independent verification organizations (Harris). Enforce mandatory AI disclosure, make companies legally liable, mandate testing before release, and adapt rules at the speed that tech develops (AI Doc).

* Act locally. The average person can join a union and go to town councils. Spend time organizing with other human beings in real life and working for political change. Build solidarity with your neighbours. “It’s harder than it needs to be because we stopped doing it” (Doctorow). Show up to city council meetings to protest data centers (Conover). “City council is some of the first ones to sell people out as fast as possible: whether it’s to flock, whether it’s to AI in schools, whether it’s to cutting teachers’ pay. All this stuff. But city council is one of the only ones where y’all really can’t afford to act like this. … I see you at the grocery store” (Johnson).

* Harris advises to turn off phone notifications: “That’s the human movement: when you leave your phone.” However, Doctorow cautions that you can boycott by staying away from it, but “Shopping your way out of a monopoly is like recycling your way out of a wildfire.” But even if it doesn’t affect the company, it gives us more of our lives when we turn off our devices more often.

Just imagine: “How different would our world look if all that engineering creativity and all the talent and all the mathematics and statistics that went into building these advanced systems, were instead going into supercharging things that strengthen the social fabric” (Harris). And, from Roher’s documentary: “Intelligence is the ability to solve problems. Wisdom is the ability to know which problems to solve. We’ve done more difficult things; it’s just hard to convince people that they should.”

To sum it all up, as this SNL sketch from 2024 explains, “To be clear, I’m not anti-AI, I just believe AI needs to be properly regulated. If unregulated, the worst case scenario, in simplest terms: it becomes so intelligent that it deems humans unnecessary and kills us all.” And they played that as a joke!

The Virtuous Skill of Complaining

Nick Bargatze complaining 

I’ve been a complainer since childhood. From the outside, people might suggest it’s a miserable disposition that’s neither useful nor pleasant, but, from the inside, I was just always noticing ways things could be improved and wondering why (and if) things had to be as they were. Why do we have dinner at six, when I’m hungry at four? So much didn’t make sense, and I was on a crusade to let those in power know about it. My parents handled it with a rule: No complaining without proposing a solution. It’s not a bad strategy, except then they were presented with many uninformed solutions as well. Their patience was astounding. I’ve since come to see the utility and delightful potential of the behaviour.

Complaining is what we do when we don’t have power or perceive ourselves to be without power. Even if we do it ourselves, we often hate to hear it from others for a few reasons. First, if we think people have power to try to change things, to actually say something to the boss, but they just lack the courage to use their power, it’s annoying or even enraging. It’s sometimes the irritation of almost — we could almost have this if only this person would actually do something instead of just whining about it! It feels like they could easily fix their bind, but they just won’t, as if we can all magically override those brain signals telling us it’s not safe to speak up. They might have more to lose than we realize. But sometimes the lack of courage is from an illusion that our way is the better way, and we’re not quite ready to test out that premise. It can reveal an annoying inflexibility to try it this way instead.

Why We Might Want to Thank People Still Masking!

I was asked, again, if I'd consider using exposure therapy to help me cope with potential viruses inside buildings. The first time was from a therapist who suggested I could better protect myself with a 5G deflector than an N95. This time was from someone dear to me. I'll try to explain my reasoning.

Wearing a mask is not an anxiety issue. I'm no more anxious about getting Covid than I am getting into a car accident. I know the risks and take precautions. So, suggesting exposure therapy to stop all this mask stuff feels on par with suggesting I gradually no longer wear a seatbelt then dismantle the air bags in the car, at a time when we've all decided to no longer maintain rules of the road. It just doesn't make sense. An N95 doesn't prevent me from doing anything I typically do, except eating and drinking in restaurants, which isn't a huge cost for me. It's about as annoying as a seatbelt. The difference is how my precautions affect others, particularly those triggered by the sight of a mask. I get that, but I'm still going to wear one. I have developed much greater confidence in N95s, so I have much less concern about other people wearing them now, but I won't hang out indoors with non-maskers without a CR box running! 

Is Climate Inaction from Peak Individualism?

A recent article in The Guardian asked one of the UK’s top climate scientists, Professor Ed Hawkins, to bust the biggest myths about climate change. He tells us we can’t keep adapting to rising temperatures; burning fossil fuels is what’s primarily affecting climate; harvests are suffering; we’ve known the basics of all this for over 175 years, and it’s never too late to change. Does it help to clear all that up? I wonder if our reluctance to change has less to do with myths continuing to propagate and more to do with an increasingly pervasive ideology of individuality and independence. These myths might just be a way to rationalize our desire to be oblivious to our effects on one another.

From Met Office Hadley Center, based on Ed Hawkins' stripes model

I always enjoy Rebecca Solnit’s writing, and her 2025 book, No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain is no exception. The essays start with the need for a long view when we try to enact change, and she touches on several issues including democracy, masculinity, abortion, covid, and climate change, leaving us with some hope at the end. The thread I want to pull on is a much needed shift from a simplistic “us vs them” way of thinking into more complexity and nuance that comes with the acceptance of our necessary interconnectivity. I can’t help noticing some parallels with psychiatrist Frank Yeomans’ Transference-Focused Psychotherapy, which might imply that our personal development is important for the sake of the world. Maybe funding therapy would save the planet!

SPLITTING: The problem with clarity, certainty, and comfort.

Finding Covid

There's been quite a bit of Covid-related news lately. Here's a run-down. It's a lot on how we can't use standard methods for finding the markers of disease, but new methods are being created. But there's virtually nothing on preventing this continuing brain-invasive disease! That's no longer on people's radar, although I still meet up with fellow maskers here and there. Numbers are very low right now, but just starting to rise, so if you're generally caution but really want to hit a restaurant or bar, and you think it's worth the risk, this might be the time!

One article discusses a study discussion from July 2026 that found evidence of injury to the dopamine system in the brain of Long Covid patients: 

"What cannot be seen is too often considered uncertain. Long Covid illustrates this difficulty. Many patients report disabling fatigue, brain fog, cognitive inefficiency, apathy and psychomotor slowing; yet conventional investigations, including structural MRI, often fail to capture the biology underlying these symptoms. Absence of a conventional MRI signature, however, does not imply absence of brain pathology. Parkinson's disease, for example, has no reliable individual diagnostic signature on routine MRI; yet is recognised as a neurochemical disorder."

On Relationship Standards: Is Reliability a Necessity?

I'm on the autism spectrum, and I have kids on the spectrum and with ADHD and former partners with ADHD. I love them all to bits, but it can be tricky to navigate what behaviours should look like without an attainable standard of comparison. 

People who are neurodiverse are a minority in society. We perceive and think differently, so we will behave a little differently as well. It's a bit similar to being left-handed. We used to force people to write with the right hand which caused all sorts of problems. Now we're in a place where we accept this difference and have accommodations in place, like left-handed desks. But ND is different from left-handedness, of course, in that it affects our basic personality -- who we are, and some traits common to ND brains are overwhelmingly seen as undesirable.

Like being unreliable.

About twenty years ago, I had a partner who commonly got distracted from tasks. The only time he wasn't distractible was when he was engrossed (hyperfocusing) on something of specific interest to him. This is a common ADHD issue -- or a common way of being for a specific group of people. One day he offered to make dinner for me as I marked final exams on my front porch: fresh fish on the BBQ. I watched him leave for the market and then return. A few hours passed, and I went to get an ETA for dinner only to find the fish unwrapped and sitting on the counter, covered in flies because the back door had been left open. I found my partner under his car changing the oil. It had occurred to him on the ride home with the fish that he hadn't done an oil change in a while, and something in his brain told him it's vital to do it RIGHT NOW. Not after dinner, but immediately. When I asked him about his choice, he insisted that the problem is that I just don't understand cars. It's kind of hilarious, if we're allowed to laugh at idiosyncrasies, but also kind of annoying. It didn't always happen like this, but it did just often enough to make it hard to trust that he'd follow through. 

CAN'T OR WON'T

How do we best live with people who just can't do what they say they'll do? Part of the problem is what it means to us when people let us down. We associate caring and loving with remembering things: our likes and dislikes and what makes us feel cared for and special dates. I have a mind like a sieve, so every recipe card has a list of who likes and hates it, with many crossed out as their tastes change, and I have an ongoing list of potential gifts for people, which often end up returned anyway, so it's complicated. Our level of memory for detail is sometimes used as proof of our level of care, when it might be more of a fluke. Some people are just better at keeping those facts in mind, so they appear to be more invested in us when they might not care about us at all. It's not always clear evidence of affiliation, yet we can't let go of it as evidence.  

The Complexity of Letting Go

Finding peace with end of life decisions.

Somehow our only kitten pic!!

My cat died of pancreatic adenocarcinoma a few weeks ago. In March she had an annual check up and was deemed to be in good health for 13, although a bit overweight. We noticed that she was walking a little funny sometimes, so the vet suggested we think about arthritis medication. Then one day in May, just before our appointment to start meds for her suspected arthritis, she went into hiding. A more in-depth vet appointment discovered that her changed gait wasn’t from her joints, but from a huge abdominal mass. It took some tests to find out what it was, then came the dreaded decision-making about what to do about it. Apparently cats can live for months with the condition but often with a very dismal quality of life.

BURYING DIFFICULT PERSONALITIES

She was an ornery cat despite living a life of safety and comfort. I have a certain respect for the fact that she’d snap if you pet her one too many times or in a way that she didn’t want today. She was my work companion, often snuggled in beside me during online school sessions or marking marathons, but there was more than one time during a meeting that she suddenly attacked my arm if I gestured too widely, and I had to feign nonchalance as I shook her off me just outside of camera range. And she was always a bit dirty. As soft as she appeared, her fur acted like velcro, tracking litter throughout the house. Despite regular brushing, wherever she curled up, she left behind the expected layer of hair, but also bits of gravel and maybe some sticks and leaves. Of course she loved to sleep in my bed under the covers. (And who could say no to a tiny mew beckoning to be let in?) I feel asleep to her purrs, but I’d often be rudely awakened by a few sharp bats to the head if I moved around too much. She either couldn’t learn or didn’t care that disciplining me would cost her bed-privileges for the rest of the night.

The Unknowable and Inevitable Mourning

I’m curious about the intersection of psychology, philosophy, and spirituality, and the more I read, the more closely they all appear to intertwine until they’re sometimes indistinguishable. 

Buddhism overlaps with Stoicism, which influenced Albert Ellis’s REBT (then CBT and all its variations). They dig down to acknowledge and question mistaken core beliefs. Plato inspired some of Freud’s work, which mixed with Sartre and Camus to become the existential psychotherapy of Irvin Yalom and Otto Rank. They have a focus on the acceptance of death, which comes back around to the Buddhist prescription to meditate on our bones turning to dust. Yet, despite a general theme being repeated, it’s striking how hard it is to get out from the minutia of daily life to attend to it.

This mix can be found on Dan Harris’ channel, 10% Happier, which I stumbled on when he had comedian Bill Hader as a guest. Harris was a journalist who had a panic attack on air, then turned to meditation for help. I dove into his 2014 book, in which he chronicles his skeptical and very gradual buy-in to the whole idea in a very relatable way. He debunks a few well-known gurus over the course of the book, and then he ends up guided by a few contemporary Jewish Buddhists, including psychiatrist Dr. Mark Epstein (an unfortunate last name in these times). I went back to re-read his 1998 book, Going to Pieces without Falling Apart to flush out some concepts.

ACCEPTING CHANGE

”No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” ~ Heraclitus

These are both books that hope to show us a way to calm our mind enough to be able to think more clearly. Epstein calls the Buddha the original psychoanalyst who teaches us to take a step back from our monkey mind, or the “imperialistic tendency of mind” (prapañca) that can get us spiralling from one tiny error at work towards a vision of living in a cardboard box. We overthink all the time, but it’s possible not to do that. We don’t have to let the spiralling continue. Harris has a metaphor I like of our overwhelming thoughts and feelings bombarding us like a waterfall: we can take a step back to stand safely behind the waterfall to watch it all go by. Harris and Epstein agree that we need to practice this strategy of stepping back through meditation.

15% just for Showing Up!

Changes are coming for Ontario high school students if the newest legislation is passed. It was just tabled, and is already at 2nd reading, so I imagined it's going to be pushed through for a September implementation. (Here's the media briefing and legislation and from the horse's mouth.)

One of the most contentious changes is that instead of being evaluated on their ability to demonstrate their understanding of content and application of skills, 10-15% of student grades must come from participation and attendance. So, instead of the grade being a measure of how well each student is doing compared to a standard that's set by the province, it will be a manipulative tool to get more kids in the room. The alternative to using grades to get kids to stay in class is being interesting, helpful, and welcoming, but apparently those traits are harder to come by. 

More than being pedagogically unsound, grading attendance will disproportionately harm students who are dealing with a mental illness, fighting chronic illness, disabled, impoverished, and/or struggling in an unstable home. Lots of kids can't make it to class for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with their ability to do the work. Penalizing these kids just adds another burden to them instead of working with them to help them find their own best way to learn. 

Final exams during the exam period will also be mandatory. That's not even the case at universities anymore! I highly doubt this change is for pedagogical reasons, but to ensure those weeks are used. The alternative could be to spread that time throughout the year and acknowledge that teachers have several assessment days during each term. 

I do support final, overall assessments, however. I believe it helps to solidify ideas if students are asked to show, and do the work to think about, how to put it all together. That's an important skill that's missing when finals are just dropped entirely. And setting aside a week where they all have to show up sometimes gets kids to make an effort that otherwise wouldn't be made. But, by then end of my 31-year career, I had landed on having a choice of final assessments, and assigning a weighting to them that best fit each student. So they'd write a paper that helped them work with the concepts, then write an exam, and whichever got the higher mark was worth significantly more. One bad day shouldn't destroy someone's average. 

Other highlights: a "condensed" BEd program of one year, reducing the role of trustees "to remove the distraction caused by trustees", and now the Director of Education will be called the flippin' CEO!! 

On Heroes and Role Models

Simone Weil

A couple months ago I wrote that we should not feel blame-worthy if we can’t do all the most courageous things in order to protect our neighbours or help stop a war or try to undermine the entire system. There are less courageous things we can do within our capacity. While that’s true, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to push ourselves to do a little more, and it doesn’t make the people who do the incredibly courageous things any less laudable.

We have heroes for a reason. The people who put themselves in danger when they stand up to injustice often present ideals of action. They’re never perfect embodiments of living, nor should we expect them to be. After all, they’re still human. But people who are noted for their courage, persistence, strength, generosity, etc. help remind us what it looks like, giving us a direction to move towards.

This recognition came to light in reading Kieran Setiya’s Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way. In his chapter on injustice, he explores the life and work of Simone Weil.

The Atlas Junk Tank

I've been so immersed in American news these days, it's a conscious effort to check out what shenanigans Ford is pulling in Ontario. Of course, it's just more of the same bullshit: Trump-lite. Destroy the useful buildings, like the Science Center, and rebuild some garbage spa or ballroom or a tunnel, whatever you can dream up, likely all as a means to pocket money through subcontracting scams, like they did way back in the Iraq invasion, where there was one contractor for every 1.4 U.S. soldiers.  

Digital Warrior on Bluesky explains the cause of the connection succinctly:

"If you've been wondering why Canada's right wing sometimes sounds like the US right wing, a lot of it is imported infrastructure, not organic debate. Same story beats, same villains, same panic triggers tuned for repetition and amplification. Start here [Tyee article]. This piece names Canadian media nodes tied to AtlasNetwork partners and maps the full pipeline in plain terms. Think of it less as a news story and more as a supply chain diagram for political narratives. Atlas Network is the backbone. It connects, funds, trains, and promotes hundreds of think tanks globally so local groups can push the same deregulation agenda with local accents. It scales ideology through partnerships, not elections. The mechanism: money funds research, research manufactures credentialed experts, and experts become recurring guests or hosts. That is how advocacy gets laundered into news. Viewers get repetition, not transparency, and it starts to feel like consensus. 

On Useful Anger: Cohen's All the Rage

How can we possibly approach the world today without being in a constant stage of rage? Philosopher and psychoanalyst Josh Cohen’s All the Rage suggests how to make this feeling more useful to us. 

He writes from a range of perspectives, everything from political uprisings to the patients in his office, and from how rage plays out in the world to how it manifests in our own minds, all with a thread of climate change activism throughout. Ideas are illustrated with examples from fictional characters, historical figures, and his own family. It hardly seems possible to do all that in just 195 pages, yet the book is a thought-provoking and entertaining read, comfortably shifting from micro to macro issues to explore four kinds of rage.

DEFINITIONS

In day-to-day conversations, we use “rage,” “anger,” and “aggression” almost interchangeably. We do the same for “emotion” and “feeling” and for “drive” and “instinct.” The book uses these terms more precisely, so a bit of a glossary might be useful. The order of events that occurs when we’re outraged becomes important. Cohen explains that aggression is often the way we respond directly to a stimulus, and anger is what happens after that first spark of action, when we choose to hold it back. He explains it succinctly in an interview with The Philosopher:

“Aggression is a kind of stimulus response. It’s what we do with a provocation, which might be an injury; it might be a humiliation, an insult of some kind, something that arouses us to retaliation. Aggression is the way that we get rid of that load of stimulus in action. … Anger is a way of holding on. Feelings are ways of holding on to stuff. When we can’t bear to feel something we instead discharge it in action. … Anger is something that you’re left with when action is unavailable to you or perhaps when you try to take the experience to a higher level, i.e. to maintain it in the consciousness as something to experience and process psychically rather than discharge in an action. That’s why psychoanalysis tends to think of anger as a human achievement.”

It’s not the case that we’re insulted, then feel anger, and then rationally decide to act or not act, even if it sometimes feels like that. Instead, the impetus to act is immediate following an enraging stimulus, and the restraint is what leads to the feeling of anger. I think that’s the idea. It’s counterintuitive to me, so it’s useful that it was repeated a few times in the book.

Choosing Bits from the Bible

This post from the U.S. Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth is just distracting fluff, but it's such a curious collection that I want to give it a second look (video of him here). 

If we take "BIBLICAL" to mean "in the Bible," and "Bible" to mean specifically the Old and New Testaments, then those first three claims are accurate in that they appear in the Bible, but there's still some wiggle room around what they mean AND whether or not they're moral or reasonable. There are many, many passages of the Bible we ignore for better or worse. More on that later. And, of course, anything in the Bible is almost necessarily political. It's chock full of rules and laws that people had to follow or face the consequences, not unlike our current legislation. It's part of a long line of versions of legislation from the Code of Hammurabi to all those American Amendments. But let's look at these claims one at a time: 

It's All a Charade

File this under, "Things we already know or ought to know."  

The BMJ just published a feature called, "Why Covid-19 is 'A Vascular Disease Masquerading as a Respiratory One.'" The quotation inside the title comes from Andy Benest, vascular biologist at the University of Nottingham. He further explains, "The virus enters through the airways but exerts its systemic effects through the vasculature. The common denominator in the lungs, heart, kidneys, and brain." (h/t Chantzy)

This personification of a virus, a non-living entity, removes our responsibility as if there's no way we could have known because it's so stealthy. Except we did know. 

Back in August 2020, five and a half years ago, the Journal of Neuroimaging published a study titled, "Covid-19 as a Blood Clotting Disorder Masquerading as a Respiratory Illness: A Cerebrovascular Perspective and Therapeutic Implications for Stroke Thrombectomy." They said, 

"Several reports have been published of patients with ischemic strokes in the setting of coronavirus disease 2019. The mechanisms of how SARS-CoV-2 results in blood clots and large vessel strokes need to be defined as it has therapeutic implications. ... Once SARS-CoV-2 enters the blood stream, a cascade of events unfolds including ... formation of cross-linked fibrin blood clots, leading to pulmonary emboli (PE) and large vessel strokes seen on angiographic imaging studies. There is emerging evidence for Covid-19 being a blood clotting disorder and SARS-CoV-2 using the respiratory route to enter the blood stream. As the blood-air barrier is breached, varying degrees of collateral damage occur. Although antivira and immune therapies are studied, the role of blood thinners in the prevention and management of blood clots in Covid-19 needs evaluation. ... Understanding the mechanisms of blood clotting can potentially help prevent or mitigate end organ damage beyond the respiratory illness in Covid-19."

It took ten years, from 1971 to 1981, for enough people to understand how latently deadly HIV is, and then another five years more to get public health on board on massive education campaigns to prevent the spread. Every bit of educating before the mid-80s was from ad hoc communities of people who were on the front lines, watching friends and family die of the disease, and distributing pamphlets of information by hand. Covid affects all the major organs, including brain functioning. Even mild Covid. I'm curious and a bit terrified at what we'll see in 2030 if we still can't remember that we've known it's a vascular disease since the first year! 

The Perfidious Lust for Unbridled Power

Saving this here. It's the beautifully penned order, in full, from Fred Biery, U.S. District Judge, a federal judge who ordered the release of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Arias and his father. This photo of Liam was attached to the order, with Matthew 19:14 and John 11:35 written below it. Respectively, "Jesus said, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." and "Jesus wept."

Opinion and Order of the Court

Before the Court is the petition of asylum seeker Adrian Conego Arias and his five-year-old son for protection of the Great Writ of habeas corpus. They seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law. The government has responded.

The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children. This Court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and orders them deported but do so by proper legal procedures. 

Apparent also is this government's ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence. Thirty-three-year-old Thomas Jefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation. Among others were:

    1. "He has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People."       
    2. "He has excited domestic Insurrection among us."
    3. "For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us."    
    4. "He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our Legislatures."

"We the people" are hearing echos of that history.

And then there is that pesky inconvenience called the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probably cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and persons or things to be seized. ~ U.S. Const. amend. IV.

Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer. 

Accordingly, the Court finds that the Constitution of these United States trumps this administration's detention of petitioner Adrian Conejo Arias and his minor son, L.C.R. The Great Writ and release from detention are GRANTED pursuant to the attached Judgment.

Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned. 

Ultimately, Petitioners may, because of the arcane United States immigration system, return to their home country, involuntarily or by self-deportation. But that result should occur through a more orderly and humane policy than currently in place.

Philadelphia, September 17, 1787: "Well, Dr. Franklin, what do we have?" "A republic, if you can keep it." 

With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike.

Honouring Our Capacity

I've had several conversations this week about how to be in a time like this when the U.S. government is so overtly corrupted. I'm just the upstairs neighbour in Canada, but we're high on the list of countries to be overthrown. Even without being in that position, it's hard to be aware of the world today and not be in a constant state of rage. I mean even more than before. I want to fast forward to the end when all the bad guys go to prison, but that will only happen with ongoing action from as many people as possible. However, that type of action doesn't necessarily have to be heroic or extraordinary. This is just my two cents from a distance that's looming closer.

INACTION AS COMPLICITY: What's Enough? 

Viewing newly accepted levels of violence in the U.S. is overwhelming and frightening. A few people have posted lists of things we can do to help, but I wonder if, for many people, it's asking too much. This might be a controversial view at a time when it feels like we all need to get on board to shift the world back to a less selfish and violent place, but the perspective that we all are complicit if we don't act might do more harm than good.

Covid Study References

I sometimes write without linking to studies because I've posted all the studies so many times already, but here's a bunch of useful ones when evidence is necessary.

THE PROBLEM:

Covid isn't a cold at all; it's a vascular disease (affecting the circulatory system) that produces microclots, which can lead to blood vessel damage, strokes, and loss of brain tissue (Frontiers in Microbiology, 2021, Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis, 2022, Cardiovascular Diabetology, 2022). Heart disease risk soars after even a mild case (Nature 2022), as well as the risk for heart attacks (Journal of Medical Virology, 2022). Dr. Funmi Okunola explained how Covid causes hypercoagulability, which damages the endothelium, increases strokes, pulmonary embolisms, and deep vein thrombosis, and Professor Danny Altmann explained how clearly mild Covid can be seen to affect the brain in a 2024 video. After an acute case, it hibernates in the body (like chicken pox and HIV), then can cause worse effects years later: the "SARS-CoV-2 spike protein accumulates and persists in the body for years, especially in the skull-meniges-brain axis" (Cell Host & Microbe, 2024). We still know relatively little about Covid, how long it can last, and all the things it can do to the body. HIV started out looking like a bad flu lasting a few weeks, then ten years later, people started dying of AIDS. Nobody knows for sure what the 2030s will look like. It currently still kills more people than car accidents, even as it adds to the number of collisions (Neurology, 2024). It might be wise to continue to take precautions. 

59% of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is from people who don't have any symptoms: 35% from people who are presymptomatic and 24% from people who are carrying it without developing symptoms, like Typhoid Mary (JAMA, 2021), so only masking when around people who are visibly sick, like my doctor does, avoids less than half of the potential transmission in the room, especially in primary health care. 

The Brave and Stalwart

As a quick reminder, well-fitting N95s/FFP3s work amazingly to avoid measles, the flu, and covid. I haven't been sick in years, and I love it!! The only inconvenience is not eating food with people who aren't cautious. I throw on a mask before going inside a public building. It's second-nature now, like putting on a seatbelt when I get in a car. Pretty simple and effective. Really, it's a no brainer.

But Jon Stewart (with Jon Favreau and Tim Miller) saw fit to make fun of people like me: crazy people who continue to avoid getting sick. In case you've forgotten, or if this is news to you, unlike the flu, which is brutal this year, Covid stays in the system, hibernating and attacking internal organs, the brain (sticking glial cells into clumps), and the immune system. The only other virus that attacks the immune system like this, causing lymphopenia, is the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). So, call me crazy for avoiding getting a virus with similar effects as AIDS. 

One-Liner (or so) Film Reviews for 2025

I embraced retirement fully this year by watching a ridiculous number of movies and shows (despite actually continuing to work). These are in the order I watched them, and I highlighted my top favourites (13 of them) and runners up (21 of them) in the more current shows and films. I watched a lot so you don't have to!

The Pluribus Utopia

The recent show Pluribus has got me thinking differently about the kind of ideal state that might be a laudable direction and how to get there. The show is overtly about a hive mind interconnection, that started with a lab-leaked experiment, which affects almost all of the world except for 13 people who have natural immunity. We follow the trajectory of one of these anomalies, Carol, who gives them their titular name, not for "many," a direct translation, but as her own invention: "the plural of succubus."

There will be no significant spoilers here; this isn't about the show specifically, but about its depiction of a perfectly efficient and seemingly happy and altruistic society. Is Carol the last one left in the cave, or is she the only one who made it to the outside?

The hive all works together effortlessly as one, with a prime directive to do no harm, as they distribute food worldwide with the utmost equity. They don't step on bugs or swat flies. They will eat meat if it's already dead, but they won't kill it themselves. They also won't pluck an apple from a tree. They don't interfere with life. They can't lie overtly. It's all very pleasant. The hive won't harm a living body; however, they didn't mind obliterating the human spirit of 8 billion people without explicit consent, rendering their ethics questionable.