Petty Officer Third Class Fred Gwynne of the US Navy: Veteran of The Battle of Saipan and the Battle of Tinian.
Frederick Hubbard Gwynne was born in New York City on July 10, 1926. Fred enlisted in the US Navy and in 1944 he served as a Radioman Third Class on a submarine chaser in the Pacific Theater. A veteran of both the Battle of Saipan and the Battle of Tinian, Gwynne was honorably discharged in 1948 with the rank of Petty Officer Third Class.
According to the Veterans Administration: “After the war, Fred attended Harvard University. An aspiring painter, Gwynne drew cartoons for the “The Harvard Lampoon,” and later became president of the publication. Upon graduation in 1951, he returned to New York and worked several jobs, such as creating commercial artwork and copywriting at the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency.
Gwynne’s first big break came in 1961 when he was cast in the role of police officer Francis Muldoon on the comedy series “Car 54, Where Are You?” The show aired until 1963; the following year, he was cast as Herman Munster in the popular syndication favorite “The Munsters.”
A regular on Broadway – Fred was cast as Big Daddy in the 1974 Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”. His final on-screen role was that of Judge Chamberlain Haller in the 1992 film “My Cousin Vinny,” the end of an acting career that spanned 42 years.” – VA News October 13, 2022.
Petty Officer Third Class Fred Gwynne passed away on July 2, 1993 at the age of 66 years old. He lies in rest at Sandy Mount United Methodist Church Cemetery in Finksburg, Maryland. Lest We Forget.
Annual reporting by the non-profit organization Freedom House shows that internet freedom has been declining globally for 13 consecutive years. What’s new about the report’s latest installment, “The Repressive Power of Artificial Intelligence,” is in its title. AI has been used by governments all over the world to restrict freedom of speech and abuse opposition.
This oppression is both direct and indirect. Directly, AI models supercharge the detection and removal of prohibited speech online. Dissenting opinions cannot spread when they are shut off so quickly. AI-based facial recognition can also help identify protesters, making it unsafe for them to have any of their images shared on social media.
Indirectly, AI advances oppressive goals by spreading misinformation. Two factors play an important role here. First, chatbots and other AI-based tools enable automation that cost-effectively distributes large volumes of false information across platforms. Secondly, AI tools can generate fake images, videos, and audio content that distort reality. These fabrications promote general distrust in publicly available information even when identified as fake. Distrust, in turn, makes people incapable of coordinated action.
Montana certified the No Labels Montana Party as eligible for the 2024 election, the Secretary of State’s office said Friday.
The party seeks to create “a unity ticket to run in 2024 if the two parties [Republicans and Democrats] select unreasonably divisive presidential nominees,” according to the party’s website. The organization listed allies in congress including Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D- Ariz., and Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La.
Manchin was rumored to be a potential presidential candidate for the party, but he said Friday he wouldn’t be running, as reported by Politico.
The No Labels party in Montana is a minor party, alongside the Green Party, meaning candidates will only appear on the general election ballot. The party needed at least 5,000 signatures to appear on the ballot, or 5% of the total vote cast for the successful candidate for the same office at the last general election – whichever qualification it met first.
The national No Labels organization sent the Montana branch $243,000 in July of last year, which the party spent on signature gathering efforts through Texas-based Advanced Micro Targeting.
David Bell, president of insurance company ALPS and board chairperson for the Mansfield Center at the University of Montana, was listed as the party’s treasurer in the state but was not immediately available on Monday for comment. No Labels did not respond to emailed questions in time for publication.
Daily Montanan is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
I can’t remember exactly what day I quit using Google, but I do know that somewhere back in 2008-2010 I was using different search full-time.
It’s well known that Google’s search results reflect the personal opinions of Google and it’s employees; it doesn’t necessarily show facts, science, or objective results, and it’s been this way since the early 00’s.
When I learned of Google’s latest racism gaff I wasn’t surprised:
Google says it has temporarily suspended the ability of Gemini, its flagship generative AI suite of models, to generate images of people while it works on updating the “technology” (code for toning down the DEI) to improve the historical accuracy of outputs involving depictions of humans.
Gemini … When prompted to show images of a Black person, the AI offers to show images that “celebrate the diversity and achievement of Black people.”
I guess that when the Gemini AI was asked to show a picture of a White person, it said it could not fulfill the request because it “reinforces harmful stereotypes and generalizations about people based on their race.”
After multiple tests White people appeared to be the only racial category that Gemini refused to show.
The primary take-away here is that Google has a racism problem, or rather Google’s engineers have a racism problem.
The problem isn’t a new one because as you see, an earlier AI image classification tool made by Google caused outrage, back in 2015, when it misclassified black men as gorillas. The company promised to fix the issue but, as Wired reported a few years later, its ‘fix’ was a pure workaround: With Google simply blocking the tech from recognizing gorillas at all.
As long as there are humans writing the code and doing the math, going forward, our so-called artificial intelligence will still continue to be artificial, but will have nothing to do with intelligence.
Bias will always rear it’s ugly head as long as there are programmers or engineers that have an opinion … on anything … because Generative AI tools produce outputs based on training data and other parameters, such as model weights.
Running off the societal rails in this country is nothing new.
DEI is the new Eugenics —
Eugenics was the set of beliefs and practices which aimed to improve the genetic quality of the human population, it played a significant role in the history and culture of the United States from the late 19th century into the mid-20th century. The cause became increasingly promoted by intellectuals of the Progressive Era.
DEI will prove itself to be a failed attempt at improving the quality of the human population, just like Eugenics did back in the day.
History repeats itself because people have forgotten that we already had a Progressive Era.
DEI is just as racist as Eugenics was … and here we have the likes of Google buying into a bill of goods that serves absolutely no good purpose. Any ideology that rejects portions of a population in an attempt to improve on a society are doomed to failure.
It’s not just Google either:
We can even see Microsoft running off the rails:
If you use grammar check on Microsoft word you will encounter even more nonsense.
It flags everything from “‘mankind” to “father and mother”. It doesn’t like the use of brother or sister instead telling you that it’s more inclusive to say sibling.
It doesn’t like terms like waitress or waiter. It’s more inclusive to say server. Things like that. It has an entire check for inclusivity and any term others might find offensive.
Our world is full of brothers and sisters, white people and black people, waiters and waitresses, husbands and wives. These are the things that makes the world go ’round.
Your exclusion of any of these things makes you so much less inclusive than those who include them. Your DEI is totally worthless and a waste of time. It causes much more division and goes to show just how intolerant those who claim to be tolerant are.
You can’t lift someone up by putting someone else down. This is the sort of thing that your average high school bully does. It’s tyranny, it’s abhorrent, and it’s unacceptable … just like Eugenics was.
I didn’t quit Google because it was racist, I quit Google because I got tired of it telling me what I liked or not. I got tired of Google showing me things that it wanted me to see, and not the things that I actually wanted to see. I quit Google because it was a worthless search for any kind of genuine science or research. I’m thinking that maybe someone should let Google in on the fact that Pseudoscience is not science.
Looking back, I’m glad I quit Google when I did, because Google has never gotten better … only worse (I had no idea of just how racist Google would become).
As the case is with Google today and it’s blatant racism, and not too unlike how Eugenics was back in the day, developing and maintaining derogatory social constructs will do nothing to advance society as a whole. As a society, we didn’t learn the lesson of Eugenics, so now we have to go back and take the class again.
Lets just hope that this time we won’t fail the class, because if we do, we’ll be going down this same path 100 years from now.
It seems like that the more some things change, the more they stay the same —
Crude electric carriages were first invented in the late 1820’s and 1830’s. Practical, commercially available electric vehicles appeared during the 1890’s. An electric vehicle held the vehicular land speed record until right around 1900.
For a variety of technical and social reasons, electric vehicles prevailed to become a highly preferred mode of transportation by 1902.
Drivers considered passenger and commercial electric vehicles to be neater and they were especially cleaner than gasoline and steam powered vehicles since they produced no steam or odor.
Electric vehicle technology was not only embraced by early drivers, it also improved drastically. Thomas Edison perfected his nickel-iron storage battery in 1909, and the storage capacity of batteries increased 35% from 1910 to 1925 with a corresponding increase in range of 230%. Rechargeable lead–acid batteries could provide modest output over long periods or large output in short bursts.
With all of the excitement around electric back in the day, it looked as if the sky was the limit. Despite these high hopes, the use of electric vehicles peaked in 1901 and 1902, when about 62% of motorized vehicles in the country were electric-powered.
EV trucks being charged, 1917
Electric began declining around 1902 and then sharply dropped off. So much so that by 1920 they constituted less than 2% of the overall market. Even the commercial sector slowly abandoned them: in 1913, 10% all commercial vehicles were electric powered, but by 1925 the number had dropped to less than 3%.
Here in 2024 we’re facing many of the same technological problems that we faced clear back in 1902.
Back in 1902, electric vehicles required special time-consuming recharging stations, as most could travel only 25 miles or so between charges. (roughly 250 average miles today even with vastly improved roads)
Back in 1902 electric vehicles were more expensive than gasoline vehicles, had slower top speeds, were difficult to charge, and were mostly confined to urban areas.
Drivers found it difficult and expensive to have electric vehicles recharged at gas stations and hotels, which differed in their rates for charging, while gas stations listed prices clearly.
Early gas vehicles cost $1,000 to $2,000 whereas electric vehicles cost $1,250 to $3,500. The high initial price of electric vehicles convinced manufacturers to focus only on the luxury market (Tesla comes to mind here).
In the early 1920’s, the battery market for electric vehicles became fragmented and many of these companies went bankrupt due to mismanagement. Even with the government subsidies of today to the tune of billions of dollars for these so-called green companies, we still have corruption and green company failures at alarming rates across the country.
In the 1920’s, electric vehicles were pretty much suited to and were practical for only short urban trips that could be completed near charging stations and cities just like they are today.
Not too unlike today, the electric vehicles of the 1920’s performed poorly in hilly areas or on rough roads and were not well suited for mountains and heavy freight (todays horse trailors or RV’s).
The outbreak of World War I in 1914 cemented support in favor of gasoline vehicles. The federal government did not see electric vehicles as being well suited for military applications
Even today, military standards are set for speed, range, and improved performance that are much higher than what even the best electric vehicles can provide.
Electric vehicles had started out with high hopes in the 1890’s and by the 1920’s had proven the extent of their technological advancement. Here in 2024 we are seeing all of the same exact shortcomings and limitations to the electric vehicle market/industry that we saw clear back in 1924.
And just like back in 1924, the electric vehicle proponents of 2024 still believe in their technological optimism and are placing faith in human ingenuity to overcome all of the lingering technical problems that come with the electric vehicle.
Henry Jackson Howard wrote in a 1900 issue of Metropolitan Magazine that:
“… from this initial club run we must infer that up to the present electricity is the most popular motive power… With the city automobilist, electricity will continue in favor”.
I think that Henry Jackson Howard was right, in that the electric vehicle is best suited for the urban areas and cities. After all, with all of the push for electric vehicles originating in and coming from some of our largest cities, which is where all of the pollution is incidentally, the electric vehicle may be best mandated for use in those areas.
The last time I visited Los Angeles there was a sign disallowing trucks to drive on the Golden State Freeway. The Golden State Freeway passes directly through Los Angeles and it was mandated that only cars are allowed to drive that section of the interstate. I can see this as a great starting point for the implementation of mandatory electric vehicle use. Big city environ’s may one day wake up to see a sign that specifically disallows gas powered vehicles within the Los Angeles city limits for instance. With the way the world is these days, that idea isn’t as far fetched as it might seem.
The fact of the matter here is that electric vehicles are fairly limited — you can only do so much with electricity. Electricity isn’t something you can put into a can and carry home for a fixed or otherwise set price. Buying electricity isn’t at all like buying a head of lettuce.
Also, if it weren’t for the government wasting our tax dollars pushing a less than stellar technology, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation about electric vehicles because history told us over 100 years ago that this is it — electric has a place, but that place is small in the larger scheme of things.
There are reasons why the sales of electric vehicles have fallen off a cliff over this passed year. One of the reasons being that people are having to relearn the lessons that were taught 100 years ago.
Even Ford Motor Company, much to their disappointment, seeing billions of dollars invested in electric disappearing, never to return, (because some pie-in-the-sky environ decided to nap through high school history class … probably), learned that you can’t just believe a government that forces concepts that were already proven limited by the free market.
Ford Motor Company does have the right idea though. Instead of just tossing electric out the window, Ford realized that there’s a place for everything and continues to produce electric vehicles, albeit at a much more limited and realistic scale (Ford may have decided to focus only on the luxury market).
Electric vehicles are limited and need to be promoted and brought to the public in a realistic way.
There’s money in electric … there always has been. But getting money out of electric at the national level is pretty much only promoted by the folks that think everything that happened during the movie “The Little Mermaid” was real … or by folks that watched the movie “2012” and then turn around racking their brain trying to remember if that ever happened.
The electric vehicle in 2024 is being embraced for many of the same reasons that it was embraced for all of those many years ago. It doesn’t stink, it’s quiet, and it’s easy to operate.
You can’t really claim that the electric vehicle of 2024 is going to help save the environment when you stop to consider all of the environmental damage that’s being done just to get all of the materials together in order to build it. Even in spite of the fact that the electric vehicles of the 1920’s contained rechargeable lead–acid batteries, we can’t help but notice how the mining of Lithium might be adversely affecting our environment.
For the amount of ecological damage that has been and is being done with regard to electric vehicles, one sort of wonders if it all might be worth it at the end of the day when you stop and consider the over all limitations of the electric vehicle itself.
You can’t save the planet by destroying it. One day we may end up waking to another Berkeley Pit or worse, all for the sake of trying to (or being forced to) make a limited technology work.
Lithium iron phosphate or lithium ferro-phosphate (LFP) is an inorganic compound with the formula LiFePO. It is a gray, red-grey, brown or black solid that is insoluble in water. The material has attracted attention as a component of lithium iron phosphate batteries, a type of Li-ion battery. This battery chemistry is targeted for use in power tools, electric vehicles, solar energy installations and more recently large grid-scale energy storage. – Wikipedia
In Argentina, indigenous communities report that lithium operations on their lands threaten their survival and the exercise of their rights. In Zimbabwe, where lithium exploitation is currently low (1%), the illicit financial flow has already been identified in the lithium mining sector. A recent study on the life-cycle water-scarcity footprint showed that water use associated with lithium-brine mining in Chile and China, mainly through evaporative loss, can create a high risk of natural freshwater scarcity for humans and nature.
A regular on Broadway – Fred was cast as Big Daddy in the 1974 Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”. His final on-screen role was that of Judge Chamberlain Haller in the 1992 film “My Cousin Vinny,” the end of an acting career that spanned 42 years.” – VA News October 13, 2022.
