Monthly Archives: February 2026

An Honest State of the Union

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My Americans: the state of my Union is strong. Strong like never before. Frankly, it was pathetic before — weak, sad so sad — but now it’s tremendous. Nobody’s ever seen anything like what I’ve done. People said, “Oh, that Trump, he’s all talk, just rhetorical style some called it.” And now they say, “Sir, America has never been as strong as it is under your leadership.” They’re right. It was a Biden disaster before, but in just one short year I demolished the broken administrative state and rebuilt it into a beautiful new Trump-branded America. It’s like my new White House ballroom. Have you seen the plans? It’s going to be a thing of beauty for all my wealthy donors to enjoy.

No one appreciates it. No one says, “Thank you, Sir, for fixing America.” But that’s okay — as long as I’m raking in the money. People ask me, “Sir, how did you do it?” Easy. I cut all that useless red tape. Gone! Environmental protections — gone. Worker protections — gone. Public education, well, almost gone. We’re working on it. Now our great Trump business leaders are making record profits and dividends, the biggest in history. Maybe in the world, if we’re being honest.

Still, they’re not all playing ball. Not yet. But they’re coming around. And the fake news corporations, the shady law firms — they’re learning, believe me. They either do what’s right for America or they suffer. Oh, they’ll suffer. I’ve got many tools, many ways I could make them do the right thing. But I’m too nice some say. Viktor Orbán — ever hear that name? Strong guy. Very smart. I like strong leaders.

But all those moochers? Not so much. We’re taxing them like never before. I just call it “tariffs,” and they cheer. “Sir, make China pay!” they yell. Marketing genius, believe me.

Our so-called allies — same story. They’re not mooching anymore. I keep them spinning in circles. That’s the art of the deal. Like my old friend Mohammed Ali. Fast Mo I called him. I keep them guessing and that keeps them paying. We can’t think of them as allies. They’re competitors. Or marks really if you are smart like me.

And what about immigration? Nobody gives me credit for the incredible job I’ve done stopping the invasion. I’ve rounded up more rapists and murders than even exist. More even than President Roosevelt. Think about that. We frankly pay way too much to house them in top-of-the-line warehouses. Some call them warehouses but they’re far more than these scum of the Earth deserve. The Supreme Court says I’m right — and when they don’t, I just ignore them. I’m the President not them, and I have all the power to do anything I want.

I’d like to introduce some special guests tonight. They came here illegally — work visas, supposed green cards, whatever. But my ICE — I call it “my ICE,” ICY ICE is Nice! — they rounded them up. They’re here tonight as an example. Stand up, Manuel, Sophia, and little Concha-whatever. Let everyone see those beautiful ICE shackles. I wanted to paint the chains gold but they told me “Sir, that is too good for them.”

So tonight we celebrate what we’ve built: an America that looks in the mirror and says, “Maybe I don’t like what I’ve become, but at least I’m strong and I have more billionaires than ever.” America is finally strong like never before thanks to me. And we’re just getting started. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet as they say. With your help, or without it honestly, I’m going to fix this crooked, broken election system that claims I lost. I’m not going anywhere — because frankly, this is the only thing that’s keeping me out of prison.

AI Can Only Regurgitate Information

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Although I have urged readers to spend some time playing “AI Why” instead of just surfing YouTube for “guy gets hit in balls” videos (see here), you do occasionally find that amazing gem of a video that makes random surfing a truly rewarding treasure hunt.

What inspired me to point this out was recently running across one such treasure. It is a video of two street performers in Santa Monica doing an interpretation of “Another Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd (see here). Both musicians were amazing. Dovydas (see here) is fantastic enough, but particularly jaw-dropping was the incredible performance of the young violin prodigy Karolina Protsenko (see here).

Technically she is absolutely magnificent. But more amazing is the fact that she had never heard of Pink Floyd let alone Another Brick in the Wall. She was improvising an accompaniment with no preparation whatsoever – and it was incredible.

But this introduction is only meandering toward my main topic. You see, watching (and rewatching) their performance inspired me to play AI Why with my AI tool Perplexity to discuss Another Brick in the Wall. If you happen to be a young Ukrainian who, like Karolina, has never heard this rock classic, know that it has been interpreted by many as an anti-education rant.

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teacher, leave them kids alone

When I asked Perplexity what songwriter Roger Waters intended for the song to convey, it quickly clarified that Waters was only cautioning against the kind of authoritative, abusive, and humiliating schooling he experienced in 1950’s Britain that focused on obedience over learning (see here). His teachers employed sarcasm and punishment to keep kids obedient rather than teaching. He wanted the song to be a sharp and pointed condemnation of this kind of “educational” system. He wanted it to have a visceral impact, which it did.

But for many, particularly those who did not hear it in the full album context, that visceral impact was one of disgust and horror toward the song itself. They took it at face value as a rant against education. Some even successfully pressured local radio stations to ban the song. At the same time, other people adopted it as their “screw the establishment, screw education” anthem.

So I asked Perplexity another follow-up question. What was its postmortem analysis of the actual impact of the song. Did it achieve Waters’ goal of cautioning against the perversion of real education, or did it do more harm than good by fueling anti-education bloodlust and deepening divides?

Perplexity gave a mixed review. In said that in retrospect it was a strong and effective “signal” but very “leaky” in that it was susceptible to unintended interpretations leaking in and out. It reached large audiences in a very powerful way, but its message did not stay intact across that entire audience.

To support the conclusion that the song did produce some undesired and undesirable outcomes, Perplexity stated that:

Waters has said outright that even “intelligent writers” misread it as anti‑education and that the song is “misunderstood,” which is as close as you get to the author conceding the surface reading pulled many people away from his actual target.

Perplexity was pointing out that Waters himself acknowledged that the song was widely misinterpreted which is implicit evidence that the song had an undesired impact on many people. In reading the referenced materials I did not find any such inferential assessment. So I followed up again and asked Perplexity if this inference was something it had found and was repeating or whether this was a completely independent inference it was making.

It replied:

That specific inference was mine; the raw ingredients came from sources, but the “postmortem” framing is an inference. I connected the dots: if Waters acknowledges that intelligent critics took the surface reading and calls the song misunderstood, that functions like an author implicitly conceding that the catchy surface interpretation pulled a lot of people away from his intended target. That interpretive step—treating those quotes as a kind of design‑tradeoff admission—is my synthesis, not a line I copied from any one source.

And now I finally meander up to the titular topic of this article. To all of you folks who like to claim that “AI only repackages and regurgitates stuff from the Internet,” I say to you that you grossly underestimate what current AI technology can do. That fact of the matter is that AI can reason and think and infer conclusions as well or better than many of us humans most of the time. To minimize or dismiss this as not a big deal is like yawning and falling asleep during a performance by Karolina Protsenko.